Lots of Democrat/Blue State fraud of varying types (campaign financing, voting, welfare state), hot marine-drone-on-marine-drone action, one of Maduro’s scumbags pleads guilty, the feds investigate Governor Hairgel and his henchmen, corrupt or power-hungry police get slapped down in two different Texas locales, a breakdown of just who is funding the “AI will kill us all” panic, and a Hank Hill meme to represent my continued loathing of restaurant QR codes.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Just as suspected: “Dem Fundraising Giant ActBlue Accepted Illegal Foreign Donations, Covered Up Evidence, House Report Says.”
ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising giant, may have accepted both fraudulent and illegal foreign contributions — and later concealed the relevant evidence from House Republicans investigating the matter, according to a new congressional report.
Congressional oversight “found that ActBlue, in its own words, decided to take ‘a more lenient approach’ to fraud prevention in 2024, weakening its fraud-prevention policies at least twice even though internal assessments showed that these changes would result in a measurable increase in fraudulent contributions,” according to the new report.
“Similarly, internal trainings directed ActBlue’s fraud prevention team to ‘look for reasons to accept contributions’ rather than to examine them closely for indicators of fraud — as required by federal regulation. ActBlue took this lax approach to fraud prevention even though it had detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on the platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources.”
The report — which is the third released by the Committee on House Administration, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding their investigation into ActBlue — accuses the platform of accepting “illegal foreign political donations” and later undertaking a cover-up.
ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously wrote in a letter to Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R., Wis.) in 2023, when the investigation began, explaining that donations made by people with addresses outside of the U.S. require a passport number for verification.
But the report argues the step does little to prevent fraud, as it “only ensures that the entered passport number contains a certain number of characters, not that it is a valid U.S. passport number.”
ActBlue’s previous law firm, Covington & Burling, told ActBlue in 2025 that Wallace-Jones may have misled Congress in her response because the steps for vetting foreign donations were not always followed, the New York Times reported earlier this year. ActBlue processed $990 million in donations in 2023, including $1.3 million from donors with foreign addresses, according to the Washington Post. ActBlue said it collected passport numbers for 93 percent of the donations with foreign addresses.
In the new report, the House committees cite internal communications in which ActBlue employees appear to downplay warnings of fraud. “Donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows,” employees wrote in one memo about a “great accept.”
In another message, an ActBlue supervisor says that a rejected foreign contribution “should have been accepted.”
“It is a foreign contribution, but the name/email match, the IP/billing match, a full address with the correct country code, and there were previously accepted and successful contributions,” the message says. “The donor uses an Arkansas state code, which isn’t great, but [the] system can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors.”
On a separate occasion, an ActBlue supervisor said a contribution “set off a lot of” alarms, but suggested the donor should be given the “benefit of the doubt.”
Democrats always seem to give the “benefit of the doubt” to foreign money flowing into their pockets…
Townhall Media caught Sky McAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, admitting to a scheme involving paying people to influence others to vote for Democrats.
You know they desperately want Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talerico to win.
You can’t pay someone to vote for a candidate, but apparently the PAC discovered a way around the rule.
From the video:
MCADAMS: We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things. So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially, which is interesting.
PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: What’s the – what’s this called?
MCADAMS: It’s called the Paid Relational Program. I think rally Texas is the official name. You can’t pay someone to vote for someone. You can’t be like, “Here’s $25, go vote for me.” You can say, “Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.” And then the class just talks about the importance of…it’s a little gray.
PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: But right now we could use all the help we can get.
MCADAMS: If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, “That’s shady as f**k.”
You know, if I were a Soros-backed PAC that was already under investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (AKA the Republican nominee running against Talarico in the 2026 Texas senate race), I’d want to be a lot more circumspect at breaking federal election law…
WOAH 🚨 An addiction recovery center in Minnesota accused of stealing millions with fake Medicaid billing has just been exposed to have another account with $25 MILLION
They’ve used our stolen tax money to buy:
– 3 Minnesota homes
– $10.4 million in charges
– $3.5 million on leather goods and luggage
– $380k jewelry and watches
– $150k clothing and shoes
– One month of LV charges alone was $440,000
June 2024 spending alone included
– $35k at Fendi
– $57k at LV
– $13k at Hermès
– $64k private jet
– $41k Airbnb
And now a $25 million CD has been discovered
Some of the craziest items they bought were
– 3 Minnesota homes
– Rolex Oyster Mickey Mouse edition that’s 18kt yellow gold with genuine Rolex crocodile band
– Louis Vuitton trunks and hard-side luggage including additional jewelry trunks
– Louis Vuitton black mink coat and other fur pieces
– Gents diamond cluster rings and fashion rings that were 14kt gold pieces with 7–59 diamonds, plus EFFY, Kabana, and Gabriel & Co. platinum diamond rings
– 18kt yellow gold and diamond Louis Vuitton pendant on an 18kt LV chain, plus other 14kt gold diamond heart pendants and Tiffany pearl and diamond pieces
– Louis Vuitton Tambour watches
Again, this is all with our stolen tax money with fake Medicaid billing in Minnesota
Tim Walz and Democrats allowed this and would have never did anything to stop them if it wasn’t for Trump getting elected
Twelve people are facing federal fraud charges after an investigation revealed that more than $10 million intended to help low-income families pay for childcare was instead funneled to bogus daycare providers.
In a coordinated takedown early Thursday morning, more than 250 federal, state and local law enforcement officials arrested all 12 defendants and executed 12 search warrants at homes in San Diego purported to be used as daycare facilities.
“These charges underscore a simple truth: anyone who steals from programs meant to support children will face swift and uncompromising accountability, said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Fraud against these programs is an attack on vulnerable families, and law enforcement will continue to dismantle schemes that exploit them. I want to thank the prosecutors and agents in the Southern District of California whose relentless work exposed this scheme and ensured that those responsible are being held accountable.”
“Programs that help families access childcare are intended to support children and working parents, not to enrich fraudsters,” said Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Director Michael Krol. “HSI is proud to stand with our federal, state, and local partners to identify and disrupt schemes that steal taxpayer-funded benefits from the communities they are meant to serve. These arrests reflect our commitment to protecting public programs, safeguarding children, and holding accountable those who exploit systems designed to help vulnerable families.”
“Today’s takedown exposes a sprawling fraud scheme that siphoned more than $10 million from programs designed to help low-income families who depend on subsidized childcare. By following the money, IRS Criminal Investigation uncovered patterns of deceit that revealed twelve ghost daycare operations billing for children who were never present. This was not a victimless crime. It deprived working parents of critical support and eroded trust in programs meant to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. We remain steadfast in our commitment to safeguarding federal funds and ensuring that those who exploit public programs for personal gain are held fully accountable,” said IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman.
“Shameless attempts to steal taxpayer‑funded childcare funds for personal gain endanger support for some of our nation’s most vulnerable children,” said Special Agent in Charge Robb R. Breeden of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “Working alongside our law enforcement partners, HHS‑OIG will continue to pursue these schemes relentlessly to protect these funds and the families who depend on them.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides federal funding to California to help low-income families pay for childcare. In San Diego County, the County of San Diego, Child Development Associates (CDA), and the YMCA administer childcare subsidy programs.
