Trump tackles mail-in ballot fraud, the Democrat Party sinks (and sinks, and sinks), millionaires and billionaires pump money to the same lefties who decry them, a kangaroo verdict gets slapped down, a platoon of swamp creatures get smacked down, Ukrainian drones are producing gas shortages in Russia, Lebanon declares itself Iranian influence-free, a heavyweight joins the Texas AG race, Dade bows out, a neo-Nazi expertly trolls the German justice system, and Facebook’s AI wants to have sexytime with your children.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The next voting fraud vector President Trump is ready to tackle: mail-in voting fraud.
President Donald Trump has been warning for years that mail-in ballots and voting machines are riddled with vulnerabilities that invite fraud and undermine trust in elections. We’ve discussed these vulnerabilities here at PJ Media extensively, and now Trump is taking action on them. On Monday morning, President Trump announced on Truth Social that he will issue an executive order to put an end to mail-in ballots before the 2026 midterms and restore “honesty and integrity” to America’s elections.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump announced, “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” He argued that such machines cost “Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”
Trump said the United States stands alone in continuing to use widespread mail-in voting. “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED,” he wrote.
The president made clear that he intends to act quickly, pledging to use executive authority to move the plan forward. “WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,” Trump said.
Snip.
In 2021, Democrats in Congress tried to ram through a series of radical bills — the Freedom to Vote Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the For the People Act — that would have federalized state elections and permanently undermined election integrity. These schemes included universal mail-in ballots, counting votes up to ten days after Election Day, automatic voter registration, granting felons the right to vote, and even laying the groundwork to abolish the Electoral College altogether. It was a brazen attempt to lock in Democrat power forever by destroying the safeguards that protect free and fair elections.
Trump’s announcement proves that election integrity will be a central priority of his presidency as the 2026 midterms approach.
Some think Trump will run into states rights issues. We’ll see…
A federal appeals court handed the Trump administration a decisive 2-1 victory Wednesday, ruling that the president can proceed with cutting nearly $2 billion in previously approved foreign aid payments. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a lower court’s order that had required the administration to continue sending taxpayer funds abroad.
How the Working Families Party sells itself as “grassroots” — with IRS-documented, publicly admitted “common control” revealing it’s really a Soros-financed political money washer.
In New York politics, there’s one machine that towers above the rest. No, not the Democratic Party—it’s the Working Families Party, the most powerful minor party in America. Its name sounds wholesome enough—who doesn’t support “working families”? But behind that branding lies a $2 billion tax-exempt laundromat that’s anything but local, grassroots, or honest.
Take Zohran Mamdani, their current belle of the ball.
Easy answer: Zohran Mandani is the product of a grassroots washing syndicate of 501c3 and 501c4 entities funded by George Soros and Silicon Valley billionaires. He is their manufactured product.
Easy answer: Zohran Mandani is the product of a grassroots washing syndicate of 501c3 and 501c4 entities funded by George Soros and Silicon Valley billionaires. He is their manufactured product.
After winning his race, he announced on NBC: “I don’t think we should have billionaires.” Hilarious considering Mamdani’s “grassroots” revolution was fueled by over $2 million in PAC and organizational spending, much of it courtesy of the very billionaire class he allegedly opposes.
This is the theater of modern politics: denounce wealth while being powered by it. And the actors know their audience. They’ve learned that if you slap “grassroots” on the packaging, voters won’t check the label.
But let’s check it anyway.
The money trail revealed in Sam Antar’s breaking report is straightforward enough. Soros donates to the Open Society Institute, a $4.5 billion “charity” that enjoys generous tax deductions. OSI then transfers millions to other “charities” like Tides Foundation, which mysteriously claims to run a $350 million operation with zero employees. From there, the money “converts” into political cash: Tides passes funds to the Working Families Organization, a 501(c)(4), which then wires millions to PACs that bankroll candidates like Mamdani.
What you have is billionaire money dressed up in “working families” clothing, masquerading as the will of the people while being anything but.
Drawing on data from the nonpartisan data firm L2, the New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher conducted an in-depth analysis of the changes in these numbers over the past few election cycles. His findings paint a stark picture for the Democratic Party. It is in the midst of what he calls a “voter registration crisis,” with the party “hemorrhaging voters long before they even reach the polls.”
Goldmacher first looked at how these figures shifted between 2020 and 2024. In the span of four years, Democrats lost roughly 2.1 million registered voters across the 30 states and the district that track party affiliation, while the GOP gained approximately 2.4 million.
As the map below shows, Democrats fell behind in each one of these states. This includes blue states such as California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, as well as the swing states of Arizona, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
NEW at NYT: The Democratic Party is facing a voter registration crisis in red, blue and battleground states alike — losing ground to the GOP everywhere.
My deep dive into the numbers and what it reveals about the party's brand.
The shift in Pennsylvania has been dramatic. In November 2020, Democrats held a registration advantage of 517,310 active voters. Today, that margin has shrunk to just 53,303.
A similar scenario has played out in North Carolina, where Democrats once enjoyed a 400,000-voter edge. Their lead now stands at less than 17,000.
Goldmacher noted that, in percentage terms, Democrats’ advantage over Republicans narrowed from nearly 11 points in 2020 to just over 6 points in 2024.
President Donald Trump was still able to win because so many Democratic votes are concentrated in deep-blue strongholds such as California and New York. By contrast, large red states such as Texas don’t allow voters to register by party affiliation — and thus aren’t reflected in the data.
In some cases, Democrats still retained an edge over Republicans (such as in Pennsylvania). But the majority of new registrations in other states, such as Florida, shifted from Democrats to the GOP. Goldmacher expects more states to follow.
Moreover, between 2018 and 2024, new young voters have shifted noticeably toward the Republican Party. In 2018, 66% of voters under 45 registered as Democrats, but by 2024 that share had fallen to just 48%.
Goldmacher reported that, last year, for the first time since 2018, new voter registrations nationwide favored Republicans over Democrats.
That was a long time ago and today Democrats’ image is significantly worse and over a wider range of cultural issues than it was back then. The animus toward the party among working-class voters has reached epic proportions and Democrats appear clueless on how to overcome that. The reigning theories seem to be talking more about economics (“kitchen table issues” or, more daringly, “abundance”), insisting they’re “fighters” and cussing a lot. Damon Linker gets to the heart of how absolutely hopeless this approach is.
[W]hat liberals need to do to defeat right-wing populism…[is] to moderate on culture. That means on policies and moral stances wrapped up with the old culture war (like trans and other gender-related issues) as well as in other areas of policy that have a strong cultural valance—like crime, immigration, and DEI. This isn’t just necessary because Democratic positions on these issues are unpopular at the moment. It’s also crucial because culture is more fundamental than politics: It sends a signal to voters about where a politician or party stands on base-level moral questions. When voters become convinced that a specific politician or party has bad (or just sufficiently different) moral judgment, they lose trust in that politician or party. And then other, more superficial policy commitments don’t matter…
The area surrounding the Texas-Arkansas border has been solidly Republican for a while, but the Biden people wanted to demonstrate that federal dollars are available to all, regardless of political leanings, and they hoped they might be able to tilt the area’s partisan alignment a bit back toward the Dems if those dollars were used to jump-start a solar-panel-construction industry in the region, creating jobs and boosting the local economy in other ways…The money arrived, but in the 2024 election, the region voted even more overwhelmingly for Donald Trump than it had in the previous two election cycles…The effort failed because the voters in Texarkana, like voters in rural and exurban communities around the country, have learned to distrust the Democrats on fundamental issues of morality and culture, making them disinclined to trust them on anything else…
The way to [reach these skeptical voters] is for the party to make an effort to distance itself from the leftward cultural stances associated with its most animated progressive activists, but also often affirmed by many millions of well-educated upper-middle-class white and often female professionals. Since people fitting this description frequently hold top jobs in the Democratic Party itself, this is a hard ask…
This, I’m convinced, is the top challenge facing liberalism and the Democratic Party today.
Exactly. This is the top challenge facing the Democrats today. Yet they are shockingly M.I.A. in dealing with it. Democrats overwhelmingly would rather do anything than do what is needed: two, three many Sister Souljah moments. Consider how Democrats have handled culturally-inflected issues since their 2024 election defeat.
Trans? A few peeps, quickly slapped down by the Groups and party activists.
Immigration? Everything Trump’s doing is wrong. We’ll only cooperate with federal law enforcement when we feel like it.
Crime? Not a problem. Everything’s going great—especially in D.C.! Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries: “The crime scene in D.C. most damaging to everyday Americans is at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.” Trump’s turning D.C. into a police state!
Race? DEI is wonderful and we’ll defend it to our dying breath. Same thing with racial preferences. Those who oppose these policies are racists and white supremacists.
The list could go on. Using the traditional 0-10 Sister Souljah scale, where zero is doing nothing at all, 5 is barely adequate, and 10 is what Bill Clinton did, I’d give today’s Democrats a 1 for the occasional grudging admission in interviews and the like that maybe the Democrats have overdone their noble commitments a little bit (though of course their heinous opponents are 100 percent wrong). And the 1 might be generous.
Teixeira is 100% right on the problem, and on Democrats complete inability to address the problem. Sister Souljah is the Democratic Party. The insane wing is in the process of driving out the last remnants of the Corrupt Wing, the latter of which foolishly believes that actually winning elections is somehow more important than the perpetual virtue signaling festival to remind those inbred redneck freaks of JesusLand that Democrats are the Good People, and anyone who disagrees is a hetronormative racist transphobic white supremacist who must be cancelled at all costs.
Social Justice controls the ideological core of the Party hook, line and sinker. Opposing social justice is heretical #WrongThink that must be punished. Social justice warriors cannot be argued out of their convictions by logic, as logic had nothing to do with forming them. Social justice is a religious imperative, and the only way to free the party from the grip of social justice is to burn it to the ground. The Democrat Party needs to go the way of the Whigs. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced Tuesday that she will be revoking security clearances for 37 current and former intel officials for allegedly abusing the public’s trust by manipulating information and conducting political activities.
The officials on Gabbard’s list includes former top aides to Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was involved with a discredited intelligence assessment that claimed Russia favored once-and-current President Donald Trump to win the 2016 election over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Gabbard has accused the 37 officials accused of politicizing and weaponizing intelligence, failing to safeguard classified information, or other instances of failing to follow standards.
Andrew Cedar: Former Senior Director for Global Engagement at the National Security Council
Andrew P. Miller: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs
Benjamin A. Cooper: Associate Scholar in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute
Beth E. Sanner: Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration
Brett M. Holmgren: Former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research
Charles A. Kupchan: Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and former Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council
Christopher Center: Former intelligence analyst and official
Corinne A. Graff: Former Senior Advisor at the United States Institute of Peace
Dipreet K. Sidhu: Former intelligence and policy official
Edward Gistaro: Former National Intelligence Officer for Europe
Emily J. Horne: Former Spokesperson and Senior Director for Press at the National Security Council
Harry Hannah: Former intelligence official
Heather R. Gutierrez: Former intelligence analyst
Jamie S. Jowers: Former intelligence and policy advisor
Jeffrey M. Prescott: Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture
Joel T. Meyer: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security
Joel Willett: Former CEO of Cybermedia Technologies
John W. Ficklin: Former Senior Director for Records and Access Management at the National Security Council
Julia S. Gurganus: Former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia
Julia Santucci: Former Director for Egypt at the National Security Council
Loren DeJonge Schulman: Former Deputy Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security
Luke R. Hartig: Former Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council
Maher B. Bitar: Former Coordinator for Intelligence and Defense Policy at the National Security Council
Mark B. Feierstein: Former Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at USAID
Mary Beth Goodman: Deputy Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Megan F. Doherty: Former Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Middle East at USAID
Michael P. Dempsey: Former Acting Director of National Intelligence
Perry Blatstein: Former intelligence analyst
Richard H. Ledgett: Former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency
Samantha E. Vinograd: Former Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the Department of Homeland Security
Sarah S. Farnsworth: Former intelligence official
Shelby L. Pierson: Former Intelligence Community Election Threats Executive
Stephanie O’Sullivan: Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Thomas W. West: Former Special Representative for Afghanistan
Thom X. Nguyen: Former intelligence analyst
William J. Tuttle: Former intelligence official
Yael Eisenstate: Former Vice President of Global Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League
I’m including the entire list here because I think it’s important to name and shame. Also, having this posted and tagged lets me keep track when one of those swamp creatures pops up in a new role, and helps track the corruption of previously important institutions (I’m looking at you, ADL).
