Posts Tagged ‘Illegal Aliens’

DoD Declares Rio Grande Defense Zone

Tuesday, July 1st, 2025

The Trump Administration is using every tool at its disposal to secure the border Biden left deliberately unsecured, and that includes bringing in the military.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) announced it will create designated defense areas along the U.S. southern border to bolster border security.

The U.S. Air Force released details about the “National Defense Area” (NDA) directive, explaining it will manage a 250-mile stretch of land along the Rio Grande River in Cameron and Hidalgo counties, and work alongside another DOD installation, Joint Base San Antonio.

Other responsibilities at the NDA will be handled by members of the Joint Task Force-Southern Border in coordination with U.S. Northern Command, to conduct border enforcement duties such as “temporarily detaining trespassers until they are transferred to the appropriate law enforcement authorities” and the “installation of temporary barriers, and signage to secure the area.”

On May 1, the Air Force press release mentions, an additional Texas zone was established. This zone will stretch approximately 63 noncontiguous miles, connecting El Paso and Fort Hancock, and will serve as an extension of Fort Bliss. Another zone in New Mexico was established on April 21.

“This designation marks the latest in a series of NDAs established to strengthen interagency coordination and bolster security operations along the U.S. southern border,” the press release states.

Snip.

In May, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas stated there had been “dozens of illegal aliens” found guilty of illegally entering NDA zones, in addition to the 60 who had already pleaded guilty to the same charges.

On January 20, the day of his 2025 inauguration, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14167 — “Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States” — that directs U.S. North Command “to provide steady-state southern border security, seal the border, and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion, including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.”

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States of America states that the federal government shall protect each state against invasion. Certainly the flood of illegal aliens Biden unleashed upon the U.S. counts as an invasion, and one of the traditional tasks of a military is guarding borders. In early 2021, the Department of Justice issued an opinion that such border duties did not violate the Posse Comitatus Act, as “Congress has expressly authorized the military to support civilian law enforcement under chapter 15,” as per the terms of the act, as long as troops were not involved “in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity.”

Securing the border is overwhelmingly popular with actual American citizens, and President Trump hasn’t been shy about using every tool at his disposal to do so.

LinkSwarm For June 27, 2025

Friday, June 27th, 2025

President Trump (and parents) rack up Supreme Court wins, more Iran nuke damage assessments, a whole lot of Democrats want to die on the hill of taxpayer subsidies for mutilating your children, and some fast cars. Plus a weird assortment of violent lunatics.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • The Supreme Court finally limits nationwide injunctions.

    The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Trump administration a win by limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s agenda.

    The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump v. Casa, siding with the Trump administration’s challenge to the scope of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The Court did not, however, weigh-in on the legality of the birthright-citizenship order itself.

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, finding that universal injunctions exceed the authority Congress has given to federal courts. Barrett was joined by the Court’s five other conservative justices.

    The High Court ruled that lower courts cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its policies against nonparties to the specific case they’re ruling on. For the time being, the justices have partially halted the nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order. They halted the injunctions in areas where their authority is too broad and prevent the executive branch from developing public guidance related to Trump’s executive order.

    They punted on birthright citizenship, but a win is a win, and hopefully lower courts will now stop trying to reimport convicted and deported illegal alien felons.

  • Suchomimus has clear satellite images of the damage Operation Midnight Hammer did to the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear complexes.

  • UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief: ‘Night and Day’ Difference Between Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Before and After US Strikes. ‘It is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,’ says IAEA’s Rafael Grossi.

    The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the Islamic Republic’s program “significantly,” the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization said Tuesday.

    “I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”

    Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.

    “Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Trump’s Iran Strike Shows Precisely Why Elections Matter.”

    After a week’s worth of pounding from the Israel Defense Forces, the Iranian regime was disoriented and defenseless, helplessly exposed to Israeli and American air superiority, like a turtle flipped on its shell and baking underneath the pitiless desert sun. Now was the time to finish the job, not two weeks from now, after (what was left of) the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command structure had time to regroup.

    So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.

    I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.

    If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered. Iran’s nuclear program has either been destroyed permanently or set back decades. The mullahs are very upset, as one imagines murderous religious fanatics tend to be, but also seemingly powerless to do much more than cause a temporary economic ruction by laying mines across the Strait of Hormuz. (Note: In a late-breaking development after this piece had gone to press, Trump announced last night that he had in fact brokered a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.)

    This is an unalloyed victory for the forces of sanity and civilization. To those who point to the inevitability of unforeseen “blowback,” I will remind you that Iran and its proxies have been engaging in low-level conflict with America for well over a decade now — who do you think was funding and training the people killing our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years? — and now it is free to try its hand at more of the same, if it wishes, this time without a looming nuclear threat to back it up. America has come out ahead on this in concrete, measurable, and hugely valuable geostrategic ways.

    Most importantly of all, none of this would have happened if Kamala Harris were president. Think about that for a moment; think about the road not taken. One can only speculate about hypotheticals, but . . . c’mon now. Look into your heart, you know it to be true. Imagine a President Harris, sitting uneasily atop a Democratic coalition barely held together at the seams: Would she have encouraged Netanyahu in his initial campaign against Iranian military and nuclear assets? Would she have provided the final air support and ordnance necessary to get the job done? With people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, and Zohran Mamdani calling the shots among large segments of her base?

    To ask the question out loud is to answer it: no. For that reason alone, it is no exaggeration to say that the shape of the world perceptibly turned for the better on the outcome of last November’s election. You can draw a straight line between Donald Trump’s winning the 2024 race and Iran’s nuclear weapons program now being best described as a series of variably sized craters. If you supported Donald Trump and voted for him in 2024, you should feel proud of it today: Saturday is the most obvious evidence yet of why your vote mattered.

  • Everyone loves Raymond, but evidently everyone hates Iran

    It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.

    Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.

    Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.

    Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.

    So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.

    For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.

    A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.

    As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.

    A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.

    How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?

    Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary.

    So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.

    But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.

    The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?

    It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.

    Russia? Its former Obama-Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.

    It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.

    Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?

    No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50 percent of Chinese-purchased oil passes.

    For President Xi, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.

    The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.

    So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Is the FBI actively hiding information from the President and congress?

    We recently learned of a previously concealed tranche of documents likely to shed new light on the past decade of American political controversies. This potentially earth-shaking information is known as “Prohibited Access.”

    It was only recently discovered that the FBI’s information system, called Sentinel, had a level of access previously unknown to anyone outside the Bureau and known only to a select few inside. In essence, this was a concealed cache used to hide documents the FBI wanted hidden from discovery.

    There is one part of the Sentinel system that is devoted to classified and confidential information, termed “Restricted Access.”

    It turns out there is a higher, more secretive level called “Prohibited Access.” To any outside observer or investigator, it would appear that there was no record of Prohibited Access information, even though the existence of Restricted Access documents would be shown.

    Accordingly, when prosecutors like John Durham or investigators such as Congressman James Comer were investigating various potential misdeeds, they would not have learned of the existence of documents relevant to their investigation that were kept in Prohibited Access.

    Although it remains unclear, there is reasonable suspicion that even FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not aware of this document cache. Alternatively, Horowitz may have known about it but also may have agreed to keep its existence secret, a dismaying possibility for one charged with enlightening Congress and the public.

    Logic tells us that, broadly, there could be only two related purposes for this concealed tranche because it prevents those investigating the FBI or its favored parties from even knowing about the existence of the documents; such suggests concealment of information inculpatory to the senior levels of the FBI and/or its favored politicians, as well as exculpatory information about the targets of its biased investigations.

    If, by way of a wild hypothetical example, James Comey and Andrew McCabe broke laws to make an innocent Donald Trump appear guilty of “Russian Collusion,” they would not wish a trail of their ugly misconduct to see the light of day, nor reveal proof of Trump’s innocence.

    Pam Bondi and Kash Patel should shine a lot of disinfecting sunlight here.

  • Winning: “Supreme Court Allows States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood.”

    The Supreme Court is allowing South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, a win for pro-lifers that will likely clear the way for red states across the country to stop taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.

    The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines Thursday to permit South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Court, siding with the state against a private challenge brought by the abortion provider and a patient.

    The plaintiffs in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that Medicaid patients should be free to sue in order to choose their own health-care providers, while the state claimed they lacked the right to sue.

    “By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

    The 1965 Medicaid Act grants patients the ability to choose a willing and qualified provider. Medina dealt with whether patients have the right to sue to go to their preferred provider and whether Planned Parenthood qualified as a provider. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state and argued the case was about healthcare access, not abortion.

    South Carolina stopped allowing Planned Parenthood to participate in its Medicaid program in 2018 because of state law barring the public funding of abortion. The move was immediately blocked in court in response to a challenge brought by Julie Edwards, a South Carolina woman who claimed she preferred Planned Parenthood for gynecological care and needed Medicaid coverage.

    “States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the South Carolina Department of Health in the case.

    Abortion is not “woman’s health care” and should not be treated as such.

  • The ACLU is very upset that groomers will no longer be allowed to transition children behind their parent’s back.

    SB 12 includes a prohibition on schools assisting in the “social transitioning” of students and also restricts the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity,” while providing that it does not “limit a student’s ability to engage in speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment … that does not result in material disruption to school activities.”

    In a press release Monday, the ACLU of Texas, along with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), called SB 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.”

    “This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for ACLU Texas, stated in the press release.

    “Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them.”

  • Another Supreme Court win: “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Maryland Parents in Challenge to Mandatory LGBTQ Curriculum.” Which part of “Get your groomer hands off children” was unclear?
  • ICE Arrests Eleven Iranian Nationals in U.S. Illegally amid Heightened Terror Threat.”

    Immigrations and Customs Enforcement recently carried out a multi-state operation targeting eleven Iranian nationals in the U.S. illegally as the threat of Iranian terror cells attacking the U.S. intensifies.

    Over the last 48 hours, federal agents arrested the eleven Iranians and a U.S. citizen who harbored an illegal immigrant from Iran, a Department of Homeland Security official told NR.