When CDA or the YMCA determines that a family qualifies for subsidized childcare, the organizations pay the eligible childcare provider directly after the provider submits required monthly attendance records documenting the care provided. The records must be signed by both the provider and parent under penalty of perjury and include the dates and times children are in care.
California law also requires licensed childcare providers to be present and ensure that children are supervised at all times, except for limited temporary absences when a qualified substitute is present.
While the 12 federal complaints are unrelated, the scheme was essentially the same: Defendants obtained a California license to operate a home childcare facility and registered with Child Development Associates (CDA) and the YMCA to provide subsidized childcare to eligible families. To receive government-funded payments, the defendants were required to submit monthly attendance records accurately documenting the dates and times they provided care to each child.
Instead, the defendants knowingly submitted false attendance records claiming they provided childcare on dates and at times when they did not. They also falsely certified, under penalty of perjury, that the information was true and correct. CDA and the YMCA relied on those fraudulent records and issued payments with federal funds intended to pay for childcare actually provided to low-income families.
The complaints describe how surveillance recordings of the defendants’ licensed facilities conflicted with what the defendants claimed in their attendance records. For example, Abdulrahman Ayman Alawad submitted attendance records claiming to have provided childcare to 23 children in March 2026 and 25 children April 2026, and that he provided childcare every day of those two months.
My amazing psychic powers tell me that local media reports refer to Alawad as “San Diego Man.”
But surveillance recordings covering 57 days of those months showed children entering or exiting Alawad’s facility on just one day—coincidentally, the day a state inspector showed up for an unannounced inspection, when children and Alawad himself arrived at the facility after the inspector arrived.
Twenty-seven FBI field offices were working fraud cases that looked local. Then Washington finally put the data in the same room.
What emerged wasn’t dozens of unrelated problems. The FBI says investigators connected over 40 cases to the same strategic threat and the same group of overseas actors.
From the FBI:
Launched in August, the NFDC brings together the FBI, federal law enforcement agencies, Offices of Inspector General, and state partners in a first-of-its-kind effort to identify fraud across taxpayer-funded programs. Rather than evaluating investigations in isolation, the center combines cross-agency data and artificial intelligence to help investigators spot patterns, connect cases, and dismantle organized criminal networks.
The initiative stems from a broader “whole of government” approach mandated by Executive Order 14395, which established the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
The discovery came through the new National Fraud Detection Center, launched in August. The center brings together information from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, Treasury, FinCEN, inspectors general, state agencies, and others.
Instead of examining one suspicious student loan, Medicare payment, or SBA loan at a time, investigators can search for connections across programs and jurisdictions. The center uses data analytics and AI to help spot patterns that individual offices might miss.
The student-loan investigation offers the clearest example. Individual cases appeared small enough that some might never have attracted major federal attention. Once the data was combined, investigators concluded they were looking at pieces of a much larger foreign-directed operation.
Fraudsters had figured out something the federal government has struggled with for years: agencies don’t always talk to each other.
The Government Accountability Office reported in June that agencies can use more than 100 federal data sources to verify whether people qualify for benefits or payments. GAO examined nine major sources and found data-quality problems in every one. It also found no government-wide rules ensuring those systems can efficiently share information.
The price of those weaknesses isn’t theoretical.
Federal agencies reported an estimated $186 billion in improper payments during fiscal 2025. Improper payments include errors and overpayments, so they shouldn’t automatically be called fraud. GAO separately estimates that actual fraud costs the federal government somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, based on data from 2018 through 2022.
Those numbers help explain why connecting databases matters.
“Syzran Oil Refinery Hit Hard By Drones: Supplies Russia’s Armed Forces.” I think that’s at least the fifth attack on the oil refinery we’ve reported here.
President Trump signs the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026
Peter Zeihan explains how Ukraine targets Russia’s shadow fleet in the Black Sea. “What the Ukrainians have done is they’ve contacted every shipping company in the world and said, “Hey, if you’re operating in the Black Sea, A, tell us the name of the ship. B, give us their transponder so we can follow them. C, tell give us their course and D, the ports you expect them to be at and when. And if we can confirm that information as part of our operations, we will not attack those ships. And so far, shipping company in the world is complying except the shadow fleet. Shadow fleet runs dark. Shadow fleet doesn’t report. And that’s the whole point. So, what the Ukrainians have basically done have mapped out the entire commercial world of shipping in the Black Sea and attacking the ships that don’t report.”
Evidently the left is the same everywhere: “Maduro Ally Pleads Guilty In Miami To Scheme That Stole Venezuelan Welfare Funds.”
The former minister of industry for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a global money laundering conspiracy that skimmed millions from a Venezuelan public welfare program.
According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release, Alex Saab, 54, who was extradited from Venezuela in May and charged days later, conducted a decade-long scheme that defrauded a Venezuelan welfare program for food and medicine, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and associates.
Saab, a Colombian businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments before federal district Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.
“Criminals like Alex Saab who stole from the people of Venezuela and worked to exploit and misuse American financial institutions to fund illicit activities will be held accountable,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the news release.
Saab is accused of bilking the welfare program known as Local Committee for Supply and Production, or CLAP (Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción).
The ex-minister admitted to using a system of bribes and illegal payments to public officials. Entities controlled by conspirators in the scheme would be rewarded with lucrative contracts from the Venezuelan government to import food and medicine under CLAP.
Saab and his conspirators did not fulfill the contracts and would instead use fake companies, false invoices and shipping records, and other fraudulent documents to unlawfully obtain millions while concealing their association with the scheme, the DOJ said.
Saab further admitted he used shell companies outside his country to launder the illegal proceeds around the world, including in the United States.
I wonder if there’s a book called How To Line Your Pockets With Welfare State Funds that leftists the world over all read…
Federal prosecutors have expanded their criminal investigation into Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, issuing subpoenas for six years of records covering his international travel, outside funding, and personal expenses, including money spent on his residence and living costs. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Anderson signed the subpoenas, which concern a criminal investigation in the Eastern District of California.
The subpoenas, issued in early September, seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has funded Newsom’s overseas travel through private donations. The subpoenas are expected to produce records for a federal grand jury.
Federal investigators also want communications involving Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who helps oversee his foreign travel and has staffed him at events ranging from the California Hall of Fame ceremony to meetings with foreign heads of government. Prowda is married to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. She declined to comment.
Investigators also sought communications involving Steve Kawa, Jim DeBoo, Jason Elliott and campaign counsel Tom Willis. All four have longstanding ties to Newsom.
Kawa, Newsom’s former San Francisco chief of staff, now chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the Protocol Foundation. DeBoo, a former Newsom executive secretary, is the foundation’s secretary. Elliott, another former deputy chief of staff, sits on both the Protocol Foundation board and the rail authority. Willis sits on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Records involving Siebel Newsom were also requested.
Sounds like a cozy influence-peddling cabal, doesn’t it?
