Here’s an update on our previous report of a buildup of U.S. military assets for a possible strike on Iran.
We already knew that the USS Carl Vinson and USS Nimitz were in-route or on-station in the Middle East. Now the USS Gerald R. Ford, the most modern aircraft carrier in the fleet, is deploying to Europe, which means it could steam to the Eastern Mediterranean.
Suchomimus has a video up about the U.S. moving still more assets to the region, including two more B-2s.
The number of B-2 bombers either at or in transit to Diego Garcia was previously four, but is now up to six.
“This satellite image shared today but dated June 19th shows 22 KC-135 Stratotankers, 55 F-16s and 10 C130 Hercules transporters at Prince Sultan Air Base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.”
As previously noted, the B-2 can carry the 30,000 lb GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator. It’s generally thought that one will not be enough to penetrate the 80 meters of reinforced concrete protecting the Fordow nuclear centrifuge complex, but that two should should be able to do the job. Six, on carried by each B-2, should crack the complex wide open like a sledgehammer hitting a watermelon.
Rest in peace, prop comic.
Nah, actually it will be more like using a sledgehammer to drive a spike into someone’s skull.
Rest in peace, Phineas Gage.
This now concludes today’s selection of inappropriate metaphors.
There’s still no guarantee that President Trump will order an attack, but America’s military has assembled the exact assets to rid the world of Iran’s nuclear weapons program once and for all.
Israel continues to pummel Iran’s nuclear program, President Trump sets a deadline, illegal alien border crossings are down radically, Democrats are bankrupt (financially, not just morally), more horrifying sex offenders, and a new face for the Texas Democrat Party.
The big news of Wednesday, reported in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere: “President Trump told senior aides late Tuesday that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program, people familiar with the deliberations said.” This feels like a strategic leak to reinforce to the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he faces the choice of giving up his country’s nuclear weapons program or war with the
There’s an important distinction between approving the attack plan and ordering the attack plan. Our military forces are poised to strike, but at least as of Tuesday, no U.S. fighters are in Iranian airspace, according to Pentagon officials.
“I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on,” Trump said. “They’re totally defenseless. They have no air defense whatsoever, totally captured. We totally captured the air.”
There’s that “we” again. One of the reasons people keep wondering if the U.S. is covertly helping Israel in an offensive manner as well as the revealed defensive manner (helping shoot down incoming ballistic missiles) is that Trump keeps using “we” to describe Israel’s actions in the war. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
I know, I know, everybody’s obsessed with which pronouns you use these days.
Yesterday at the White House, Trump continued:
Q: What does unconditional surrender mean?
Donald Trump: Well, you know what it means, unconditional—
Q: Can you explain—
Donald Trump: Two very simple words, very simple: unconditional surrender. That means I’ve had it. Okay, I’ve had it, I give up, no more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there. They had bad intentions. For 40 years, they’ve been saying death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn’t like. They were bullies. They were schoolyard bullies and now they’re not bullies anymore, but we’ll see what happens. Look, nothing’s finished until it’s finished. War is very complex, a lot of bad things can happen, a lot of turns are made. So, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that we won anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress and we’ll see. The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week, maybe less.
Snip.
The Economist has a scoop about the Israeli intelligence that spurred its decision to launch this military operation:
We understand that the information presented by Israel includes a detailed account of a recent, more urgent, push by Iranian scientists towards “weaponization”, or the creation of an explosive nuclear device. The dossier provides two key pieces of reported evidence for this claim. The first is that an Iranian scientific team has squirrelled away a quantity of nuclear material, of unclear enrichment status, that is unknown to the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog (on June 9th the IAEA assessed Iran had official stockpiles of over 400kg of highly enriched uranium). The second piece of reported evidence is that the scientists have accelerated their work and were about to meet commanders of Iran’s missile corps, apparently to prepare for the future “mating” of a nuclear warhead with a missile. . . .
In a report published on May 31st, the IAEA noted that in 2003 Iran had planned to conduct what the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank, calls a “cold test” — a simulated nuclear weapon which uses natural or depleted uranium rather than weapons-grade uranium. . . .
The Israeli intelligence dossiers also contain information that, if correct, is genuinely new. They suggest that roughly six years ago the scientists formed a secret “Special Progress Group”, under the auspices of the former AMAD director, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This group’s aim was to prepare the way for a much quicker weaponisation process, if and when a decision was made by Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to rush for a bomb. Mr Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by Israel in November 2020. On June 13th in the first hours of the war, the Israeli government published slides describing this backstory. But we have been told that it also shared further assessments with allies that suggest the Special Progress Group stepped up its research at the end of last year. Iran had a new incentive to advance to a bomb. It was reeling from the limited impact of its missile attacks on Israel, and the depletion of its air defenses by Israeli strikes in October 2024. And it was facing the collapse of its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in Gaza and Lebanon.
Bonus:
Israel secret services used a fake phone call to trick the top commanders of Iran’s air force into gathering at a single location before taking them out in a targeted strike, an Israeli Channel 12 commentator has said.
In a statement confirmed to the JC by Israeli sources, Amit Segal told the Call Me Back podcast on Monday: “What Israel did was create a fake phone call for 20 members of the air force senior staff an calling them to a specific bunker in Tehran.”
This meant there was no one to give the order to fire the initial salvo of 1,000 ballistic missiles as Iran had previously threatened to do, he added.
According to sources familiar with the operation, Mossad initiated a targeted disinformation effort days before the strike.
Using falsified communications through Iranian channels, they triggered what appeared to be an emergency meeting.
The ruse successfully drew the entire senior leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, including Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, his deputies, and key technical personnel, into a fortified bunker outside Tehran.
Moments before the strike began, that bunker was hit in a precision airstrike, eliminating Iran’s top missile command.
Border Czar Tom Homan dropped a bombshell on X Tuesday night that should have every American asking why we tolerated four years of Biden’s border catastrophe.
“In the last 24 hours the Border Patrol encountered a total of 95 illegal aliens across the entire southern border,” Homan posted. “That is the lowest number EVER recorded. Compare that to the Biden administration, who surpassed more than 10,000 per day.”
Read that again. Ninety-five. That’s not a typo. For the first time in recorded history, we’re seeing double-digit border encounters. Meanwhile, Biden’s administration was routinely processing more than 10,000 illegal crossings daily. The contrast couldn’t be more stark or more damning for the previous administration.
“Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” he said. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
But here’s where it gets even worse for Biden’s defenders. Homan revealed that the Biden administration released the “vast majority” of illegal immigrants back into American communities. How many were released under Trump in May? “Zero,” Homan revealed.
The numbers are staggering. In May 2024 alone, Biden released 62,000 illegal aliens into the country. Let that sink in: 62,000 people who crossed illegally were simply turned loose on American streets in a single month. This wasn’t immigration policy; it was an authorized invasion.
While ICE arrests and deportations have grabbed headlines, President Trump is also running a separate but complementary “mass deportation” program — one that encourages aliens here unlawfully to go home voluntarily.
And if reports are correct, that plan is more successful than anyone could have imagined.
Based on government data, my organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, has conservatively estimated there are about 15.4 million illegal aliens in the United States, a 50% increase over the four tumultuous years of the Biden administration.
That’s no surprise, given how Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ignored congressional detention mandates and ushered millions of illegal migrants into the United States.
Trump rode a wave of concerns about the costs those migrants are imposing on schools, hospitals, housing, and essential government services in cities and towns across the United States to a second term.
Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, it’s up to him, “border czar” Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to drive the unauthorized population down and restore credibility to our immigration system.
They’ve implemented a two-track plan to tackle this onerous task.
One of those tracks relies on arrests and deportations of aliens unlawfully here, which at the outset has focused mainly on criminals (the “worst first” strategy).
The other track is more subtle but also cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective —encouraging illegal migrants here to self-deport.
It began with an Inauguration Day Trump directive requiring DHS to ensure all aliens present in the United States — legal and otherwise — have registered with the federal government, and to prosecute those who don’t comply.
By late February, Noem had implemented that registration program.
DHS next launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning migrants not to enter illegally or, alternatively, to leave voluntarily now and possibly “have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”
Noem also rebranded the notorious CBP One app — which the Biden administration used to funnel hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into our country — as “CBP Home,” which aliens can use to “notify the U.S. Government of their intent to depart.”
That rebranding coincided with an offer of financial incentives for aliens who leave voluntarily, a stipend of $1,000. That’s in lieu of costly physical deportation, which can cost taxpayers $17,100 per person on average.
How effective has self-deportation been?
One way to track the program is by checking employment numbers. One financial whiz cited by the Wall Street Journal calculated a decline in the immigrant population of 773,000 in the first four months of Trump II.
