No matter how unpopular the topic is with American voters, the hard left still wants to keep as many illegal aliens from being deported as possible, and to that end they’re organizing to attack ICE agents.
A volunteer orientation meeting hosted by the Party for Socialism and Liberation in partnership with Houston Leads outlined plans to establish a rapid response network against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Houston.
The session, attended by about a dozen participants, emphasized organizing volunteers to counter deportations, raids, and detentions.
A speaker described the initiative’s objective, stating, “We want to build a long-term movement that fights back against deportations, raids, detention, and all other forms of immigration-related terror.”
Snip.
Tactics discussed include responding to ICE sightings by recording agents, slowing operations, and mobilizing at locations. Volunteers are advised to identify as neutral observers to avoid affiliation disclosure.
“What you say is that you’re a volunteer legal observer … we never say what we are a part of,” instructed an organizer.
The meeting covered legal rights, such as refusing searches without warrants, and potential risks like being arrested for obstructing justice. “We are just inevitably going to be facing up against law enforcement and ICE agents,” speakers noted.
Whoever knowingly and willfully obstructs, resists, or opposes any officer of the United States, or other person duly authorized, in serving, or attempting to serve or execute, any legal or judicial writ or process of any court of the United States, or United States magistrate judge; or
Whoever assaults, beats, or wounds any officer or other person duly authorized, knowing him to be such officer, or other person so duly authorized, in serving or executing any such writ, rule, order, process, warrant, or other legal or judicial writ or process, shall, except as otherwise provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
So how does the Party for Socialism and Liberation get away with an open conspiracy to hinder law enforcement officers in carrying out their official duties? This seems like the sort of thing the FBI should investigate, especially the funding sources. The Party for Socialism and Liberation’s fiscal sponsor is the Progress Unity Fund, which in turn is funded by the George Soros-backed Tides Foundation.
The left know that deporting illegal aliens is widely popular with the American people, and that such deportations are both legal and constitutional. But they are in open rebellion (indeed, dare we say “insurrection?”) against them because they have deluded themselves into thinking that importing a huge populace of unassimilated illegal aliens into the country is somehow going to be their ticket to permanent political rule, long after the author of this idea stated that it was no longer true.
It’s yet another 20%/80% hill they seem willing to die in.
The Houston Police Department has ordered approximately 1,200 officers to replace their SIG Sauer P320 service weapons following a lawsuit alleging the pistol’s potential for unintended discharges.
Under the new directive, officers have until the end of September to make the switch.
The decision follows a lawsuit filed by veteran HPD officer Richard Fernandez Jr., who alleges that his holstered P320 discharged without a trigger pull.
The $10 million lawsuit, filed against the pistol’s manufacturer, SIG Sauer, claims Fernandez now suffers permanent numbness in his foot as a result of the incident.
“I heard a pop, but it didn’t sound like a gunshot,” Fernandez recounted. “I looked down, saw a hole in my pant leg, and realized I was bleeding. My hand wasn’t anywhere near the gun.”
His legal team argues that SIG Sauer has long been aware of serious design flaws in the P320. The suit joins more than 100 similar claims filed nationwide since 2017, many alleging the pistols fired while holstered or after being dropped.
The P320 has a controversial track record with HPD. In 2017, tests done by HPD found the pistol can accidentally fire almost 10 percent of the time after being dropped.
I wonder if this was pre- or post-voluntary upgrade.
While it was adopted by the U.S. military in 2017 as the M17 and M18, the civilian version soon faced scrutiny following reports of “drop-fire” incidents. These concerns prompted SIG Sauer to launch a voluntary upgrade program in 2017 to address potential discharge risks.
Despite the upgrades, lawsuits have continued to emerge alleging that the P320 can still fire without the trigger being pulled.
A jury found the SIG P320 “defectively designed” in a Massachusetts police lawsuit last month.
Steve Crowder devoted a show to P320 problems, including collecting videos of uncommanded discharges:
Crowder shows four videos of police P320s going off in the holster with no one’s fingers anywhere near the trigger. In two of those instances an officer was shot. And those are just the instance where the discharge was actually captured on film, so it seems reasonable to assume that there are a whole lot more that weren’t filmed.
Crowder also notes a very significant change in the language of Sig’s denials: “Newest email. The P320 cannot, under any circumstances, discharge without the trigger first being moved to the rear. Cool. “Trigger pull” versus “moved to the rear.” You know that change had to have come straight from their legal department in a CYA memo.
Crowder also had on Brandon Herrera (who previously covered the issue) to talk about the P320:
Brandon Herrera: “ICE has released a report. Basically they were talking about all the accidental discharges that have happened with all of their service weapons. And you have multiple columns. One of them is which pistol it was. Vast majority were the P320s. Then in the other column whether or not that incident included injury. So they not only said that these things were going off, but there were multiple occasions where they were injuring people that were actively working for ICE.”