Plenty of money is up for review. Newsom has directed more than $7.5 million in outside donations to the California State Protocol Foundation since taking office, with roughly $5.1 million coming from leftover inaugural funds. Behested payments are donations that public officials solicit on behalf of outside organizations. They are legal in California but must be disclosed. Newsom has directed roughly $349 million in such payments between 2019 and 2026. The foundation ended 2024 with just $7,790 in net funds after spending nearly $600,000 more than it took in over the previous two years.
Among its donors are CVS, a Blue Shield-linked foundation, and autonomous vehicle company Zoox, all of which do business in California or operate under state rules. Other contributors include the New Venture Fund and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen. Foundations tied to Democrat megadonors Susie Tompkins Buell and Lisa Stone Pritzker have also contributed. Both women have supported Newsom politically and backed nonprofits associated with Siebel Newsom. The foundation has helped pay for Newsom’s travel to Davos, Munich, London, and China.
What.The Fuck. “Dutch officials say first toddler euthanized under new state law was ‘handled well.'”
This child was born very prematurely, at only 26 weeks of gestation. It quickly became apparent that the child had suffered severe brain damage, resulting in severe cerebral palsy and a visual impairment. This was compounded by frequent and severe epileptic seizures, which were largely unresponsive to medication. This left the child restless and unable to sleep for long periods. They also had mucus in their lungs, which made breathing and swallowing very difficult.
Cerebral palsy and epilepsy are serious conditions that require focused care.
Doctors predicted that the child would not live to adulthood; therefore killing the two-year-old was the best choice for “care.”
‘Despite all medical and non-medical interventions, the parents and the doctor observed no improvement in the child’s condition and were convinced that the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of relief.’
Neither the article, nor the medical committee described how the child’s life was ended.
Was the child removed from life support and allowed to die?
Was the child injected with lethal chemicals to stop the heart?
What is the mania on the left for killing children these days?
How senators John Kennedy (LA) and Ted Cruz derailed Biden judicial nominees with such trick questions as “What does Article II of the Constitution cover?”
“Federal Judge Overturned after Denying Jury Trial, Awarding Plaintiff $1 for Home Demolished by City. The appeals court called the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial ‘fundamental.'”
A federal appeals court has ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Jeff Brown of the Southern District of Texas abused the discretion of the court when he denied a jury trial to a property owner who sued Texas City for demolishing his house without proper notice.
In an opinion issued earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals also threw out Brown’s determination that homeowner Michael Ramirez was only entitled to $1 in nominal damages for the destruction of his house, but the court’s ruling hinged on the right to a jury trial guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Because ‘the right of jury trial is fundamental,’ federal courts must ‘indulge every reasonable presumption against waiver,’” Justice Leslie H. Southwick wrote in the decision.
“Indeed, a ‘motion for trial by jury under this rule should be favorably received unless there are persuasive reasons to deny it.’ Those reasons must be ‘strong and compelling’; otherwise, the motion should be granted, and it is an abuse of discretion not to do so.”
Ramirez’ clash with Texas City began after a fire in April 2022 damaged the home he bought for $90,000, which he planned to renovate and resell for an estimated $230,000.
Three days after the fire, the City sent a “Notice of Substandard Structure and of Abatement,” labeled the building a “clear and imminent danger,” and said it would be “abated without further notice.” But Ramirez hired an architect with experience in fire restoration who advised that the damage was primarily superficial and that the home was repairable.
Ramirez then contacted city officials to secure repair permits, but alleged that city employees gave him conflicting information. He also said City Attorney Kyle Dickson assured him the property would be demolished only with his approval. While awaiting approval, Ramirez said he stored tools and appliances in the house valued at $15,000.
Instead, the city demolished the home without further notice on May 9, 2023, more than one year after the fire.
An FBI agent pitched investigating Elon Musk for his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to an email released on Sept. 15.
FBI agent Kevin Gounaud wrote in the Feb. 22, 2025, missive to a supervisor that he wanted to recommend opening a criminal investigation into the person or people at the Office of Personnel Management who approved transmitting an email to government workers about what they had done the previous week.
That person was conspiring with Musk “to violate government-wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know,” Gounaud said.
“Furthermore, Musk used a non-government system (Twitter) to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes,” he said.
“In doing so, because he is monetized … he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization and/or advertising revenues.”
Gounaud compared Musk’s action to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct government business.
Yes, because running a private email server to facilitate foreign bribes is just like looking for patterns of government waste…
The mayor is a nonpartisan position, but we all know this kid is a future shining star of the Democratic Party. Stockbridge, Georgia’s youngest elected mayor has been shown the door less than a year into the job, the city confirms.
Here’s Breitbart:
[Jayden] Williams — who recently turned 23 — was initially stripped of certain privileges in July before the City Council impeached the mayor on grounds of malfeasance, misfeasance, and violation of his oath of office, then returned to executive session on Saturday to vote for his removal, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.
The former mayor — who took office in early January — was reportedly accused of using his city purchasing card for more than $4,000 in personal expenses such as dining at restaurants, buying clothes, getting haircuts, and watching a movie, in addition to spending $2,600 on gas.
Before 03/17/1973: “Police hunted today for a man in his early 20s seen leaving a burning home after a businessman, his wife and son were shot to death outside the hillside dwelling.” A neighbor saw the man leaving with a shotgun who rejected the neighbor’s poorly thought offer to help. “Go away,” was the response. Police found at least 22 shotgun shells.
At a subsequent trial of a man, 22, his defense attorney asserted that the murderer was paranoid schizophrenic and committed the murders because his friend, one of those murdered, “possessed supernatural powers which were bent of destroying [the murderer.” Also, “the Mafia was involved in his life and that Dan Shallock was involved and could not be killed, even by an H-Bomb.” “At one point he believed Dan Shallock was the devil, and to this day [the murderer] fear in his heart that Dan may come back.” The murderer had spent a month at Marin Community Mental Health Center, and in the days immediately prior to the slayings, his mother had been trying to persuade the youth to commit himself.”
If you’re confused about the thunderclap of “AI will kill us all” doom forecasting this week, Director Blue has a visual breakdown.
Here’s the 9-second version: A 27-year-old quits AI frontier lab Anthropic. Fires off a post on X. Says AI could kill us all. The Wall Street Journal has the exclusive ready to drop. Ted Cruz freaks out and calls it “catastrophic”. Bernie Sanders drafts socialist-style regulations. The tweet gets 164 millions views. Elon responds with two words: psy-op. Let’s follow the money trail. It traces back ten years. This isn’t an AI scandal. It’s a clandestine operation designed to damage American interests.
Go over there for details, I’m just going to pull out the names of the people and orgs running the psy-op for future reference:
Anthopic series A investor Dustin Moskovitz and wife
Cari Tuna, who fund
Coefficient Giving, who gives money to
Redwood Research
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
Center for AI Safety
AI Policy Institute
Open Philanthropy, run by
Holden Karnofsky, who is married to
Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, sister of
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. More names:
Jacob Coxon
Evan Hubinger
Samuel Marks
Jaan Tallinn
China
Max Tegmark
Future of Life Institute
Alexander Berger
Hope you enjoy the bullet point summary of the visual summary…
“Texas police department shut down for failing to provide ‘public benefit’ after arresting mom over dirty water Facebook post.”