Speaking of swamp creatures: “Kash Patel’s FBI raids John Bolton’s home, office in probe over sending classified documents to family.” Bolton reminds me of Mark Felt, Watergate’s “Deep Throat,” in that both stabbed metaphorical knives in the President they served over being denied the influence and deference they felt they deserved. Bolton was actually a pretty good UN ambassador, where he served the useful function of scaring the shit out of America’s foreign enemies. Alas, he Peter Principled himself to National Security Advisor, where he never got on the same page with Trump’s unorthodox (but effective) diplomacy.
“LaToya Cantrell, the mayor of New Orleans, has been indicted on Federal charges….The indictment alleges that [Cantrell] and Jeffrey Paul Vappie, a member of her Executive Protection Unit (EPU), developed a personal relationship in October 2021. To conceal their relationship and maximize their time together, they allegedly created a scheme to defraud the City of New Orleans by engaging in personal activities while Vappie was on duty and being paid for providing protection.” They were canoodling on the taxpayer’s dime. (Previously: “It’s the mayor’s exorbitant travel spending that has people up in arms. She traveled to sister cities Ascona, Switzerland, and Juan Antibes-les-Pins on the French Riviera this summer, costing the City of New Orleans close to $45,000, including first-class international airfare with lie-flat seating.”)
“The Unecha pumping station which is part of the Druzhba pipeline has been hit for the second time this week by drones.” This is near to the border with Belarus.
“Unprecedented Shift In Lebanon’s Attitude Towards Iran: Our Government’s Decision To Disarm Hizbullah Stands; We Will Not Tolerate Your Intervention In Our Internal Affairs; Relations With Lebanon Must Be Conducted Via State Institutions, Not Via Hizbullah,” MEMRI, August 14, 2025:
On August 13, 2025, during his visit to Lebanon, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, heard unequivocally from Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam that Lebanon is no longer under Iranian patronage and will not tolerate Iranian dictates or interference in its internal affairs.
Larijani’s visit came amid tension between the two countries that followed the historic August 5 decision by the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah by the end of the year – a decision that sparked rage in Hizbullah’s patron Iran. Iranian officials, among them Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, as well as Ali Akbar Velayati, top advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Iraj Masjedi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Qods Force, expressed their vehement opposition to the Lebanon’s sovereign decision, claiming that it reflected not the will of the Lebanese people but only Israeli and American aspirations. These senior Iranian officials voiced support for Hizbullah’s refusal to comply with the demand to disarm, and warned that Hizbullah could thwart this plan because it had already rebuilt itself following the war with Israel and is now “at the height of its powers.” They added that Iran would support the organization in this matter.
Lebanon was quick to respond to these statements, perceiving them as direct and blatant interference in its domestic affairs. In a notable response, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry issued, unprecedentedly, not one but two harsh condemnations of “the violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, unity, and stability.”
More condemnation and criticism came from the anti-Hizbullah and anti-Iran camp in Lebanon, which called on the Lebanese government to take diplomatic measures against Iran, such as expelling the Iranian ambassador and even severing relations with Iran, in addition to filing a complaint with the UN Security Council.
Israel’s decision to crush Iran’s terrorist catspaws continues to reap benefits across the region.
The Texas Attorney General’s race just got a major shake up.
Conservative firebrand and U.S. House Freedom Caucus member Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX-21) will run for Texas attorney general, the four-term legislator told The Texan.
“It has been my honor to represent the 21st Congressional District of Texas — the best part of the best state in the greatest country in the history of the world. I am particularly proud of our work to deliver on President Trump’s agenda and fight to drain the swamp. I could do it forever and be fulfilled professionally. But representatives should not be permanent,” Roy said in a release.
“And my experience watching Texans unite in response to the devastating Hill Country floods made clear that I want to come home. I want to take my experience in Congress, as a federal prosecutor, and as First Assistant Attorney General to fight for Texas from Texas.”
Roy’s 21st Congressional District stretches from Austin to San Antonio and west of Kerrville. During the devastating Hill Country flooding last month that killed over 130 people, Roy, who represents the area, was on the ground in the community more than most other state officials responding to the disaster.
He joins a field that includes state Sens. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) and Joan Huffman (R-Houston), as well as former Department of Justice appointee Aaron Reitz. Polling released by Texas Southern University on Thursday morning, which did not include Roy, put Huffman at 12 points, Middleton at eight, and Reitz at seven with nearly three-quarters of respondents undecided.
Previously Ted Cruz’s chief of staff before getting elected to congress, Roy has to be considered the immediate favorite to win the Republican nomination.
Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party stripped the party’s endorsement of radical leftist Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh in the Minneapolis mayoral race over “brazen cheating.” The emerging election cheating scandal hilariously occurred amongst Democrats. Awkwardly, this comes from the same party of woke leftists that insists U.S. elections are the “safest in the world” and free from manipulation. Clearly, this corrupt party that serves progressive elites – not the working class – wants a do-over in this local election.
On Thursday, Minnesota DFL chair Richard Carlbom wrote in a statement, “After a thoughtful and transparent review of the challenges, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee found substantial failures in the Minneapolis Convention’s voting process on July 19, including an acknowledgement that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention.”
Carlbom added, “Now it’s time to turn our focus to unity and our common goal: electing DFL leaders focused on making life more affordable for Minnesotans and holding Republicans accountable for the chaos and confusion they’ve unleashed on Minnesotans.”
A series of challenges were submitted to the Minnesota DFL after last month’s convention, citing serious issues with the electronic voting system and raising questions about election integrity in Fateh’s endorsement over incumbent Jacob Frey. The Minneapolis DFL also recognized it had erroneously eliminated DeWayne Davis after the first round of voting due to 176 undercounted votes.
Funny how Democrats swear up and down that there’s absolutely no voting fraud…until they accuse a fellow Democrat.
Trump is calling on Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook to resign over mortgage fraud allegations, namely claiming two separate homes as her primary residence.
Moribund lefty legacy outlet MSNBC is rebranding as MS NOW. Until that woke hive of scum and villainy is entirely purged, no sane American will ever trust it.
“Texas Is Preparing To Cut Off Power To Data Centers During Grid Emergencies.” Well, yeah. If it’s data centers or people’s homes and apartments, people should generally win. Data centers should have backup power and orderly shutdown procedures, not to mention redundant arrays of backups and rotating off-site backups…
Texas Democratic State Rep. James Talarico (TX-50) decries the effects of money on politics while taking “a whopping $59,000 in donations from a billionaire’s PAC last year. The Texas Sands PAC, which is pushing for the Lone Star State to legalize casino gambling, gave Talarico the donations to encourage him to lead that initiative.”
“Senator launches investigation into Meta over allowing ‘sensual’ AI chats with kids.” It seems that all the billions Facebook has been sinking into AI has only made the world worse. Much like Facebook itself…
Flesh-eating bacteria is on the rise again. Avoiding swimming in the ocean or eating raw oysters seems to be the key to avoiding it.
Dwight has a swell obit up for RAF Flight Lt. John Cruickshank, a Catalina pilot who was so shot up by a U-boat, with blood soaking through his flight suit, that his crewmembers thought he wouldn’t make it on the five hour flight home. Not only did he make it back to help land the plane, he lived to be 105.
“U.S. Agriculture Secretary Rollins, Gov. Abbott Announce $850 Million to Combat New World Screwworm Threat. Hundreds of millions will be appropriated by the federal government to build a sterile fly facility.”
German neo-Nazi claims to be a woman so he can serve his time in a women’s prison. ‘Sven Liebich, who now goes by ‘Marla-Svenja,’ was convicted of “slander and incitement to hatred’ and lost his bid to appeal. Now that he’s headed to jail, he has suddenly identified as a woman, despite previously calling transgender people ‘parasites.'” Liebich appears to be an actual neo-Nazi rather than just an AfD member, and neo-Nazis are scum, but you have to admire the brazenness of the hustle, especially not even bother to shave off his mustache, and actually demanding kosher meals.
After weeks of gridlock, the Texas House has approved a new congressional redistricting plan that Republicans say will strengthen their hold on Washington, adding five GOP-leaning seats across the state.
The issue has been a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott, who placed congressional redistricting on the call during the first special session earlier this summer. But Democrats brought the chamber to a standstill when they broke quorum and fled to Illinois and other states to prevent the map from advancing.
Their walkout effectively killed the first special session, but with Abbott calling lawmakers back for a second 30-day session, Democrats returned on Monday. By Wednesday, Republicans had rushed the proposal out of committee and onto the House calendar, where it passed on a party-line vote.
State Rep. Todd Hunter (R–Corpus Christi), who carried the legislation, defended the process while laying out the plan on the floor.
“This plan originated in the first called special session before the chamber left a quorum,” said Hunter. “In that session, we held three public hearings—we were not required to hold those hearings. At these hearings, we heard testimony from members of Congress and citizens alike. The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance.”
The map, which reshapes districts in Dallas and Houston as well as Central and South Texas, is designed to reflect population growth while giving Republicans an even stronger advantage. Each new district is required to be nearly equal in population, with the ideal congressional size sitting around 766,900 residents.
Democrats blasted the proposal as “illegal and racially discriminatory.”
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, cheered the move on Truth Social, calling it “ONE BIG, BEAUTIFUL CONGRESSIONAL MAP!” He praised Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows for restoring a quorum, writing, “With the Texas House now in Quorum, thanks to GREAT Speaker Dustin Burrows, I call on all of my Republican friends in the Legislature to work as fast as they can to get THIS MAP to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, ASAP.”
The detailed county-by-county breakdown maps of the new districts can be found here. On a personal note, I am thankfully being moved out of Democrat Lloyd Doggett’s District 37 and into Republican August Pfluger’s District 11.
Here’s a snapshot of the new districts from The Texan.
“The final vote was 88 ayes — all Republicans including House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), who normally doesn’t vote on legislation — to 52 nays.”
Republicans drew this new map at the behest of President Donald Trump and with his 2024 election performance top of mind, ensuring that each of the projected five GOP pickups were areas the president won last year by at least 10 points.
Those five seats are the 9th, 28th, 32nd, 34th, and 35th congressional districts; two are in South Texas, one in Dallas, one in Houston, and one on the outskirts of San Antonio.
The Democrats currently representing those districts are Al Green of Houston (9th), the currently indicted Henry Cuellar of Larado (28th), Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch (32nd), Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen (34th), and infamous commie twerp Greg Casar of Austin (35th).
My guess is that Cuellar and Gonzalez are simply gone, since the Rio Grande Valley was already trending Republican and there are no friendly districts anywhere nearby for them to run in. Green could quite conceivably run in the now-vacant 18th congressional district, previously represented by the deceased Sylvester Turner, and before that by the daughter of the also-deceased Sheila Jackson Lee, and before that by Lee. While Johnson could theoretically run in neighboring Marc Veasey’s 33rd congressional district, that’s a Hispanic and black majority district (and I suspect it’s getting even more so in the current redistricting), which is a tough hill to climb for any white candidate, much less a gay white girl in a suburban district, so I suspect she’s toast as well. The redistricting sets up a Thunderdome showdown between Doggett and Casar for the Austin-based 37th, unless Doggett (who is 79) retires.
Now on to the Texas Senate, where which passed its own redistricting bill handily in the first special session and will likely pass this one in quick order.
I have been (and will continue to be) quite critical of House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ membership in the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan cabal that stays in power thanks to Democrat votes and special interest/gambling money, but in this instance he has delivered on a very important Republican priority.
Remember: All this was set in motion by Petteway v. Galveston County, a lawsuit Democrats filed in order to save one Galveston County commissioner’s seat, whereupon the Supreme Court ruled that “black/brown” coalition minority districts carved out to benefit the Democratic Party were unconstitutional. So instead of saving one county commissioner’s seat, they’re going to lose five U.S. Congressional seats.