BH: “if if they admit there is a problem with the civilian side stuff, then they have to maybe go in and [do] a very expensive upgrade to all their their military contract [P320s].”
BH: “Hopefully this is a big enough deal with this airman unfortunately losing his life that Sig can no longer look the other way and pretend there isn’t a problem.”
Steve Crowder: “How do you think [Sig] scored such a big contract with at that point a relatively new pistol?
BH: “That’s an excellent question.” [long pause]
BH: “It seems like Sig has gotten a lot of these contracts. And the question is whether that was based on merit, or some other thing that I won’t say in a public setting.”
BH: “I’m frankly shocked I haven’t gotten a cease and deceased yet. A cease and desist yet. I think it might be coming soon because I think they’re at the point where they, especially this this most recent wave, they’re losing control of the narrative. Before it was easy to just say, ‘Oh, it’s a couple of grifters, you know, don’t pay any attention to them. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.’ But now, I mean, hell, it’s everybody. The the conversation is completely shifted. Very few people are defending Sig anymore on this.”
SC: “My hunch is because of the military doesn’t want to admit that they screwed up either.”
Off the topic of Sig, Herrera says he’s not eager to run for office again. “Running the first time was probably one of the worst nine-month experiences of my life. And I would love to not repeat that again, but at the same time, they’re not voting any better.”
At this point its hard to see Sig gets out of this jam short of completely withdrawing the P320 from the market. Their potential liability is huge, and replacing all military and police service arms may be ruinous, as, presumably, any sort of recall to fix the problem, even assuming that they could find a fix and provide a solution that works.
The Texas National Guard is mobilizing to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations across the state, sources confirmed to Texas Scorecard.
The deployment will reportedly center on managing large-scale detention facilities designed to facilitate mass deportations, with judge advocate general officers potentially deputized to streamline legal processes.
Hundreds of National Guard troops from across the nation will also be deployed to protect and support ICE agents in the field amid a heightened threat environment for federal immigration enforcement officers.
Under Operation Lone Star, launched in 2021, Texas has already deployed thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border in response to the Biden administration’s lax enforcement policies. According to officials in border counties, some of those assets have already been pulled back, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are now being empowered to do their jobs.
Texas has reportedly eased off of arresting illegal aliens and charging them with criminal trespassing as the federal government assumes responsibility for border security operations.
Maybe there’s less need now that they’re not crossing the border in such huge numbers.
Operation Lone Star is now expected to be refocused from securing the southern border to assisting with mass deportations.
Texas National Guard troops were previously activated in June to maintain order during statewide protests against federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Abbott’s office has emphasized collaboration with federal partners, including a February agreement allowing guard members to make arrests under CBP supervision.
Weirdly, Texas is a state where the government follows the law and works for the benefit of actual citizens, not shadowy transnational conspiracies bound and determined to import as many illegal aliens into the country as possible.
It must be very frustrating for those who saw Biden’s illegal alien invasion as the key to finally turning Texas blue…
People were wondering what agenda items Texas Governor Greg Abbott would lay out for the forthcoming special session, and now we know.
Gov. Greg Abbott has officially released the agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, identifying 18 items for lawmakers to tackle when they return to Austin on Monday, July 21.
The announcement ends weeks of speculation about what issues would be included on the call and contains a mix of responses to both recent events and long-standing conservative priorities.
“We delivered on historic legislation in the 89th Regular Legislative Session that will benefit Texans for generations to come,” said Abbott. “There is more work to be done, particularly in the aftermath of the devastating floods in the Texas Hill Country. We must ensure better preparation for such events in the future.”
Included in the call are several flood-related items aimed at improving early warning systems, emergency communications, and local relief funding. The agenda also includes a sweeping review of rules related to disaster preparation and recovery.
Abbott is also calling for legislation to eliminate the STAAR test, cut property taxes, and overhaul regulations on THC products—an issue that has divided state leadership since Abbott vetoed a proposed ban last month. Instead of an outright ban, the governor is asking for new restrictions on potency and synthetic compounds without “banning a lawful agricultural commodity.”
We covered the issues surrounding marijuana and THC regulation here. The law that was vetoed would likely have clashed with federal legislation on the issue.
Several conservative priorities also made the list, including a ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying, a constitutional amendment granting the Attorney General the power to prosecute election crimes, and protections for women’s privacy in sex-segregated spaces. Legislation to further protect unborn children by strengthening the state’s ban on abortion-inducing drugs also made the cut.
Other agenda items include measures to protect victims of human trafficking from criminal liability, protections for law enforcement personnel files, and action on title theft and deed fraud. Abbott also called for legislation addressing judicial department operations and incentives for water conservation in building projects.