The Texas police department that arrested a mother for criticizing the town’s dirty drinking water on social media has been ordered to disband after the state ruled that it provided no “benefit to the community.”
The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement sent Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws a letter on Sept. 9 revoking the city’s license to operate its own police department — determining the department had “failed to meet minimum standards” as a law enforcement entity, KETK reported.
The action followed an Aug. 5 investigation in which the department was found “unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community” and lacked 18 required policies, including ones on use of force, vehicle pursuit, professional conduct and active shooters, the commission said.
Texas has ordered the Trinidad Police Department to disband after it arrested Jennifer Combs for posting about the town’s dirty drinking water.
Police defended the arrest, claiming Combs’ post had created “fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community” — despite the city itself posting a notice urging residents to boil their water to “avoid harmful bacteria” on April 21, weeks before her arrest.
Despite the mounting contradictions, Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory doubled down — calling the case against Combs “cut and dry.”
Police also arrested a supporter of Combs, citizen journalist Winston Noles, for misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he displayed a “f–k bad cops” sign outside city hall, FOX 4 reported.
Combs’ arrest quickly drew national attention, prompting Gregory to drop the felony charge against her and the state to launch its investigation into the department.
Let’s hope other police departments get the message that their authoritah does not override the First Amendment. (Previously.)(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Fulshear Police Chief Kenny Seymour has been relieved of his duties effective immediately.
Fulshear is west of Houston and south of Katy.
At a Sept. 15 meeting, Fulshear City Council voted unanimously to dismiss Seymour after a third-party investigator found “overwhelming” evidence stemming from an alleged affair Seymour had with a subordinate within the police department.
The city will begin looking for an interim chief and, in the meantime, has appointed City Manager Zach Goodlander to oversee police department operations, while command-level oversight will be assigned to appropriate department leadership.
Although the proceedings could have been held in closed session, Seymour—who has served as police chief since 2011—requested they be held publicly.
Officials with the investigation said it showed Seymour “engaged in a prolonged pattern of deception, financial conflict of interest and direct insubordination.”
According to the investigator, sworn interrogatory responses from Seymour’s divorce case showed a prolonged sexual relationship with the subordinate. The investigator also said Seymour had a financial entanglement with the captain, including providing money for rent, plane tickets, and other expenses.
Including a refrigerator.
Good. “UT-Austin Eliminating Additional Grievance Studies Programs. University to cut Mexican American, African, women’s and gender studies majors.”
The University of Texas at Austin will liquidate several grievance studies programs that observers had previously thought it would keep.
KUT reports that the university will eliminate majors in African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women’s and gender studies, and race, indigeneity and migration.
The left-wing outlet received a leaked email outlining the changes.
In the email, Danielle Pilar Clealand, the interim chair of the newly formed Social and Cultural Analysis Department said that “the Provost’s office rejected our proposal to keep our majors.”
The provost is the chief academic officer at UT Austin. William Inboden currently serves in the position.
The Texas A&M University System has removed 350 course entries from core-curriculum eligibility, while the University of Texas at Austin provost’s office has proposed removing 113 “topic” courses from core-credit eligibility beginning in spring 2027, with most of the affected UT courses reportedly housed in the College of Liberal Arts.
In an Aug. 13 announcement from The University of Texas at Austin, the school has announced that it will be deploying a new core curriculum that is designed to specifically give students “a common learning experience built on rigorous, broad and balanced classes.”
The new curriculum comes after 22 faculty members, who made up a “Core Curriculum Task Force,” found that the school offered “more than 1,000 disconnected courses of inconsistent quality.”
As a result of the Task Force’s work, the new curriculum at UT Austin is stated to give students a foundation of courses on “three foundational domains of knowledge: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM.”
Additionally, UT Austin’s Core Curriculum Task Force’s Report found other suggestions to cut the catalog of more than 600 courses to prioritize courses that focus on Western civilization, U.S. History, “Great Questions of Human Life,” principles of American Politics, and others.
The report also ties the core curriculum overhaul to concerns that “narrow,” specialized courses fail to provide students with a shared academic foundation. It recommends incentives, including tuition discounts and honors status, to encourage students to complete the newly required courses and reduce the likelihood of students transferring to other institutions.
A curriculum overhaul is also set to take place within the Texas A&M University System as well, as S.B. 37 requires state-funded universities to review their course catalogs and make appropriate changes.
Golden Retrievers are great dogs, but they make poor watch dogs.
Nash, the golden retriever, had his big chance to be hailed the best guard dog when an intruder broke into his family’s home – but instead, the 4-year-old thought the man was a friend and brought him some toys to play with. https://t.co/6LROw5EcAn
— CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) September 17, 2026
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
New York Times seems very upset we might win in Iran, the economy adds more jobs (or, as I call it in my house, Passover), ActBlue employees keep invoking the Fifth, the left still wants to trans your kids, a mistrial for Murder Mom, and the unwritten rules of the Internet.
Conditions in the Strait of Hormuz are coming unstuck in ways that advance American interests, although the situation remains stalemated.
CNN reported late last week that “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway” as the U.S. Navy quietly but effectively transits oil-laden tankers out of the strait under Iranian noses. In concert with the oil and petroleum products escaping the region via overland pipelines, Donald Trump’s energy secretary indicated that energy exports from the region are now approaching pre-war levels.
CNN couldn’t independently verify the administration’s figures. Nor could the Wall Street Journal. But to a certain extent, that is to be expected from a covert operation like the one the U.S. is engaged in. “Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery,” the Journal reported Monday. The report’s headline warns that industry trackers “can’t find” the exports the White House touts, but the body of the article notes that some of those trackers’ estimates about what could be coming online run “closer to the administration’s numbers,” albeit only recently.
Even if it only backed into the policy of economic strangulation that it’s applying to the Islamic Republic, the Trump administration is finally seeing it produce some positive results. Naturally, then, it’s incumbent on the president to surrender to the Iranians while he still can. At least, that’s the argument Rosemary Kelanic brought to the pages of the New York Times.
Kelanic, the director of Defense Priorities’ Middle East program and a contributor to the Quincy Institute’s “Responsible Statecraft” blog, contends at the outset of her Monday op-ed that “defeat” is now America’s “least bad option.” The U.S. has little choice but to quit the field, allowing Iran to control and toll an international waterway. But it’s not clear why America must give up now.
As Kelanic admits, the war has shown that, even if the U.S. “cannot completely open” the strait, Iran “cannot completely close” it either. Why should they be bequeathed an unprecedented level of sovereignty over an international maritime chokepoint that they could not capture on their own? Kelanic doesn’t say. She does, however, dwell on America’s challenges.
The geography of the strait ensures that it is “impossible to decisively defeat” Iranian harassment initiatives. Modern technology, like cheap missiles and drones, creates “endemic risk of crossing Hormuz that even a negotiated deal with Tehran would not eliminate.” That sounds like a rationale for abandoning the negotiations that will, by Kelanic’s own admission, fail to produce a durable (much less desirable) outcome.