    “Under Secretary Noem, DHS has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

    “We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out—and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”

    ICE agents arrested former Iranian army sniper Ribvar Karimi in Alabama on June 22. Karimi possessed an Iran army identification card upon his arrest and is currently being held in ICE custody. He entered the U.S. in October 2024 under a K-1 marriage visa but never updated his immigration status.

    In Houston, ICE agents arrested Behzad Sepehrian Bahary Nejad, an illegal alien who was armed with a loaded pistol at the time of his arrest. Nejad was previously arrested in August 2017 for assaulting a family member and had a final order of removal prior to his latest arrest. Also in Houston, ICE arrested Hamid Reza Bayat, who a judge had ordered removed from the U.S. 20 years ago. Bayat was convicted twice on drug charges and again for driving with a suspended license.

    In Tempe, Arizona, where they nabbed Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian convicted of threatening a law enforcement officer and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, and U.S. citizen Linet Vartaniann for threatening law enforcement and harboring Eidvand. The pair were arrested after ICE obtained a search warrant and they now face federal charges.

    Likewise, ICE arrested two Iranian nationals living together in Colorado Springs, Mahmoud Shafiei and Mehrdad Mehdipour. Shafiei was ordered removed decades ago and has criminal convictions related to drug crimes, and arrests for assault and child abuse. Border patrol encountered Mehdipour in June 2023 and processed him for expedited removal. Both are now in ICE custody as they undergo removal proceedings.

    Another Iranian national ICE nabbed is Mehran Makari Saheli, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sahei was previously convicted for being a felon in possession of the firearm and was illegally staying in the U.S. after a judge ordered him removed in 2022.

    ICE agents arrested several other Iranian nationals in numerous other states and localities, almost all of whom had criminal convictions for various offenses and are now in federal custody.

    How many Democrat district judges had decisions half-written forbidding deportations when the Supreme Court decision came down?

  • LA non-profit is paying illegal aliens not to work. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Anybody but Mamdani.

    Moderate Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans — concerned about the prospect of a Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are plotting ways to keep the Democratic Socialist out of Gracie Mansion.

    Shocked by the 33-year-old state assemblyman’s upset win in the Democratic mayoral primary last night against a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, these Cuomo backers, reluctant Cuomo backers, independents, and Republicans say the only way to beat Mr. Mamdani is to all back one candidate.

    “The horse they’re going to back is Eric Adams,” a grocery store magnate and former Republican candidate for New York City mayor, Jon Catsimatidis, tells The New York Sun. “He is backed by the White House, by Washington, and he’ll make sure crime is cleaned up.”

    When asked what that means for the Republican nominee for mayor, Curtis Sliwa, whom Mr. Catsimatidis employed at his radio station, the billionaire replied, “He’ll clean up the crime.”

    Mr. Catsimatidis ended the call. He didn’t respond to a text asking if he is personally planning to back Mr. Adams. He said to tune into his radio show this evening.

    Mr. Catsimatidis told the press earlier this month that he may sell his grocery store empire or move his business out of the city if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor.

  • Always with the trannies: “Zohran Mamdani Wants To Spend $65 Million on Medical Gender Treatments for Minors and Adults.”

    Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has quietly proposed channeling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay for medical gender-transition treatments for residents of all ages – including for minors. This city spending would counteract the sustained assault on these medical interventions – coming from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans – which threatens treatment programs even within blue cities and states.

    The controversial method of providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes gender-transition surgeries — such as breast removal — to minors in particular is now at the apex of the culture wars. It has also become a flashpoint in Democrats’ battle to redefine themselves in the wake of their brutal losses in the November election.

  • Another case of good guys with guns stopping a bad guy with a gun.
  • How not to interact with the police the first. Ramming police cars with your car is not conducive to your health.
  • How not to interact with the police example the second. Police are not wild about your ignoring their orders then trying to run away.
  • Lunatic arrested for threatening Joe Rogan.

    Authorities in Austin, Texas, have arrested Brian Johnson, known online as the social media influencer “Liver King,” according to jail records.

    He faces one charge of terroristic threat, a Class B misdemeanor.

    Snip.

    The so-called Liver King rose to viral fame with social media posts depicting a barbarian-like “ancestral lifestyle,” including the consumption of raw animal organs, as depicted in the recent Netflix documentary “Untold: The Liver King.”

    His persona and the story behind the physique fell apart in December 2022, however, when he admitted in a YouTube video to using steroids.

  • Speaking of crazy, violent lunatics: “51-year-old Adam Christopher Sheafe has now confessed to crucifying and killing Pastor William Schonemann in Phoenix in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2025.”
  • Tension between the Republican Party of Texas and President Trump over Texas endorsements?
  • Houston looks to ban drug addicted transients from sleeping on the street.
  • “U.S. Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Muslim-Centric EPIC City, No Charges Filed.” As I’ve mentioned before, while investigation was certainly warranted, right now EPIC City looks more like a failed speculative real estate venture than an actual Muslim city in the offing, especially now that the developers have sworn up and down that they won’t discriminate against buyers based on religion. Awful nice of them to agree to obey the law
  • Joan Huffman Launches Campaign for Texas Attorney General. Huffman joins a field that already includes State Sen. Mayes Middleton and former U.S. Department of Justice official Aaron Reitz.”
  • BlackRock 2019: “We hate that icky oil stuff.” BlackRock 2025: “I, for one, welcome our new Texas Overlords!”
  • All that money spent on cocaine, and he can’t pay his legal bills. “‘Substantially In Excess Of $50,000’: Hunter Biden’s Law Firm Sues Him Over Unpaid Legal Bills.”

    This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees,” reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP – which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm “to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees.”

    According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged “repeated” efforts to collect those fees.

    Once a Biden, always a Biden…

  • Hertz is now using AI scanners to flyspeak your car and send you outrageous bills for repairs, plus “administrative fees.” Oh, and you can’t actually reach a human to complain.
  • Morrissey cancels Stockholm show, saying he and band are ‘travel-weary beyond belief’, citing “’bsolutely zero music industry support’ for full Scandinavia tour.”

    “No label will release our music, no radio will play our music … and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”

    Last year, he said he had bought back the rights back to the album, as well as his 2014 record ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. He later told Medium that “there are two albums” that he has completed but is unable to release, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’.

    “The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title. We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”

    He added: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell. The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels do not want to become involved with this Gotcha! Journalism.”

    Evidently Morrissey figured out that unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration to the UK was a bad idea way back in 2019. Obviously The Guardian must punish him for his #wrongthink.

    I’m not a Morrissey fan, and a significant percentage of my impression of him is everyone from MST3K to Mojo Nixon making fun of him. I can certainly see a musician cancelling a show due to exhaustion, and Morrissey is no spring chicken. But as for “zero music industry support,” dude, it’s 2025. Major labels don’t support anyone unless they can own your entire output, or at least get their sticky fingers into every possible revenue stream. Just pay to have your own CDs pressed and sell them at your (evidently successful) shows.

  • Newsflash: Pop stars don’t write their own songs.
  • Critical Drinker on Ironheart: “By far the worst thing Marvel has produced in 20 years of MCU history.”
  • Great screen composer Lalo Schifrin, RIP. if you’ve ever heard the opening music to Mission Impossible or Mannix, you know his work.
  • Ferrari SP3 v Pagani Huayra. For my many readers who were worried about which one they should buy…
  • Speaking of fast, the forthcoming (in December) Corvette ZR1X hybrid is supposed to have 1,250 horsepower, hit 240 MPH and do 0-60 in under two seconds.
  • With the 4th of July coming up, this lighter has been pretty useful to light fireworks without getting your hands too close to the sploady part.
  • “Supreme Court Legalizes Trump Presidency.”
  • “Democrats Discover Innovative Strategy Of Promising Free Stuff To Stupid People.”
  • “Mamdani Vows To Knock Down World Trade Center To Build More Affordable Housing.”
  • “Pete Hegseth Vows Military Will Not Discriminate Against Chicks, Broads, Or Dames.”
  • Dogs vs. stairs: A compilation.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For June 20, 2025

    Friday, June 20th, 2025

    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.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Israel has complete command of the skies over Iran and continues to hit military and nuclear targets at will.
  • Jim Geraghty covers a lot of the most important angles on the Israel-Iran War:

    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.

  • Suchomimus examines the damage from Israel’s very precise strikes on Iran.
  • Trump47 demonstrates how easy it is to secure the border when you actually try.

    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.

    (Hat tip: Charlie Martin at Instapundit.)

  • Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants have ‘self-deported’ under Trump, which has led to higher wages.”

    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.
  • Of course they didn’t want to secure the border: 148 Democrats vote against preventing non-citizens from voting. (Hat tip: Sara Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • “FBI director gives Congress evidence that China created mail-in ballot scheme to help Joe Biden win 2020 election.”

    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?

  • Two Big Ukrainian Drone Strikes on Oil & Chemical Plants: One Nearly 1,000km Away.”
  • Did Russia have a BM-21 Grad missile launcher loaded with chemical weapons?
  • 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 Democrat Party is sucking even harder than we suspect.

    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.
  • Minnesota assassin arrested.

    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.)
  • “FBI Dallas Announces 109 Children Rescued, 244 Offenders Arrested in Child Exploitation Investigation.”
  • Conservatives are happier than liberals across all age, sex, race, and income groups.
  • “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.
  • National outlets have already jumped on this one, but behold who Texas Democrats have made their their new vice chair for finance.

    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?
  • “Israel is having a mostly peaceful protest in Iran.”
  • “Good Guy 1, Bad Guy 0.” Bonus: The least manly spray-and-pray you’ll ever see.
  • Paste without formatting should be the default.” Preach, brother, preach…
  • Elio: “The worst Pixar film ever made.”
  • 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…
  • “Do You Have Experience In Nuclear Engineering? Check Out These Exciting New Job Openings In Iran.”
  • “Texan Republicans Tip Off State Department That Austin Has Nuclear Weapons.”
  • “No Foul Called After Caitlin Clark Crushed By Anvil.”
  • Nosy neighbors, indeed.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Paxton Investigates 33 Instances Of Illegal Alien Voting Fraud

    Tuesday, June 17th, 2025

    Another week, another investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton into more of that illegal alien voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exit.