Democrats did this to themselves, and have no one else to blame…
There’s been a lot of media articles that the runaway Texas House Democrats are going to cave, but it hasn’t happened yet. The Trump Administration continues to rack up success after success at the border, Ukraine hits more Russian oil facilities, once again Adam is full of Schiff, more illegal alien sex traffickers nabbed, and China finally picks on someone its own size.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that the U.S.-Mexico border is experiencing “all-time lows” of illegal immigrant crossings after President Donald Trump’s administration ramped up efforts to secure the southern border.
On August 1, DHS released preliminary numbers for the month of July that report to show nationwide encounters are 90 percent lower than during the Biden administration, in addition to the “lowest single-day apprehensions in history” — on July 20, DHS reported just 88 apprehensions at the southern border and 116 across the country.
“History made, again. The numbers don’t lie — this is the most secure the border has ever been,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. “President Trump didn’t just manage the crisis — he obliterated it. No more excuses. No more releases. We’ve put the cartels on defense and taken our border back.”
The numbers released from DHS reflect previous assessments made by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which said in July that nationwide apprehensions have hit a “new historic low” following a “dramatic shift” in policy focus since President Donald Trump entered office.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped to levels not observed since the 1960s.
Progress. “Trump Purges 275,000 Illegal Aliens From Social Security.”
Months after President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum targeting illegal aliens and other ineligible individuals from collecting Social Security Act benefits, the president told reporters at the White House on Thursday afternoon that nearly 300,000 illegals have been removed from the government program that provides financial benefits to eligible citizen taxpayers and/or lawful permanent residents (green card holders).
“Last month, I signed the One Big Beautiful Bill, and allowed No Tax on Social Security for our great seniors … and to protect our benefits, we’ve already kicked nearly 275,000 illegal aliens off of the Social Security system,” Trump told reporters.
Recall that on April 15, the president signed a memorandum directing federal agencies to take immediate action to purge the Social Security system of illegals and fraudsters.
As Maureen Steele via American Greatness elegantly noted earlier this year, “We don’t need an executive order to bar illegals from Social Security – we need a government that obeys the law.”
Let’s not forget that the Biden-Harris regime facilitated the invasion of illegal aliens, allowing millions of these third-worlders to siphon dollars and essential services from citizens and lawful permanent residents – in what some have described as a classic Cloward–Piven strategy.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that taxpayers spend more than $182 billion annually to cover costs associated with 20 million illegal aliens and their children, which includes $66.4 billion in Federal expenses plus an additional $115.6 billion in state and local expenses.
The free lunch for the Democratic Party’s illegals is coming to an end.
A Democratic whistleblower told the FBI that Senator Adam Schiff authorized the leak of classified information related to the Russia collusion investigation in 2017 in an effort to discredit President Trump, newly-released documents show.
The whistleblower, who worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for more than ten years, first reported Schiff’s alleged behavior to the FBI in 2017, when Schiff was leading the committee’s Russian collusion investigation.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed on Monday that he had handed over the documents, first obtained by Just the News, to Congress. “We found it. We declassified it. Now Congress can see how classified info was leaked to shape political narratives – and decide if our institutions were weaponized against the American people.”
The FBI interviewed the whistleblower most recently in June 2023, at which point the unidentified intelligence officer said he had been part of an all-staff meeting called by Schiff in which the then-California representative “stated the group would leak classified information which was derogatory to President of the United States Donald J. TRUMP. SCHIFF stated the information would be used to Indict President TRUMP.”
“[The whistleblower] stated this would be illegal and, upon hearing his concerns, unnamed members of the meeting reassured that they would not be caught leaking classified information,” the report added.
The whistleblower expressed concerns that Schiff’s actions were “treasonous” and “illegal.”
District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer (Obama) wrote in his order that the government’s premise that unsealing the records would shed light on meaningful new information was “demonstrably false,” and that “unsealing the grand jury materials would not reveal new information of any consequence.”
“Contrary to the Government’s depiction, the Maxwell grand jury testimony is not a matter of significant historical or public interest. Far from it,” he wrote. “It consists of garden-variety summary testimony by two law enforcement agents. And the information it contains is already almost entirely a matter of longstanding public record.
Translation: Either it implicates powerful Democrats, or else we need to keep the issue alive to try to dirty up President Trump.
Truth: “White House Deputy Chief of Staff on Redistricting Battle: ‘We all know Democrats cheat.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is blasting Democrats for complaining about the current redistricting uproar and accuses them of stealing dozens of House seats by counting illegal aliens in the last census.
Miller told Newsmax that Democrats brought in tens of millions of “invaders” into the nation through their open borders policies to “rig the results of the census” and the apportionment of congressional seats.
Miller pointed out that even though Republicans won a landslide in the House popular vote, they only picked up a 4-seat majority due to Democratic gerrymandering, manipulation and rigging of congressional districts.
He contrasted the gains of this last election with the 2010 election, in which the Republicans won a much smaller majority in the popular vote, yet gained 63 seats in the House.
President Trump on Monday announced plans to place the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and to deploy several hundred National Guard troops and more than 100 FBI agents to the streets of Washington, D.C., to assist local law enforcement in fighting crime.
“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, squalor and worse,” Trump said during a press conference on Monday. “This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back.”
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people,” he said.
Trump said the murder rate in D.C. is higher than some of the “worst places” in the world, including Bogota, Colombia.
Trump has the authority to take over the Metropolitan Police Department under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which includes a provision that grants him the ability to take over the department when there are “special conditions of an emergency nature.” As part of the federal takeover, Attorney General Pam Bondi will lead the department, while Terry Cole, the new DEA Administrator, will be the interim federal commissioner of the department.
On Friday, the Trump administration dispatched federal law enforcement officers to tourist hotspots around D.C. Trump has also threatened to federalize the district if crime rates do not fall and on Monday, he said he would send in the military, if needed.
Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded several DC police executive orders Thursday that restricted officers from arresting illegal migrants – vowing that the nation’s capital will not be a sanctuary jurisdiction under President Trump.
“DC will not remain a sanctuary city. Actively shielding criminal aliens will not happen,” Bondi declared in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The attorney general’s comments came as she issued a new directive voiding commands issued – as recently as earlier Thursday – by DC Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith.
Smith is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. “DC police chief [Pamela Smith] asks what ‘chain of command’ means after question from reporter.”
Hilarious news this week: “Two Chinese ships collide while chasing Philippine Coast Guard boat.” A Chinese Coast Guard ship collided with a Chinese Navy ship. And yes, there is video:
A power bill crisis is gripping parts of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and is set to worsen, threatening to financially crush households as long-range forecasts point to a brutally cold winter. What began in Baltimore, Maryland – as first covered in our reporting one year ago- has now spread to New Jersey, where residents are furious over skyrocketing electricity costs.
The common denominator in both states? A disastrous green energy agenda, pushed by radical leftist lawmakers, is dismantling reliable and cheap fossil fuel power generation in favor of unstable solar and wind. This has unleashed a power bill armageddon on working-class and middle-class households, as well as mom-and-pop businesses, all while baseload power demand surges in the era of AI data centers.
Fox News is beginning to latch onto the power bill crisis theme, starting with coverage of New Jersey residents who are absolutely furious over exploding power bills. This new development could severely damage the state’s Democratic leaders in the upcoming elections.
This all started when New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities approved a 17 to 20% rate hike for power bills in June. Many residents were shocked when they opened their bills at the end of last month.
“$200 more, I know my electrical bill,” one Jersey woman told Fox News reporter CB Cotton, adding, “I was shocked. So to say the least, I’m very disappointed. This is killing us, and every time you turn around it’s something more. You only get little pleasures in life that you enjoy, and my air conditioner is one of them.”
Perhaps Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s decision to shutter the state’s nuclear and coal plants, without a one-to-one replacement for lost capacity on the grid, was a catastrophic error that is only now coming home to roost. He also prioritized offshore wind farms and other green energy projects, which have left the grid more fragile than ever.
“Just like the old gypsy woman every Republican ever said!”
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disillusioned and even disavowed by Democratic leaders, is showing Republicans some love in the midterms. The union’s donations are evidence of a realignment that could outlast President Trump’s term unless Democrats embrace at least some union-friendly policies like tariffs.
Prior to 2024, the Teamsters backed almost no Republicans. This year, the Democrat, Republican, Independent Voter Education PAC gave the maximum, $5,000, to each of 22 House Republicans and backed several Senate candidates, Politico reports. They also gave $50,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association.
After dumping millions into the 2024 election cycle and coming up short, Las Vegas Sands appears ready to roll the dice again.
New financial disclosures show that Texas Sands PAC, the Texas-based political arm of the casino giant, has more than $9 million in cash on hand heading into the upcoming election season. That money comes almost entirely from Miriam Adelson, the billionaire owner of Las Vegas Sands and majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Despite its name, Sands does not operate casinos in Las Vegas or anywhere in the United States; its operations are exclusively in China and Singapore.
While the group has largely held off on spending in recent months, records show it contributed $1.8 million to members of the Texas House during the 2024 cycle—$1.34 million to Republicans and $457,500 to Democrats. That spending mirrors the strategy the group employed last time: pour money into protecting lawmakers who supported its push to legalize casino gambling in Texas.
That effort didn’t go as planned.
Despite getting casino legislation to the floor of the Texas House in 2023, Sands watched its momentum collapse in the primaries. Voters rejected the very lawmakers who had sided with the casino giant. Former House Speaker Dade Phelan, the top recipient of Sands money, was forced into a runoff. Meanwhile, 14 Republican House members who voted for casino legislation either lost re-election or chose not to seek it.
Sands and Adelson attempted to salvage the cycle with a massive last-minute push. The Texas Defense PAC, funded entirely by Adelson, poured more than $7 million into runoff races in an effort to rescue Phelan’s allies. But again, the money didn’t translate into wins.
Now, Sands is recalibrating.
Although no major new contributions have been reported yet this cycle, those connected to the group have continued to work in some statewide campaigns.
Former State Sen. Kelly Hancock, who is now running for state comptroller, has hired John Jackson to run his campaign.
Until earlier this year, however, Jackson served as Sands’ head political consultant in Texas. He previously managed campaigns for Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
Hancock did not respond to a request for comment on whether he supports the group’s efforts to bring government-monopoly casinos to Texas.
Neither Don Huffines or Christi Craddick—the other two candidates currently in the race—have casino operatives leading their campaigns.
Hancock is not the only one with senior staff tied to the casino operator.
Jordan Berry, a recent registered lobbyist for Sands, also serves as a campaign consultant to numerous candidates in the state legislature, including State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R–Galveston) in his campaign for attorney general. Berry’s lobby registration with all his clients ended on June 23.
City-owned Kansas City grocery store closesdespitebecause of millions of dollars in subsidies.
Not this shit again: “Judge Rules Against Little Sisters of the Poor in Obamacare Contraception Case.”
A U.S. district court decided on Wednesday to strike down a 2017 federal regulation that exempted religious employers from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for employer-sponsored health insurance to cover the cost of contraception.
If the ruling holds, religious non-profit organizations such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, the defendants in the case, may now be required to file for an accommodation process with the government that still maintains employees’ access to contraception without the religious organization having to pay. For-profit employers would have access to no religious exemption from the mandate whatsoever.
Judge Wendy Beetlestone, chief judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, found that the Trump administration’s 2017 rule expanding religious exemptions from the contraception mandate was “arbitrary and capricious,” thus violating statutory authority. Consequently, she declared the rule vacated.
The left can’t stop attacking the Little Sisters of the Poor because it is intolerable to them that there is an legitimate source of moral authority apart from the state. Catholic nuns must be forced to pay for contraception (and abortions) as a token of their submission to social justice. Every. Knee. Must. Bend.
I know you’ll be shocked to learn that Beetlestone is an Obama appointee…
So on Monday, I get a text from my property management company saying that they’ve retained an outside security company to address the numerous complaints about loitering and drug sales in the neighborhood.