The Washington Post claims “a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.” The Post frames this as “a sign of the weakening labor supply.” Yet the paper also notes, “Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May, as earnings continue to beat inflation in a boost to workers’ spending power.”
In other words, with fewer illegal immigrants, businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers.
Win-win-win for everyone except Democrats, illegal aliens, and the businesses addicted to cheap, illegal labor.
ICE raid nabs more than 100 illegal aliens at a meat packing plant. Americans applying for jobs ensues. The “jobs Americans won’t do” canard was always a lie.
Kash, who just shared the documents with Congress, then shared the accompanying article from Just the News to shed more light:
Officials who have seen the documents told Just the News the FBI had a relatively new confidential source who provided information in summer 2020 that the Chinese government was manufacturing and exporting fake U.S. driver’s licenses as part of a plot to create voter identities for Chinese residents living in the United States so they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.
The intelligence source claimed the plot was specifically designed to benefit Biden, officials said.
Wait, you’re telling me that China wanted “10% for the Big Guy” Joe Biden, a man whose family made money by peddling political influence with Chinese businessmen, to be the US president?
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
In a 2018 email, a bank flagged serious concerns about the China money Hunter Biden received – $40,000 of which ultimately landed in Joe Biden’s bank account.
In the email, the bank’s money laundering investigator highlighted:
Hmmm. “The U.S. Navy now has five guided-missile destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, according to U.S. defense officials. This is a significant increase. Earlier this week, the U.S. had just one in the eastern Med.” (Previously.)
Even God has taken a crack at Iran. “A 5.2 magnitude earthquake has just struck Central Iran as Israel continues its attack on Tehran. The quake’s epicentre was just outside the city of Semnan, around 210km east of the capital.”
The Democratic Party is struggling. In every way a political party can be dysfunctional, the Democrats are careening toward an implosion.
Riven by poisonous factionalism, running out of cash, and devoid of purpose and plan, the oldest political party in the Western World is falling apart right before our eyes.
How bad is it? When the New York Times gives space to a 1,800-word, five-alarm article giving excruciating detail about your party’s travails, you know it’s not time to pop the champagne cork and celebrate.
To make matters worse for the Democrats, on the same day the Times aired the party’s soiled panties for all to see, the other Democratic Party house organ, Politico, laid 1,600 words of criticism on party chairman Ken Martin.
The media couldn’t be quiet about it. With 17 months to go before the 2026 midterm elections, the Democrats find themselves in an existential crisis. Half the party wants to abandon the radical left, while the radical left wants to give the heave-ho to anyone to the right of Karl Marx.
Let’s start with Ken Martin as a point of contention. Barely four months into the job, he’s already made plenty of enemies. Worse, those enemies aren’t going quietly into that good night. They are sniping at him from the sidelines, drawing blood with criticisms no party chair has ever heard before.
David Hogg section skipped. Judging by Kolby Duhon (see below), Hogg really was too masculine for the DNC.
“This is worse than some high school student council drama,” said Wisconsin Democrat Representative Mark Pocan. I’d say that’s right on the mark.
One DNC member told Politico that Martin looked “weak and whiny,” and another said he has been “invisible.” Similar sentiments were expressed by other DNC members.
These aren’t Republicans talking about their leaders. It’s the supposed leadership caste of the Democratic Party.
Awesome, isn’t it?
Snip.
The biggest blow to the party may have been the recent exit from the DNC of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and AFSCME President Lee Saunders. Together, they represent millions of members and tens of millions of dollars in contributions.
“The DNC is weaker than I have ever seen it… They have shown zero ability to chart a post-24 vision for Democrats,” a Democratic strategist with close ties to labor unions, told Politico.
Weingarten and Saunders couldn’t “in good faith continue to rubber-stamp what was going on with the DNC,” the strategist said.
Instead of developing a strategy for 2026 and preparing the battlefield for 2028, Martin and the DNC are bogged down in the minutiae of organizational warfare. There’s no plan, no purpose behind the DNC’s pronouncements. Martin is too busy putting out political brushfires and soothing bruised egos to get anything organizationally done.
No one is going to wave a magic wand and put the party back together.
Unspoken in this piece: The Social Justice hard left would literally rather kill the Democrat Party than give up control of it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The Supreme Court upheld the state of Tennessee’s ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors, a major victory for parental rights advocates and those seeking to protect distressed children from harmful operations. The justices ruled 6-3 in United States v. Skrmetti, with all of the conservative justices opting to allow Tennessee’s ban to remain in place and the liberal justices dissenting. The ruling will likely allow similar bans in more than 20 other red states to be upheld in the face of legal challenges.” Decision by decision, the transsexual madness is finally being beaten back.
The man suspected of assassinating a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and attempting to kill another is being brought up on federal murder and stalking charges and could face the death penalty, prosecutors said Monday, hours after he was arrested following a days-long manhunt.
Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson said during a press conference that Vance Luther Boelter went to the homes of four Minnesota lawmakers with the intent of killing them….
Boelter, 57, is facing six federal counts: two stalking charges, two firearm offenses for the non-fatal shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, and two murder charges for the killing of former State House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. He faces anywhere from 20 years in prison to a potential death sentence for the federal murder charge.
The case had a lot of weird aspects to it, from him being a Tim Waltz appointee to the suspect’s wife being stopped with cash and passports in her car to the supposed anti-abortion motive to the No Kings flyers in his car to the murdered lawmaker being the only Democrat to vote for repealing taxpayer frunded illegal alien health care. A bunch of things don’t add up, especially how quickly the story seemed to disappear off news radar…
Finally. “Feds Crush Violent Antifa Uprising Outside Portland ICE Facility.” Now the feds need to start looking into RICO charges against Antifa funders…
Speaking of antifa behaving badly, they just attacked two more journalists, Cameron Higby and Brandi Kruse.
“DOJ charges another Chinese researcher with smuggling ‘biological materials’ into US. The new case accuses Chinese researcher Chengxuan Han of trying to smuggle packages containing concealed biological material related to round worms into the country by sending multiple packages that contain the material to a lab in the U.S.” It looks like we need to check the lab of every Chinese national studying biology in the U.S. for possible biological warfare material. Indeed, given these arrests, we may already be doing so. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
“New Law Protects Property Owners, Assists in Removing Squatters.” Good to see Texas getting ahead of the issue.
We don’t cotton to cop killers in Texas. “El Salvadoran Illegal Alien Receives Death Penalty for Murder of Harris County Deputy. Oscar Rosales never disputed that he killed Deputy Corporal Charles Galloway in a January 2022 shooting.” El Salvador, eh? Maybe we can pay El Salvador to keep him in CECOT while his appeals play out, then fly him back to execute him…
Trigger warning: Another case of two gay men adopting a baby and raping it to death.
That’s the face (and haircut) Democrats want to put forward as representing their party.
Over the weekend, Texas Democrats elected Kolby Duhon as their new vice chair for finance. The position is responsible for a variety of duties related to the party’s raising and spending of money.
Duhon filled a vacancy that opened when the previous vice chair, Kendall Scudder, was elected party chairman in March.
His X feed reveals his radical views.
Duhon describes himself as a “pansexual.” Advocates claim “pansexuals” do not take gender or sexuality into account when choosing a partner. In 2020, Duhon tweeted his admiration for State Rep. Mary Gonzalez (D–San Elizario) and claimed she inspired him to run for a position with the Texas Young Democrats on an “openly Pan” platform.
By “pansexual” I assume he strikes out with both men and women. And what self-respecting gay would want to be seen with someone with that hairstyle?
Duhon uses “they/he” pronouns and helped found the Socialist Caucus of the Texas Young Democrats in 2017.
Beyond his lifestyle choices and political affiliations, Duhon has expressed views on subjects including Israel, policing, and racism that place him on the far-left end of the political spectrum.
Duhon has repeatedly posted in favor of pushing gender confusion on so-called “trans kids.”
Of course he has.
Here’s the perfect face for the modern Democratic Party: A freakshow all the way down…
More signs of the decline of the Democratic Party in Texas. “Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Resigns Months After All Staff Laid Off. [Crystal Gayden] will continue as chair until July 7 when an election will take place to decide her successor.”
Just a couple months after laying off all of its paid staff, the Tarrant County Democratic Party will need to find a new party chair as incumbent chair Crystal Gayden announced her resignation at the beginning of June.
Gayden, who became party chair back in July 2023, stated in her announcement that she had overseen the strengthening and re-energizing of the party, which had expanded its precinct chair network, prioritized turnout in local elections, grown its supporter base, and increased party visibility, among other things.