    Texas has opened investigations into 33 alleged noncitizens who voted in the November 2024 general election, following Secretary of State (SOS) Jane Nelson’s referral of the cases to Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    After Nelson gained access to a federal citizenship database, which she used to cross-reference the voter rolls, her office reported on June 5 that it had found evidence that 33 individuals who voted in the previous election are not U.S. citizens.

    The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, an online service utilized by government agencies for verifying immigration and naturalization status, was made available to the SOS after an executive order by President Donald Trump — which laid out a variety of directives and requirements to state agencies related to ensuring election integrity across the nation. One of these was an order given to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), requiring it to ensure that all state and local officials receive free access to information regarding voters’ citizenship and naturalization statuses.

    “Noncitizens must not be allowed to influence American elections, and I will use the full weight of my office to investigate all voter fraud,” Paxton said in a press release on Tuesday morning.

    “In order to be able to trust the integrity of our elections, the results must be determined by our own citizens — not foreign nationals breaking the law to illegally vote.”

    Paxton had originally called on Nelson in September 2024 to request access to the SAVE database, in order to confirm that the upcoming November 2024 general election would be free of illegal voting by individuals who are not U.S. citizens.

    Shortly after Paxton’s initiative, Nelson sent her own letter to the USCIS demanding its collaboration with her office and outlining the department’s responsibilities in collaborating with local government agencies to ensure the integrity of elections. She requested access to the information by October 2, 2024.

    The SOS reported on June 5 that it had identified the 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the 2024 November general election, “within weeks” of gaining access to the SAVE database.

    One wonders if that’s all the Texas illegal alien voters in the database, or if this is just the tip of the iceberg…

    LinkSwarm for June 13, 2025

    Friday, June 13th, 2025

    Happy Friday the 13th!

    Israeli’s strike on Iran may be shocking to some, but I remember talking to co-workers about the possibility literally two decades ago. The Ayatollah Khomeini made the complete destruction of Israel a stated policy goal at the very outset of the Iranian revolution. Multiple Israeli PMs and American Presidents have made it clear to the Islamic Republic of Iran that they would not be allowed to produce nuclear weapons. Now the mullahs are reaping the whirlwind. And the strikes are still going on. As of this writing, there have been at least nine waves of Israeli strikes on Iran.

    Other news: Trump racks up more legal victories, somebody SWATs the head of the FBI, more illegal alien felons deported from Houston, and a couple of callbacks to the 1970s. Plus a whole lot of bullet lists.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • For last night’s post on the Israeli strikes, strike footage was scarce, but Suchomimus has a roundup this morning:

    • General suspicion is that F-35s were used.
    • “It’s a complete embarrassment for the air defense here. Zero confirmed interceptions of missiles and aircraft so far.” Which is what you would expect after Israel took out Iran’s shitty Russian SAM systems. Not to mention the fact that Iran’s most capable fighter aircraft are pre-revolutionary F-14s…
  • Mossad even released footage of Israeli commando teams in Iran guiding in drone strikes on targets.
  • More:

  • Jim Geraghty on why the Israeli strikes were inevitable.

    If you’ve followed the Middle East at all over the past few decades, you’ve understood that the region was on a path to a conflict — the mullahs in Iran kept inching closer to a functioning nuclear weapon, and Israel — and multiple American presidents — kept declaring that that outcome was unacceptable and had to be prevented at all costs. On June 12, 2025, the Israeli military did something about it. Read on.

    Last night’s Israeli air strike was surprising, but also inevitable.

    Israel could not live in a world where the Iranian regime had nuclear weapons — or to put it another way, once the mullahs in Tehran had a nuclear weapon, Israel was certain to die, it was just a matter of when. It was just about inevitable that the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism — the primary sponsor of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Yemen’s Houthis, among others — would sooner or later use those weapons against Israel.

    If America were hit by half-dozen nuclear bombs, the effects would be devastating, but America would still function and carry on. If Israel were hit by six nuclear bombs — say one each in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and three other targets of your choice — it would likely cease to exist as a state. Almost three-quarters of Israelis live in cities. Israel’s land area is smaller than New Hampshire.

  • Trump gave Iran a chance to come to the negotiating table and Iran chose not to take it.

    Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to “make a deal.” They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!

    Also:

    • Two Israeli officials claimed to Axios that Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public — and didn’t express opposition in private. “We had a clear U.S. green light,” one claimed.
    • The goal, they say, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent and make sure Iranians on Israel’s target list wouldn’t move to new locations.
    • Netanyahu’s aides even briefed Israeli reporters that Trump had tried to put the brakes on an Israeli strike in a call on Monday, when in reality the call dealt with coordination ahead of the attack, Israeli officials now say.

    The classic Two Man Con. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Also from Instapundit (Ed Driscoll):

  • RS McCain has an updated kill list, including some names we haven’t listed yet:

    Known kills so far:

    • IRGC Chief-of-Staff Hossein Salami
    • IRGC General Gholamali Rashid
    • Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri
    • Ali Shamkhani, Senior Advisor to Khamenei

    And these nuclear scientists:

    • Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi
    • Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi
    • Dr. Abdolhamid Minouchehr
    • Dr. Ahmad Reza Zolfajari

    The best thing you could ever do is die…

  • “Iran Launches Dozens of Missiles at Israel in Retaliatory Strike.”

  • But there seem to be more than that, and at least one seems to have hit Tel Aviv.

  • With all that’s going on, it might be easy to miss how President Trump keeps racking up court victories.

    While mainstream news outlets, cable networks and social media obsess over Elon Musk’s latest antics, they have neglected a far more important story — the Trump administration is accumulating a significant catalogue of appeals court and SCOTUS victories. Last Friday alone three more wins were added to the list. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the White House may exclude AP from its press pool while SCOTUS stayed a district court order requiring DOGE to heed a Freedom of Information Act request and ruled that it can access Social Security Administration records.

    These rulings follow a spate of similar wins last month. On May 30, the Supreme Court stayed a district court ruling that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem couldn’t revoke former President Biden’s parole of 532,000 non-citizens. On May 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed a U.S. Trade Court ruling that President Trump’s tariffs are somehow unlawful. On May 22, SCOTUS stayed a district court order reinstating two Biden administration officials fired by Trump. On May 19, SCOTUS stayed a district court ruling that Secretary Noem does not possess the legal authority to terminate the temporary protected status of 350,000 Venezuelan non-citizens.

    The seven cases noted above do not exhaust the list of the Trump administration’s wins. During April the administration won three Supreme Court cases. On April 17, Justice Elena Kagan declined to stay a deportation order involving four Mexican nationals without referring the case to the full court. On April 8, SCOTUS stayed a district court order to reinstate 16,000 fired federal employees. On April 7, the Court vacated a district court order blocking deportations pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act. This particular ruling, combined with two others, led the editors of the Wall Street Journal to conclude that the Supreme Court was sending a message to the district courts:

    President Trump is exercising executive power in aggressive and often novel ways, and opponents are suing to stop him. But in a trio of recent orders, the Supreme Court has sent lower-court judges an important reminder that they must still respect judicial rules and procedures. A 5-4 majority handed Mr. Trump a partial victory Monday by allowing his Administration to continue deporting Venezuelans believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • The same radical leftists who love burning down cities during their “peaceful protests” are looking to do the same thing this Saturday.

    The pro-open-borders riots that have set parts of Los Angeles on fire and have spread to other U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, were anticipated more than a year ago by Democratic Party operatives gaming out ways to destabilize a second Donald Trump administration. Press reports and war-game scenarios from early 2024 predicted domestic unrest caused by the Trump administration’s arrest and deportation of illegal aliens. Consequently, according to the forecasts, the president’s decision to use the military to quell the violence triggers a crisis at the Pentagon and threatens to split the leadership of the U.S. armed forces.

    Whether those scenarios were simply Democratic Party fan fiction or early evidence of a genuine plot to destabilize the government in the event Trump was reelected is likely to become clearer this Saturday. Trump has scheduled a large military parade in the nation’s capital for June 14—the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, Flag Day, oh, and Trump’s birthday—while his adversaries have planned for a massive nationwide anti-deportation protest the same day. If the point is to overwhelm the capacities of local law enforcement agencies across the country, the administration may have no choice but to mobilize National Guard units and regular troops, like those now on the streets of Los Angeles. And it is the mass mobilization of the U.S. military in American cities, according to the 2024 scenarios, that prompts a crisis in the administration.

    According to border czar Tom Homan, the ICE raid that sparked the mayhem in Los Angeles wasn’t detailed to catch illegal aliens, but to serve warrants for a cartel’s money-laundering operation. But to Americans left and right, the protests are about open borders. The Democratic Party base broadly supports the policy, or lack of one, with the radical left leading the violence, and relatively normal Democratic voters believing that it’s a betrayal of American values to refuse anyone a shot at the American dream. Trump voters, on the other hand, expect the president to fulfill his campaign promise to deport tens of millions of illegal aliens. Therefore, Trump couldn’t ignore the riots, even if they directly affected only those who oppose him on open borders, and virtually everything else.

    Plans to destabilize the second Trump term have been in the works for at least a year and a half, and the Pentagon was virtually announced as home-base of the next anti-Trump plot.
    Copied link

    The FBI is investigating “any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots.” But some of the funding streams are already evident—they’re the usual sources of left-wing activist groups and donors, like the Neville Roy Singham-funded Party for Socialism and Liberation—which is to say that money isn’t the crucial factor. For instance, Elon Musk’s shutdown of USAID, which former administrator Samantha Power had used as a slush fund to advance progressive causes here and abroad, emptied only the public sector’s progressive piggy bank. America is teeming with private-sector donors, from “disruptive” tech billionaires to the wan and loveless heiresses who are keen to spend their inheritance on violence that impoverishes others. In America, no leftist will ever go hungry.