‘Beginning today, you will see these security personnel around the properties and in the neighborhood, goes on and on about procedures.’
Okay. Today’s Wednesday. It’s two days later, I get an email from my property management, and they said,
‘We’re disappointed to share that the security company that was hired has pulled out of the neighborhood. After a day and a half of doing recon and observing activity in the neighborhood, they decided the problems with crime exceed their resources to control. We will continue to work with organizations and neighborhood and explore other options to improve public safety and so on.’
Funny what happens when a Democrat-run locale decides to “defund the police” because a random black drug user died…
“Commissioner Ramsey Seeks Removal of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Following a vote to censure Hidalgo, Ramsey said, ‘It is time to consider replacing Judge Hidalgo.'”
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo faced a historic 3-1 censure vote from the commissioners court after her proposed property tax increase was rejected. The vote followed accusations of disruptive behavior, prompting Republican Commissioner Tom Ramsey to call for her removal.
This is the first time a Harris County judge, the chief executive of the county, has been censured.
Lots of candidates (Democrats and Republicans) are lining up to run against Hidalgo next year.
United States Attorney Lesley A. Woods announced that five people were charged by complaint for a range of federal violations that center around their alleged conspiracy to engage in labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and harboring of aliens at several hotel locations across the Omaha metro area and into central Nebraska. The defendants own, operate and manage several hotels in the Omaha metro area located at the following locations where federal search warrants were executed in the early morning hours of August 12, 2025:
The AmericInn, 2920 S 13 Ct., Omaha;
The Inn (formerly Super 8), 9305 S 145th St., Omaha;
The New Victorian, 10728 L St., Omaha; and
Roadway Inn, 1110 Fort Crook Rd S, Bellevue, NE.
The five Nebraska men from Nebraska with very Nebraskan names were identified as:
Kentakumar Chaudhari, a/k/a Ken Chaudhari, age 36, of Elkhorn, NE;
Rashmi Ajit Samani, a/k/a Falguni Samani, age 42, of Elkhorn, NE:;
Amit Prahladbhai Chaudhari, a/k/a Amit, age 32, of Omaha;
Amit Babubhai Chaudhari, a/k/a Matt, age 33, of Omaha; and
Maheshkumar Chaudhari, a/k/a Mahesh, age 38, of Norfolk, NE.
Federal, state, and local law enforcement officers conducted a search of 14 premises, including homes and several “Brow and Lash” salons associated with the men.
During the operation, law enforcement officers rescued 10 minors from an alleged labor trafficking conspiracy that involved putting children under the age of twelve years old to work at the hotels for long hours with little to no pay. Seventeen adult victims were also rescued from the same conspiracy.
The US Attorney’s Office says at least one of the defendants were running a sex trafficking operation that sold both children and adults into prostitution. Sex trafficking was “not only allowed at the hotels … but also encouraged.” Prosecutors say hotel management and employees sexually abused the victims personally, as well as selling their victims out to others.
Drugs were also openly used and sold at the hotels, according to officials.
The Biden Administration went all-out to ensure that all 50 states got to enjoy that vibrant illegal alien diversity they imported…
An Arizona judge is reportedly planning to free an illegal alien who kidnapped and raped a girl from Kansas whom he brought all the way to Arizona.
The 14-year-old girl went missing on July 20, but authorities were able to track her cell phone and locate her in an Extended Stay America hotel in Chandler, Arizona. The kidnapper is a man named Cristian Leonardo Caal Mucu. When police arrived, the teenage girl was alone in the hotel room. What local media was reluctant to admit was that Caal Mucu is an illegal alien. And now this predator is set to be released on bail with only electronic monitoring.
Shortly after declaring that running for congress was “one of the worst nine-month experiences of my life,” gun YouTuber Brandon Herrera is rushing into the breach again.
He starts off by comparing his run to Rocky II, the movie in which Rocky actually wins the heavyweight championship.
His first run “was a terrifying jump into unfamiliar territory. But I did it because the congressman who represented me, Tony Gonzalez, even though a Republican, kept making bad votes that just made no sense to me, like voting for Biden’s gun control, opposing border security, selling out American interests on behalf of other countries, and a bunch of other things that shocked me to learn that a Texas Republican would vote for.”
“Statistically, replacing an incumbent that wants to run for reelection is very hard to do, but we gave it a shot. What followed was one of the craziest 10-month journeys of my life, running for office in Texas Congressional District 23, one of the biggest in the country, against one of the best funded members of Congress in the entire country.”
“We succeeded in our goal of taking him to a runoff.”
“What followed was a brutal two-month runoff where I had all of the guns and money of the establishment pointed directly at my forehead. over $10 million being spent against me. I got outspent like 10 to one.”
“I lost by like 400 votes, by 1%.”
Gonzales doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. “Like three days after the election was over in November, he was on CNN arguing against deportations.”
“When these people win, they feel untouchable. They will continue to do favors for the people who kept them in office and vote for garbage without any sense of accountability from the people who they hate and pretend to love when the cameras are on. The truth is, these people only understand one language. The only way to stop them, truly stop them, is to win.”
“I’m not going to lie, [the loss] started to eat at me. Those things that I didn’t like about DC, about my congressman, they didn’t change. The things that the voters in the district were upset about, the reason so many of them were sick of their fake conservative congressmen, they didn’t change.”
“People in the political world kept telling me, you know, nobody wins on their first try, even during my first try, which, I’ll be honest, kind of ticked me off, cuz I was, you know, gunning to prove them wrong.”
“Texas District 23 deserves a real conservative, not a cheap fake who plays one on TV.”
“Somebody who actually understands and respects the Constitution, not just as like a cheap line, but actually respects it. Someone who will vote not just to protect, but to enhance your gun rights. Not vote to throw them away when it gets inconvenient.”
“Someone who will actually vote to protect America’s borders, not just claim that they will on TV during election season.”
“Texas deserves better than Tony. I’m willing to put my life to the side to stand up and take that fight.”
He goes on to praise his donors. “The amount of you guys that were able to put together even just $5, $10, $20 blew away the DC professionals. I’m not even kidding. I had these conversations after the race with, you know, DC types who do political data for a living, and they were in literal disbelief of what we were able to put together. All with no big super PACs, no special interests, no foreign lobbyists, just me and you guys.”
“They literally didn’t believe me until I showed them the numbers. I mean, we were able to raise over a million without having to play the DC games and beg people who definitely don’t expect favors in return.”
“But this time, I want to make sure we give them a fight they’re not ready for. I’ll give you a war you won’t believe.”
Flogs his website: https://brandonherreraforcongress.com/ and says he’s going to personally match donations with his own money. “To start off strong, I’m going to be matching your donations in the month of August up to $100,000 personally.”
“I hate that money is such a pivotal part of politics, but last time I saw exactly what happens when you didn’t have enough. The establishment could barely handle us last cycle, and money and slander were the only two weapons they had. This time, if we keep the momentum up, they don’t stand a chance.”
“Unlike the DC types, I don’t need this. I already have my dream job. I’d be taking a pay cut to take this job, but I’m willing to do it because I truly feel like it’s the best way I can currently serve my country, cuz that’s what it should be.”
“When I’m in office, I will not be buying, selling, or trading a single stock. Hell, I support legislation to ban it while in office. Again, unlike the DC types, I don’t need insider trading to be successful. Although, if you’re looking for stock tips, I’d just recommend doing what Nancy Pelosi does. I hear that tends to work out for some reason.”
“I am tired of Republicans saying that they’re going to go in and they’re going to fight for us. And then when the time comes to fight for something specific, they cave, they capitulate, they say, ‘I had no choice.’ Most of them didn’t even bother to fight in the first place.”
Some of it is standard campaign boilerplate, but Herrera is striking all the right notes here.
As in 2024, unseating a sitting congressman is going to be an uphill struggle, especially since Gonzales has been careful to stand closer to President Trump (at least rhetorically) than he has in the past.
The Q3 fundraising numbers for the race should be very interesting…
President Trump wins another huge (and hugely favorable) trade deal for America, more Obama/Clinton skullduggery exposed, a whole lot of sick perverts get arrested, Nigel Farage plays Cassandra, Russia gets hammered by both Ukraine and God, plus an unusually high amount of hypercars and Star Trek.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Winning: “Trump strikes massive trade deal with EU on energy, arms, tariffs.”
The United States has reached a trade deal with the European Union after President Donald Trump pressured the group of nations, as well as others, to open up trade with the US using the threat of tariffs.
While being joined by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Trump detailed the plans for the deal. “The European Union is going to agree to purchase from the United States $750 billion worth of energy.”
“They are going to agree to invest, into the United States, $600 billion more than they’re investing already. So they’re investing a large amount of money. … They’re agreeing to open up their countries to trade at zero tariff,” Trump added. “So that’s a very big factor, opening up their countries. All of the countries will be opened up to trade with the United States at zero tariff, and they’re agreeing to purchase a vast amount of military equipment.”
The president added that the number for the military equipment is not exact, and then also said the EU imports to the US will have a “straight across tariff of 15 percent” on automobiles and other goods. The tariffs on EU goods were previously in the single digits on average, according to the New York Times. The EU had hoped to reach an agreement for 10 percent across the board on tariffs.
The Very Best People repeatedly told us that President Trump’s tariff strategy would inevitably plunge us into a trade war and send the economy into a recession, if not a recession. It turns out, once again, that Trump has far better grasp of negotiating strategy than they do.
When Mr. Trump first unveiled his reciprocal tariffs, virtually all the important foreign countries flocked to make a deal with him; they ignored Communist China.
Why is that? Because America’s the greatest country in the world. With the best economy.
And nobody trusts the Chinese to do anything, much less honor a trade deal.
What’s more, Mr. Trump and his team have already made a number of deals with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.
Talks with Mexico are constructive and will be extended.
We can’t be sure, but it’s likely that the China talks will be extended.
In general, Mr. Trump is charging a very modest 15 percent or 20 percent fee as the price for doing business with the greatest economy in the world.
That modest fee could generate something like $400 billion a year in tariff revenues.
And here’s his new wrinkle: vast foreign direct investment into America
For example, $600 billion from the EU, and perhaps another $600 billion from Japan. Maybe $750 billion from EU energy purchases. Think clean burning LNG produced by America’s first in the world energy industry.
Direct investment pledges of as much as $5 trillion or $6 trillion coming from governments and companies all around the world — including the Middle East. And even in Asia — with South Korea putting up $350 billion.
We’ll learn more about how this direct investment is going to work, but the point is — the stimulus from all of that vastly outweighs any fiscal drag from the mostly moderate reciprocal tariff rates.
That’s Mr. Trump’s brand-new wrinkle. And it’s a very clever ploy.
FBI Director Kash Patel found a trove of sensitive documents related to the origins of the Trump – Russia probe buried in multiple ‘burn bags’ in a secret room inside the bureau, sources told Fox News Digital.
Sources told Fox News Digital that the ‘burn bag’ system is used to destroy documents designated as classified or higher.
Sources told Fox News Digital that multiple burn bags were found and filled with thousands of documents.
Sources exclusively briefed Fox News Digital on some of the contents of the classified annex — including that the U.S. intelligence community had credible foreign sources indicating that the FBI would play a role in spreading the alleged Trump – Russia collusion narrative — before the bureau ever launched its controversial Crossfire Hurricane probe.
A source familiar with the contents of the classified annex told Fox News Digital that while it may not have been exactly clear in the moment what the intelligence collection meant, with the benefit of hindsight, it predicted the FBI’s next move ‘with alarming specificity.’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took members of the press corps to task over their refusal to cover newly released evidence that shows Hillary Clinton approved the Russian collusion hoax against Donald Trump.
Leavitt’s comments come on the heels of a newly declassified appendix to the Durham Report that exposes a reported Clinton campaign plan to falsely accuse President Trump of collusion with Russia.
Leavitt chided members of the press, telling them, “This is a story that every outlet in this room should be covering,” and that “This is further evidence that Hillary Clinton approved the Russia Hoax against President Trump. Her campaign financed it.”