For those outside Texas, Tarrant County is home to Ft. Worth and is the third largest county in the state, so the Democrats having no staffers there is a kind of big deal.
As far as “prioritizing turnout,” it’s certainly not visible in national elections. Biden’s recorded vote total in Tarrant County in 2020 was 411,567, edging Trump by just under 2,000 votes. In 2024, it was 384,501 votes, or more than 40,000 votes under Trump’s total. Some triumph of turnout…
“State Sen. Kelly Hancock has officially entered the race for Texas Comptroller with the backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, resigning from the Senate and being sworn in as chief clerk of the agency by outgoing Comptroller Glenn Hegar.”
The move is designed to sidestep a 2002 legal opinion from then-Attorney General Abbott, which held that a sitting state senator cannot be appointed to a position requiring Senate confirmation during the term for which they were elected.
By resigning and taking on the role of “chief clerk,” Hancock avoids triggering the Senate confirmation process while still stepping into the agency’s top position for the remainder of Hegar’s term—through January 2027.
Hegar, who will officially take over as chancellor of the Texas A&M University System on July 1, praised Hancock as his successor.
Snip.
In 2023, Hancock was one of only two Republican senators who sided with Democrats to attempt to remove Attorney General Ken Paxton from office following his impeachment trial. During this most recent legislative session, he was one of seven Republican senators who voted to water down Senate Bill 19—intended to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying—by supporting an amendment that exempted organizations like the Texas Association of School Boards from the ban.
Snip. Don Huffines:
“The political elite are manipulating the system to install another go-along-to-get-along lap dog as State Comptroller, because they know President Trump’s DOGE-style transparency would expose everything. But they don’t just fear me. They fear you—the taxpayers, the grassroots. And they should. The conservative base in Texas is wide awake, fed up, and ready to take back control. And they know we will win,” said Huffines, pointing to endorsements from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Charlie Kirk, Riley Gaines, Ron Paul, and a majority of the State Republican Executive Committee.
Another declared candidate, current Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick, responded by pointing to her statewide record.
“No matter who else enters the race, I’ll put my record up against anyone,” said Craddick. “I’m the only candidate in this race with statewide experience and a proven record running one of Texas’ most important agencies, cutting red tape, generating billions in revenue from oil and gas, and delivering results that fund our schools, roads, and first responders.”
Been a while since we had a juicy crazed poisoner story, so here’s one. Did it not occur to to supergenius (accused) perp that two former lovers both being poisoned by cyanide was pretty handily going to mark him as a suspect?
How many of these classic prog rock intros can you name? Harder than you might think, though I got “The Musical Box” off Genesis’ Nursery Crime on the very first note…
There’s a raging debate on the right about whether the Trump Administration should back regime change in Iran or not. After holding off on killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (reportedly at Trump’s behest), Israel seems quite open to taking him out along with any remnants of the rest of the regime. Somefigures on the right (Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens being two, though each have being moving, at various speeds, to the right’s fringes for a while now) are absolutely dead-set against regime change in Iran.
Over all of this, of course, hangs the specter of the Iraq War(s), in which the United States expended trillions of dollars and thousands of soldiers lives in order to gain very little (deposing Saddam and sorta, kinda, stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq). And for all this we got to endure three decades of heightened terrorist attacks due to having U.S. troops in “the land of the two mosques.” So it’s understandable that Americans would want to avoid another long slog of nation-building in a failed Middle East state to prevent it from becoming a haven for transnational Islamic terrorism.
Understandable, but not applicable to Iran, for the most basic of reasons. Iraq was an Arab state with Sunni minority leaders ruling over a restive Shiite minority. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a Persian nation currently ruled over by a Shiite theocratic dictatorship that is already one of the region’s main (if not the main) financial supporters of terrorism. There’s no danger of an Arab Sunni terrorist group like the Islamic State taking hold, because the population of Sunni Arabs in Iran is too small for such an insurgency to take hold. And there’s no nation in the Middle East that seems likely to pick up the mantle of funding Shiite fundamentalism in the region. (Qatar’s ruling family is Sunni, as is the overwhelming majority of Pakistan.) Ali Khamenei is the head of the snake, and when his regime dies, the snake dies as well.
If Israel can finish off Khamenei’s regime, what follows it will not be something worse, or even a failed state like Somalia. There is every sign that ordinary Iranians are weary to death of being under the heel of the Mullahs, and what will follow more likely to be more secular and western-oriented state than what is there now (which is, to be sure, a very low bar.) And though Iran is somewhat multi-ethnic, the minorities there (primarily Kurds and various Turkish ethnicities) are too small compared to the ethnic Persian majority to seriously contend for control of the Iranian state. (The Kurds could, in theory, launch a bid for independence (or, like in Iraq and Syria, quasi-independence), but without U.S. support are unlikely to make much headway. Their best play may be to negotiate broad autonomy with any new government.)
Could there be a civil war power struggle to rule post-theocratic Iran? Possibly. Still a better outcome for us than a theocratic, terrorist-supporting Islamic state with nuclear weapons. Ditto a military dictatorship, as long as they allowed an end to the nuclear weapons program. Ditto any number of other possible political outcomes, from a modern, secular democratic state to a (deeply unlikely) restoration of the Pahlavi monarchy. All are almost certainly improvements over the fanatical, institutional hostility to the west shown by the mullahs. (Not to mention the fanatical, institutional hostility to Israel. Historically, Persians and Jews have gotten along well, both being outsiders to the Turks and Arabs running the Ottoman Empire.)
There’s no reason to fear a post-theocratic Iran because we won’t be the one having to do nation-building or pick up the pieces.
Getting rid of a government than ritually chants “Death to America” and funds terrorists that have killed numerous Americans throughout the life of the regime must be considered a desirable outcome. The Abraham Accords indicated that a number of Sunni Arab states are abandoning their institutional hostility to Israel and the west, and toppling the mullahs will dry up funds for Shiite terrorism across the world as well. The result will not automatically make the Middle East peaceful and prosperous, but will probably calm things down enough to measurably move the region a bit closer to those admittedly very distant goals.
Four plus days into Israel’s bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, it’s obvious that Israel has achieved complete air superiority and is bombing Iranian targets at will. There’s ample evidence of successful precision strikes on a wide range of targets, from aircraft hangers and runways to oil storage facilities:
That said, Teddy Roosevelt famously advised “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” and, right now, Uncle Sam seems to be crafting a mighty big stick within striking distance of Iran:
Item: There are now three aircraft carriers (two American, one British) taking positions within striking distance of Iran:
USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and her Carrier Strike Group appear to be heading now in the direction of the Middle East, which would place three aircraft carriers, the U.S. Navy’s USS Carl Vinson and USS Nimitz as well as the Royal Navy’s HMS Prince of Wales, off the coast of Iran. https://t.co/e1SVUxQ5RW
Item: “A major military airlift appears to now be underway, as an unprecedented number of U.S. Air Force KC-135 and KC-46 Aerial-Refueling Tankers have departed from airbases across the United States and appear to be preparing to cross the Atlantic towards Europe.”
Item: Multiple B-2s are already believe to be stationed at Diego Garcia, well within strike distance of Iran for the B-2 (though it might need refueling on the return trip).
Maybe all that movement is indeed just to give President Trump “options” should the Iranians try something crazy. But if I had to guess, it seems like the groundwork for some sort of planned operation is being laid.
It may be that President Trump thinks that the the mullah’s current prostrate and distracted status may be the perfect time to settle the Houthi’s hash. Having already attacked American navy ships (absolute casus belli under international law), the time may be ripe to finally dismantle the Houthi threat.
Another possibility: One thing the otherwise extremely capable Israeli Air force lacks is a heavy bomber. The B-2 can carry the 30,000 lb GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which has a much better chance of pentrating the massive reinforced concrete bunkers for Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow. Given the complete destruction of Iran’s air defenses, Trump could even covertly greenlight B-2 strikes on those sites without telling anyone except Israel’s high command, giving him “plausible deniability” that America is involved.
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 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…
WILD FOOTAGE! Mosaad had bulit an entire drone facility deep inside Iran, which was activated as the IAF struck with 200 aircraft. The drones took out many surface-to-air missile launchers and ballistic missiles aimed at Israel. The entire Iran now has zero air defenses left. pic.twitter.com/x9IxtfiO1V
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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):
🚨 JUST RELEASED: Follow the Money Behind the No Kings Rally 🚨
DataRepublican has launched an interactive, open-source map showing how your tax dollars flow to organizations involved in the No Kings rally.
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.”
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
Israel has announced again and again that they cannot accept an Islamic Republic of Iran, which has stated it desires the complete destruction of Israel, acquiring nuclear weapons. Right now they’re doing something about it.