    The crucial issue is never money but leadership. That top figures and institutions of the Democratic Party have lined up behind the protests already suggests we’re not dealing simply with supposedly fringe elements on the far-left flank of the party. In fact, the operatives who in 2024 gamed out this latest anti-Trump effort are among the party bosses who ran the plot against the president during his first term. Among others, there’s Marc Elias, the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer who paid for the dossier falsely alleging Trump’s ties to Russia; Mary McCord, a former Barack Obama Justice Department official who oversaw federal law enforcement’s unlawful investigation of the Trump circle; and Rosa Brooks, a former Obama Pentagon official who led the Transition Integrity Project, a 2020 war-game exercise forecasting how Trump was likely to contest the flagrant irregularities that would mark that year’s election and shape its aftermath. TIP was also a communications campaign, feeding press reports that outlined what the Democratic Party and allied institutions—including the court system and Congress—were preparing in order to stop the Republican leader and his supporters.

    It seems the same Obama-led crew that’s been targeting Trump since 2015 is still running the same op.

  • DataRepublican has more info on those funding the protests (with your tax dollars):

    Pulling a few NGOs out for future reference:

    • Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc.
    • BVM Capacity Building Institute Inc.
    • Chinese Progressive Association
    • Liberty Hill Foundation
    • National Endowment for Democracy
    • The Nature Conservancy
    • Silicon Valley Community Foundation
    • Tides Center
    • World Wildlife Fund
  • “House Oversight Committee Launches Investigation into Neville Singham, the Maoist Millionaire Funding Anti-ICE, Pro-Hamas Demonstrations.”

    The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is about to focus its investigative powers on Neville Roy Singham, the pro-China Marxist multimillionaire behind many of the destructive far-left demonstrations plaguing the United States in recent years.

    The Committee is reportedly issuing a formal document request to Singham over his alleged financial support of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)—an extremist Marxist group that has been helping to organize violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

    As the main funder of The People’s Forum, Singham, 71, has also bankrolled the “Free Palestine” protests that erupted after 1,400 innocent Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The People’s Forum works closely with other organizations in Singham’s network, including PSL and the ANSWER Coalition, all of which have been involved in the anti-Israel protests and anti-ICE riots.

    PSL describes itself as a revolutionary socialist party that believes “only a revolution can end capitalism and establish socialism.”

    The group supports the Communist Party of China (CCP) and argues that “militant political defense of the Chinese government” is necessary to stave off “counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment.”

  • Ground Stop Ordered at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.”

    Police say a black SUV hit a gate at Bush Intercontinental Airport and drove into the Air Operations Area Thursday evening.

    HPD confirmed the incident and said the vehicle drove into the cargo area, but did not have any other details at the time of this writing.

    It is unclear if anyone was arrested or what happened afterwards.

    Lifted now. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Has President Trump killed wokeness?

    Trump has shifted the Overton window in the culture away from woke, and it’s hard to imagine it shifting all the way back.

    Corporations aren’t going to play ball again the way they did after the death of George Floyd. Trump could well lose his legal battle with Harvard and other schools, but they’ve admitted that they need to change. DEI and other race-conscious policies may go subterranean under different rubrics, although that, in itself, is a sign of weakness. Black Lives Matter has been discredited by scandal, and “anti-racism” now feels more like a relic than the hot new thing.

    Let’s hope so, but the left’s embrace of wokeness seems essentially religious (or “religious substitute”) in nature, and religions are notoriously hard to stamp out…

  • “CNN: “There is no block of voters that shifted more to the right from 2020 to 2024 than immigrant voters.” A 40 point shift to the GOP, from “+32 in favor of the Democrats in 2020 to +8 in favor of the Republicans” today. Usual poll caveats apply.
  • FBI Director Kash Patel told Joe Rogan that his house had been SWAT-ed.

  • The Wagner Group is bugging out of Mali in favor of new Russian military backed “Africa Corps.”

    The Russian Wagner Group formally withdrew from Mali, as the Kremlin continues to transition control of its military operations in Africa to the Ministry of Defense–backed Africa Corps. The shift to more overt Russian state military involvement in Africa creates myriad domestic and geopolitical risks for the Kremlin. Russia may accordingly adapt its engagement in Africa to the detriment of its current and prospective partnerships.

  • According to this Warfronts (AKA Simon Whistler) video, Wagner is leaving because the Jama’at Nusrat al Islam (JNIM) jihadis have been kicking their ass using motorcycle-based battleswarm tactics, which are well suited for sparsely inhabited, mostly desert environments like Mali.

  • Harris County gives up on its socialist guaranteed income program.
  • ICE Houston Deports 142 Criminal Aliens to Mexico.”

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported 142 criminal aliens from the Houston area to Mexico.

    Among them were eight known gang members, 11 convicted child predators, and one individual who had entered the country illegally 21 separate times.

    Collectively, the group illegally entered the country 480 times and accumulated 473 criminal convictions for a wide range of serious crimes, including:

    • 11 convictions for child sex crimes
    • 76 convictions for driving while intoxicated (DWI)
    • 43 convictions for aggravated assault and domestic violence
    • 22 convictions for human smuggling

    ICE Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford said, “Unfortunately, this is not an anomaly. For the past few years, there has been virtually no deterrent to illegal entry into the country.”

    As a result, millions of illegal aliens, including violent criminals, child predators, transnational gang members, and foreign fugitives, have poured into the U.S.

    Among the most egregious cases:

    • Benito Charqueno Zavala, 60, was convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child and is one of the 11 convicted child predators deported.
    • Johnny Urbina Carillo, 37, was convicted of sexually exploiting a minor and had prior convictions for cocaine possession and illegal reentry.
    • Luis Angel Garcia-Contreras, 40, a documented member of the Sureños 13 gang, had illegally entered the U.S. 21 times and had four convictions for illegal entry.
  • Trump DOJ Official Aaron Reitz Enters Race for Texas Attorney General. His campaign announcement included praise from Trump, who described Reitz as “a true MAGA attorney” and ‘a warrior for our Constitution.'”

    Aaron Reitz, a former deputy attorney general under Ken Paxton and recent Trump administration appointee, announced his campaign for the Republican nomination for Texas attorney general.

    Reitz made the announcement Thursday, a day after resigning as assistant attorney general for legal policy under Pam Bondi in the Department of Justice. He previously served as Paxton’s deputy attorney general for legal strategy and as chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

    “We are in a fight for the soul of Texas, our nation, and Western civilization itself,” said Reitz in a campaign statement. “This is no time for half-measures or untested cowards.”

    “As Attorney General, I’ll use every ounce of legal firepower to defend President Trump, crush the radical Left, advance the America and Texas First agenda, and look out for everyday Texans,” he added.

    State senator Mayes Middleton is already in the race.

  • Moran canned.

    Finally, an excuse to dig out this classic meme from the depths of time.

  • Forty electric busses burn in Philadelphia. “They were parked in such a way that there was NO chance for firefighters to do anything. They could[n’t] get close to the fire. The buses were parke[d] so close together that a fire in 1 bus was almost guaranteed to destroy a bunch of them. And with electric buses mixed in, whatever caused the fire, toxic fumes were going to be released.”
  • Scott at Kentucky Ballistics has an important safety tip for you: Don’t try to run modern firearms on black powder.
  • Entire Shanghai city block moved by swarm of robots.
  • Truth in tourism advertising:

  • Richard Hammond drives the new Morgan Supersport. I’m not a candidate to spend £125,000 on a two seater sports car, even if it were available in the U.S., but that really is a nice looking car.”
  • The Talking Heads release a new video for “Psycho Killer” starring the pastry girl from Grand Budapest Hotel.
  • Speaking of things born in the 1970s, the Critical Drinker looks back on the disasterous production of Heaven’s Gate.
  • A look at Kinugawa, Japan, a hot springs resort that’s been mostly abandoned and untouched for decades.
  • Mayor Bass Reflexively Skips Town After Seeing L.A. Burning Again.”
  • “CNN Reports Peaceful Night In L.A. As Majority Of Cars Not On Fire.”
  • “Trump To Release One Gorilla To Fight Every 100 Rioters.”
  • “Concerns Raised As ChatGPT Begins Replying To All Prompts With ‘Are You Sarah Connor?'”
  • Loyalty:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LA Riot News Roundup

    Wednesday, June 11th, 2025

    Just like in 1992 or 2020, another bout of “mostly peaceful protest” in a Democrat-run city has turned into a multi-day spree of rioting and looting. So here’s a roundup of leftwing riot news from the pro-illegal alien felon riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere:

  • LA’s ineffectual hard-left mayor declares a curfew.

    The mayor of Los Angeles is imposing a nighttime curfew to curtail the continuing anti-ICE riots and combat looting and vandalism amid the chaos.

    L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D.) announced a curfew beginning at 8 p.m. Pacific time in downtown Los Angeles and lifting at 6 a.m. She warned violators that law-enforcement officers would arrest them.

    “I issued a curfew starting tonight at 8pm for Downtown Los Angeles to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President’s chaotic escalation,” Bass said.

    “If you do not live or work in Downtown L.A., avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted.”

    Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D.) have faced criticism for allowing the riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement to get out of hand and for taking a soft-handed approach. Both Democrats have attacked President Trump and his administration for quickly sending in the National Guard to quell the violence after local law enforcement was overwhelmed.

    “If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said Tuesday morning on Truth Social.

    Trump and Newsom have exchanged heated rhetoric over Newsom’s handling of the rioting and Trump’s decision to quickly intervene. Newsom has cast Trump as an authoritarian, wannabe dictator for mobilizing the National Guard to stop the violence.

    How dare Trump enforce public order and deport illegal alien felons?

  • Jim Geraghty on why LA is burning yet again.

    In the coming days, you’re going to see an enormous effort by the Democrats and large swaths of the media to declare that if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had never tried to enforce immigration law in Los Angeles, the city would not be beset by so much widespread violence and unrest this past weekend. Implicit in that argument is the idea that Los Angeles city and county are so primed for violence, such a powder keg of anarchic malcontents, that the U.S. government must simply throw up its hands and concede that it cannot enforce immigration law there. You see, this reflects how the likes of Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass approach governing — when a task is too difficult, they just don’t even make the attempt.

    In the minds of the progressive Democrats who run the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California, ICE efforts to arrest and deport those who have entered the country illegally are unpopular among their constituents and, therefore, must be illegitimate.

    That is not how it works, of course.