Leavitt added that “the FBI and the CIA were both weaponized to accelerate this hoax against then-candidate and former president Trump.”
The Press Secretary told reporters that, “The president wants to see justice served and he trusts the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to implement that justice and hold these people accountable.”
The so-called “Durham annex” to John Durham’s Special Counsel report was released yesterday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and brings previously classified information to light regarding the Clinton campaign’s plans to falsely tie Trump to Russia.
In a press release, Grassley said, “History will show that the Obama and Biden administration’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies were weaponized against President Trump. This political weaponization has caused critical damage to our institutions and is one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history. The new Trump administration has a tremendous responsibility to the American people to fix the damage done and do so with maximum speed and transparency.”
Travel back in time to the year 2021 and you might find yourself in the middle of a bizarre debate over the virtues of “cancel culture”. At the time the political left was aggressively trying to secure long term power within the US through a multi-pronged psychological offensive – A war on the minds of the masses designed to force Americans into submission.
A big part of their strategy relied on the fundamentals of Cultural Marxism: The combination of Marxist mob tactics, artificial consensus and the exploitation of minority grievances as a vehicle for controlling speech. This was the rise of the “woke movement” to the halls of government.
The root of their power was not martial. In fact, the political left is weak and largely astroturf with minimal ability to project power in a physical way. If conservatives wanted to destroy them tomorrow the task would be relatively easy. We don’t because many of us still have hope that our problems can be solved through peaceful discourse.
What the leftists did have at their disposal was a massive institutional apparatus of government agencies, corporations, Big Tech and NGOs. The full might of the establishment cabal was on their side, which meant they had the means to enforce “cancel culture” and silence their ideological opponents.
I don’t think there has ever been a psychological war on a population that was more pervasive and tyrannical. Not since Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China has a citizenry been under such a siege by their own government. The fact that we survived this event, defeated the onslaught and actually grew a grassroots anti-woke movement without the use of social media forums is truly mind blowing.
Very few people today realize the level of victory that was achieved. We thwarted perhaps the largest 4th Generation “mind war” ever devised and we did it without any institutional access. We won by simple truth and word of mouth.
Another tool that the leftists and globalists used was the mobilization of illegal migrants, gays and minorities as a shield against criticism or counter-protest. If conservatives and moderates fought back with superior debate or our own protest groups, we were immediately accused of racism, xenophobia and homophobia. Merely presenting an opposing view to the progressive machine was considered an act of evil.
Large contingents within all of these groups were happy to go along with the agenda for numerous reasons.
First and foremost, DEI allowed them to easily game the system. They could snatch up grants, subsidies, welfare, and leapfrog over more talented and more intelligent competitors in education and business simply because of their “marginalized status”.
Secondly, the system under progressives was two-tier; leftists activists, illegals and minorities were given preferential protection while breaking the law and causing chaos. Conservatives were labeled terrorists for any act of defiance. We were banned from the largest web platforms. Some of us were targeted by the online mob and lost our jobs. Others were “de-banked” and threatened with ostracism from the economy. Still others were imprisoned.
This imbalance of the law bred a culture of entitlement, especially within the LGBT cult and the black community. Illegal aliens were given carte blanche to enter the country and feed like parasites. Not only that, but they were treated like heroes coming to save the US from “population decline” and “labor shortages”.
They all participated in the game willfully and joyfully. They were ALL part of the problem. But, of course, none of them ever thought the party would end or that they might end up facing consequences for their behavior. They joined in the feeding frenzy without considering the inevitable clap-back.
The primary argument that leftists would often use to defend the application of cancel culture was that there was “no such thing as cancel culture”, only the righteous utilization of “consequence culture”. This was, of course, a misdirection. The word “consequence” suggests that a person deserves punishment for wrongdoing and that the leftists canceling him (or her) have the right to do so.
Cancel culture was never about justice or karma, it was about suppression of anyone who disagreed with the political left. A corrupt group of psychopathic people with no support from the majority is in no position to dole out consequences. They can dole out harassment and intimidation, but not justice.
In recent months, however, I think these people are finally beginning to understand what “consequence culture” really is and clearly they don’t like it.
We told them over, and over, and over again that the left wouldn’t like it when the “new rules” they were creating got applied to them. And here we are.
Annals of human depravity: “FBI, DOJ arrest ringleaders of dark web child porn exploitation networks with over 120,000 users.”
The Justice Department has announced the results of Operation Grayskull, a sweeping joint investigation with the FBI that dismantled four dark web sites dedicated to child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The operation has so far resulted in 18 convictions across multiple federal districts and significant sentences for offenders involved in the distribution and advertisement of CSAM.
One of the most notable sentences came last week, when Thomas Peter Katsampes, 52, of Eagan, Minnesota, was sentenced to 250 months in prison, lifetime supervised release, and ordered to pay $23,000 in restitution. Katsampes pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to advertise and distribute child pornography. According to court records, he joined one of the dark web sites in 2022, actively advertised and distributed CSAM, including material depicting prepubescent children, and eventually became a site moderator responsible for enforcing posting rules and advising others on sharing illegal content.
The Houston branch of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 214 illegal aliens who have either been charged with or convicted of child sex offenses over the past six months — more than it arrested in all of Fiscal Year 2024.
Among the five illegal aliens captured and highlighted in an ICE press release published on Monday, four were from Mexico and were deported back there following their arrests. Forty-eight-year-old Jorge Zebra received convictions for two counts of sexual assault of a minor as well as “sexual indecency” with a minor. He was returned to Mexico in March.
Mexicans Sergio Rolando Galvan Guerrero and Jesus Gutierrez Mireles were convicted for “aggravated sexual assault of a child” as well as for Driving While Intoxicated.
Jose Guadalupe Meza, who’s been deported four other times, was convicted of both sexual assault of a child and theft. Meza was deported to Mexico on June 25.
The lone criminal from El Salvador was Manuel Antonio Castro-Juarez, who was convicted for both sexual assault of a child as well as illegal entry, twice. He’ll be sent back to El Salvador for the third time, but is in ICE custody until necessary proceedings are completed.
“Former Texas National Guardsman Convicted of Smuggling Aliens. Mario Sandoval now faces up to 10 years in federal prison.”
A Houston-based former member of the Texas National Guard who once served on the front lines of Operation Lone Star is now facing up to 10 years in prison after a federal jury convicted him of human smuggling.
Mario Sandoval, a 27-year-old Houston resident and former national guardsman, was deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border as part of Operation Lone Star, the Texas-led initiative launched in 2021 to curb illegal immigration. The operation mobilized both the Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety.
Despite being released from his official orders, Sandoval remained in the Rio Grande Valley and, in July of last year, began smuggling illegal aliens north of the immigration checkpoint. Jurors were shown text messages confirming Sandoval’s coordination in the smuggling operation—including his role arranging drivers and alerting others to law enforcement locations. Surveillance footage also placed him near the checkpoint during the times those messages were sent.
Sandoval was discharged from the Texas National Guard in October 2024. Although he claimed the texts were taken out of context and that no conspiracy existed, a jury found him guilty after a one-day trial and less than an hour of deliberation.
“We live increasingly in a lawless Britain… most people think that Britain has become lawless”, Farage remarked Monday at a press conference to launch a new law and order policy platform.
“We’re actually facing, in many parts of our country, nothing short of societal collapse,” Farage warned, adding “People are scared to go out to the shops, scared to let their kids out. That is a society that is degraded, and it’s happening very, very rapidly.”
Farage further suggested that Britain should leave the European Court of Human Rights in order to restore effective criminal deterrence.
Farage maintains that the ECHR undermines the country’s ability to deport foreign criminals, terrorists, and illegal migrants, thereby weakening criminal deterrence.
He contends that exiting the system would remove legal barriers imposed by foreign judges, and allow the UK to swiftly remove dangerous individuals, free up prison space, reduce taxpayer burdens, and send a strong message that crime by non-citizens will result in certain expulsion.
This, in his view, would restore effective deterrence by ensuring consequences are enforced without interference, discouraging both criminal activity and illegal immigration.
Among a range of policies he outlined to avoid a descent into societal collapse, Farage suggested outsourcing hardened criminals to foreign jails and a hard-line three-strikes and you’re out rule, meaning after three convictions there would be no more rehabilitation for offenders.
He noted that one of the most egregious aspects of the collapse is that the government is obsessed with drilling it into the British people that everything is getting better when citizens can see the rampant degradation all around them.
“Huge numbers of law-abiding, taxpaying Britons have also lost respect for the police but in a different way. The idea, the concept that we’re living in a system of two-tier policing and two-tier justice under two-tier Keir has really taken hold,” Farage urged.
Farage noted that crimes such as shoplifting and drug taking have been allowed to become a part of everyday life in cities, and that one in three Londoners have now been victims of mobile phone theft.
He vowed that his party will work to halve crime in five years if elected to parliament by becoming “the toughest party on law and order and on crime that this country has ever seen”, and instituting “zero tolerance policing.”
Farage also floated the idea of Army run centres for repeat petty criminals to be held in and made to undergo a program of reform.
He pointed to Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as Mayor of New York City as an example of how to restore law and order in a broken down society.
The Tories could have been the party of border control and tough on crime policies, but their feckless wet leadership pissed the opportunity away.
Ukrainian troops also landed on the Tendrovo Spit, a long sandbar south of Kherson. I’m including this one because it includes a closer look at some of Russia’s drone jamming equipment.
Here’s some great outside-the-box thinking: A wounded Ukrainian soldier behind enemy lines was rescued by a drone lowering an E-bike to him.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh: “‘Crisis’ at Media Matters, As It Cuts Staff, Struggles to Pay Legal Bills.” Golly, a whole lot of lefty outlets seem to be in trouble now that Trump47 is eliminating the graft at places like USAID… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
What too much winning looks like: “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will shut down by September’s end, the private non-profit that is funded almost entirely by Congress announced on Friday.”
Soros-funded prosecutor = brothel boom in Fairfax County. “How did the state’s largest municipality, a wealthy and highly educated suburb of Washington, D.C., become a sanctuary county for pimps, madams, and whorehouse operators? All signs point to the Commonwealth’s attorney, self-styled progressive prosecutor Steve Descano.””County Supervisor Pat Herrity said that about 80 to 100 ‘illicit massage businesses’ are ‘operating in plain sight today’ in the county.”
The latest event that’s now too dangerous to attend: Jazz festivals, as a crowd of black people beat two white people unconscious. Then Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge tried to downplay the attack saying that the assault was taken “out of context.”
Candace Taylor, 35, of Slidell, was arrested Monday after investigators found she underreported her income to qualify for the program. The Louisiana Bureau of Investigation launched its probe after a complaint from the state health department.
The Fox News report says court records say Taylor ran six businesses that brought in over $9.5 million between 2020 and 2024. Bank records show deposits of $480,994, including more than $325,000 linked to her businesses.
“From 2021 through 2024, Ms. Taylor continued to transfer tens of thousands of dollars between her personal and business accounts, with personal inflows consistently exceeding the eligibility thresholds for Medicaid,” the affidavit states.
Despite this, Taylor allegedly kept renewing her benefits—most recently claiming $4,000 in monthly income without disclosing she owned the business.
Authorities say her spending included $45,086 in Audi vehicle payments, a $100,000 wire to an exotic car dealer, and $13,000 for a 2022 Lamborghini Urus. She also allegedly withdrew multiple six-figure cashier’s checks for property, cosmetic surgery, jewelry, and luxury services.
Unless it was very hot or very crashed, there’s no way she paid $13,000 for a Lamborghini Urus, as those things go for over $200,000. Maybe that was a down payment…
Progress on civil rights: “California Law Requiring Background Checks for Ammo Declared Unconstitutional.”
But the Democrat Party’s desire to disarm law-abiding American citizens never rests. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy filed a bill to raise the National Firearms Act tax to $4,709. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Entertainment economics: Stephen Colbert isn’t worth $20 million a year. but South Park is worth over $1 billion.
“Texas Democrat Candidate Flips Out During Hearing, Winds Up Getting Arrested.” “Isaiah Martin’s attempt to filibuster the redistricting hearing ended in cuffs as he was dragged away from the microphone by a capitol security official.” Martin is currently running in a special election for the 18th Congressional District following the death of Shelia Jackson Lee, and is currently polling at 3%.