As expected, redistricting is officially on the agenda, following pressure from President Donald Trump’s team to secure additional Republican seats in Congress. The item calls for revisions to Texas’ congressional maps “in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
I have mixed feelings about redistricting. On the one hand, it would be nice to give House republicans a little more breathing room. On the other, Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America states that “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct,” and it has not been ten years since the last census and redistricting. Still, plenty of states have had to perform redistricting based on court orders, and for decades Democrats used them for partisan advantage, so this is a case of what’s good for the goose in good for the gander.
My understanding is that the Fifth Circuit Court ruling in Petteway v. Galveston County opens the door for redistricting to be performed in light of an altered reading of Voting Rights Act remedies (no longer need black and Hispanics be combined into the same district for “coalition” majority districts, much to the annoyance of the Democrat Party). Indeed, that is the precise outcome we discussed the last time we covered Petteway v. Galveston County. And Democrats were the ones who filed the lawsuit to try to save save one commissioners court seat in Galveston County.
We told them over and over again that they weren’t going to like living under the “New Rules” they instituted, and now they get to find out why, good and hard…
President Trump (and parents) rack up Supreme Court wins, more Iran nuke damage assessments, a whole lot of Democrats want to die on the hill of taxpayer subsidies for mutilating your children, and some fast cars. Plus a weird assortment of violent lunatics.
The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Trump administration a win by limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s agenda.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump v. Casa, siding with the Trump administration’s challenge to the scope of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The Court did not, however, weigh-in on the legality of the birthright-citizenship order itself.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, finding that universal injunctions exceed the authority Congress has given to federal courts. Barrett was joined by the Court’s five other conservative justices.
The High Court ruled that lower courts cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its policies against nonparties to the specific case they’re ruling on. For the time being, the justices have partially halted the nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order. They halted the injunctions in areas where their authority is too broad and prevent the executive branch from developing public guidance related to Trump’s executive order.
They punted on birthright citizenship, but a win is a win, and hopefully lower courts will now stop trying to reimport convicted and deported illegal alien felons.
Suchomimus has clear satellite images of the damage Operation Midnight Hammer did to the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear complexes.
UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief: ‘Night and Day’ Difference Between Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Before and After US Strikes. ‘It is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,’ says IAEA’s Rafael Grossi.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the Islamic Republic’s program “significantly,” the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization said Tuesday.
“I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”
Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.
“Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”
After a week’s worth of pounding from the Israel Defense Forces, the Iranian regime was disoriented and defenseless, helplessly exposed to Israeli and American air superiority, like a turtle flipped on its shell and baking underneath the pitiless desert sun. Now was the time to finish the job, not two weeks from now, after (what was left of) the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command structure had time to regroup.
So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.
I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.
If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered. Iran’s nuclear program has either been destroyed permanently or set back decades. The mullahs are very upset, as one imagines murderous religious fanatics tend to be, but also seemingly powerless to do much more than cause a temporary economic ruction by laying mines across the Strait of Hormuz. (Note: In a late-breaking development after this piece had gone to press, Trump announced last night that he had in fact brokered a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.)
This is an unalloyed victory for the forces of sanity and civilization. To those who point to the inevitability of unforeseen “blowback,” I will remind you that Iran and its proxies have been engaging in low-level conflict with America for well over a decade now — who do you think was funding and training the people killing our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years? — and now it is free to try its hand at more of the same, if it wishes, this time without a looming nuclear threat to back it up. America has come out ahead on this in concrete, measurable, and hugely valuable geostrategic ways.
Most importantly of all, none of this would have happened if Kamala Harris were president. Think about that for a moment; think about the road not taken. One can only speculate about hypotheticals, but . . . c’mon now. Look into your heart, you know it to be true. Imagine a President Harris, sitting uneasily atop a Democratic coalition barely held together at the seams: Would she have encouraged Netanyahu in his initial campaign against Iranian military and nuclear assets? Would she have provided the final air support and ordnance necessary to get the job done? With people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, and Zohran Mamdani calling the shots among large segments of her base?
To ask the question out loud is to answer it: no. For that reason alone, it is no exaggeration to say that the shape of the world perceptibly turned for the better on the outcome of last November’s election. You can draw a straight line between Donald Trump’s winning the 2024 race and Iran’s nuclear weapons program now being best described as a series of variably sized craters. If you supported Donald Trump and voted for him in 2024, you should feel proud of it today: Saturday is the most obvious evidence yet of why your vote mattered.
It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.
Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.
Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.
Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.
So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.
For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.
A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.
As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.
A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.
How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?
Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary.
So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.
But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.
The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?
It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.
Russia? Its former Obama-Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.
It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.
Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?
No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50 percent of Chinese-purchased oil passes.
For President Xi, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.
The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.
So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.
We recently learned of a previously concealed tranche of documents likely to shed new light on the past decade of American political controversies. This potentially earth-shaking information is known as “Prohibited Access.”