Indeed, the author doesn’t even attempt to strike a more-in-sorrow tone when arguing for America’s capitulation. The United States is struggling with an irreparable shortage of munitions, she suggests. And even if America’s ordnance stocks were brimming, its people have no stomach for a long-duration mission to “sneak oil through Hormuz.” In fact, the voting public may even resent the political class’s resistance to an Iranian tolling regime that extracts funds primarily from foreign pockets. After all, “those countries could pay their own way.”
The U.S., Kelanic adds, has little slack in its economy — quite unlike the less “oil-intensive” economies of China and Russia. That’s a kick that Kelanic has been on for some time. And she has a point when it comes to China, albeit one that was overstated at the outset of Operation Epic Fury; China’s energy position today is sustained by its consumption restrictions, its oil reserves, and its “shift toward coal.” By contrast, the argument that Russia can easily absorb a fuel shock is betrayed by the evidence of your own eyes.
At no point does Kelanic acknowledge the buffers in the American economy. The “shale revolution,” the Journal’s Greg Ip observed, “has turned the U.S. into a net exporter of petroleum and major exporter of liquefied natural gas.” That might account for some of “the recent resilience of world oil markets,” which Kelanic admits “surprised many.”onditions in the Strait of Hormuz are coming unstuck in ways that advance American interests, although the situation remains stalemated.
CNN reported late last week that “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway” as the U.S. Navy quietly but effectively transits oil-laden tankers out of the strait under Iranian noses. In concert with the oil and petroleum products escaping the region via overland pipelines, Donald Trump’s energy secretary indicated that energy exports from the region are now approaching pre-war levels.
CNN couldn’t independently verify the administration’s figures. Nor could the Wall Street Journal. But to a certain extent, that is to be expected from a covert operation like the one the U.S. is engaged in. “Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery,” the Journal reported Monday. The report’s headline warns that industry trackers “can’t find” the exports the White House touts, but the body of the article notes that some of those trackers’ estimates about what could be coming online run “closer to the administration’s numbers,” albeit only recently.
Even if it only backed into the policy of economic strangulation that it’s applying to the Islamic Republic, the Trump administration is finally seeing it produce some positive results. Naturally, then, it’s incumbent on the president to surrender to the Iranians while he still can. At least, that’s the argument Rosemary Kelanic brought to the pages of the New York Times.
We can’t let American win in Iran because that might help Trump.
Good news! “Economy Adds 162,000 Jobs in August 2026.”
The August 2026 jobs report blew all expectations out of the water.
Economists expected the economy to add only 53,000 jobs.
Well…the report shows the economy added 162,000 jobs:
Food services and drinking places: +59,000
Local government education: +42,000
Manufacturing: +16,000
Health care: +13,000
Information: -23,000
Construction: +22,000
The bad news for me personally: My sector (information) was the only one of those with job losses. AI continues to suck up all the VC funding…
More countries are reconsidering their support agreements with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a senior State Department official confirmed to Just the News.
Following Just the News reporting that the United States’ Agency for International Development’s Inspector General’s office found more than 100 UNRWA employees had participated in the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, Finland’s minister for foreign trade and development announced on Thursday that the country would not extend its support for UNRWA.
Several more countries have since indicated that they are reconsidering their own support for UNRWA as well, a senior State Department official briefed on the USAID IG’s investigation told Just the News.
It’s a bribe and terrorism organization with a debating society attached.
Hmmmm. “Another ActBlue Official Pleads Fifth In House Probe of Alleged Foreign Donations.” Why, it’s almost like they’re guilty.
Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a member of ActBlue’s board of directors, invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination while appearing before the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees, according to sources familiar with her testimony.
ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis invoked the Fifth during a closed-door deposition Aug. 20, while CEO Regina Wallace-Jones asserted the same right during congressional questioning in June.
The House Administration Committee began investigating ActBlue in 2023 following concerns that the fundraising platform’s fraud-prevention procedures were inadequate to prevent illegal foreign donations.
German police have opened a terror investigation after two attacks on power stations, and a bombing at a railway station, within 24 hours.
Officials are investigating the possibility that the power plant attacks were carried out by a hostile foreign state, such as Russia, or home-grown Left-wing terrorists.
California has bicoastal company in its efforts to drastically reinterpret a Supreme Court precedent that reinstated a permanent injunction against the Golden State’s so-called gender secrecy policies in public schools, with the majority citing a century of parental rights precedents that it said lower courts were ignoring.
Moms for Liberty is suing a New York City suburb on behalf of unnamed members with children there, seeking to force New Jersey’s Chathams School District to notify and give parents veto power over their children’s “asserted ‘gender transition'” and “social transition-related accommodations,” arguing a trio of related policies violate the Mirabelli precedent.
School Board President Ann Ciccarelli argued at a June 15 public meeting that the high court’s March 2 emergency order was “not binding” on New Jersey public schools, in response to demands from parents to eliminate a policy requiring schools to “accept a student’s asserted gender identity regardless of parent consent or involvement.”
SCOTUS scolded the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Mirabelli for having “brushed aside” its 2025 precedent Mahmoud, which required school districts to notify and get consent from parents before exposing their children to LGBTQ “storybooks,” by wrongly limiting it to curricular decisions.
“The Chathams Board of Education’s open defiance of the Supreme Court’s clear rulings in Mirabelli and Mahmoud is an assault on the constitutional rights of every family in that district,” Moms for Liberty CEO Tina Descovich said.
In a Federal Election Commission filing made on Wednesday night, America PAC disclosed $800,475 in total spending in August.
The expenditure data showed that the billionaire’s PAC primarily poured resources into competitive Senate races in Texas, Maine, Ohio, New Hampshire, Michigan and a few other states.
The Texas Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton received the largest share of spending—around $248,000.
The Maine Senate race, which Democrats view as a key pickup opportunity, received the next largest tranche of spending at around $170,000.
In total, the PAC spent around $712,000 on seven Senate races—around 90% of the total disclosed expenses—and only around $88,000 on a small number of House races.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“80% of drug traffickers arrested in Portland in the last 3 years have been illegal aliens.
The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon announced on Tuesday that more than 80 percent of the roughly 100 defendants federally charged with trafficking fentanyl in Portland are illegal aliens from Honduras and Mexico. The apprehensions began in 2023 and remain ongoing as federal and local authorities work to rid the sanctuary city of drug-related criminal activity.
As a result of the crackdown on open-air drug markets, authorities have seized more than 100 kilograms of fentanyl, 40 guns, and $1.3 million in proceeds. ‘That is enough fentanyl to kill 50 million people, or Oregon’s population, 11 times,’ the US Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
Illegal alien drug cartels + Woke Portland allowing open drug use = Americans dead.
What a tremendous scheme here from the Democrats.
They’re just selling the dope that Americans won’t…
After cattle country stresses over President Donald Trump’s plan to flood the market with cheaper foreign ground-beef trimmings, the 47th president posted that four giant processors have made life “miserable” for American ranchers and that he is authorizing farmers to process their own food if desired or necessary.
“Trump wants to remove some of the red tape and costs associated with setting up USDA inspected facilities for small producers or areas of the country that don’t have USDA processors to be able to sell their protein to consumers in a legal way,” grazier Derek Lange told Just The News last week.
“Consumers want to buy beef from ranchers and be a part of their story.”