The IDF has started to attack dozens of Iranian nuclear sites.
Warning sirens have been set off to get the public ready for potential Iranian counter attacks of ballistic missiles on Israel.
Iran has not yet fired ballistic missiles, but has thousands of them.
According to the IDF, Iran has enough uranium to weaponize it to nuclear levels to 15 nuclear weapons within days
In recent days, Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the State of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan.
This was the point of no return according to the IDF.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has entered the security cabinet.
The IDF targets also include commanders, bases as well as nuclear sites, though the main goal is nuclear sites.
Further, the IDF said in the last 20 minutes, Iran was taken by surprise and they were attacked in places they didn’t expect.
There are reports of multiple airstrikes in Tehran:
— Niyak Ghorbani (نیاک) (@GhorbaniiNiyak) June 13, 2025
For decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attacked Israel via terrorist proxies, and spent vast sums developing nuclear weapons over taking care of their own people or growing their economy. In the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attacks of October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pursued a steadfast policy of neutralizing or destroying jihadist threats against his country. Now he’s eliminating the threat of a nuclear Iran.
Update 3: Trying to find footage of the strikes on YouTube, but all I’m finding is those crappy, non-embeddable “shorts.” This Hindustan Times live feed has some footage.
Initial reports suggest that Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, conducted covert operations deep in Iran focused on its air defense and missile capabilities. Israel appears to have targeted Iranian military personnel and senior nuclear scientists with the strikes, including the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared an immediate state of emergency upon Israel’s launch of the attack, with the Jewish state preparing itself for an immediate Iranian missile response.
“Following the State of Israel’s preemptive strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against the state of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future,” Katz said in a message blasted out to Israelis.
Explosions have been reported in Tehran and in areas where Iranian nuclear facilities are located. Images and footage of the explosions have circulated widely on social media. It is not yet known if there are any casualties.
The move comes after President Trump said earlier Thursday that he still believed in the possibility of a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear buildup. Talks had been tentatively scheduled to resume in the coming days.
“We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue! My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran. They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had no involvement in the Israeli operation.
“Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement.
“Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”
On Thursday evening, the long-anticipated Israel strikes began, targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear sites and other key military facilities. The objective of Operation Strength of a Lion is to end the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all, as well as to destroy, as much as possible, the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue to wage war against the Jewish state via its proxies, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis. The entire state of Israel was on emergency alert; the Israeli Home Front Command issued instructions to all Israeli citizens to comply with guidelines that would be issued as part of “preparations for a significant threat.”
Almost immediately after the air strikes began in Tehran, the propaganda war also entered a new phase. The Iranian military posted on X: “Remember, we didn’t initiate it.”
Ah, but it did. The Islamic Republic of Iran initiated this Israeli strike on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas operatives, funded and directed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, brutally tortured and murdered 1,200 Israelis. The Islamic Republic of Iran initiated this Israeli strike when its leaders regularly screamed “Death to Israel” (as well as “Death to America”) and repeatedly vowed to destroy Israel. As recently as May 17, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, declared: “The Zionist regime, which is the dangerous and lethal cancerous tumor of this region, must undoubtedly be removed, and it will be.”
In fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran initiated it by regarding Israel as an enemy from its earliest days. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979, replaced the Israeli embassy in Tehran with an embassy of “Palestine.” He decreed that the last Friday of the Muslim fasting-and-feasting month of Ramadan would henceforth be known as Al-Quds Day. Al-Quds is the name that modern-day Arabs and Muslims use for Jerusalem, and Al-Quds Day from its inception was the occasion for an orgy of hatred for Israel, jihadist saber rattling, and declarations that the Jewish state would soon be completely destroyed and a new genocide of the Jews would begin.
Additional footage claimed to show the results of Israeli strikes tonight against the Natanz Nuclear Facility in Central Iran. pic.twitter.com/dmYoOOrs5K
Secondary explosions observed at the site of an Israeli strike earlier in the Northwestern Iranian city of Piranshahr, near the border with Iraq. pic.twitter.com/rv6NHY0tuf
This is a good time to remind people that just because someone has posted a video to Twitter doesn’t make it true, or current. Old videos get recycled as new war footage by the unscrupulous all the time…
Update 10: LiveMap: “Israeli military radio – Israel has carried out five waves of strikes against Iran so far. Channel 13 Israel, citing sources, reported: The Air Force has launched hundreds of raids inside Iran since the start of the military operation.”
Update 11: LiveMap: “Najaf base in Kermanshah” struck… “Armed Forces Commander Mohammad Bagheri” killed…”Revolutionary Guards camp in the western Iranian city of Borujerd” hit.
Update 12: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit:
🚨 Breaking: Ali Shamkhani, Supreme Leader Khamenei's right hand man, was eliminated pic.twitter.com/pvYzWwV498
A massive explosion at Iran’s largest commercial port killed several people and destroyed shiploads of ballistic missile fuel from China, news reports suggest. “A huge blast probably caused by the explosion of chemical materials killed at least 18 people and injured more than 700 on Saturday at Iran’s biggest port, Bandar Abbas,” Reuters reported, citing Iranian regime-run media.
The exploding rocket fuel sent out a huge plume, unleashing a shock wave spanning several miles. “Iran’s official news channels aired footage of a vast black and orange cloud of smoke billowing up above the port in the aftermath of the blast,” the news agency added. “The blast shattered windows within a radius of several kilometres and was heard in Qeshm, an island 26 kilometres (16 miles) south of the port, Iranian media said.”
The shipment was reportedly carrying sodium perchlorate, which is indeed pretty spicy stuff if handled improperly.
Now we have footage of the blast and, holy crap, was it massive and devastating:
At 36 seconds in, you get footage of the start of the fire. It doesn’t look like an explosive or a drone strike, just a fire that got out of control, so I doubt the U.S. or Israel was behind this one. Neither China nor Iran is known for their painstaking attention to detail.
On top of the rogering Iran’s missile program has already received from Israel, the explosion will make it that much more difficult for Iran to reconstitute their missile program anytime soon.
Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge, tells us “Shahid Rajaee Port is responsible for 85% of the total loading and unloading carried out at the Iranian ports. By 2011, Shahid Rajaee port ranked 44th among the 3500 major ports of the world.” With Iran’s inflation rate already creeping toward 40%, damage to their main container port is going to weaken their economy further, giving President Trump additional leverage in talks over their nuclear program.
Ever since Kid Rock announced that he had invited Bill Maher to have dinner with President Trump, I was interested in hearing his perspective on the event, and now we have it.
“12 days ago, I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock, because we share a belief that there’s got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away.”
“And let me first say that, to all the people whom treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you’re ridiculous! Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I have no power. I’m a comedian.” I think Maher is underselling the importance here. Maher was one of the earliest sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Like many on the left a decade ago (and, indeed, up through now), Maher seemed to loath Trump on an almost instinctual or class level. Indeed, at lot on the left still exhibit this all-consuming loathing. Even before 2020, Maher was willing to ding the excesses of social justice, but the Flu Manchu lockdowns seemed to accelerate his red pilling, to the point that he now regularly slams the left for even more extreme social justice madness and ever-more pro-censorship policies. Like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard endorsing Trump, Maher’s dinner invitation is provides a sort of psychic permission to those ever-dwindling numbers of “sane liberals” to abandon their own TDS blinders and take a long, critical look at what social justice-infected liberalism and the Democratic Party have become.
“So okay. So meet up in person. Maybe it’ll be different. Spoiler alert: It was.”
“Before I left for the capital, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets that the president has said about me. Things like stupid, dummy, low-life, dummy, sleazebag, sick, sad, stone cold crazy, really a dumb guy, fired like a dog, his show is dead. I brought this to the White House because I wanted him to sign it. Which he did, with good humor.”
“And I know as I say that millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. ‘Oh my God, Bill, are you going to say something nice about him?’ What I’m going to do is report exactly what happened. You decide what you think about it. And if that’s not enough pure Trump hate for you, I don’t give a fuck.”
“So no, I didn’t go MAGA. And to the president’s credit there was no pressure too.”
“After we left the Oval Office, he showed me the little room off the office. You know the one where Clinton used to…OK, the blowjob room. Now it’s the merch room. And and he gave me a bunch of hats, but he didn’t ask me to take a picture in one, which I appreciated.”
“My friend said to me ‘What are you going to wear to the White House?’ I said ‘I don’t know, but I’m not going to dress like Zelensky.'”
“Just for starters, he laughs. I’d never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including at himself. And it’s not fake. Believe me as a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it, and I thank you for them.”