It was only recently discovered that the FBI’s information system, called Sentinel, had a level of access previously unknown to anyone outside the Bureau and known only to a select few inside. In essence, this was a concealed cache used to hide documents the FBI wanted hidden from discovery.
There is one part of the Sentinel system that is devoted to classified and confidential information, termed “Restricted Access.”
It turns out there is a higher, more secretive level called “Prohibited Access.” To any outside observer or investigator, it would appear that there was no record of Prohibited Access information, even though the existence of Restricted Access documents would be shown.
Accordingly, when prosecutors like John Durham or investigators such as Congressman James Comer were investigating various potential misdeeds, they would not have learned of the existence of documents relevant to their investigation that were kept in Prohibited Access.
Although it remains unclear, there is reasonable suspicion that even FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not aware of this document cache. Alternatively, Horowitz may have known about it but also may have agreed to keep its existence secret, a dismaying possibility for one charged with enlightening Congress and the public.
Logic tells us that, broadly, there could be only two related purposes for this concealed tranche because it prevents those investigating the FBI or its favored parties from even knowing about the existence of the documents; such suggests concealment of information inculpatory to the senior levels of the FBI and/or its favored politicians, as well as exculpatory information about the targets of its biased investigations.
If, by way of a wild hypothetical example, James Comey and Andrew McCabe broke laws to make an innocent Donald Trump appear guilty of “Russian Collusion,” they would not wish a trail of their ugly misconduct to see the light of day, nor reveal proof of Trump’s innocence.
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel should shine a lot of disinfecting sunlight here.
Winning: “Supreme Court Allows States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood.”
The Supreme Court is allowing South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, a win for pro-lifers that will likely clear the way for red states across the country to stop taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines Thursday to permit South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Court, siding with the state against a private challenge brought by the abortion provider and a patient.
The plaintiffs in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that Medicaid patients should be free to sue in order to choose their own health-care providers, while the state claimed they lacked the right to sue.
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
The 1965 Medicaid Act grants patients the ability to choose a willing and qualified provider. Medina dealt with whether patients have the right to sue to go to their preferred provider and whether Planned Parenthood qualified as a provider. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state and argued the case was about healthcare access, not abortion.
South Carolina stopped allowing Planned Parenthood to participate in its Medicaid program in 2018 because of state law barring the public funding of abortion. The move was immediately blocked in court in response to a challenge brought by Julie Edwards, a South Carolina woman who claimed she preferred Planned Parenthood for gynecological care and needed Medicaid coverage.
“States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the South Carolina Department of Health in the case.
Abortion is not “woman’s health care” and should not be treated as such.
SB 12 includes a prohibition on schools assisting in the “social transitioning” of students and also restricts the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity,” while providing that it does not “limit a student’s ability to engage in speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment … that does not result in material disruption to school activities.”
In a press release Monday, the ACLU of Texas, along with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), called SB 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.”
“This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for ACLU Texas, stated in the press release.
“Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them.”
Another Supreme Court win: “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Maryland Parents in Challenge to Mandatory LGBTQ Curriculum.” Which part of “Get your groomer hands off children” was unclear?
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement recently carried out a multi-state operation targeting eleven Iranian nationals in the U.S. illegally as the threat of Iranian terror cells attacking the U.S. intensifies.
Over the last 48 hours, federal agents arrested the eleven Iranians and a U.S. citizen who harbored an illegal immigrant from Iran, a Department of Homeland Security official told NR.
“Under Secretary Noem, DHS has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out—and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
ICE agents arrested former Iranian army sniper Ribvar Karimi in Alabama on June 22. Karimi possessed an Iran army identification card upon his arrest and is currently being held in ICE custody. He entered the U.S. in October 2024 under a K-1 marriage visa but never updated his immigration status.
In Houston, ICE agents arrested Behzad Sepehrian Bahary Nejad, an illegal alien who was armed with a loaded pistol at the time of his arrest. Nejad was previously arrested in August 2017 for assaulting a family member and had a final order of removal prior to his latest arrest. Also in Houston, ICE arrested Hamid Reza Bayat, who a judge had ordered removed from the U.S. 20 years ago. Bayat was convicted twice on drug charges and again for driving with a suspended license.
In Tempe, Arizona, where they nabbed Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian convicted of threatening a law enforcement officer and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, and U.S. citizen Linet Vartaniann for threatening law enforcement and harboring Eidvand. The pair were arrested after ICE obtained a search warrant and they now face federal charges.
Likewise, ICE arrested two Iranian nationals living together in Colorado Springs, Mahmoud Shafiei and Mehrdad Mehdipour. Shafiei was ordered removed decades ago and has criminal convictions related to drug crimes, and arrests for assault and child abuse. Border patrol encountered Mehdipour in June 2023 and processed him for expedited removal. Both are now in ICE custody as they undergo removal proceedings.