    I sometimes think that news organizations in Los Angeles don’t want to give their audiences and readers a clear picture of what’s actually happening in their city. Here’s the opening sentence of an article published online by the Los Angeles NBC affiliate Friday afternoon: “A group of people were seen outside of a business named Ambiance in the Fashion District of downtown Los Angeles.”

    Hey, remember those basics of journalism, the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, and sometimes the how? Are we just not doing any of that anymore?

    The next sentence reads, “Essayli tells NBC4 that the FBI was working along with other federal agencies to serve a search warrant, which were [sic] signed by a judge, because they have probable cause to believe this employer is using fictitious documents for some of its workers.”

    There’s nothing indicating to readers that “Essayli” is Bilal A. “Bill” Essayli, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, the chief federal prosecutor for the region.

    Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement Friday afternoon declaring, “We received reports of federal immigration enforcement actions in multiple locations in Los Angeles. As mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place. These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. My office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.”

    Throughout the day, Bass issued one statement after another that kept referring to “immigrants” — refusing to even acknowledge the distinction between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.

    California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statement Friday contending, “continued chaotic federal sweeps, across California, to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel. Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.”

    What makes these law enforcement actions “chaotic” and “reckless”?

    The following morning, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons contended that an angry crowd of Los Angeles residents had assaulted federal agents, and the Los Angeles Police Department had an inexplicably delayed response:

    As rioters attacked federal ICE and law enforcement officers on the L.A. streets, Mayor Bass took the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement.

    Our brave officers were vastly outnumbered, as over 1,000 rioters surrounded and attacked a federal building. It took over two hours for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond, despite being called multiple times. The brave men and women of ICE were in Los Angeles arresting criminal illegal aliens including gang members, drug traffickers and those with a history of assault, cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery, and smuggling.

    The protest was outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. The headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department is three-tenths of a mile away, an eight-minute walk.

  • DataRepublican took a deep dive into who is funding the LA riots. Let me pull out the relevant orgs for tagging:
    • Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights (CHIRLA)

    • Party for Socialism and Liberation
    • International ANSWER
    • Billionaire socialist Neville Roy Singham
    • People’s Forum
    • SEIU
  • The Daily Caller fingers more lefty organizations helping organize and fund the riots.

    Unión del Barrio and Centro CSO

    Another downtown Los Angeles press conference on Friday featured speakers from Unión del Barrio and Centro CSO, Facebook video shows. Unión del Barrio’s Ron Gochez told his audience about the need to resist ICE “by any means necessary.”

    “If we organize, we can kick their asses out of every single ghetto, every single barrio, anywhere where our people are,” Gochez said, drawing applause.

    “Who gives a damn about legality, when these people have their boot to our neck,” Gochez said, referencing immigration law. “We have … every single obligation, moral, historical, we have every reason to defend our people, to defend our community, to defend our families by whatever means necessary.”

    Unión del Barrio describes itself as “entirely self-financed through membership dues, community contributions, and local fundraising” on its website, while Centro CSO says it is a member-funded grassroots group. The organizations did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
    Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

    The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) helped spread SEIU’s graphic about CHIRLA’s Friday press conference on X. “Citizens who know their rights can disrupt and slow ICE incursions, as well as pressure local authorities to take action,” another Friday X post from the group reads. The DSA chapter did not respond to a request for comment.

    Snip.

    The 50501 Movement, formed in response to the second Trump administration, promoted the protests on Bluesky throughout the weekend, including the Friday 4 p.m. gathering. 50501 National Press Coordinator Hunter Dunn posted about being personally among the protesters.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • LAPD did the meme and called the leftwing arson and looting sprees “mostly peaceful.”
  • More mostly peaceful: “Illegal alien charged with attempted murder for throwing Molotov cocktail at officers in LA riots.”
  • The Other McCain looks at the left’s current love for illegal alien criminals, and reaches back into history to remember Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association.

    Voters elected Donald Trump for a reason, and if Chris Van Hollen, Will Bunch or anyone else thinks they’re going to fool the electorate into sharing their sympathy for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they’re simply delusional. But we have often seen the Left enthralled by such delusions.

    Jan Myrdal, Marita Wikander, Gunnar Bergström and Hedvig Ekerwald were Swedish socialists who enthusiastically supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a widespread sentiment in Sweden at the time:

    The Indochinese revolutionary movements enjoyed widespread support in Swedish society, particularly among supporters of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. When the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh [in April 1975] and expelled its inhabitants, 15,000 Swedes greeted their victory by spontaneously celebrating in the center of Stockholm.

    The arrival of Year Zero in Democratic Kampuchea was, as we now know, the beginning of one of the most murderous tyrannies in all human history. The best estimates are that Pol Pot’s communist regime killed about 1.5 million people, nearly 25% of the country’s population.

    The first widely noticed account of the ongoing massacre in Cambodia was published by the Reader’s Digest in February 1977, and immediately sparked widespread controversy. The Left, having embraced the Communist regime in Cambodia, denounced the Reader’s Digest account as “propaganda.” To quote Wikipedia:

    According to Joel Brinkley, “Khmer Rouge apologists [among Western academics] easily outnumbered those who believed a tragedy was under way.” . . .
    [H]uman-rights activist David Hawk . . . claimed that the West was indifferent to the atrocities taking place in Cambodia due to “the influence of anti-war academics on the American left who obfuscated Khmer Rouge behavior, denigrated the post-1975 refugee reports, and denounced the journalists who got those stories.”

    In the prevailing worldview of the intelligentsia, the Communists must be good, because America was bad. Therefore, reports about atrocities in Cambodia (based on accounts from those who had escaped) must be false or exaggerated. Such was the background of the August 1978 trip to Cambodia by Myrdal, Wikander, Bergström and Ekerwald as a delegation from the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association (SKFA). They spent two weeks as guests of the Khmer Rouge, even having dinner with Pol Pot, and “returned to Sweden where they undertook a speaking tour and wrote articles in support of the Democratic Kampuchea regime.” Bergström expressed the belief that, under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia could become “a very special model for the third world … an ideal society with no oppressors.” And this, keep in mind, was a brutal regime that killed a higher percentage of their national population than any known dictatorship in all human history. Among the victims were Marita Wikander’s husband. She had married a Khmer Rouge diplomat, who returned to Cambodia in 1977. During the SKFA trip to Phnom Penh in 1978, she asked to see her husband. The request was denied. It wasn’t until years later that she learned he had been executed by the regime shortly after his return to Cambodia. Such an “ideal society“!

    The analogy to current liberal politics is obvious enough. Viewing Trump as the Sum of All Evils, liberals reflexively attack any policy advocated by Trump. Therefore, if Trump wishes to deport criminal illegal aliens, liberals must defend criminal illegal aliens: “Free Kilmar!”

  • It just wouldn’t be a “mostly peaceful” leftwing riot without widespread looting:

  • Evidently looting Apple stores is now so common that iPhones now have a store setting that sets alarms and tracking off if stolen, rendering them useless to looters:

  • Democrats always seem to have a pathological need to lie about the riots and looting happening on their watch.

    Los Angeles is grappling with a wave of violence and destruction that has left local business owners reeling, as captured in a viral TikTok video from NewsNationNow, posted on 10 June 2025.

    The video features a furious LA business owner, Monty, owner of Bargain2Perfumes, whose store was ransacked during protests against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. ‘This is ridiculous.

    This doesn’t look like they’re protesting ICE or anything… Just looting the stores,’ he told NewsNation, echoing sentiments shared across X posts.

    Yet, California Governor Gavin Newsom has repeatedly called these events ‘peaceful protests,’ a stark contrast to the reported £80 million ($107 million) in property damage since 6 June 2025, including looted stores, torched vehicles, and vandalised buildings.

  • Once again, President Trump is on the right side of another 80/20 issue in which Democrats have taken a widely unpopular position.

    So President Trump chose criminal deportation, law and order, and tough on crime.

    California Democrats Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass chose lawsuits and states’ rights.

    Who do you think won this latest round? I’d say Mr. Trump 10, Democrats zero.

    It’s just hard to believe that removing illegal alien criminals who have committed sexual assault and murders would be attacked by one of our two major political parties.

    But that’s the state of play among Democrats. Shame on Governor Newsom in particular.

    And good for Senator Fetterman for being just about the only Democrat to stand up and say that peaceful free speech is good, but violent protest is not. And Democrats should not be defending violent protests.

    And Mr. Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, is absolutely right that Mr. Newsom and Ms. Bass should be thanking ICE for making California a safer place.

    In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Mr. Homan said, “What angers me the most” is that “people aren’t looking at the facts. ICE arrested significant public safety threats in the last few days in L.A. We arrested a murderer — a Vietnamese national who murdered teenagers at a graduation party.”

    He added that “we arrested several sexual predators — child sexual predators — we arrested people convicted of armed robbery, arrested people for domestic violence and all sorts of public safety threats.”

    And as protesters and trouble makers turn to violence to oppose ICE’s safety actions, remarkably the Democrats chose to support the rioters committing arson, and looting, smashing police cars, throwing rocks at ICE agents, spitting on the American flag and setting it on fire, and spray-painting “Death to America” graffiti on government buildings.

    Mr. Trump’s rapid action to protect public safety and avoid a truly vast insurrection by bringing in the National Guard and Marines was a stroke of genius.

  • Not just LA:

    The chaotic anti-ICE riots aren’t just confined to California; anti-ICE agitators have taken their lawlessness to the East Coast. On Saturday, New York City joined Los Angeles in becoming a flashpoint for radical protests, as demonstrators clashed with law enforcement after a mob of nearly 150 people tried to block federal officials from conducting an immigration raid in Manhattan.

    More than 20 anti-ICE protestors were arrested after interfering with immigration authorities trying to carry out lawful operations. The activists were actively obstructing the removal of criminal illegal immigrants. At one point, the mob attempted to block a white van from exiting the area. It successfully forced it back into the building’s parking garage after agitators threw themselves at the vehicle. The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrived and started pushing protesters back onto the other side of the street. Authorities warned protestors to disperse or get arrested

  • Even here in Austin, protestors were demonstrating the usual left-wing idea of “peaceful”:

    While the Austin protest was largely peaceful, it ended with a dozen arrests and a standoff between demonstrators and state and local police who deployed tear gas and pepper ball projectiles against a smaller group of protesters after they graffitied a federal building and threw rocks at officers.