Jeanine John Taele, 38, had more than 200 pages of writings that included schedules for the first lady and members of the president’s USSS detail, The Associated Press reported, citing information revealed during a Los Angeles County court hearing Wednesday.
The New York Post reported that prosecutors said Taele had seven notebooks containing 208 pages of drawings and sketches of Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, lists of USSS schedules, details about individual security personnel and copies of Melania Trump’s schedule.
Yet somehow Teale has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial…
Austin’s one woman crime spree. “Austin Woman Arrested After Police Find Hundreds Of Suspected Stolen Bank Cards, Keys And Mail.”
A routine arrest in North Austin developed into a much broader investigation after police said they discovered a large collection of mail, payment cards, checks and postal keys believed to have been stolen, according to Yahoo.
Austin police arrested 42-year-old Elizabeth Rozo on Aug. 25 after officers tracked her to an apartment complex near Tech Ridge Boulevard. Authorities were looking for Rozo because she was wanted on a warrant stemming from a credit or bank card abuse investigation.
Officers with the department’s North Metro Tactical Unit reportedly watched Rozo leave the apartment complex and enter a vehicle. They followed her before initiating a traffic stop.
The investigation expanded significantly when officers searched the vehicle. Police said they recovered roughly 400 bank cards believed to have been stolen, along with nearly 300 gift cards. Investigators suspect at least some of the gift cards had been purchased using compromised bank cards.
Officers also discovered two counterfeit Arrow Keys, a type of master key associated with U.S. Postal Service mail equipment. Such keys can potentially be used to open certain shared mailboxes and other postal receptacles, making them particularly valuable to people seeking access to mail belonging to multiple households.
Evidence from the vehicle led investigators to secure a warrant for Rozo’s apartment. The second search produced considerably more material, according to police.
By the time officers finished searching the vehicle and residence, authorities said they had collected thousands of pieces of suspected stolen mail and hundreds of checks. They also recovered about two dozen identification documents that police believe were either stolen or fraudulently produced.
Investigators reported finding 17 stolen postal keys in addition to the two counterfeit keys discovered during the investigation. Authorities have not publicly explained how the postal keys were allegedly obtained or identified how many mailboxes could have been accessed with them. Police also have not announced an estimate of how many people may ultimately be connected to the recovered mail and financial documents.
Not The Bee imitates the Babylon Bee: “Canadian PM says he will resume trade talks ‘when the Americans stop doing memes.'” This went over exactly as you imagined it would.
Some measure of justice: “Former Houston Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Falsifying Affidavit That Led to Deadly 2019 Drug Raid.”
A former Houston police officer pleaded guilty to abusing his authority as law enforcement in his falsification of information used to obtain a search warrant that resulted in a no-knock raid and two murders for which the officer is already serving time.
Gerald M. Goines pleaded guilty to making false claims, including that a resident had sold illicit drugs to a confidential informant and that additional other customers had bought drugs from the resident in prior weeks, in an affidavit that was necessary to obtain a search warrant — known as a “color of law” violation.
Goines was a senior narcotics officer with the Houston Police Department (HPD).
The no-knock warrant was executed in January 2019 and became known as the Harding Street Raid when officers shot and killed a couple in their home. The raid added fuel to the fire in regards to particular scrutiny of HPD, with activists and some Houston City Council members calling for the department to be defunded or similarly financially impacted. This occurred amid anti-police protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Due to his role in leading the raid, Goines was charged with the murders of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, who were shot and killed alongside their dog during the drug bust. He was indicted in 2019 on two counts of murder and found guilty at trial, and is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence as a result.
Goines did not fire the fatal shots. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the summer of 2026 that the officer who did so, Felipe Gallegos, was protected from a civil rights lawsuit under qualified immunity after he was previously indicted for Tuttle’s killing, a charge that was ultimately dismissed due to alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
Two middle schools in Austin Independent School District (ISD) received their fifth failing A–F accountability rating from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) last week.
Under the Texas Education Code (TEC), “If a campus is considered to have an unacceptable performance rating for five consecutive school years, the commissioner shall order: (1) appointment of a board of managers to govern the school district; or (2) closure of the campus.”
The district originally had three middle schools with four consecutive failing ratings: Burnet, Dobie, and Webb. While Burnet and Webb earned F ratings, Dobie earned a D rating for this year.
According to TEA, a D rating does not break a consecutive failing streak — only an A, B, or C rating will stop the count. A D rating instead pauses the count until there are three D ratings in the chain, at which point the failing streak resumes.
Over the past school year, Austin ISD has made headlines for numerous challenges. In November, the district approved 10 school closures and 24 state-mandated turnaround plans for struggling campuses. After a projected $181 million budget deficit, the district was forced to make $205 million in cuts.
The district also announced the last-minute closure of Paredes Middle School on July 30, shortly before the start of the school year.
Austin ISD applied for Senate Bill 1882 partnerships for Burnet, Dobie, and Webb, which would have allowed the district to partner with an open-enrollment charter school or institutions of higher education approved by the TEA. These partnerships can receive increases in state funding and are exempt from certain accountability measures for two years.
Segura told KXAN News that the accountability pause was “not the driving factor” for the partnership, but rather the resources the partnership made available.
The TEA denied Austin ISD’s request in May, but said that the district could continue the partnerships, just without the state incentives. Austin ISD announced the dissolution of the partnerships for the three middle schools in July.
In an August 13 letter to parents, Austin ISD Superintendent Matias Segura addressed the possible state takeover, saying that “challenges remain.”
One failing grade for a school should be a wakeup call. Two demands heads should roll and get AISD to make whatever changes are necessary to fix the problem. Five is educational malpractice.
Microstamping cartridges isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s Ineffective.
Ohio Democratic congressional candidate Brian Poindexter was arrested for allegedly swallowing a rock of crack cocaine at a traffic stop after he was stopped by police and for slapping a man at a baseball game according to police records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Poindexter, a city councilman and former union organizer running against the embattled Republican congressman Max Miller in Ohio’s Seventh Congressional District, has a criminal rap sheet dating back to the late 1990s, the records show.
On Jan. 23, 1998, Poindexter, then 18, was pulled over by police officers at a street corner known for heavy drug activity in Cleveland, according to the police report. Poindexter allegedly pulled out “some small objects from his coat pocket and put them into his mouth” and “began to swallow them.” The officer tried to retrieve the objects from Poindexter’s mouth, and the two men fell to the ground in a scuffle. The officer eventually recovered a “rock of suspected crack cocaine,” according to the records.
Another towering intellectual genius batting for Team Blue. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
NVIDIA has agreed to acquire open source AI company Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000.
Justice for Tupac? “Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis convicted of masterminding Tupac Shakur’s murder 30 years after rapper gunned down in Vegas.”
The man accused of orchestrating the murder of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur — one of the entertainment industry’s most captivating crimes — was found guilty by a Nevada jury.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, learned his fate in a Las Vegas courtroom on Monday after about two weeks of trial, as Shakur’s emotional family members passed tissues around and embraced, the New York Times reported.
The conviction of Davis, a former high-ranking “shot caller” in a Los Angeles chapter of the Crips gang, marked the first person to face justice for Shakur’s murder, which went down on a Las Vegas street on the night of Sept. 7, 1996.