Another Iranian national ICE nabbed is Mehran Makari Saheli, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sahei was previously convicted for being a felon in possession of the firearm and was illegally staying in the U.S. after a judge ordered him removed in 2022.
ICE agents arrested several other Iranian nationals in numerous other states and localities, almost all of whom had criminal convictions for various offenses and are now in federal custody.
How many Democrat district judges had decisions half-written forbidding deportations when the Supreme Court decision came down?
Moderate Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans — concerned about the prospect of a Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are plotting ways to keep the Democratic Socialist out of Gracie Mansion.
Shocked by the 33-year-old state assemblyman’s upset win in the Democratic mayoral primary last night against a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, these Cuomo backers, reluctant Cuomo backers, independents, and Republicans say the only way to beat Mr. Mamdani is to all back one candidate.
“The horse they’re going to back is Eric Adams,” a grocery store magnate and former Republican candidate for New York City mayor, Jon Catsimatidis, tells The New York Sun. “He is backed by the White House, by Washington, and he’ll make sure crime is cleaned up.”
When asked what that means for the Republican nominee for mayor, Curtis Sliwa, whom Mr. Catsimatidis employed at his radio station, the billionaire replied, “He’ll clean up the crime.”
Mr. Catsimatidis ended the call. He didn’t respond to a text asking if he is personally planning to back Mr. Adams. He said to tune into his radio show this evening.
Mr. Catsimatidis told the press earlier this month that he may sell his grocery store empire or move his business out of the city if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor.
Always with the trannies: “Zohran Mamdani Wants To Spend $65 Million on Medical Gender Treatments for Minors and Adults.”
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has quietly proposed channeling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay for medical gender-transition treatments for residents of all ages – including for minors. This city spending would counteract the sustained assault on these medical interventions – coming from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans – which threatens treatment programs even within blue cities and states.
The controversial method of providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes gender-transition surgeries — such as breast removal — to minors in particular is now at the apex of the culture wars. It has also become a flashpoint in Democrats’ battle to redefine themselves in the wake of their brutal losses in the November election.
Authorities in Austin, Texas, have arrested Brian Johnson, known online as the social media influencer “Liver King,” according to jail records.
He faces one charge of terroristic threat, a Class B misdemeanor.
Snip.
The so-called Liver King rose to viral fame with social media posts depicting a barbarian-like “ancestral lifestyle,” including the consumption of raw animal organs, as depicted in the recent Netflix documentary “Untold: The Liver King.”
His persona and the story behind the physique fell apart in December 2022, however, when he admitted in a YouTube video to using steroids.
Speaking of crazy, violent lunatics: “51-year-old Adam Christopher Sheafe has now confessed to crucifying and killing Pastor William Schonemann in Phoenix in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2025.”
“U.S. Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Muslim-Centric EPIC City, No Charges Filed.” As I’ve mentioned before, while investigation was certainly warranted, right now EPIC City looks more like a failed speculative real estate venture than an actual Muslim city in the offing, especially now that the developers have sworn up and down that they won’t discriminate against buyers based on religion. Awful nice of them to agree to obey the law…
This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees,” reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP – which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm “to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees.”
According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged “repeated” efforts to collect those fees.
“Morrissey cancels Stockholm show, saying he and band are ‘travel-weary beyond belief’, citing “’bsolutely zero music industry support’ for full Scandinavia tour.”
“No label will release our music, no radio will play our music … and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”
Last year, he said he had bought back the rights back to the album, as well as his 2014 record ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. He later told Medium that “there are two albums” that he has completed but is unable to release, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’.
“The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title. We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”
He added: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell. The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels do not want to become involved with this Gotcha! Journalism.”
Evidently Morrissey figured out that unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration to the UK was a bad idea way back in 2019. Obviously The Guardian must punish him for his #wrongthink.
I’m not a Morrissey fan, and a significant percentage of my impression of him is everyone from MST3K to Mojo Nixon making fun of him. I can certainly see a musician cancelling a show due to exhaustion, and Morrissey is no spring chicken. But as for “zero music industry support,” dude, it’s 2025. Major labels don’t support anyone unless they can own your entire output, or at least get their sticky fingers into every possible revenue stream. Just pay to have your own CDs pressed and sell them at your (evidently successful) shows.
Texas has a reputation as the state most willing to implement the death penalty. Yet, thus far in 2025, with the year almost half over, only four people have been executed in Texas.
The death penalty remains controversial, because few prospects are more horrible than having the state take you life. (In communist countries, they’ve done it by the tens of millions.) That’s why our judicial system has an extensive series of checks and balances, derived not only from the Constitution but extending further back into English common law.