    Snip.

    Laiba Khan, an organizer with the Austin chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said the group organized the protest specifically because of the Trump administration’s response to the LA demonstrations.

    Quoting that not because it’s important, but just so I have the tags ready the next time these Austin commies burn something else down.

  • Trace Gallagher on Fox News sums out just how bad these riots look for Democrats:

    “If the goal is to lose elections in perpetuity, they have devised the perfect plan.”

  • The Babylon Bee appreciates illegal alien rioters making things easier for ICE:

  • Remember to stay away from riot areas, and make sure your carry gun is properly oiled and loaded…

    Left Cranks Up Riot Season For Alien Felons

    Saturday, June 7th, 2025

    if you wondered when the hard left was going to crank up the riot machine like we saw in the 2020 Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riot, we now have an answer in Los Angeles: They’re going to riot over criminal illegal aliens being deported.

    Mayhem ensued when ICE raids were conducted in Los Angeles yesterday. Like in Minneapolis, leftists came out of the woodwork to berate and disrupt federal agents enforcing immigration laws. Unlike that incident, however, it didn’t lead to what I was told is an act of armed rebellion: anti-ICE activists stormed a federal building, and the local police were nowhere to be found (via Los Angeles Times):

    A series of surprise U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps in downtown Los Angeles on Friday prompted fierce pushback from elected officials and protesters, who decried the enforcement actions as “cruel and unnecessary” and said they stoked fear in the immigrant community.

    Tensions remained high in downtown into the evening. The Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly and ordered around 200 protesters who remained gathered by the Los Angeles Federal Building to disperse around 7 p.m.

    Chaos erupted earlier in the day in the heart of the Fashion District after federal immigration authorities detained employees inside a clothing wholesaler, and used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray on a crowd protesting the raid around 1:30 p.m.

    Hundreds of people then rallied outside the Los Angeles Federal Building at 4 p.m., condemning the crackdown and demanding the release of Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta, who was injured and detained while documenting a raid, according to a statement from the labor union.

    Eventually Bass allowed riot police to be sent in and disperse the rioters, but she certainly took her sweet time about it.

    Instead of having the black Marxists in BLM running the riots, now they have Mexican Marxists running the current riots.

    Democrats and their rogue NGO network appear to be at it again—this time staging a new protest movement against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Los Angeles, hoping to spark another ‘Summer of Love’ nationwide riots like in 2020, when leftists used the useful idiots behind the Marxist group Black Lives Matter as a vehicle for chaos.

    With BLM kicked to the curb by the Democratic Party, the Mexican version of BLM – Unión del Barrio – whose manifesto is filled with explicit Marxist and communist rhetoric—has become the next group Democrats will use as useful idiots.

    On Friday, Unión del Barrio issued a call to action for the crazies on Facebook to stage a protest against “ICE Terrorists” in Downtown LA:

    Emergency Protest TODAY in LA! 4:30PM

    535 Alameda St LA, CA 90012

    Join us to denounce ICE terrorizing our communities! Over 200 people are currently being held at this location in the basement of the courthouse. Today, there has been ICE activity all over the LA area.

    LA EMERGENCY PROTEST!
    535 Alameda St, LA, CA 90012
    Friday, June 6, 2025 4:30PM
    STOP DEPORTATIONS NOW!
    ICE has hundreds of members of our community kidnapped and is holding them at this location.

    Given that ICE is still concentrating of deporting criminals, the “community” they’re talking about is “illegal alien felons.” I guess that makes them perfect victims as far as the cadres of social justice Democrats are concerned: non-white, non-citizen criminals, all things the hard left seems to idolize.

    A quick review of Unión del Barrio’s political program is absolutely alarming – and basically the Mexican version of BLM…

    Core Beliefs & Goals:

    • Opposition to U.S. imperialism, capitalism, and settler colonialism
    • Advocacy for immigrant rights, against deportations and ICE raids
    • Promotion of community organizing in working-class Latino neighborhoods
    • Support for socialist and pan-Latino unity movements
    • Education and youth empowerment through political study and activism

    Action campaigns:

    • Organizes rallies and protests, particularly against ICE and border enforcement
    • Runs community education programs like Escuelita Aztlán
    • Collaborates with other radical left-wing organizations in the U.S. and Latin America
    • Frequently involved in May Day demonstrations, anti-police protests, and immigration activism

    When it comes to the Democratic Party’s on-demand rioters, it’s commies all the way down…

    Feds Sue Texas Over Illegal Alien Tuition

    Thursday, June 5th, 2025

    Usually it’s been Texas suing the federal government (especially under Biden) for breaking the law when it comes to illegal aliens, but yesterday saw a reversal when the federal government sued Texas for providing discounted in-state tuition to illegal aliens.

    Just two days after the Texas Legislature adjourned without passing legislation to end in-state tuition for illegal aliens, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas.

    Now, the state has settled, ending the discounted tuition for illegals for now.

    Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the lawsuit challenges longstanding provisions of the Texas Education Code that allow certain illegal aliens to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities—rates that are significantly lower than those charged to U.S. citizens from other states.

    “Federal law prohibits illegal aliens from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens,” the DOJ complaint reads. “There are no exceptions. Yet the State of Texas has ignored this law for years.”

    The lawsuit cited a federal statute that bars states from offering postsecondary education benefits based on residency to illegal aliens unless the same benefit is available to all U.S. citizens regardless of residency. The DOJ argued Texas law is in direct violation of that statute and therefore preempted under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

    Since 2001, Texas has allowed illegal alien students to qualify for in-state tuition if they attended Texas high schools and resided in the state for a certain period. At the time, the policy received bipartisan support and was signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry.

    During his 2012 presidential campaign, Perry defended the law and infamously called critics of the policy “heartless” during a nationally televised debate.

    It was a stupid idea then. Government benefits should be reserved for American citizens. Giving them to illegal aliens is not only morally wrong, it encourages other aliens to break the law by coming here illegally.

    Senate Bill 1798 by State Sen. Mayes Middleton would have repealed that provision and barred state-funded financial aid from going to illegal aliens. Despite being placed on the Senate intent calendar, the bill was never brought up for a vote.

    Curious.

    Now, with the legislative session over and the bill dead, the Trump administration stepped in to accomplish what the Legislature didn’t.

    The DOJ asked the court to declare the Texas provisions unconstitutional and to permanently block the state from enforcing them.

    Hours after the lawsuit was announced, a settlement was announced, with the state agreeing not to offer discounted tuition to illegal aliens.

    “In-state tuition for illegal immigrants in Texas has ended. Texas is permanently enjoined from providing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants,” wrote Gov. Greg Abbott in a social media post.

    Funny how you can get things done when Republicans control both the state and national executive branches.

    Slowly but surely, common sense is returning to government, and official government preferences for illegal aliens are being stripped away.

    Faster, please.

    LinkSwarm For May 30, 2025

    Friday, May 30th, 2025

    This week brought not one, but gully washers to the Austin area, so now I’m fighting a war against a zillion millipedes climbing the walls to invade every nook and crevice of my home, so I’ve been spraying a lot of pesticide around windows. A Supreme Court win for Trump, lots of budget wrangles, a look at the burgeoning Democrat Party civil war, antifa finally gets investigated, and more Harvard-bashing from the Babylon Bee.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Winning: “Supreme Court Lets Trump Strip 500,000 Migrants Of Legal Status.”

    The Supreme Court on Friday sided with the Trump administration – allowing them to revoke temporary legal status granted to over 500,000 immigrants by the Biden administration.

    In a 7-2 vote, the court granted an emergency application filed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that ends the Biden program which granted 532,000 people from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua permission to temporarily live and work in the United States.

    Faster, please.

  • A look at part of the Soros network:

    This Part 1 report will focus on the George Soros-funded NEO Philanthropy which is funding and orchestrating a massive, nationwide illegal immigration scheme through NEO’s the Four Freedoms Fund.

    In the 2024 election, NEO Philanthropy’s Four Freedom Fund sought to raise $5 million to help illegal immigrants stay in the country in the event of a victory by Donald Trump.

    NEO Philanthropy
    Latest Tax Filing(s): 2022
    Budget (2023): Revenue: $167,648,220
    Expenses: $128,270,774
    Assets: $199,912,880

    A Capital Research report shows NEO Philanthropy and its advocacy sibling received $21 million from the Soros Network to support “advocacy on Latinx rights and empowerment,” change policy in North Carolina, register voters and fund get-out-the-vote efforts among “historically disenfranchised voters” (read: likely Democrats), and boost the Movement for Black Lives.

    The Four Freedoms Fund is a donor collaborative of NEO Philanthropy. The Fund primarily focuses on pushing left-of-center immigration policies, including “legalization of undocumented immigrants” through a path to citizenship and comprehensive immigration reform legislation. The Fund is critical of what it calls “anti-immigrant ordinances” created by conservative legislators, including deportations by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).

    NEO Philanthropy (formerly Public Interest Projects) is a New York-based nonprofit that serves as a fiscal clearinghouse for left-of-center causes. The group serves as a vehicle for left-of-center foundations to pool resources, hosts donor-advised funds, and sponsors various advocacy projects.

    The organization is the fiscal sponsor of left-of-center entities, including the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, a voter mobilization group. Disbursing grant money remains one of NEO’s primary functions; NEO Philanthropy gave close to 60 percent of its total expenditures as grants.

    Inside Philanthropy described NEO as “an intermediary that doesn’t have its own resources for grantmaking.” The group receives funding from major left-of-center donors institutions including the Atlantic Philanthropies, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Gill Foundation, the Pew Trusts and the Carnegie Corporation, among others. The organization and similar left-of-center groups that engage in “nonpartisan” voter registration have received criticism for appearing to favor the registration of voters exceptionally likely to vote for Democrat candidates.

    According to a 2016 report, an Obama administration appointee managed a fund that George Soros used to bankroll election-related activities likely increasing the number of “voters of color” and “improving odds” of electing preferred candidates.

    Karen Narasaki, a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, managed the Soros-backed NEO-linked Shelby Response Fund. Narasaki worked as a corporate attorney at Russia Collusion hoax conspirator Perkins Coie in Seattle.