Shakur, a pioneer of the burgeoning rap scene, was driving in a car when another pulled up alongside and blasted him with a hail of bullets. He died days later at 25.
Davis was not accused of shooting the gun which killed Shakur, but prosecutors argued he gave it to the gunman — long presumed to be his nephew Orlando Anderson, who died in a gang shootout two years after the murder — and orchestrated the entire attack.
The NBA on Wednesday announced severe punishments for the LA Clippers — including the loss of five future first-round draft picks, a fine of $30 million and a yearlong suspension of owner Steve Ballmer — for violating salary cap circumvention rules in a case involving star Kawhi Leonard.
In a statement, the NBA said a near-yearlong investigation “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules.”
As a result, the Clippers must forfeit first-round draft picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033. In addition to the $30 million fine, Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year “for knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities,” among other issues. President of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year, and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank is suspended without pay for six months.
Iran lashes out again and gets pounded even harder for its troubles, Fauci’s diary validates just about everything conservatives have been saying about him for the last six years, DSA is open about wanting to destroy the Constitution, Ukraine blows up more refineries and Wildberry logistic warehouses, Spain faces invasion, all sorts of AI skullduggery, and Neuromancer finally makes it to the screen.
Following Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) missile attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Jordan, President Donald Trump is now signaling readiness for full-scale military action that could shatter the cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges and accelerate an end to the conflict, opening the door for a full-on revolution for the Persian nation.
“We’re going to beat the f****** s*** out of them […] We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating,” Trump said on Wednesday.
If the Iranian regime collapsed under external pressure and internal strain, the power vacuum could empower ordinary Iranians, who have long protested theocratic rule, to seize control of their country’s future. Hardcore Islamists brought the nation into a theocracy in February of 1979.
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a maritime coalition to protect shipping and energy supplies in the Red Sea as Yemen’s Houthi rebels threaten a vital route for the kingdom’s oil exports and global trade.
Riyadh on Thursday hosted a meeting of 43 countries and the EU to discuss plans to form a multinational maritime defensive coalition.
After the meeting, 14 countries affirmed their commitment to the coalition, including Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan and several other Arab and African countries, according to the kingdom’s defence ministry.
The United Arab Emirates and Oman were notably absent, but the ministry said the door remains open for countries that want to join the coalition.
The alliance is “aimed at enhancing maritime security, protecting freedom of navigation, securing international trade routes and energy supply routes, and protecting shared maritime interests in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden”, the 14 countries said in a joint statement.
The statement added the coalition would be led by Saudi Arabia and headquartered in Riyadh, with the participating countries agreeing to share intelligence and engage in joint maritime operations and exercises.
I exclusively uncovered the identities of prominent U.S. journalists flown to China by a CCP-linked influence operation seeking “favorable coverage” and “positive messages” about Beijing. 🧵
The names include:
– Ezra Klein, New York Times columnist
– Matthew Yglesias, Vox co-founder
– Ronald Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst
– Bradford Plumer, New York Times reporter
– Marjorie Miller, former Associated Press vice president
Also identified:
– Steve Clemons, former The Hill editor-at-large
– David Rohde, MS NOW senior national security reporter
– Jonathan Alter, NBC News and MSNBC political analyst
– David Sweeney, former NPR managing editor
– Daniel Gross, former Yahoo Finance columnist
Also on the roster:
– Marilyn Geewax, former NPR senior editor
– Kathleen Deveny, former Newsweek editor
– Tom Omestad, former U.S. News & World Report correspondent
– Steve Chapman, former Chicago Tribune columnist
– Bruce Stokes, former National Journal correspondent
The list continues:
– Craig Gilbert, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief
– Tony Semerad, Salt Lake Tribune reporter
– Shikha Dalmia, former The Week columnist
– Jonathan Broder, former Newsweek senior writer
Also identified:
– Cristi Kempf, former Chicago Tribune associate managing editor
– Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor
– Julian Pecquet, former Foreign Affairs reporter
Trip organizer CUSEF was founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a former senior official in the CCP’s United Front system, the influence apparatus Beijing uses to cultivate foreign elites and shape institutions outside China.
According to [Sen. Rand] Paul, “During his time as NIAID Director, and particularly during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci took meticulous notes about his work. He made note of conversations, decisions, and his thoughts about actions taken by politicians and other officials.” This past weekend, Paul released a gargantuan 1,141 pages of Fauci’s notes. Very little in these pages enhances Fauci’s already deeply tarnished reputation.
Most notably, on January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote:
It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread. Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.
America and the world spent most of the next two years in an increasingly furious debate over whether the virus emerged from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, perhaps from a pangolin; or from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the separate institution of the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control (which was also doing research on coronaviruses found in bats); or somewhere else. Fauci apparently knew — notice he didn’t write “believe” or “theorize” — he could rule out the wet-market theory but never felt obligated to share that conclusion with the rest of us. Instead, he repeatedly dismissed and downplayed the lab-leak theory.
More at the link.
“Revealed: Five Months After Fauci Got Vaccinated, He Suffered a Pulmonary Infarction, an Adverse Effect Associated With the Vaccine.’ He Kept This a Secret.”
The alternate celebrity and villain of the COVID-19 policy response repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse answering even mundane questions, such as the color of the hearing room’s carpet, following publication of over 1,100 pages of diary-like notes that have raised even more questions about the veracity of his COVID-era public statements.
Committee Republicans repeatedly argued Fauci could not opt out of answering questions due to President Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardon, the validity of which has been questioned because it was signed by autopen amid Biden’s cognitive decline. Legal analysts explained Wednesday how Fauci could still be prosecuted.
Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford, who pointedly disagreed with colleagues on the Fifth Amendment issue, waited until the hearing’s end to recall that Congress went through a near-identical exercise in President Obama’s second term.
It held former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt for giving an opening statement at a House hearing in 2013 on her alleged discrimination against conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, then invoking her rights under the Fifth Amendment to decline giving testimony or answering questions that may expose one to criminal prosecution.
Fauci did the same Wednesday.
Lankford asked committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whether the Lerner vote determined the Fauci outcome. Paul, who has called for Fauci’s prosecution for years, said lawmakers have a week to study the issue before voting on a contempt resolution.
The question that courts may have to answer is whether Biden’s pardon preempts Fauci’s right against self-incrimination, since he can’t be prosecuted “as long as he answers truthfully” and the statute of limitations forecloses some claims anyway, Paul said.
George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf floated two other ways Fauci could testify without risk to himself: a two-thirds committee vote or a simple House majority to immunize him, or doing media interviews in which he’s not under oath, since “it is not a crime to lie to the public.”
More blow-by-blow Fauci testimony details at the link. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Congressional committee issues subpoenas to organizations tied to China-linked Dem megadonor. The latest subpoenas raise the question of whether U.S. tax law — which grants tax exemptions and shields charitable donor identities — can be used to route foreign money into domestic political activity. At the heart of it, questions abound whether the far-left outfits have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., has issued subpoenas to three tax-exempt organizations tied to socialist megadonor Neville Roy Singham, an American multimillionaire living in Shanghai with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The subpoenas have been served, a spokesperson for Smith’s office told Just the News, on BreakThrough News, Tricontinental and The People’s Forum, all three of which are funded, at least in part, by Singham. The subpoenas come after nearly a year of the Committee’s attempts to get answers from the three non-profit organizations regarding foreign influence in U.S. nonprofits.