Three inmate deaths within two days have reignited scrutiny of the Harris County Jail, which is chronically overcrowded and understaffed and lacks adequate medical care for inmates, according to state standards.
Sounds like Harris County has a big, big problem. Maybe they should hire more jailers, and build more jails, rather than pursuing socialist pipe dreams like the now-abandoned “Guaranteed Income” scheme. Or any budget line item for “diversity” or “climate change.”
With the latest three fatalities reported between June 23 and 24, 10 inmates have died in custody during the first half of 2025 alone—putting the jail on track to surpass last year’s total.
The Harris County Jail has been out of compliance with state jail standards since 2022.
Persistent overcrowding remains a major concern. Harris County has resorted to outsourcing around 1,500 inmates annually to facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi, and other Texas counties. This practice costs taxpayers nearly $50 million each year.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare previously stated his commitment to lowering the jail population and announced plans to bring outsourced inmates back.
Soros-backed Teare’s “solution” seems to be to keep putting repeat offenders back on the streets so they can continue to victimize citizens. Not ideal.
Critics argue that overseeing outsourced inmates is difficult, with some pointing to the recent death of inmate Erik Carlson, who died shortly after being transferred out of state.
Adding to the crisis is a severe mental health challenge. According to officials, about 80 percent of Harris County Jail inmates suffer from mental health issues, with many prescribed psychiatric medications.
80%? Really? That seems unrealistically high.
Harris County Jail has consistently failed state compliance checks since September 2022, particularly concerning inmate observation and healthcare provision. Staffing shortages continue to impede efforts to meet these basic standards.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has been in office since January 1, 2019, and these repeat failures fall on her and the Commissioners Court. Heads should roll, and Texas Attorney Ken Paxton should consider suing over the repeated negligence shown by Teare, Hidalgo and Harris County government.
Hire more jailers. Build more jails.
That might not completely solve the problem, but it sure as hell will be a start on solving it…
“Turning Texas blue” is an idée fixe for Democratic Party operatives, and it’s easy to see why. Securing Texas’ 40 (and soon to be 43 or 44) electoral votes would go a long way toward ensuring presidential election dominance for the donkeys. Indeed, one (of many) big driving factors behind the headless Biden Administration opening the border was to secure enough illegal alien votes via amnesty to do just that. (Ironically, what it actually seem to do was turn the Rio Grande Valley red and add millions of Hispanics to the Trump coalition.) But the idea never goes away, and now moneybag social justice funder George Soros is trying to turn Texas blue.
A Democrat-aligned political group backed by billionaire George Soros is once again setting its sights on Texas, aiming to flip the reliably red state with a new multimillion-dollar campaign.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Texas Majority PAC—bankrolled heavily by Soros—has launched a new initiative dubbed “Blue Texas,” partnering with the Texas Democratic Party and several county parties to organize volunteers, recruit candidates, and boost voter turnout ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Campaign finance records show Soros gave $2.1 million to Texas Majority PAC in 2024 and another $1 million in April.
The move marks the latest in a long line of efforts by Democrats to make inroads in Texas, a state Republicans have dominated for decades. Despite shifting demographics and repeated national predictions of a “blue wave,” Democrats haven’t won a single statewide race in Texas since 1994.
Soros and his political allies tried a similar approach in the last election cycle—pouring millions into Texas Majority PAC in an attempt to build a Democrat ground game—but came up short. In 2024, Republicans not only held their ground but made gains in both the Texas House and Senate. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, won 12 of the state’s 14 border counties and defeated Kamala Harris by nearly 14 percentage points.
I covered last year’s Soros funding attempts here.
The Texas Majority PAC, which describes its mission as growing the Democrat majority and winning statewide elections, is hoping for a different result this time.
Organizers say they’ll hold rallies across the state in June and visit more than two dozen cities in July to recruit candidates.
Rallies. Yeah. That will do the trick. I do wonder if they don’t actually mean “riots,” since that seems to be what Soros is best at funding.
Their long-term goal is to make Texas a competitive battleground state by 2032, when a new round of redistricting could further increase the state’s electoral significance.
“If a win is on the table in 2026, we don’t want to leave it there by not being organized,” Katherine Fischer, deputy executive director of Texas Majority PAC, told WSJ.
A win for Democrats is “on the table” in the same sense that a World Series championship is “on the table” for the Colorado Rockies in 2026: It’s theoretically possible, but no one is betting that way.
But past efforts like Battleground Texas—formed over a decade ago with similar ambitions—have largely failed.
Battleground Texas was a particularly spectacular flameout. And that was staffed with Obama retreads, i.e. the last actually successful Democratic presidential campaign that didn’t rely on mysterious 3 AM ballot dumps. What election experts are they going to bring in to turn Texas red? The supergeniuses behind the Kamala Harris campaign? What pearls of wisdom are Soros-funded cadres going to dispense on their presumably benighted Texas counterparts? They need to burn more police cars? They need to buy more Palestinian flags?