    Much more at the link. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • DeSantis Slams Republican Failure to Codify DOGE Cuts.”

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed Congressional Republicans on Tuesday over their lack of action on cutting the government waste and abuse identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

    Back in March, Congress passed the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, which maintained funding for USAID at the FY 2024 level, effectively extending existing funding for the purportedly “rogue agency” through September 30, 2025.

    The “Big Beautiful Bill,” which narrowly passed in the House of Representatives last week, reportedly includes $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including the largest-ever welfare reform.

    But because it is a reconciliation bill, Senate rules limit the cuts to “mandatory” spending only, such as Medicaid and Food Stamps, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller explained on X. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory, so they are not addressed in the Big Beautiful Bill.

    Many conservatives have expressed disappointment that Republicans have failed to codify any meaningful cuts in wasteful discretionary spending, as identified by DOGE, in separate bills. Meanwhile, the director of the National Economic Council promised last week that “way more spending cuts” are coming later this year.

    In a post on X, DeSantis put the heat on Republicans to do just that, pointing out that DOGE Chief Elon Musk “took massive incoming,” which included “attacks on his companies” and “personal smears” while leading the DOGE effort. “He became public enemy #1 of legacy media around the world,” DeSantis wrote. “To see Republicans in Congress cast aside any meaningful spending reductions (and, in fact, fully fund things like USAID) is demoralizing and represents a betrayal of the voters who elected them,” the governor added.

  • “House Republicans plan to tee up its first Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut bill next week targeting foreign aid, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) revealed on Wednesday.” Call me thick, but I just don’t see how Republicans can beat a Democratic filibuster without reconciliation, and I don’t think they can use that for this bill.
  • Ruy Teixeira 2002: Hispanic immigration will make Democrats the natural majority party of America. Ruy Teixeira 2025: Moderate Hispanics hate the Democratic Party and just about everything it stands for.

    Hispanic moderates increasingly resemble white moderates politically. They are voting their ideology and political views not their group identity. This is further illustrated by examining Hispanic moderates’ more specific political views.

    1. Hispanic moderates think the Democrats have moved too far left. In a 2024 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint, three in five Hispanic moderates agreed the Democratic Party had moved too far left on economic issues and about the same felt they’d moved too far left on “cultural and social issues.”

    2. Hispanic moderates are hawkish on illegal immigration. In the same survey, more of these voters thought “America needs to close its borders to outsiders and reduce all levels of immigration” than believed “people around the world have the right to claim asylum and America should welcome more immigrants into the country.” Most Hispanic moderates endorsed a combination of border security and more legal immigration.

    Also in that survey, net support (support minus oppose) among Hispanic moderates for a proposal to “use existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border” was 59 points (63 percent to 4 percent). Similarly, Hispanic moderates supported by 36 points restricting “the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.” And they backed deputizing “the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States” by 34 points.

    3. Hispanic moderates are tough on crime and supportive of law enforcement. Hispanic moderates supported by 53 points a proposal to “increase funding for police and strengthen criminal penalties for assaulting cops.” These voters even supported by 17 points a draconian proposal to “change federal law so that drug traffickers can receive the death penalty.”

    4. Hispanic moderates are opposed to Democrats’ stance on transgender issues. In a 2023 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot, voters were offered the following three choices:

    • States should protect all transgender youth by providing access to puberty blockers and transition surgeries if desired, and allowing them to participate fully in all activities and sports as the gender of their choice;
    • States should protect the rights of transgender adults to live as they want but implement stronger regulations on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors; or
    • States should ban all gender transition treatments for minors and stop discussion of gender ideology in all public schools.

    The first position here, emphasizing availability of medical treatments for trans-identifying children (euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming” care) and sports participation dictated by gender self-identification, is unquestionably the default position of the Democratic Party. Indeed, to dissent in any way from this position in Democratic circles is still enough to earn one the sobriquet of “hateful bigot”—or worse. Yet less than a fifth of Hispanic moderates (19 percent) endorse this position. Nearly twice as many of these voters endorse the strictest position: that medical treatments for transgender children should simply be banned, as should discussion of gender ideology in public schools. And 45 percent favor the second position, advocating stronger regulation on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors. Together, the latter two positions make it four-to-one among Hispanic moderates against the Democratic position.

    5. Hispanic moderates want cheap, reliable energy not a renewables revolution. Cost and reliability is what Hispanic moderates really care about when it comes to energy. Given four choices of their energy policy priorities in a 2024 YouGov climate issues survey for AEI’s Center for Technology, Science and Energy, 49 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them. Another 25 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Together that’s 74 percent of Hispanic moderates prioritizing the cost or reliability of energy. In contrast, just 21 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important. (Another 4 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security).

    Unsurprisingly given this pattern, it turns out that Hispanic moderates just don’t care very much about the climate change issue. In the survey, voters were asked to assess their priorities for the government to address in the coming year. Among 18 options, climate change ranked 14th, beating out only global trade, drug addiction, racial issues, and the problems of poor people.

    In terms of general energy strategy, when presented with a choice among three options—a rapid green energy transition, an “all of the above” energy policy, and emphasizing fossil fuels—Hispanic moderates strongly prefer an “all of the above” approach to energy policy including oil, gas, renewables, and nuclear. Only a fifth support a rapid transition to renewables—actually less than support flat-out stopping the renewables push. Hispanic moderates’ preference for an “all of the above” energy strategy is reinforced by their answers to a binary question asking if they preferred using a mix of energy sources versus phasing out fossil fuels. The overwhelming judgement: 71 to 29 percent against eliminating fossil fuels.

    So Democratic Party policy falls into two categories for moderate Hispanics: The ones that are low priority, and the ones they actively hate.

  • The Democratic Party is indeed in trouble, and once Jeffrey Blehar gets past the requisite NRO anti-Trump sneers, he correctly fingers the social justice culprits.

    The Democratic Party is being pulled apart by horses: On one hand, the party is increasingly held in contempt by once reliable voter demographics (Hispanics, African Americans, working-class men) as out-of-touch elitists taking orders from the Ivy League and the progressive ultra-left. On the other hand — and just as relevantly — the party is crippled from within by that same hard-left faction, which has held the ideological whip-hand over Democrats’ social agenda for a decade now.

    These people are the problem. The inflexibly ratcheting social demands of the progressive activist/academic elite are the reason Democrats are in enormous trouble and will be even after Trump is forgotten. And these people are both practically and (more importantly for Democratic politics) morally entrenched within the party at all levels except the top strategic layer. They will not concede power easily, if at all. A civil war thus brews in the Democratic Party’s intellectual/activist wing against its reform-minded moderates. (Grab your popcorn.)

    I’m not sure that the entire cadre of “reform-minded moderates” with any appreciable role within the party itself could fill a high school basketball arena. Within the ranks of the DNC itself, I doubt they could fill a Denny’s. But the corrupt wing of the party has indeed come to the realization that the policies of the insane wing are so unpopular that the corrupt wing is in danger of longer being able to rake off its usual graft, hence the crisis. Too bad for them that they’ve essentially ceded the Party’s entire ideological apparatus to the insane wing, and the predominately over-60 corrupt wing has no viable way to change course or purge their own institutions.

    Another obvious example beckons: The hilarious plight of David Hogg, the whippet-faced punk set to be voted out of his newly acquired vice chairmanship at the Democratic National Committee next month for being a mutinous weasel, is emblematic of how the Democratic Party is currently consuming itself in internecine war. Hogg, recall, was essentially given the gig by a bunch of older, clueless Democratic Party grandees who voted for him in the hopes he would help bring disaffected young progressives back into the fold. Instead Hogg understands himself to be working not for the Democratic Party, but rather for the progressive movement — hence his announcement that he would use his position and powers to support primary challengers to insufficiently woke Democratic incumbents.

    The future looks even more grim for the Democrats for structural reasons. The 2030 census is expected to subtract a swath of House seats (and thus electoral votes) from California and New York, in favor of red states like Florida and Texas. While this bodes ill for remaining Republican incumbents in those states (who can expect to be brutally redistricted away by 2032), it bodes in many ways even worse for the remaining Democrats, who will be left fighting over the division of a shrinking pie.

    Understand: A significant number of those currently angry with the Democrats are angry at them for their failure to resist Donald Trump volubly enough, not for being too far to the left. These are the people Democrats absolutely must carry reliably as part of any victorious national coalition, given their preponderance within the party electorate. They will make demands accordingly. If anything, expect the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in its biggest states to lean even more progressive in years ahead as the moderates lose internal battles for position.

    There are no Democrat moderates, only Zuul. Assuming Zuul is a 400-pound, purple-haired tranny screaming about Gaza…

  • After five years of letting Antifa run wild in the Pacific northwest, the FBI is finally investigating.

    The FBI has indicated it will investigate the attack on a Christian group and the cops who came to intervene after a Memorial Day weekend melee in Seattle.

    After the attack and outrageous response by Seattle’s Mayor Bruce Harrell, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino issued this statement: “We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert. Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”

    I claimed in this must-read background story, Seattle Attack Offers More Proof That Antifa Thugs Are Just Democrat Anti-Christian Shock Troops, exactly what the title says, and that these anti-Christian attacks are nothing new. Further, after watching these groups for years, I can attest that the Seattle and Portland Antifa groups intermingle and help each other out, as Andy Ngo points out above.

    Hopefully the current investigation will also target their finding sources and start bringing RICO charges against the entire terrorist network. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “[Texas] House Passes Immigration Enforcement Bill Mandating Local ICE Cooperation. Lawmakers approved legislation requiring counties with jails to enter into immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government.”
  • “‘A Huge Day For The Nuclear Industry‘: Trump Signs Orders To Fast Track SMR Development & Deployment.”

    President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders designed to fast-track the development and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors on Friday culminating a dramatic policy shift aimed at revitalizing the U.S. nuclear energy sector.

    Flanked in the Oval Office by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump declared nuclear power “a hot industry” and praised it as “very safe and environmental.”

    Burgum called it “a huge day for the nuclear industry,” and added, “Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of over regulation of an industry.”