Texas fundraising reports for the first half of 2025 are out, and Republicans continue to out-raise Democrats by a considerable margin, and sometimes orders of magnitude.
Gov. Greg Abbott continues to show off his fundraising prowess and flaunt his status as the financial king of Texas politics. He raised $20 million in just a couple of weeks and has $87 million in his war chest between his cash on hand account and his Texans for Greg Abbott PAC.
“Support from thousands of donors across the state reflect the unwavering trust Texans have in Governor Abbott’s strong leadership,” said Campaign Manager Kim Snyder. “The broad backing we’ve received proves that Texans are committed to keeping our state strong, secure, and prosperous.”
In the last two reporting periods, Abbott has raised $43 million, and with a re-election bid next year, he has the capacity to bring in far more. His advisors have stated they want to put $20 million into flipping Harris County back to red, and a similar attempt is in the works to continue the momentum Republicans gained in South Texas last year.
And all of that will take money — lots of it. Abbott doesn’t yet have an opponent, but if he doesn’t draw a top-level challenger, Republicans across the state will depend on him and his money to be the rising tide that lifts all of their boats up and down the ballot. The governor has also hinted at a Texas House crusade on property tax reform similar to his school choice push that succeeded in 2024.
In 2022, Abbott had what should qualify as a “top tier” challenger in Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, who actually managed to outraise him by $3 million. This managed to reduce his 2018 margin of victory from 13.3% to 10.9%. And for all his goofiness and the malleability of his “principles,” O’Rourke did the work. Against Cruz in 2018 and Abbott in 2022, he was an indefatigable campaigner who built effective, tech-fueled campaign teams that raised tons of money. It wasn’t enough, but O’Rourke in 2022 was undoubtedly better funded, organized and motivated than the Lupe Valdez campaign in 2018 or the Wendy Davis campaign in 2014, and will probably be better than whatever token opposition Democrats can dredge up against him in 2026. Barring a self-funding billionaire jumping in (which seems unlikely), Abbott should have an overwhelming funding advantage against anyone running against him.
If reelected, Abbott would surpass Rick Perry’s record of 5143 days as Governor on February 19, 2029.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick can play a similar role with his $37 million cash on hand. So far, his only declared opponent is state Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin) who raised $36,000 and has $219,000 cash on hand. Patrick will have plenty at his disposal to fend off Goodwin and at the same time play a role in the elections for the currently four open Senate seats, and more if he so chooses.
Two orders of magnitude less funding and an Austin liberal is hardly a recipe for success running statewide in Texas.
Patrick is closer to the end of his time as the state’s second in command than the beginning, and speculation has buzzed about him ultimately not seeking re-election next year. But in addition to maintaining publicly that he’s running, he’s raising money like it, too.
“More miles traveled, more media coverage, more meetings held, and more money raised than anything I have ever seen in Texas. He has set the pace for the 2026 reelection campaign, and it is fast!” said Allen Blakemore, Patrick’s political consultant.
Being the two biggest elephants in the room, Abbott and Patrick can affect a lot of other races if they choose to, and both are very much eyeing their post-office legacies.
In the Year of Beto, Democrats got within 5 points of Patrick, and then in 2022 were back to losing by ten points.
Texas politics is a prolific business; there were 18 seven-figure or higher contributions made in this reporting period. Another 15 were half a million dollars or more.
Among these include $10 million from the law firm Arnold & Itkin into their new Texans for Truth and Liberty PAC; $9.1 million from Las Vegas Sands owner Miriam Adelson into her Texas Sands PAC; $5 million from Tim Dunn into his Texans United for a Conservative Majority; $3 million from Phillip Huffines into his brother Don’s comptroller campaign; and $2 million from Elon Musk to Texans for Lawsuit Reform and one of their arms.
Sands PAC is a big supporter of the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan-Burrows cabal. Texans for Lawsuit Reform used to be a powerful force, before a series of missteps (such as backing the Paxton impeachment effort) diminished their influence. Musk is theoretically starting a third political party (based on a Twitter poll), but I haven’t seen any signs it’s actually happening. He’s one of the few individuals wealthy enough to run a successful statewide race, but probably not against Abbott, with whom he’s evidently a big pen pal.
Abbott himself pulled in four million-dollar checks during the brief fundraising period.
Given the lack of contribution limits and its political importance nationally, it’s easier to raise jaw-dropping amounts of money in Texas than anywhere else.
Democrats are farther away from winning anything statewide than they were in 2018, and while offyear elections typically favor the party out of the White House, Democrats just seem to keep falling further and further behind.
Maybe I’ll have a chance to look at some of the other races later…
A shocking budget surplus, the most boring phrase in politics makes a comeback, Trump tours Texas, Paxton slams a scammer, Soros backs the commie, more corruption from Democrats in New York and California, and Stellantis does what it does best: Ruins everything it touches. Plus a bit about Jeffrey Epstein.
I am sure that Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent don’t want to say “I told you so,” but…
Yes, according to CNBC the United States just posted some big economic dubs, with the budget hitting a surplus thanks to the tariffs that – one day, I am constantly assured – will tank the economy.
The U.S. government posted a surplus in June as tariffs gave an extra bump to a sharp increase in receipts, the Treasury Department said Friday.
With government red ink swelling throughout the year, last month saw a surplus of just over $27 billion, following a $316 billion deficit in May.
I just created a tag for “surplus”…
Back in the dim mists of time, someone at National Review noted that “Enhanced Rescission Authority” was possibly the most boring phrase in the English language. Boring or not, it’s now helping Trump cut the deficit.
Vice President JD Vance cast two decisive tie-breaking votes in the Senate on Tuesday to advance a $9.4 billion spending rescissions package backed by President Donald Trump. The measure, which would claw back federal funding from a range of programs, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and public broadcasters NPR and PBS, is now headed into a marathon floor debate.
The Senate twice deadlocked at 50-50 on procedural votes to begin debate on the controversial bill. In both instances, Vance stepped in to break the tie and push the measure forward. The rescissions package, approved by the House of Representatives last month, would eliminate approximately $8.3 billion from USAID and $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
Amid the destruction and mourning in Kerrville after the flooding disaster last week, President Donald Trump held a press conference with a number of Texas elected officials where they provided updates on ongoing recovery efforts.
“Well, this a tough one,” Trump somberly stated at the beginning of the press conference. “It’s hard to believe the devastation.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
First Lady Melania Trump also spoke about the stories she has heard from families impacted by the floods.
“We are grieving with you. Our nation is grieving with you.”
Ahead of the Trump press conference, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the federal government has updated the Presidential Disaster Declaration to include additional Texas counties eligible for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Individual Assistance program.
“We remain committed,” Abbott said during the roundtable, “we’re here for the long run.”
“We will maintain our operations to find everybody that we can, as well as ensure that we build this community from Hunt to Camp Mystic to Kerrville, to down below. We are committed for the long run, not just to rebuild, but to rebuild in a better way.”
At least 160 people remain missing since the floods. Abbott stated during a press conference earlier this week that 109 have been confirmed dead.
“Attorney General Paxton Demands Alleged Texas Flood Fundraising Scam Cease Operations. “In the wake of devastating floods across Central Texas on July 4, a plethora of fundraisers were launched in order to assist affected victims, volunteers, and first responders — one of which Paxton accuses of scamming Texans. Addressed to Tray Coppola, organizer of a GoFundMe marketed as supporting Kerrville flood victims, the letter from the Office of the Attorney General formally demands that he maintain and preserve all records for legal purposes.” Coppola responded to the accusations by screaming racism…
“Illegal From Weed Farm Where Minor Girls Worked Had Convictions for Attempted Rape, Child Molestation.” There’s no illegal alien scumbag whose crimes are too heinous for social justice Democrats hearts to bleed for.
Pay to play, California style: “Corporate Donors Gave Big to a Newsom Family Charity. Then the California Governor Took Their Side on State Issues.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t typically get involved in disputes between rival Native American tribes. That changed last year, when Newsom used his office to try to block a small tribe from opening a casino in Northern California.
In August 2024, Newsom’s office sent a letter on his behalf to the Biden Interior Department urging it to reject a $700 million proposed casino project north of San Francisco by the Koi Nation, a tribe with fewer than 100 members. But the Biden administration approved the project anyway, so in May, Newsom sued the Trump administration in a last ditch effort to block the Koi Nation’s casino. Should Newsom get his way, it would be a major win for the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a major California political donor which operates its own gambling compound just 15 miles away from its rival’s proposed site, which broke ground on a $1 billion expansion in 2023.
A little-known California government disclosure database may shed light on why Newsom took Graton Rancheria’s side in the high-stakes dispute.
In April 2024, a few months before Newsom sent his letter to the Biden Interior Department, the Democratic governor requested Graton Rancheria to contribute $500,000 to his wife’s charity, the California Partners Project. And in April 2025, one month before Newsom filed his lawsuit against the Trump administration, he again asked Graton Rancheria to contribute another $500,000 to his wife’s charity. The tribe cut those checks specifically at Newsom’s request, according to California’s “behested payments” database, which discloses whenever state elected officials request others to make donations on their behalf.
Waste and fraud, New York Governor Grannykiller style: “Governor Andrew Cuomo, before he was unceremoniously forced out of office, convinced state lawmakers to shell out over $100 million to purchase decorative LED lights to enhance the beauty of some of New York’s most iconic bridges…At least $108 million was spent on Cuomo’s “Harbor of Lights” project, which was supposed to install specialty LED lighting on several New York State bridges. The project was pitched as a way to boost tourism, but the lights ended up sitting unused in a warehouse for more than seven years until they were recently auctioned off for less than half a percent of the project’s overall cost.” Plus they paid millions to store them. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
In response to an open records request, the Harris County Housing & Community Development department revealed that it spent $2,071,676.21 in 2024 paying for legal services for illegal aliens.
The services are also available for illegal aliens with criminal records.
Harris County first spent $2,000,000 launching a program called the Immigrant Legal Services Fund (ILSF) in 2020 and has been making payments to the fund since then.
ILSF provides free legal representation in Harris County for people facing deportation from Houston-area detention centers.
Where is the enumerated statute that authorizes Harris County to spend money for illegal alien legal services?
Legal eagle Alan Dershowitz claims that the Trump administration isn’t hiding the names of the alleged pedophiles associated with Epstein; two judges are.
The Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the “blockbuster” story alleging a letter Trump wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday included some tawdry elements previously worked for Main Justice (his only prior reporting experience listed in his bio).
Main Justice was Glenn Simpson’s wife’s publication. Simpson founded Fusion GPS, which was paid by Hillary Clinton/the DNC (through Perkins Coie) to produce the Steele Dossier at the center of the Russian hoax against Trump.
As the Democrats’ policies grew progressively more anti-American, the gang of hacks, DEI hires, and grifters that once proudly styled itself as the Party of Jefferson and Jackson did everything it could to make people think pointing out that increasingly obvious fact was both ridiculous and offensive. And so, ever fewer people have dared to do so, even as it became even more obvious that hating America and having a taste for Marxism went with being a Democrat like arrogance and self-righteousness went with being Barack Obama.
Now, however, it’s impossible to deny. The best and the brightest among young Democrats are all avowed socialists. The party would have chosen a socialist, Bernie Sanders, as its candidate for president in 2016 and likely also in 2020 if party top dogs hadn’t stepped in and arranged for the candidacy of someone who was at least outwardly more mainstream.
All the while, Democrats insisted their socialism was nothing to be worried about, but was of an extremely cuddly variety. One of the foremost among the party’s up-and-coming new socialists, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Swizzle Stick), maintains that what she has in mind isn’t the bad old socialism of the Soviet Union, Communist China, Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea and the rest, but a type involving more unicorns and moonbeams. “So when millennials talk about concepts like democratic socialism,” she explained, “we’re not talking about these kinds of ‘Red Scare’ bogeyman.” Yeah, tell all the victims of Stalin and Mao that it was just a “scare.” Those hysterical right-wingers were having the vapors over nothing.