“In the Oval Office, he was showing me the portraits of presidents, and he pointed to Reagan and said, in all seriousness, ‘You know, the best thing about him: His hair.’ I said ‘Well, there was also that whole bringing down communism thing,’ waiting for the button next to the Diet Coke button to get pushed and I go through the trap door. But no, he laughed. He got it.” It’s good to hear liberals praising Reagan for ending communism, since they never did it when he was alive.
“At at one point we were walking through his amazing tour of the whole house, and I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but it must have been something with the 2020 election, because I know he used the word ‘lost,’ and I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow I never thought I’d hear you say that.’ He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public.” Also, I think Trump himself knows how radically more impactful the Trump47 term has been than a second term would have been. (And the 2020 election was still stolen.)
“Look, I get it. It doesn’t matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian, it matters who he is on the world stage. I’m just taking as a positive that this person exists, because everything I’ve ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent at least on this night with this guy.” I suspect that much of what Maher hates (or hated) about Trump (racist, antisemitic, Russian stooge, etc.) were lies created by relentless media campaign of systemic preference falsification.
“Bob, Kid Rock, told me the night before he said ‘If you want to get a word in edgewise, you’re going to have to cut him off, he’ll just go on.’ Not at all. I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected. People who don’t look you in the eye. People who don’t really listen, because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn’t track. None of that with him.”
“And he mostly steered the conversation to ‘What do you think about this?’ I know, your mind is blown. So is mine. There were so many moments when I hit him with a joke, or contradicted something, and no problem.” Why, it’s almost like he’s a master of persuasion and reading a room than the distorted caricature the MSM keeps feeding us.
Trump asked him about the Iran situation and Maher says he should have kept the Obama Iran deal. I disagree. He seems to be taking Iranian declarations at face value, which is always a mistake, and I have a feeling the real driving factor behind the Iran deal and its literal pallets of American cash were to line the pockets of Obama functionaries just as they were exiting the White House. (See also: All those USAID revelations.)
“I told him I thought parts of his plan for Gaza were wacky, but that I had supported him in the idea that Gaza could be Dubai instead of Hell.”
“I told him he was wrong when he tweeted the night before that I was critical of all things Trump. Not true. Check the tapes. Moving Israel’s embassy to Jerusalem: Loved it. The border did need to be controlled. I’m glad the cops are getting their morale back. DEI had gone too far. Biological men shouldn’t be playing women’s sports. Europe should pay for their defense. And, of course, it makes sense that Arab countries should take in Arab refugees.”
There’s a good bit on how he wishes Trump’s public persona could be like the Trump he met in private. But Trump’s rhetorical shit-talking is an integral part of his persuasion/negotiating style (not to mention his tit-for-tat), as well as the whole “seriously, not literally” thing, and he wouldn’t be nearly as effective a President without it.
“So MAGA fans, don’t worry: Your boy gave me nothing. Just hats. Hats and a very generous amount of time, and a willingness to listen and accept me as a possible friend even though I’m not MAGA, which was the point of the dinner.”
“My favorite part of the whole night was we were standing in the blowjob room. And he said ‘You know, I’ve heard from a lot of people who really like that we’re having this dinner. Not all, but a lot.’ And I said. ‘Same. A lot of people told me they loved it but not all.’ And we agreed: The people who don’t even want us to talk, we don’t like you. Don’t talk? As opposed to, what, writing the same editorial for the millionth time, and making 25 hour speeches into the wind? Really? That’s what liberals have? He takes the piss out of everybody else and we can hold ours?”
“OK, that’s my report. You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer. And it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw. And I wasn’t high.”
I think Maher is doing his level best to report honestly and faithfully what happened when he met Trump.
Yes, screaming into the wind is all liberals have, because victimhood identity politics has taken over the Democrat Party. Because Trump is anathema to that, Trump Derangement Syndrome and virtue signaling have become so central to many liberal’s self worth that many would literally rather than die than give them up. (The same thing applies to admitting all the ways they were wrong, and their critics right, when it comes to Flu Manchu.) They have to continue believing the MSM-created caricature of Trump as the racist rapist buffoon because to stop doing so would mean admitting that they were wrong, that they’ve been living a lie for going on a decade, and that they are not, in fact, infinitely smarter and nicer than rednecks with MAGA stickers on their pickup trucks.
Leftwing crooks attempt to cover their tracks, employment numbers are up, Trump’s tariffs already bring some quick action, Eric Three Phones beats the wrap, the criminal leftwing racketeers lined up against Telsa, and Tren de Aragua scumbags show up well the hell out in the countryside.
U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials attempted to delete one terabyte of financial data to “cover their crimes,” Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chief Elon Musk alleged Monday.
After President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month targeting USIP for reductions, DOGE visited the organization’s Washington headquarters, prompting a dramatic standoff.
Prior to DOGE’s arrival, USIP employees reportedly barricaded themselves inside their offices and had to be physically removed by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers. At some point, USIP employees allegedly attempted to scrub damning records, but, according to Musk, the DOGE engineers were able to recover the entire archive.
“They deleted a terabyte of financial data to cover their crimes, but they don’t understand technology, so we recovered it,” Musk posted on X.
The recovered data includes detailed financial transfers tied to individuals and groups in Afghanistan and Iraq.
USIP was receiving “$55M in congressional (taxpayer) funds” every year, the DOGE X account posted, adding that “prior management would sweep excess funds into its private Endowment” which has no congressional oversight.
“In the past 10 years, USIP has transferred ~$13M to its private Endowment, mainly used for private events and travel,” DOGE posted on X.
USIP contracts cancelled by the Trump administration, according to DOGE, include:
– $132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, an ex-Taliban member who was Afghanistan’s former Chief of Protocol.
– $2,232,500 to its outside Accountant, who attempted to delete over 1 terabyte of accounting data (now recovered) after new leadership entered the building
– $1,307,061 to the Al Tadhamun Iraqi League for Youth
– $675,000 for private aviation services
Mohammad Qasim Halimi is the former Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs in Afghanistan, according to the Doha forum. He is currently a member of the National Council of Ulema, the highest religious authority in Afghanistan. The National Council of Ulema is responsible for ensuring that all Afghan policies conform to Sharia law.
The Al Tadhamun Iraqi League for Youth is a United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) project that allegedly “works to strengthen youth participation in democratic processes” by “building a network of young activists to develop skills in leadership, negotiation and communication.”
According to Foundation For Freedom Online (FFO) director Mike Benz, USIP had been “bribing Afghan Taliban warlords to keep the drugs flowing.”
So graft, fraud, wire fraud, banking fraud, destruction of evidence, and supporting terrorism, all at the same time!
Trump’s tariffs are already bringing results. “Israel removes all remaining tariffs on US imports. Israel and the US signed a free trade agreement in 1985, and some 98% of goods are tax-free.”
When Collins pressed him on whether such escalation could turn into a full-fledged trade war, [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent dismissed the idea. “Not a trade war. Depends on the country,” he said, before explaining that history favors the United States in such disputes.
“Remember that the history of trade is, we are the deficit country. The deficit country has an advantage,” he explained. “[The others] are the surplus countries. The surplus countries traditionally always lose any kind of a trade escalation.”
His message to foreign governments was clear: Acting hastily would be a mistake. “As a student of economic history or a professor of economic history, I’d advise against it,” he said. When Collins sought further clarification, he reinforced the point: “I would say that doing anything rash would be unwise.”
Bessent’s remarks leave no doubt that Trump’s trade policies are rooted in historical precedent and strategic calculation. While globalists may panic, the Trump administration remains confident that America is in a stronger position than its trade partners. And history is on our side.
Bessent’s message is clear: Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.
We absolutely want a strong economic and security alliance. It’s not going to be the whole world because China is going to have its own sphere as well, but what we wanna have within our sphere is a few things in the past the United States didn’t exactly ask for.
We’re going to want balanced trade, where in the past we were happy to let the manufacturing go elsewhere. We’re going to want others to essentially own their own defense burdens … everybody take primary responsibility for their own defense.
Snip.
It’s not that Trump doesn’t want free trade, it’s that free trade doesn’t exist right now for the American people. It only exists in the starry-eyed fever dreams of Reaganite commentators who think that’s how the world actually works.
“Reaganite” is the wrong word here, since Reagan’s trade strategy was specifically geared to help win the Cold War, which it did. Nor was Reagan a zero tariff fundamentalist, as shown by his policies on automobiles and steel. Zero tariff fundamentalism is more of a libertarian policy, where it was postulated to be beneficial even if the other side (like China) didn’t remove tariffs on their end. Trump obviously operates under different imperatives, and employs (as I’ve noted before) tit-for-tat game theory strategy.