Texas Republicans are quite lucky nationwide liberals seem clueless about how to wisely allocate money to boost Democrats in Texas. Just think if that $160+ million Bobby Francis “Beto” O’Rourke wasted on his two losing statewide campaigns had been channeled into effective grassroots organizing instead of ill-fated media ad buys. Texas might look a lot more purple right now. Of course, that assumes it’s even possible for Democrats to carry out effective grassroots organizing, instead of shoveling money into the insatiable maws of hordes of social justice locusts looking to foment their own brand of self-serving revolution.
I think that literally just Scott Presler, by himself, has moved the electoral needle more than all the millions of dollars national Democrats have dumped into Texas all this century combined…
Texas hasn’t suffered from the massive 3 AM ballot drops that plagued large Democratic-run cities in 2020, but there have been election irregularities, most notably in Democrat-controlled Harris County. To help remedy the situation, the Texas legislature has passed two separate bills giving the Texas Attorney General power to reign rein in election shenanigans.
Both chambers of the Texas Legislature have approved a measure that will require notification to the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) before a judge can issue a temporary restraining order in relation to an election, a bill that was prompted by a series of confusing judicial actions related to Harris County’s fraught 2022 general election.
“It was occasioned by an election in 2022 where a judge in Harris County held open the polls and didn’t tell the other side,” said Rep. Mike Schofield (R-Houston) of his House Bill (HB) 1475 during a committee hearing last month. “So only one party, which had moved for it, knew that the polls were being held open an additional hour.”
“I wish they’d hold a Super Bowl and not tell the other team the game was on, and my team would win,” quipped Schofield.
The new law stipulates that a district court judge considering an election-related TRO must notify the OAG, wait two hours after providing notification before holding a hearing, and permit OAG staff to participate in the hearing remotely. The two-hour delay may be waived by the OAG after notification, but any TROs issued by a judge in violation of the law will be void.
On Election Day in 2022, the Texas Organizing Project, a progressive civil rights group, sought an emergency hearing and temporary restraining order (TRO) to keep 10 Harris County polling locations open for an extra hour. Multiple county locations were delayed in opening that morning, experienced malfunctioning equipment, were missing personnel, or suffered a shortage of ballot paper.
Following a brief hearing early that evening, District Court Judge Dawn Rogers ordered all county polling sites to remain open until 8 p.m.
After learning of the TRO, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office intervened and requested a reversal of the order, but the judge refused. The OAG then filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court of Texas, which reversed the lower court’s TRO just before 8 p.m. and ordered the county to keep the late-cast ballots separate.
During testimony before the House Elections Committee, Ken Moore said that when Rogers issued the TRO, neither the Harris County Republican Party (HCRP), nor the OAG, nor the Texas Secretary of State knew of the court proceedings.
“The AG moved with all haste to try to stop this, and they couldn’t get to the Supreme Court in time to stop the voting going beyond 7:00,” said Moore, who serves as a State Republican Executive Committee member. “A lot of [election] judges didn’t understand that anything after 7:00 is a provisional ballot, so a lot of these were votes that were regular votes that were regular cast and so it created a lot of chaos.”
The Texas House has passed legislation to restore the state attorney general’s authority to prosecute election-related crimes—an issue that has taken center stage in the wake of a court ruling and a high-stakes political fight within the Republican Party.
House Bill 5138, authored by State Rep. Matt Shaheen (R–Plano), would allow the attorney general to step in and prosecute election law violations if a local prosecutor fails to act within six months of receiving a law enforcement report. The measure passed the House this week and now awaits further action in the Senate.
The bill comes in response to the 2021 State v. Stephens decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which held that the attorney general did not have independent authority to bring criminal charges under the Election Code.
The ruling was met with fierce opposition from Attorney General Ken Paxton, who made the issue a central theme in last year’s Republican primaries.
All three Court of Criminal Appeals judges who supported the decision and were up for re-election were defeated by Paxton-endorsed challengers.
Election integrity has been one of the Texas GOP’s top legislative priorities this session, with the party supporting HB 5138. Christine Welborn, president of Advancing Integrity, praised the bill as a necessary step to ensure accountability.
“The relatively low number of convictions for election fraud is not due to a lack of fraud, but a lack of prosecutions by local district attorneys,” said Welborn. “HB 5138 would allow the attorney general to once again step in and protect voters when those DAs fail to act. Laws are meaningless unless they are enforced.”
The Texas Senate passed a similar, but not identical, bill last month, so the two versions need to be reconciled.
Naturally, all sorts of of liberal organizations have come out against these bills, to no avail. It seems that if Democrats can’t cheat, they can’t win in Texas…
After seeing numerous attempts die at the hands of the Straus/Bonnin/Phelan/Burrows cabal over the years, the Texas House has finally passed school choice.