Ocasio-Cortez continued, “We’re talking about countries and systems that already exist, that have already been proven to be successful in the modern world. We’re talking about single-payer health care that has already been successful in many different models, from Finland to Canada to the UK.” Great, but none of those countries are actually socialist. Foreign Policy pointed out in 2021 that “Nordic countries are often used internationally to prove that socialism works. It’s true that social democratic parties are enjoying success in this part of the world.” However, it’s not the kind of success that AOC would want to encourage: “Today, the Nordic social democrats have adopted stricter immigration policies, tightened eligibility requirements for welfare benefit systems, taken a tougher stance on crime, and carried out business-friendly policies.”
The brand of socialism that is getting more popular among U.S. Democrats is nothing like that. Instead, we have Zohran Mamdani, who will likely be the next mayor of New York, and has called for “seizing the means of production,” as well as transforming “housing from a private commodity to a public one.” And now there’s Omar Fateh, a candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, who also wants state-owned housing, along with wage rates set by the state. That’s not cuddly Scandinavian socialism. That’s Marxism. Do we have to have actual gulags on American soil to know where it leads?
The Communists are clearly the future of the Democrat Party. Arrayed against their spectre are the party top dogs, not because they’re against their ideology, but because they want to continue the illusion that their party still champions American values. There are still some rubes out there who can be fooled on this point.
Is Mamdani getting money from George Soros? Of course he is.
But in less than a decade, Soros’ ultra-woke grant-making network Open Society Foundation has indirectly funneled a combined $37 million to the Working Families Party and at least other nine left-wing groups whose endorsements and get-out-the-vote groundwork played a pivotal role in helping Mamdani upset ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary, the foundation’s records show.
Since 2016, the far-left, socialist-friendly WFP — which helped score Mandani the Democratic line by brokering cross-endorsement deals that squeezed out Cuomo — has pocketed a staggering $23.7 million from Soros through its nonprofit fundraising arm Working Families Organization Inc.
And at least another $13,944,005 went to the nine nonprofits and their offshoot fundraising entities — including the Make The Road Action ($3,515,00), and social justice nonprofits Community Voices Heard ($2,635,000) and Move On ($2.3 million), and the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace Acton ($650,000), according to records.
Russia will face severe sanctions and tariffs if the country does not sign a ceasefire deal to end the war with Ukraine in 50 days, a White House official confirmed to National Review. President Donald Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office Monday.
“We’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days,” he said.
The U.S. will impose secondary tariffs on the country at 100 percent, he said. The secondary tariffs would place monetary sanctions on countries that trade with Russia.
The president made the announcement during a meeting with Mark Rutte, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rutte has been coordinating European efforts to send more weapons to Ukraine to defend itself against Russian invasion. Under the arrangement, NATO would buy American weapons and pass them on to Kyiv. The president said the U.S. will send billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine through NATO allies in this way.
“We are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them,” Trump said.
Ukraine will get massive numbers of missiles, air defense systems, and ammunition through the deal, according to Rutte, who said Russian President Vladimir Putin should reconsider peace negotiations.
Undernews: “US Has Launched Over 50 Airstrikes In Somalia In 2025 But Virtually No MSM Coverage…AFRICOM said that the strikes targeted the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, to the southeast of the port city of Bossaso.” The group is al-Shabaab, which is also affiliated with
Winning: “Trump Announces Trade Deal With Indonesia, Opening Entire Market to U.S.”
This morning I finalized an important Deal with the Republic of Indonesia after speaking with their Highly Respected President Prabowo Subianto. This landmark Deal opens up Indonesia’s ENTIRE MARKET to the United States for the first time in History. As part of the Agreement, Indonesia has committed to purchasing $15 Billion Dollars in U.S. Energy, $4.5 Billion Dollars in American Agricultural Products, and 50 Boeing Jets, many of them 777’s. For the first time ever, our Ranchers, Farmers, and Fishermen will have Complete and Total Access to the Indonesian Market of over 280 million people. In addition, Indonesia will pay the United States a 19% Tariff on all Goods they export to us, while U.S. Exports to Indonesia are to be Tariff and Non Tariff Barrier FREE. If there is any Transshipment from a higher Tariff Country, then that Tariff will be added on to the Tariff that Indonesia is paying. Thank you to the People of Indonesia for your friendship and commitment to balancing our Trade Deficit. We will keep DELIVERING for the American People, and the People of Indonesia!
“DOJ Fires Former FBI Director’s Daughter, Prosecutor Who Worked on Epstein, Diddy Cases. The U.S. Department of Justice has fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey and a Manhattan federal prosecutor.”
Good news, everyone! “Department of Justice to Continue Bribery Case Against Congressman Henry Cuellar.” Despite the indictment, Cuellar managed to win reelection over Republican Myra Flores for the Texas 28th Congressional District in 2024. Flores is already raising money for a rematch.
56-year-old Adermis Wilson-Gonzalez, was arrested on June 29 by ICE. He was convicted of hijacking an airplane 22 years ago; the plane he attacked was reportedly flying from Cuba to Key West, Florida.
Among the convictions received by the four illegal aliens from Mexico — Arnulfo Olivares Cervantes, Luis Pablo Vasquez-Estolano, Jose Meza, and Javier Escobar Gonzalez — were offenses for homicide, possession of various illegal substances, sexual assault of a minor, driving while intoxicated, attempted murder, burglary, and unauthorized use of a firearm.
Interesting: “Almost 200 Texas Public School Districts Adopt Four-Day Week.”
In 2015, Kelly Sue DeConnick was praised for “saving comic books.” Instead, she almost killed them. No points for guessing her political agenda…
Steve Miller cancels concert tour due to “climate change.” So no more big old jet airliners for him, and he won’t keep rockin you, baby…
“Memorabilia dealer found dead after alleged $350 million counterfeit confession on Facebook. Brett Lemieux, 45 of Westfield, Ind., was the founder of noted sports memorabilia site MisterManCave, which he claimed sold more than four million counterfeit items.” Caveat emptor. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
People were wondering what agenda items Texas Governor Greg Abbott would lay out for the forthcoming special session, and now we know.
Gov. Greg Abbott has officially released the agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, identifying 18 items for lawmakers to tackle when they return to Austin on Monday, July 21.
The announcement ends weeks of speculation about what issues would be included on the call and contains a mix of responses to both recent events and long-standing conservative priorities.
“We delivered on historic legislation in the 89th Regular Legislative Session that will benefit Texans for generations to come,” said Abbott. “There is more work to be done, particularly in the aftermath of the devastating floods in the Texas Hill Country. We must ensure better preparation for such events in the future.”
Included in the call are several flood-related items aimed at improving early warning systems, emergency communications, and local relief funding. The agenda also includes a sweeping review of rules related to disaster preparation and recovery.
Abbott is also calling for legislation to eliminate the STAAR test, cut property taxes, and overhaul regulations on THC products—an issue that has divided state leadership since Abbott vetoed a proposed ban last month. Instead of an outright ban, the governor is asking for new restrictions on potency and synthetic compounds without “banning a lawful agricultural commodity.”
We covered the issues surrounding marijuana and THC regulation here. The law that was vetoed would likely have clashed with federal legislation on the issue.
Several conservative priorities also made the list, including a ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying, a constitutional amendment granting the Attorney General the power to prosecute election crimes, and protections for women’s privacy in sex-segregated spaces. Legislation to further protect unborn children by strengthening the state’s ban on abortion-inducing drugs also made the cut.
Other agenda items include measures to protect victims of human trafficking from criminal liability, protections for law enforcement personnel files, and action on title theft and deed fraud. Abbott also called for legislation addressing judicial department operations and incentives for water conservation in building projects.
As expected, redistricting is officially on the agenda, following pressure from President Donald Trump’s team to secure additional Republican seats in Congress. The item calls for revisions to Texas’ congressional maps “in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
I have mixed feelings about redistricting. On the one hand, it would be nice to give House republicans a little more breathing room. On the other, Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America states that “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct,” and it has not been ten years since the last census and redistricting. Still, plenty of states have had to perform redistricting based on court orders, and for decades Democrats used them for partisan advantage, so this is a case of what’s good for the goose in good for the gander.
My understanding is that the Fifth Circuit Court ruling in Petteway v. Galveston County opens the door for redistricting to be performed in light of an altered reading of Voting Rights Act remedies (no longer need black and Hispanics be combined into the same district for “coalition” majority districts, much to the annoyance of the Democrat Party). Indeed, that is the precise outcome we discussed the last time we covered Petteway v. Galveston County. And Democrats were the ones who filed the lawsuit to try to save save one commissioners court seat in Galveston County.
We told them over and over again that they weren’t going to like living under the “New Rules” they instituted, and now they get to find out why, good and hard…
Happy Independence Day! It’s rained most of the last 24 hours here in central Texas, so the good news is no burn ban means we can set off fireworks, but the downside is significant flooding in the Hill Country (Kerville was particularly hard-hit).
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is now law, employment ticks up, more high profile leftist/media perverts busted, Democrats remain stuck on stupid, some Republicans retire, and proof, yet again, that the rules for the well-heeled are different than for other people.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Employers added 147,000 jobs in June as U.S. labor market continues to defy expectations.” For the MSM, it’s always “unexpectedly” all the way down.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist was arrested and charged after authorities allegedly discovered child porn on his work computer, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday.
Thomas Pham LeGro, a 48-year-old video editor at the news outlet, was taken into custody on Thursday after FBI agents raided his Washington, DC, home and discovered a folder on his work laptop which contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to Pirro’s office.
FBI agents also discovered “fractured pieces of a hard drive in the hallway outside the room where LeGro’s work laptop was found,” during the execution of the search warrant.
The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports and correct records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. The university issued a statement on Tuesday vowing to comply with Title IX on the basis of biological sex and says it will apologize to “disadvantaged” female athletes.
“While Penn’s policies during the 2021-2022 swim season were in accordance with NCAA eligibility rules at the time, we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” Penn President J. Larry Jameson said in a statement. “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
The U.S. Education Department and UPenn announced the voluntary agreement as part of a resolution of a federal civil rights case focused on Thomas, the biological male who won a Division I women’s title for the Ivy League university in 2022. The department’s Office for Civil Rights found that UPenn had violated Title IX by allowing a male to compete in women’s sports and occupy female-only facilities.
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the University for future generations of female athletes.”
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened the Title IX investigation into UPenn on February 6, following President Donald Trump’s executive order “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which interpreted Title IX law on the basis of biological sex rather than gender identity. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.
Trump’s diplomatic method, the exact opposite of what standard diplomats recommend, is a roaring success.
The least diplomatic president in U.S. history is scoring diplomatic victories.
Over the last couple of days, Donald Trump has gotten NATO to agree to a defense spending target of 5 percent and backed Canada off imposing a digital services tax on American tech firms.
He’s done this while being loathed by many of his foreign interlocutors. In fact, Trump has executed a near-complete inversion of the typical diplomatic formula. He’s not nice. He’s not conflict-averse. He’s not euphemistic. And yet he’s gotten results.
The NATO commitment, in particular, is potentially historic and could materially strengthen the position of the Western alliance for the long term.
Trump is violating the usual rules of persuasion. Abraham Lincoln famously said: “It is an old and true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’” Trump doesn’t hesitate to pour on the gall, often in ALL CAPS on Truth Social.
The leading 19th-century French diplomat Talleyrand said, “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’ a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.” Trump says “go to hell” as the start of the negotiation.
He persuades by pressuring.
He coaxes by threatening.
He de-escalates by escalating.
He wins friends and influences people by convincing them he thinks they’re freeloaders and losers.
A lot of this is a function of his personality and his experience as a Gotham real-estate developer with a nose for power dynamics, knack for showmanship, and willingness to court risk. It’s hard to see how his style of international politics will be replicable by a more traditional political figure. But undergirding his approach is a strategic insight into the gap between U.S. military and economic might and that of its allies, and how this meant there was a vast unexploited potential for the U.S. to throw its weight around.