And if we’re talking about the Democratic Party’s theoretical conversion to post-Cold War free trade starting with Bill Clinton, then the proper term is probably neoliberalism, a word that bears a whole lot of additional baggage.
Exports made by Americans are taxed by other countries while we let them import their cheap products for essentially free, giving Americans price cuts but making it impossible for American companies to compete unless they outsource production elsewhere. That is exactly what has happened over the last few decades and it has destroyed countless American towns.
Trump’s whole schtick is to impose economic tit-for-tat in the hopes that other countries will drop their tariffs on U.S. goods. In that case, we actually get closer to free trade. It also allows us to invest in American manufacturing because we cannot rely on rising superpowers like China for all our industrial needs.
Whether or not that strategy works is up for debate.
“Sen. Mike Lee Introduces Legislation to Ditch the TSA: ‘Too Much Groping, Too Little Benefit.'”
The proposed measure would officially abolish the TSA three years after it is enacted into law and also would require the Departments of Homeland Security and Transportation to create and submit a reorganization plan to Congress.
Tuberville echoed the frustrations expressed by Lee, calling the TSA “a bloated agency—riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars—that has led to unnecessary delays, invasive pat downs and bag checks, and frustration for travelers.”
As we first pointed out on Sunday morning, former Wall Street Journal journalist Asra Nomani unveiled one of the most comprehensive reports on the NGO network behind at least one Tesla Takedown protest.
Nomani’s investigative report, which focused on 24 groups, revealed that these protests were far from organic and likely fueled by rent-a-protesters.
Snip.
In an article for the @FairfaxTimes, I wrote about how the local protests in Tysons, are a window into how the protests are AstroTurf, not “grassroots.” What this case reveals is the way that a multi-million dollar professional protest industry manufactures outrage in top-down political theater, agitprop, or agitation propaganda, and now criminal offenses.
From a spreadsheet linked in that article, here are the NGOs behind the attacks:
50501
ActionNetwork
Action Network Fund
ActUp New York Inc., ACT UP New York, the “AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power”
Climate Defenders
Climate Defenders Action Fund
Arizona – Coconino County Democratic Party
California – Aliso Niguel Democratic Club
California – California Democratic Party
California – Democratic Club Of Carlsbad
Florida – Broward County Democratic Party
Florida – Democratic Progressive Caucus of Palm Beach County Inc.
Florida – Osceola Young Dems
Florida – Rainbow Democrats of Central Florida
Illinois – Democratic Party of DuPage County
North Carolina – Durham County Democrats
Ohio – Eastside Cuyahoga Democratic Clubs
Texas – Harris County Democratic Party, Cypress-Tomball Democrats
Democratic Socialists of America
Disruption Project
Housing Works Inc., providing “assistance & expertise to homeless persons living with AIDS or HIV-related illnesses”
Indivisible Action
Indivisible Project
Mobilize.us, run by MobilizeAmerica Inc. – owned by EveryAction, the parent company of NGP VAN
MoveOnorg Civic Action
Not Above the Law Coalition — Coalition members as of 6/9/2023: American Oversight; Center for American Progress Action Fund; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW); Common Cause; Congressional Integrity Project; Constitutional Accountability Center; The Criminalization of Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies; Daily Kos; Defend Democracy Action Project; Defend the Vote Action Fund; DemCast USA; End Citizens United/Let America Vote; Fix Democracy First; Free Speech For People; Greenpeace USA; Indivisible; J Street; League of Conservation Voters; MoveOn; NextGen America; Our Revolution; People For the American Way; People Power United; Public Citizen; Public Wise; Secure Elections Network; Sierra Club; Stand Up America; Wisconsin Democracy Campaign; and The Workers Circle. SOURCE: press release
Planet Over Profit
Public Citizen Foundation
Public Citizen Inc.
Rise and Resist Inc.
Stand Up America Inc., established to “mobilize progressive Americans”
Swing Left, dedicated to “help Democrats win”
Tax Reformers LLC, running “TaxElon.us” (“an offshoot of TeslaTakedown.com”)
On Tuesday morning, former Biden administration “disinformation czar” Nina Jankowicz repeatedly refused to disclose who’s funding her new gig – the ‘American Sunlight Project’ – which cropped up after a stint at the USAID-funded UK-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) – for which she registered as a foreign agent while serving as their Vice President.
To review – Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, and was then selected to head the Biden DHS’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board – which was quickly dismantled amid criticism over censorship under the guise of fighting disinformation.
Four months later, she launched “The Hypatia Project” for CIR – where she was the Vice President until April 2024, at which point she co-founded the American Sunlight Project.
Fast forward to this morning, Jankowicz was evasive when asked by Republicans during a congressional hearing on disinformation about her funding…
As it turns out, Jankowicz’s co-founder at the American Sunlight Project is Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos, a “communications professional” who worked for the Biden DoD, and is “one of the people who launched the call for a boycott of Tesla.”
Alvarez-Aranyos comes from a wealthy and prominent family in the Dominican Republic. His father, Luis Álvarez Renta, is a well-known Dominican financier. Carlos is a nephew of the renowned fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.
A mixed bag in April 1st elections. Republicans easily retained two congressional seats in Florida and won a voter ID ballot proposition in Wisconsin, but lost a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that Elon Musk and others had poured a lot of money into.
In a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, the Democratic National Committee said Trump exceeded his authority in the March 25 order by requiring voters to prove they are U.S. citizens, preventing states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day, and threatening to take federal funding away from states that do not comply.
Snip.
‘The Executive Order seeks to impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote, cast a ballot, and participate in our democracy — all of which threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters and none of which is legal,’ according to the lawsuit, which was filed by longtime Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias and other lawyers at his firm.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leaders of the Democratic minorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, are also plaintiffs in the case.
Democrats are still all in on transing your kids. “New Colorado bill would penalize ‘misgendering’ in public places, use it as justification to take your kids away.”
“Migrant influencer” who bragged about squatting in Americans’ homes is deported. “Leonel Moreno, who encouraged illegal migrants to ‘invade abandoned houses’ in sick TikToks, was sent back to the narco state [Venezuela] this week, after President Trump resumed deportation flights to the country.”
The economic policy of the Democratic Party is grifterism.
Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy solutions. Sometimes, however, Democrats deliberately fail to coherently describe the meaning of their actions, and then it becomes even harder to ascertain meaning. Such is the case with the basic economic policies of Democrats. Many on the right like to say that Democrats support socialism, but that’s not wholly true given how many capitalist components exist inside Democrat economic policies. Similarly, it is inaccurate to describe Democrat economics as being purely capitalistic because wealth redistribution is one of their core competencies. Some say that the Democrats enjoy government control of capitalist entities, rendering their economic persuasion fascist in nature. Yet, even that is inaccurate, given that fascist states view their economies as a source of nationalistic pride and strength, while Democrats tend to abhor nationalistic pride in the United States.
It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?
It’s Grifterism. (I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)
Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.
Snip.
4. The Grifters: Well, we’re finally here. By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the Grifters are up to, but let’s be clear that this class consists of more than just government workers. The Grifter class includes all of the intelligentsia: the university professors, the traditional journalists, the lobbyists, the Hollywood elite, the “BigLaw” attorneys, and, most of all, the NGO crowd. Further, not every government worker is a Grifter—the military, the police, the justice system, and many other government offices that provide what economists call “Public Goods” all house highly necessary government employees. (Those employees are not Grifters—they are Productives, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of government workers are in fact Grifters.)
But let’s get back to the NGOs (a term I use in this article interchangeably with non-profit entities), as they reveal the true level of perfidy perpetuated by the Grifters. If you have been paying attention for the last two months, you are probably aware that DOGE and brilliantly relentless and patriotic volunteer data analysts like Data Republican have uncovered the widespread prevalence of U.S. federal agencies taking your tax dollars and using them to fund dubious efforts by various NGOs. This wicked grift cycle goes like this: (1) Taxpayers pay taxes required because Grifters establish programs that require funding; (2) Congress approves such funding in the vaguest possible terms of intent and appropriates those funds to a federal agency run by Grifters; (3) the Grifters in that agency interpret Congress’ intent in the broadest manner possible and provide funds to NGOs that employ other Grifters with six-figure salaries; and (4) that NGO then engages in some sort of woke cause such as training transgender farmers—a cause very few taxpaying voters would vote for if they only knew about it.
The cycle of grifting prospers beyond just NGOs: the universities receive taxpayer funding to indoctrinate our youth; the lobbyists curry favor with the Grifters to improve their business opportunities; the journalists cycle in and out of government, spreading the Grifter ethos as truth; Hollywood pays homage to it all, infecting American brains with woke ideas that Grifterism is noble; the BigLaw attorneys become rich navigating the vast regulatory schemes that are the lifeblood of Grifterism, and the members of the Grifter class constantly cycle in and out of the various organizations that benefit most from their economic parasitism.