In a historic move, the Texas House gave initial approval today to Senate Bill 2, a school choice proposal backed by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The vote marks the first time a school choice bill has cleared the Texas House—a major shift from just last session when a similar proposal was voted down. The change comes after Abbott made the issue a defining battle in last year’s Republican primaries, endorsing challengers against GOP incumbents who had opposed school choice. Many of those incumbents were ousted, clearing the way for today’s vote.
Ahead of the floor debate, House Republicans met privately and heard from both Gov. Abbott and President Donald Trump, who called into the meeting and urged them to stay united.
“I just think it’s a really forward-thinking vote,” said Trump on the call. “There’s nothing complex about it. You’re not going to get hurt by it. It’s actually almost the opposite. People really want it.”
Snip.
The bill ultimately passed 86-63, with Phelan and State Rep. Gary Vandeaver (New Boston) being the only GOP members to vote against the measure.
Phelan still insists on being the turd in the punch bowl.
The bill now returns to the Senate, which can either concur with the House’s amendments or send the legislation to a conference committee.
Finally getting school choice passed is a direct result of slaughtering so many Dade Phelan cronies in the 2024 Republican primary (and runoff), the success of such efforts greatly aided by Abbott, Ted Cruz and Ken Paxton all campaiging to defeat anti-school choice (and pro-Paxton impeachment) reps.
It was a long time coming, but Texas voters finally got Republican representatives to vote like Republicans.
The lefty sorts running my alma mater these days are at it again. Despite pushes at the state and national level to rid universities of poisonous racist policies, DEI/CRT is still alive and well at the University of Texas at Austin.
A new report shows the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Education is riddled with critical race theory and other leftwing ideologies.
Last year, a state law took effect that requires universities to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and eliminate discriminatory hiring and training programs. It does not apply to instruction.
Sounds like an oversight to me. Governor Abbott should appoint people to the board of regents who are willing to completely hack DEI out of the system, root and branch.
Nonprofit research organization DeepAudit analyzed 450 UT education syllabi using a machine learning algorithm and identified courses with the highest concentration of CRT and DEI material.
Seven of the ten courses ranked most ideologically-driven fall under the university’s curriculum and instruction department.
DeepAudit’s algorithm scanned for courses that emphasize “equity, diversity, social justice, critical pedagogy, critical consciousness, [and] identitarian political activism.”
According to the nonprofit’s website, its machine learning tool “can help institutions comply with state and federal mandates by using semantic analysis” to assess meaning and context beyond simple keyword searches.
“A reporter investigating DEI and CRT in schools of education would typically have to review every course individually,” reads the report. “Such a process is a barrier to analysis as many schools offer hundreds of education courses.”
“While many have heard reports of critical race theory in schools, few realize how widespread the problem is,” Jonah Davids, a founder of DeepAudit told Texas Scorecard. “These ideas are rarely expressed so openly, and instead are often hidden under labels like ‘culturally-responsive teaching’ and ‘social-emotional learning.’”
“Most legislators, parents, and taxpayers who fund universities have no idea this is happening,” Davids said. “We only looked at one college in one university—who knows how much is out there?”
Foundations of United States Schooling, the UT course that contained the most leftist bias, is required for education majors. It touches on the “development of public schooling in the United States in the context of processes of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and contests over the meaning of democracy.”
An online summary of the course also says it “examine[s] the politics and policy of education, with special attention to the consequences for students of color, Indigenous students, LGBTQIA students, immigrant students, and students with disabilities.”
Required course readings involved transgender advocacy, decolonization, and critical pedagogy.
According to DeepAudit, the ten UT Austin education courses most infused with CRT are:
EDC312 Foundations of United States Schooling
EDC319 Qualitative Inquiry and Education for Social Change
EDC385G Seminar Program Development and Research
EDP382G Cultural Diversity and Individual Differences
EDC380F Sociocultural Foundations
ELP354S Social Awareness and Critical Consciousness in Student Affairs
EDC395T Learning Technologies
ELP354D Equity and Diversity Issues in Education
EDC395L Language and Literacy Studies
EDC391G Gender and Race in Education
While sunlight is the best disinfectant, when it comes to UT and other top university systems, the state political establishment has frequently declared “We like our cozy corruption just fine, so please take your disinfectant away and put back the rock.” Such was the case when UT Board regent Wallace Hall uncovered an admissions scandal, and his reward was Joe Straus trying to indict him.
Despite the overwhelming opposition of the voters and elected leaders at the state and national level, many colleges (UT Austin included) still seem to feel that their primary purpose is to indoctrinate students in the victimhood identity politics of the radical left. Universities, UT Austin included, need severe cuts in funding and heavy supervision until they finally stamp out woke indoctrination on their campuses.