    These orders aim to strip away what the administration describes as decades of regulatory overreach that have stifled innovation and stagnated the industry. “America’s greatness has always come from innovation,” Burgum said. “We led post-World War Two in all things nuclear. But then we’ve been stagnated. We’ve choked it with over regulation.”

    The first of Trump’s executive orders directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to accelerate research and development, speed up reactor testing at national labs, and initiate a two-year pilot program for reactor construction.

    A second order clears regulatory hurdles for the DOE and the Department of Defense (DOD) to build reactors on federal land — efforts that will bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) entirely by using the agencies’ own regulatory authority.

    Long overdue.

  • “US Tightens Screws: Jet Engine Parts, Semiconductor Tech Exports To China Halted.”

    The Trump administration has intensified the U.S.-China trade war by suspending exports of critical American technologies to China, including jet engine parts, semiconductor design software, specialized chemicals, and industrial machinery. The move follows Beijing’s recent decision to restrict shipments of rare earth minerals to U.S. firms. In a further escalation, Washington also announced plans to begin revoking visas for Chinese students in sensitive research fields.

    Snip.

    Adding to the trade tensions, sources familiar with the matter told The New York Times overnight that the U.S. Commerce Department had suspended certain export licenses allowing U.S. companies to supply engine parts and technology to China’s state-owned aircraft manufacturer, Comac (Commercial Aircraft Corp of China).

    Comac has stockpiled engines and parts in anticipation of potential trade restrictions. Still, over time, the move could significantly undermine China’s aviation. The company’s C919 passenger jet—its flagship jet to challenge rival Boeing and Airbus—relies heavily on GE Aerospace–Safran’s LEAP engines.

    Keep in mind that certain semiconductor parts had already been embargoed under Biden. A complete embargo of semiconductor parts is going to screw China’s semiconductor industry, as some of those parts simply can’t be sourced locally, to say nothing of losing access to trained maintenance techs, software upgrades, etc.

  • Ukraine claimed credit for two explosions in Vladivostok, which is on Russia’s Pacific coast and is a whopping 6,800km from Ukraine.
  • Saudi Arab wants you to know that he stands with Israel because Palestinians suck:

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • California starts backing away from letting boys compete in girls events. Timidly and halfheartedly, to be sure, but something vaguely resembling progress. Gavin Newsom’s secret 2028 presidential race polling must show that tranny pandering is killing him in any general matchup…
  • A bill to make Daylight Savings Time permanent has passed both the Texas house and senate and heads to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk to be signed, but can’t take effect until federal law changes to accommodate it.
  • Trump to Harvard: Guess you won’t be needing these $100 million in federal contracts.
  • Somehow, MSNBC’s ratings have gotten even lower.

    MSNBC’s new prime time lineup, which debuted on May 5th, failed to connect with viewers in its first three weeks as the network saw its audience decline to near record lows – especially in the key 25-54 age demographic.

    Overall for May, MSNBC dropped 41% in the primetime demo and 34% in the total day demo compared to May of 2024. In total viewers, the network was down 33% across total day and 24% in prime time. MSNBC’s total day demo viewership sank to 49,000 average viewers and 73,000 in prime time – its second worst ever showing for a month behind January of 2025.

    Fox News was the only of the big three networks to see year-over-year gains for May, up 21% in total viewers and 22% in total day demo viewers compared to 2024. In prime time, Fox gained 23% in total viewers and was up 32% in the demo.

    CNN was down 24% in total day viewers and 27% in the daytime demo, while in prime time the network dropped 18% in total viewers and 21% in the demo. CNN’s prime time average came in at only 426,000 total viewers, compared to Fox News’s 2.5 million viewers and MSNBC’s average of 877,000 viewers.

    Why would you even bother to advertise on MSNBC? 79,000 is less people than fill a big college football stadium on a Saturday…

  • Speaking of MSNBC: “Jen Psaki, the former Biden mouthpiece-turned-MSNBC host, just watched her ratings plunge to humiliating new lows.”
  • Speaking of CNN, the red-pilling of Jake Tapper continues apace. His son is a gamer and high school football player who wants to be a policeman, so naturally lefty sorts immediately assumed he was a racist.
  • And despite his book tour, Tapper’s ratings are down as well. Why, it’s like viewers believe Tapper will continue to lie to protect Democrats in the future…
  • Evidently all those “old artisan shutting down their hand-crafted leather bag” business ads on Facebook are all fake scams to sell you cheap Chinese vinyl knockoffs.
  • 100% of studio headed by woman who won’t hire white people laid off.
  • The city of Austin wants to spend $5.8 million on art about hybrid plant women for an airport expansion.

    This is the same airport having delays because they can’t hire enough flight controllers. Maybe they should spent less on art and more on actually operating the airport.

  • But don’t worry: It gets worse! They’re about to hand $2.4 million to an artists that likes to include “Fuck ICE” in her work:

    (Hat tip for both: John Zoch.)

  • “InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that’s stronger than steel.”

    In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, devised a way to turn ordinary wood into a material stronger than steel. It seemed like yet another headline-grabbing discovery that wouldn’t make it out of the lab.

    “All these people came to him,” said Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood, “He’s like, OK, this is amazing, but I’m a university professor. I don’t know quite what to do about it.”

    Rather than give up, Hu spent the next few years refining the technology, reducing the time it took to make the material from more than a week to a few hours. Soon, it was ready to commercialize, and he licensed the technology to InventWood.

    Now, the startup’s first batches of Superwood will be produced starting this summer.

    “Right now, coming out of this first-of-a-kind commercial plant — so it’s a smaller plant — we’re focused on skin applications,” Lau said. “Eventually we want to get to the bones of the building. Ninety percent of the carbon impact from buildings is concrete and steel in the construction of the building.”

    To build the factory, InventWood has raised $15 million in the first close of a Series A round. The round was led by the Grantham Foundation with participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders Vision, and Muus Climate Partners, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.

    InventWood’s Superwood product starts with regular timber, which is mostly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The goal is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood. “The cellulose nanocrystal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber,” Lau said.

    The company treats it with “food industry” chemicals to modify the molecular structure of the wood, he said, and then compresses the result to increase the hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules.

    “We might densify the material by 4x and you might think, ‘Oh, it’ll be four times strong, because it has four times the fiber.’ But it’s actually more like 10 times stronger because of all these extra bonds that get created,” Lau said.

    The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better.

    Some grains of salt are probably in order here, as this sounds just a little too good to be true, and there are always concerns about material longevity. But materials science is constantly advancing, so maybe this actually will pan out.

  • “Elon Musk Leaves Job Of Making Government More Efficient For Much Easier Job Of Sending Humans To Mars.”
  • “Man Clarifies That ‘Free Palestine’ Means Palestinians Should Be Free To Kill The Jews.”
  • “With Ban On International Students, Harvard Forced To Begin Accepting Students From Ohio.”
  • ChatGPT Announced As Harvard Valedictorian.”
  • American Students Unsure Who To Cheat Off After Trump Revokes Chinese Student Visas.”
  • “The Babylon Bee Would Like To Announce We Are Joining NPR In Suing The Government For Not Giving Us Millions Of Dollars.”
  • “California Unveils Massive New Escape Room Called ‘California.'”
  • “Nicolas Cage Launches New Streaming Service Nicolas Cage+ That Has Nothing But Nicolas Cage Movies.”
  • Finally, enjoy a Golden Retriever that looks like it’s playing Jean-Micheal Jarre’s laser harp:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Democrats Want To Keep Repeat Offenders On The Streets

    Tuesday, May 27th, 2025

    There’s been lots of chatter that Democrats need to start cracking down on crime if they want to win back the middle class voters that flipped to Trump to 2024. If so, that news hasn’t been relayed to Democrats in the Texas legislature, who seem determined to keep repeat offenders out on bail at any cost.

    Measures aimed at keeping violent offenders behind bars are stalled in the Texas House after Democrats refused to provide the votes needed to meet the state’s constitutional threshold.

    Senate Joint Resolution 87—renamed “Jocelyn’s Law” in honor of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was brutally murdered in Houston last year—received support from a majority of House members but failed to reach the two-thirds vote required to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

    The resolution, carried by State Rep. Mitch Little (R–Lewisville), would have amended the Texas Constitution to require judges to deny bail to individuals accused of violent felonies if they had previously been convicted of or were out on bail for similar crimes at the time of the new offense.

    Little told members the measure is a targeted attempt to stop preventable tragedies caused by repeat violent offenders being released and allowed to reoffend.

    “You may be wondering how this is going to affect you and your districts,” said Little, citing cases across the state in which individuals released on bail for serious crimes went on to commit even worse acts, including murder, human trafficking, and the killing of a law enforcement officer. “It was all preventable. It was all preventable.”

    He also pointed to the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Salerno as legal precedent, emphasizing that bail is not a guaranteed right under the Constitution and that states may restrict it in the interest of public safety.

    The measure received 93 votes in favor and 32 against, falling short of the 100 votes needed in the 150-member House to send a constitutional amendment to voters. It will receive one more vote tomorrow.

    House Democrats largely opposed the measure, arguing it would lead to unjust pretrial incarceration and bypass due process.

    State Rep. Joe Moody (D–El Paso) spoke forcefully against the resolution, calling it “wrong” and “immoral.”

    “If you have a certain history, then someone accusing you gets you locked up awaiting trial automatically, maybe for years,” said Moody. “Members, that’s wrong, and it’s immoral, and we should reject it without a second thought.”

    And by “a certain history” he means you’re a convicted felon.

    SJR 87 had gained momentum in the wake of the seeming failure of SJR 1, a similar proposal that would have denied bail to illegal aliens accused of certain violent crimes. That resolution also bore the name “Jocelyn’s Law” but failed to clear the 100 vote threshold necessary to be put on the ballot.

    Because if there’s anything Democrats love more than repeat offenders, it’s illegal alien repeat offenders.

    The public at large is overwhelmingly in favor of denying bail to repeat violent offenders, but Democrats in the legislature, and their Soros-backed allies in blue city DA offices, think differently, and keeping repeat offenders out on the streets seems to be yet another hill (like transing your kids or backing radical Islamic terrorists in Gaza) they’re willing to die on…