The Grifters are the only class of Grifterism that fully benefits from the corrupt system; in fact, the system exists by, for, and because of the Grifters—almost all of whom are voting for Democrat candidates who themselves wallow in the pig trough of Grifterism. “But wait!” you may say, “Government workers are not Billionaires, they are not wealthy. How is that a grift?” Grifters in government generally enjoy wages in excess of the national median income; they are entitled to retirement plans largely unheard of in the private sector; they have healthcare and other benefits that far exceed those of equivalent private workers; and, most of all, they enjoy job security that is unmatched by any other sector of American society. Most Grifters are unfirable—they have life tenure. Finally, they have the power to pull the strings of the entire Grifter class for their own benefit—back-scratching and beak-wetting are their secret ways of communication.
The Democrats are obviously struggling with coming to terms with the rejection they faced last November. They’re always bad at introspection and taking responsibility for anything, but this is like nothing I’ve seen in all of my years in politics. It’s gotten to the point where I have to read at least one or two of the 2024 post mortems in the mainstream media every day to get my fix. Yeah, it’s a blast watching them not get it. The real joy for me, however, is seeing the myriad ways that they are finding to not come to the proper conclusions about why they lost.
They’ve been so reluctant to face their Pandora’s boxful of problems that they didn’t even start making attempts until just before the second Trump term was underway. In days of yore, the Democratic National Committee would have called an all-hands-on-deck meeting for around 6 AM on the morning after the election to begin plotting how to win the next one. Not only that, the Dems would have some plans in their back pockets and some viable candidates for the future on their bench. That Democratic Party and political machine no longer exist.
The reason for that is one that they will probably never admit to themselves. The decimation of its candidate bench and the party’s long-term planning ability can be laid squarely at the feet of the man who they worship above all others: His High Holiness the Lightbringer Barack Obama.
Democrats had long been invested in identity politics but went all-in to the exclusion of anything else after Barack Obama won in 2008. As my friend Stephen Green mentioned a few times last year, the Dems sold an idea in 2008 rather than a candidate with a record. Of course, that was because Obama had no record to speak of at the time.
They got kinda hooked on that.
The party higher-ups and their media mouthpieces spent the next eight years hero worshiping and not attending to the mundane nuts and bolts of keeping a successful political machine running. While they were “oohing and aahing” over the emperor’s new clothes, the emperor was sucking the life out of the party’s future. Who needed a bench when all they had to do was anoint a candidate who checked off a “historic first” diversity box on his or her résumé?
They were so invested in the diversity route that the DNC gamed the 2016 primary to make it nigh on impossible for anyone to beat Hillary Clinton — the candidate they’d unceremoniously thrown on the trash heap eight years earlier in favor of Obama because he checked off a higher-priority diversity box.
None of the Democratic Party rules applied in 2020. The Dems went with Joe Biden because he was essentially an emotional support stuffed toy who made them feel better because he had a connection to Obama. Biden immediately got them back in the identity politics game by promising to pick a Black female running mate.
We know the rest of this story.
The real problem for the Democrats in 2024 wasn’t Joe Biden’s late exit or Kamala Harris’s short campaign — no combination of circumstances was going to enable either of them to beat Donald Trump. The Dems’ real problem is what the party is now about. Things like biological males competing in girls sports and hanging around in their locker rooms. Things like drag queen story hours in first-grade classrooms. Things like “Free Palestine” lunatics attacking synagogues.
Things that they really haven’t backed off of after getting shellacked last year.
So more social justice victimhood identity politics and more Orange Man Bad. That, abortion and gun control are pretty much all they have… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Bruen on the march: “Justice Dept. Investigates L.A. Sheriff Over Concealed Carry Permit Delays.”
The Justice Department said it was investigating whether the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had violated the Second Amendment rights of residents through what it said was a pattern of long delays in issuing concealed carry permits.
The department said the investigation, announced in a news release on Thursday, was part of a larger push to protect gun rights across the United States. It added that it could open similar investigations in “any other states or localities that insist on unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of their ordinary, law-abiding citizens.”
The Supreme Court has upheld Second Amendment rights in recent years, but, the Justice Department wrote in the announcement, some states “have resisted this recent pro-Second Amendment case law.”
The department called California “a particularly egregious offender,” saying it had passed laws restricting the right to bear arms. It said some areas of California had also imposed excessive fees and lengthy wait times on concealed carry permits.
The investigation follows a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2023 by gun rights advocates who claimed it had taken more than a year to obtain a concealed carry permit from the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Last year, a federal judge agreed that the Second Amendment rights of two individuals in the lawsuit had most likely been violated when the county made them wait 18 months before they received a decision on their permits. The Justice Department said it believed others had also experienced long delays in obtaining permits in the county.
The Sheriff’s Department wrote in a statement that it respected the Second Amendment and that it was committed to processing all concealed carry permits, but it added that it was facing a “staffing crisis” and had a backlog of cases. It said it had around 4,000 applications to process, with only 14 people to review them.
Last month, President Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to assess “any ongoing infringements” on Second Amendment rights in federal agencies across the country.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Ms. Bondi wrote in the news release announcing the investigation in Los Angeles, “and under my watch, the department will actively enforce the Second Amendment just like it actively enforces other fundamental constitutional rights.”
A victory in the war against lower court judicial overreach. “Supreme Court Shuts Down Activist Judge, Lets Trump Cut $250 Million In DEI Training For Teachers.”
The Supreme Court on Friday overruled an activist judge in Boston, allowing the Trump administration to slash $250 million for more than 100 teacher training grants for DEI and other woke programs.
In a 5-4 decision nine days after the request, the Supremes sided with the Trump administration’s emergency request to stay the court order by judge Myong J. Joun of the federal District of Massachusetts – who had ordered the Trump administration to “immediately restore” the “pre-existing status quo prior to the termination.”
According to the ruling – which is likely to narrow the ability of district courts to halt agency actions involving grant function, Joun lacked authority to order the Trump admin to restore the funding.
The Supreme Court upheld the Biden administration’s regulations on “ghost guns” Wednesday, finding that guns assembled using at-home kits are subject to the same rules as traditional firearms, including requirements that they carry a serial number and that purchasers undergo a federal background check before buying them.
The justices ruled 7-2 in Garland v. VanDerStok to preserve rules imposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 2022 to combat what the government called an explosion of “ghost gun” usage in criminal activity. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Second Amendment issues aside, the Supreme Court missed an opportunity to par back some post-Chevron regulatory overreach.
He’s outa there: “South Korean court removes president from office, says he violated duties. The Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol over his martial law gambit. South Korea will elect a new president within 60 days.”
A Manhattan judge on Wednesday dismissed the federal corruption charges levied against New York City Mayor Eric Adams last fall, partially granting the Trump-era Department of Justice’s request to drop the case.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho, who presided over the Democratic mayor’s case in the Southern District of New York, permanently dismissed the charges in a highly anticipated decision.
In February, the DOJ ordered federal prosecutors to stop pursuing the case and subsequently asked the judge to dismiss the case without prejudice. That would have allowed prosecutors to refile charges against Adams in the future if the DOJ wanted to do so.
Ho dismissed the indictment with prejudice, meaning the prosecution cannot be revived based on the same evidence used in the original case.
The DOJ’s move, spearheaded by former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, sparked accusations that the Trump administration and Adams were engaged in a “quid pro quo” agreement, in which the mayor’s charges would have been dropped as a way of ensuring his cooperation with enforcing the White House’s immigration agenda. Adams denied the allegations of a quid pro quo.
In his order, Ho wrote that dismissing the case without prejudice “would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”
The Biden-appointed judge described that perception as “inevitable” and concluded that “it counsels in favor of dismissal with prejudice.”
Adams requested a dismissal with prejudice, to which the DOJ did not object.
In September, Adams was indicted on five counts of corruption related to his alleged acceptance of benefits, such as free luxury travel from Turkish officials, in exchange for pressuring city inspectors to open a new Turkish consulate building in Manhattan without a proper fire inspection. Adams pleaded not guilty.
The New York City mayor has suggested his indictment was politically motivated because of his criticisms of the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies.