When the U.S president is talking about pulling the plug on NATO, or cutting off trade talks with Canada — as Trump did in response to the proposed digital services tax — it’s going to get everyone’s attention.
The bull standing outside the door of the china shop is a powerful incentive to get along with the bull.
The rest of the conservative movement noticed this no later than, what, 2017? Nice of National Review to catch up…
In a post on social media platform X, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote that $14.6 billion in losses were incurred, while $245 million was seized, as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a separate post on X that hundreds of people were charged in the case.
“Public corruption will not be tolerated as the Director and I vigorously pursue bad actors who violated their oaths to all of us,” Bongino said, describing the case as the “largest healthcare fraud investigation” in the country’s history.
The investigation encompassed 50 federal districts and 12 state attorneys general, according to the DOJ. State and federal law enforcement agencies also took part, according to the FBI.
A statement issued by the DOJ said that criminal charges were filed against 324 defendants, including 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other health care workers across the United States. Officials said that 29 defendants were charged with partaking in transnational criminal groups who allegedly submitted around $12 billion in fraudulent health-related claims to U.S. health insurance companies.
Further, four defendants were apprehended in Estonia based on cooperation with law enforcement agencies in that country, while seven others were arrested at the U.S.–Mexico border or at American airports, the DOJ said.
That organization, federal prosecutors said, is accused of using individuals sent into the United States from other countries to purchase “dozens of medical supply companies located across the United States” before submitting $10.6 billion in fraudulent health care claims to Medicare for medical devices and equipment.
At the same time, that group allegedly exploited stolen identities from U.S. citizens across all 50 states, using their stolen medical information to submit the false claims, according to the DOJ.
In another action announced by the DOJ, federal officials said they filed charges in Illinois against five people, including the owners of two Pakistan-based marketing companies, in relation to a $703 million Medicare fraud scheme.
The defendants allegedly stole Medicare beneficiaries’ confidential information and sold it to laboratories and other medical companies, which then submitted false Medicare claims, according to the statement.
“The defendants allegedly used artificial intelligence to create fake recordings of Medicare beneficiaries purportedly consenting to receive certain products,” the DOJ’s statement said.
Here are some reasons why the Democratic drive to reinvent the party seems to have stalled out—and may have a hard time restarting despite their political opening.
The “’tis but a scratch” problem. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight insists, against all evidence, that his wounds are not that serious—“’tis but a scratch.” Democrats, in the aftermath of losing two of three elections to the widely-disliked Trump and seeing their coalition re-configured by massive losses among both white and nonwhite working-class voters, are still in denial about how serious their wounds are. They are not but a scratch and cannot be fixed by anything less than a full-scale overhaul of the party’s approach and image. Tinkering around the edges, while easier, will not work.
The breaking point fallacy. Democrats have a hard time thinking outside their own views of Trump and the GOP. They are deeply convinced that Trump is perhaps the worst person to ever walk the earth and find it difficult to relate to voters whose views are more mixed. They are convinced that a breaking point from Trump’s actions will inevitably be reached where voters will wake up and realize Democrats were right all along, with happy political results to follow. This fallacy undergirded Democrats’ thinking in the 2024 campaign with rather unhappy results when that breaking point was not reached. Democrats’ reliably florid responses to Trump’s outrage-of-the-day in 2025 indicates that they are still hoping that breaking point can be reached and that they are puzzled, indeed outraged, that voters have not yet mounted the barricades. Conveniently, the expectation of a breaking point let’s Democrats off the hook from changing very much in their own party.
The “whatever it is, I’m against it” problem. In the classic Marx Brothers movie, Horsefeathers, Groucho uncompromisingly asserts: “whatever it is, I’m against it.” That pretty much sums up Democrats’ approach to Trump administration proposals and actions. With very minor exceptions, Democrats have refused to support any of it, even where these actions are popular and/or are targeted at clear areas of Democratic vulnerability that needed shoring up. Little to no effort has been made to stake out a middle ground that recognizes some of Trump’s actions address areas where Democrats have screwed up, while setting out a better (kinder, gentler?) approach that would more effective and less illiberal. Easier though to adopt Groucho’s approach and avoid the uncomfortable need to acknowledge mistakes and convince voters you won’t make them again.
The rising generations chimera. Many Democrats have seized upon the fact that leading Democratic politicians tend to be quite old, if not ancient (hello, Joe Biden!) and decided what is needed is younger Democrats. The changing of the guard—that’ll do the trick! On net, it seems like a no-brainer to move younger cohorts up in the party who can better communicate with young voters where Democrats have been losing ground. But what if these young communicators aren’t communicating anything to voters that would actually help Democrats dig out of the hole they’re in? Then the changing of the guard will only help at the margins.
Take Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic Millennial who pulled off an upset victory in the New York City Democratic primary and will likely be New York’s next mayor. His energy and media savvy are admirable but his radical cultural politics—only lightly sanded off recently—and his wildly impractical economic plans don’t seem likely to change the image of the Democratic Party in a good way. But he nevertheless will be a pole of attraction in the party, just as AOC and “the Squad” were in the aftermath of the 2018 election—and we saw how well that worked out. Democrats’ thirst for generational excitement, whatever its content, will make it even harder than it already was for Democrats to re-orient the party around an effective majoritarian politics.
Snip.
The “round up the usual suspects” problem. In the movie Casablanca, Captain Reynaud (Claude Rains) concludes the film by saying “round up the usual suspects.” The Democrats have an establishment and establishments don’t like change. Thus, there is a built-in tendency to blame messaging, narrative, lack of coalitional input, etc.—the “usual suspects”—rather than deeper problems of culture, economic policy, and class antagonism. Most recently this tendency was on display in the formation of a Project 2029 group drawn from various sectors of the Democratic establishment to craft a new, improved approach for the Democrats. As the Politico article on the group notes:
Some would-be allies are skeptical that such an ideologically diverse and divergent set of policy minds could craft anything close to a coherent agenda, let alone a politically winning one.
“Developing policies by checking every coalitional box is how we got in this mess in the first place,” said Adam Jentleson, who has spent recent months preparing to open a new think tank called Searchlight. “There is no way to propose the kind of policies the Democratic Party needs to adopt without pissing off some part of the interest-group Borg. And if you’re too afraid to do that, you don’t have what it takes to steer the party in the right direction.”
For Texas voters: “17 Proposed Amendments Head to Voters in November.” Expected a more detailed post on this sometime in October.
“Houston Parents Sue HISD Over Daughter’s Secret Social Gender Transition. A Houston family is taking the state’s largest school district to court, claiming their daughter was socially transitioned by school staff in direct defiance of their explicit instructions.”
Terry and Sarah Osborn, the parents of a Bellaire High School student, filed a federal lawsuit against the Houston Independent School District earlier this week, alleging the school socially transitioned their daughter against their explicit wishes. The lawsuit names several individuals, including Superintendent Mike Miles, Bellaire High School Principal Michael Niggli, school counselor Sarah Ray, and multiple teachers.
According to the suit, more than six Bellaire High School employees referred to the Osborns’ daughter—who is biologically female—using a masculine name and male pronouns for two years. The situation began in ninth grade, when the student’s theater teacher distributed a worksheet asking for students’ names and pronouns. Sarah Osborn specifically requested that the teacher use her daughter’s legal name and female pronouns. However, the student altered the worksheet, crossing out the original entry and writing in “he/him” pronouns.
The parents claim they did not learn about the consistent use of male pronouns by teachers until the student was well into her sophomore year. At that point, they formally requested that teachers revert to using their daughter’s biological pronouns. Despite these repeated requests, the lawsuit alleges that the teachers continued using male pronouns.
By the student’s junior year, the Osborns met with Principal Niggli to address the situation directly. They reiterated their concerns about the school’s handling of the matter. Principal Niggli attempted a compromise: teachers would refer to the student only by her last name to avoid using any pronouns at all. The Osborns, however, rejected this compromise and again instructed the school to use their daughter’s legal name and female pronouns.
The lawsuit also notes that the Osborns filed a request under the Texas Public Information Act, seeking employee communications regarding their daughter, HISD’s policies on the use of preferred names and pronouns, and documentation related to the student’s counseling sessions over the years. Elizabeth Rice, HISD’s attorney, responded that the request was too broad and asked for clarification. When the Osborns’ attorney insisted the request was sufficiently specific, Rice again claimed it was overly broad and said fulfilling it would require producing at least 77,344 pages of emails.
The lawsuit argues that HISD’s responses are evidence of “widespread past and ongoing treatment of their daughter as a boy by its employees,” carried out without parental consent and in direct opposition to explicit parental instructions.
The Osborns are asking the court to declare HISD’s policies in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, prohibit the district from using masculine pronouns or an alternate name for their daughter, and award attorney’s fees along with compensatory and punitive damages. The complaint states the district violated the parents’ “fundamental parental rights” under the Fourteenth Amendment and their “sincerely held religious beliefs” protected by the First Amendment.
Not only should the school district pay, but everyone involved in this should having their teaching certificate revoked and never be allowed to teach in the state again.
Yeah, Kerville has been hit hard by the flooding:
More good news: “Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa killed in airstrike, IDF says.” Unlike Democrats, I think it’s a good thing when terrorist leaders get killed.
Diddy do it, but according to a jury, not all of it. “Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was convicted of a prostitution-related offense but acquitted Wednesday of sex trafficking and racketeering charges.”
A steady stream of reports is now developing that suggests Covid vaccinations may indeed hurt fertility and pregnancy outcomes.
I reported on a rat study that clearly showed fertility was impacted after the animals were injected with mRNA Covid vaccines. A recently published study (not peer reviewed yet) looking at data from Israeli women found a substantially higher-than-expected number of eventual fetal losses associated with Covid vaccination during gestational weeks 8-13.
A newly published peer-reviewed study analyzing nationwide data from the Czech Republic has reported a significant association between Covid vaccination and reduced fertility rates in women of childbearing age. The study, which examined approximately 1.3 million women aged 18–39 between January 2021 and December 2023, found that women who received the Covid vaccine before conception had a substantially lower rate of successful conceptions (“SC”, i.e., pregnancies that resulted in live births) compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.
Of course, vaccine mandate advocates swore up and down it was absolutely safe. Meanwhile, it seemsto be harming those with very low chances of dying from Flu Manchu…
“Florida Gov. DeSantis Announces Tax Holiday On Guns.” September 8 through December 21. Your move, Greg Abbott…
On July 1, District Judge Ann Donnelly of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a 16-count indictment against Huawei and its subsidiaries.
Huawei, which is closely tied to the Chinese communist regime, stands accused of racketeering, stealing trade secrets from six U.S. companies, and committing bank fraud.
With Donnelly’s ruling, the case will move forward toward trial. Currently, the proceedings are scheduled to begin on May 4, 2026.
Huawei stands charged with using a Hong Kong-based front company, Skycom, to conduct business in Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions and with misleading banks in order to facilitate more than $100 million in illegal money transfers.
Additionally, the indictment alleges that Huawei engaged in racketeering to expand its global brand.
“Harris County Agencies Reportedly Spent Millions With No Paper Trail.” Even lefty County Judge Lina Hidalgo has been raising the alarm over it. Maybe she didn’t get her cut…
“Famed Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. was arrested for overstaying his visa and lying on a green card application and will be deported to Mexico, where he faces organized crime charges.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Spanish Operator of Proposed High-Speed Rail Liquidates American Subsidiary.” Yet another roadblock to the pie-in-the-sky Texas high speed rail project that will never be built.
So remember that story a while back in New York magazine’s The Cut, when the (I kid you not) Finance Reporter got scammed, withdrew $50,000 in cash from a bank, and handed it to a total stranger? To a lot of people, the details didn’t add up. Can you even withdraw $50,000 in cash without filling in a boatload for forms or triggering fraud warnings? One reporter went digging for the truth, and found out that, yeah, it looks like it’s true and you can just waltz out with that much cash…if you’re related to the Roosevelts.
So Diamond Distributors declared bankruptcy, and the new owners evidently decided, “Hey we can just sell all this consignment inventory we have, not pay the publishers for it, and use the money to pay back this Chase loan.” The publishers disagree…
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…