Given that Adams was a Democratic mayor of New York City, my working assumption is that he’s dirty as sin in general, but not necessarily for this particular case. And it’s entirely possibly that the Biden Administration did indict him for daring to question open borders. Also, even if guilty, dismissing his charges might be justified in the same way that a mobster who turns state evidence gets their charges dismissed. (Honestly, three different iPhones seems like overkill. One iPhone and two burner phones for different dirty deals seems sufficient, unless you’ve got so much dirty going down that you need to use the Stringer Bell SIM card swap to keep all the balls in the air. On the other hand, were the FBI to raid my house for some reason, they too might seize three iPhones: One working, and two old, mostly broken models…)
But wait! Adams says that, while he’s still a Democrat, he’s running for re-election as an Independent. Maybe he figures (correctly) that his heretical questioning of The Message means he has no chance to win a Democratic primary…
EuroElites are hoping that lawfare can succeed there even though it failed against Trump: “French Court Sentences Marine Le Pen to Jail, Bars Right-Wing Presidential Hopeful from Running in 2027.”
A French court on Monday sentenced right-wing leader Marine Le Pen to jail and barred her from seeking public office again for five years, preventing her from running in France’s 2027 presidential election after she was found guilty of embezzlement.
A member of the French Parliament, Le Pen and others were accused of misusing 4.4 million euros, or $4.8 million, in European Parliament funds to pay staff who were working for her National Rally party. In violation of European Union regulations, the alleged embezzlement occurred between 2004 and 2016. She was found guilty alongside eight members of Parliament and twelve assistants. The French right-wing leader has denied any wrongdoing.
Le Pen faces a prison sentence of four years, with two of those years suspended; a $108,000 fine; and ineligibility to run for office for five years, effective immediately. She is expected to appeal the ruling.
But even if she does appeal, the political ban will likely remain in place unless she is victorious. Meanwhile, her prison sentence will be suspended during the appeals process. The ban doesn’t affect her parliamentary position.
There’s widespread belief that “embezzlement” charges like this would never be employed against politicians that hew the EU line.
Earlier this month, President Trump wrote to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying he wanted to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, emphasizing “I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran. . . . I’m not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily.” This weekend, the Iranians rejected direct negotiations but left the door open to indirect negotiations. This is all occurring as a quarter of the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 bombers are at the joint U.S.-United Kingdom military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. A U.S. military conflict with Iran feels increasingly plausible.
Snip.
Northrop B-2 Spirits are what the U.S. Air Force uses when it needs to drop very powerful bombs in a very stealthy manner. Among those very powerful bombs is the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) Bunker-Buster, a 30,000 pound bomb that is described as “the most powerful and deeply burrowing non-nuclear bunker buster on earth.” In fact, the B-2 is the only plane that can carry a MOP.
The MOP is exactly the sort of weapon you would use if you wanted to hit Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. On March 25, Iranian state media “showed Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Mohammad Baqeri and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force commander, showing off what Iranian media said was an ‘underground missile city.’”
(Howard Altman of The War Zone noted that from what viewers could see in the video, “The munitions are stored out in the open in long continuous tunnels and large caverns with no, or at least limited, blast doors or separated revetments. That could result in devastating consequences should the facility be breached in an attack. The lack of these protective measures could lead to an absolutely massive chain reaction of secondary explosions.”)
As of May 2024, Iran has 42 declared facilities and at least 8 suspected facilities in its nuclear program.
Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested over three dozen individuals—including suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua—near Dripping Springs, a small town a half-hour west of Austin.
Law enforcement also seized narcotics during the Tuesday raid and took nine minors into custody.
Texas continues to cement itself as a hub for capital investment with the opening of a new Lone Star State-based stock exchange on Monday.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced plans to establish its own exchange in Dallas back in February — which came on the heels of the Texas Stock Exchange being founded in June last year.
“As the state with the largest number of NYSE listings, representing over $3.7 trillion in market value for our community, Texas is a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere,” NYSE Group President Lynn Martin said in a press release at the time.
Now, March 31 is opening day for the Texas-based New York Stock Exchange, which Martin said will “allow companies to capitalize on the pro-business dynamics in Texas.”
The NYSE also announced that the first security to be listed on the Texas exchange will be the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).
TMTG describes itself as a “social media and technology focused company” where its goal is to “end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back.” Its most well known product offering is the social media platform TruthSocial.
Headquartered in Florida, the company debuted on the NYSE in March 2024 under the ticker “DJT” and skyrocketed to a market valuation of at least $8.4 billion on an undiluted share basis during its first day of business; it currently sits around $4.37 billion in market capitalization.
“We’re honored to become the initial listing for NYSE Texas, which is a great fit for TMTG as we diversify into financial services and other realms,” said TMTG CEO and Chairman Devin Nunes.
“Texas provides a fantastic climate for business and entrepreneurship that aligns with TMTG’s mission. This listing, alongside our plans to reincorporate in Florida, shows we’re part of a growing movement to take our business to states that value free enterprise and personal freedom.”
After attending a “transgender conference” at the University of Texas at Austin, State Rep. Brian Harrison is demanding an end to the school’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.
Harrison (R-Midlothian) is calling for the university to be defunded unless it terminates the department, along with its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
“The Texas government has failed Texans, by weaponizing their tax dollars against them, their values, and their children, and I won’t stand for it, especially in light of what I recently discovered on my undercover visit to the University of Texas campus yesterday as they were hosting a transgender conference,” Harrison stated.
He warned that if the programs are not immediately dismantled, he will attempt to strip UT Austin of taxpayer funding in the upcoming state budget.
On Tuesday, Harrison shared photos captured at the 32nd Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Student Conference.
One featured a banner promoting an art exhibit called “TRANSCENDENCE: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy.” The banner shows two black men standing in front of a cross.
The event agenda for day one of the conference included a lecture titled “Keeping Time: Queer-Crip Temporal Attunement Through Tarot.”
Pamphlets and flyers throughout the library advertised “Resources for Trans Folks,” which primarily focused on the use of cross-sex hormones or mutilating surgeries used to appear like the opposite sex.
One flyer directed students to UT’s University Health Services for medical transition procedures and to the UT School of Law’s Gender Affirmation Project for legal name and gender changes.
The flyer was created by The Queer and Trans Student Alliance, which is an agency of the UT student government.
In some under-reported news, “Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday that the intelligence community maintains its assessment from prior years that Iran is not currently actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, but that open discussion of nuclearization has increased inside the regime.”
“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard said in her opening remarks at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
But, Gabbard added, “In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
Gabbard also said that the full impacts of renewed sanctions on Iran are not yet in effect, but that the “message … is certainly heard.”
The intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, released in conjunction with the hearing, predicts that Iran will continue efforts to threaten U.S. citizens globally and develop networks and conduct operations inside the United States.
It also describes Iran’s military capabilities and proxy armies as an ongoing threat to the U.S. and its allies, despite Israeli successes in degrading those capabilities.
“The IC assesses Iran’s prospects for reconstituting force losses and posing a credible deterrent, particularly to Israeli actions, are dim in the near-term,” the report continues.
Color me skeptical on Iran not developing nukes, for a number of reasons:
The Trump Administration has only been in office a hair over two months, and Tulsi Gabbard, confirmed February 12, a bit less than that, meaning that there has not been enough time for an effective screening and purge of the national security apparatus. I’m sure vast swathes of deadwood left over from the Obama and Biden Administrations, including the careerists still in place from official efforts to sell the infamous Obama Iran deal to a properly skeptical public. As such, their judgment can’t be trusted.
We have no way of knowing just how much Uranium Iran has enriched, or how many enrichment sites Iran actually has, and there’s no reason to believe that same deadwood was terribly motivated under Obama to uncover them, given how desperately he wanted the Iran deal. Given the revelations that continue to come out from DOGE’s deep dive into government finances, it seems only reasonable to assume that untold amounts of that Iran deal cash found its way back into Democratic grandee pockets.
The entire existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran is predicated on the theocratic theories of Ayatollah Khomeini, who hated the United States, Israel and democracy long before the current ideological core of the Democratic Party did. Given its theocratic roots, Iran’s current leaders would have no compunction to lying the officials of any non-Islamic state that dwells in dar al-harb (the house of war), which it considers (along with the Sunni states) to be its enemies.
Moreover, typical Shia Twelver eschatology believes in an apocalyptic Day of Judgment when the 12th (occluded) imam, AKA the Mahdi, will reveal himself and help purify the world. Indeed, one of Khomeini’s honorifics was Na’eb-e Imam (Deputy to the Twelfth Imam). Therefore, there is little reason to believe the mullahs currently running the Islamic Republic of Iran would balk at unleashing nuclear weapons on its enemies, especially if they thought it would bring about the return of the Mahdi. And remember that Iranian catspaw Hamas believes the mere existence of Israel is an affront to God, and that destroying it is their holy duty.
So I would still take any intelligence claims about knowing the precise state of Iran’s nuclear program with several grains of salt.