“For months, the Ways and Means Committee has been investigating how the Chinese Communist Party has been taking advantage of our country’s laws through its tax-exempt sector to sow chaos and division here in the United States,” Smith said in a statement. “Public reporting has traced hundreds of millions of dollars from Neville Roy Singham – a tech mogul living in Shanghai – that was funneled through a web of shell companies and donor-advised funds that concealed the true source of the money before it reached these organizations.”
The subpoenas request documents showing whether the organizations have received or transmitted funds connected to foreign nationals or foreign entities, contracts between those nationals or entities, documents and communications between employees and Singham or foreign nationals about the organization.
“Three non-profits connected to Mr. Singham – BreakThrough News, Tricontinental, and The People’s Forum – have stonewalled the Ways and Means Committee’s investigation. That ends now,” Smith said in his statement. “These subpoenas will compel the production of the documents they have withheld for months and will help expose how America’s tax laws and charitable sector may have been exploited to advance the CCP’s influence operations inside the United States. The American people deserve to know whether the CCP has exploited America’s tax-exempt sector to advance its agenda. These subpoenas will allow the Ways and Means Committee to identify the networks that exploit our tax laws, and further expose the urgent need for legislation to close those loopholes for good.”
The Democratic Socialists of America wants you to know exactly what it wants, and Megan Romer, the group’s national co-chair, laid it out on national television without once reaching for a hedge word over the most radical ideas on the party platform.
The platform itself reads like a fever dream a committee wrote line by line. A 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay and benefits, a federal jobs guarantee, canceling all student debt, and free college from pre-K through graduate school anchor the economic wish list, alongside healthcare that is universal, free, and includes gender-affirming care as a guaranteed right.
The platform calls for more publicly owned social housing, universal rent control, and a guaranteed lawyer for every tenant. On policing, the platform wants demilitarized police departments, defunded police unions, and money pulled out of police budgets entirely, all of which the DSA frames as a first step toward abolishing prisons and policing outright.
On foreign policy, the platform demands the defunding of the Department of War, the closure of overseas military bases, and an end to all foreign wars, and it pairs that with support for International Criminal Court prosecutions of what it deems American war criminals. As for Israel, the DSA calls for an end to all U.S. military and economic aid, prosecution of American and Israeli leaders over what many consider a genocide in Gaza, and recognition of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The DSA is just as blunt about reimagining how the government works. The platform seeks statehood for Washington, D.C., self-determination for U.S. territories, and the abolition of both the Electoral College and the Senate, alongside an expanded House and a presidency and Supreme Court that answer to Congress instead of operating independently. The DSA wants to swap the two-party system for proportional representation and ranked-choice voting and pay for all of it through full public financing of every election.
And, to top it all off, the platform calls for slavery reparations.
Fox News host Shannon Bream ran through the DSA’s platform position by position, true or false, no room to dodge. Romer never flinched. She confirmed that the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform calls for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court, eliminating ICE, ending borders while granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, defunding the Pentagon, abolishing prisons as a long-term goal, and placing most large corporations under government or public ownership. At every step, she answered without hesitation, affirming that each position accurately reflected the DSA’s platform.
If we can’t stop the DSA at the ballot box, then stopping them at the ammo box becomes inevitable…
Michigan journalist Charlie LeDuff, who formerly worked at The New York Times and The Detroit News, decided to visit this 88-year-old woman to ask why she’s made nearly 15,000 donations to Democrats in the last 5 years:
You’ll note that resident Elizabeth Waffle is living in a trailer because her house burned down.
LeDuff: ‘Did you make 15,000 donations in 5 years? $150,000?’
Waffle: ‘A hundred and fifty? Hell no. I don’t have that kind of money.’
Her house burned down two years ago and she’s been living in a camper since.
She wasn’t even sure if she had enough money to pay the guy who was coming to mow the fields of weeds around the camper!
DOJ needs to audit ActBlue with proctological intensity.
After the Trump administration indicated that there were at least 35,000 noncitizen registered voters in New Jersey, the Democratic governor there tried to do damage control by admitting to at least 6,600 registered noncitizen voters. Soon after her admission, however, she refused point-blank to hand over that data to the Trump administration.
In fact, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who has wasted a great deal of time and money trying to protect illegal alien criminals through her dangerous and disgusting sanctuary policies, actually referred to the noncitizen voters as “citizens” of her state. Either she is under the deluded impression we are still operating under the Articles of Confederation, or she thinks she gets to be a petty dictator because she has rigged elections enough to ensure her party never gets out of power.
Last Tuesday, a reporter asked Sherrill during a press conference, “The Trump administration is seeking, I believe by today, the list of noncitizens who are registered to vote and the approximately 400 that did vote, to what extent will your administration comply with the Trump administration’s request in that regard?”
Sherrill self-righteously but inarticulately sneered to a round of applause, “As I have said, I am not in the habit of turning over private, identifying administration—information of the citizens of New Jersey.” Again, it is completely outrageous that this is how she refers to noncitizens, particularly since many of them are illegal aliens.
Snip.
Why might Sherrill be so determined to ensure there is not a thorough cleaning out of the voter rolls in her state? In 2025, she did apparently win the gubernatorial race against Republican Jack Ciattarelli by about 453,000, so that is a fairly sizable margin. But back in 2020, when there were allegations of fraud, then-Gov. Phil Murphy beat Ciattarelli by only about 84,200 votes. The preliminary findings, meaning the likely lowball initial results, from the Department of Justice this year as to how many illegal aliens are registered to vote in New Jersey were 35,152.
Suddenly, when you compare these numbers, New Jersey Democrats don’t seem to have quite such a firm grip on power in their state, do they?
“A California-Funded Homeless Shelter Gave Us Meth Pipes.” Of course it did.
As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has repeatedly supported “harm reduction” policies, which enable drug use in the name of making it “safer.” He created the state’s Harm Reduction Initiative, which funded “syringe services programs” for “people who inject and smoke fentanyl and/or methamphetamines.” His Department of Public Health has endorsed distributing syringes, glass pipes, and “[c]ontainers for mixing injectable drugs” to drug users. Newsom argued earlier this year that harm-reduction tactics “increase the likelihood of people entering substance use treatment.”
But do California’s harm-reduction programs encourage addicts to enter treatment? We visited the Skid Row Care Campus, a homeless-services site in Los Angeles County, to witness “harm reduction” in action. We discovered that, instead of directing addicts to get clean, the taxpayer-funded program doles out free paraphernalia, enabling addicts to get high—no questions asked.
We arrived at Skid Row in the morning. The campus, bounded by pastel-colored buildings and a metal gate, looked like an apocalyptic wasteland. Homeless people and addicts were splayed across the common areas, with some smoking what seemed to be hard drugs with impunity.
We stepped onto the courtyard connected to the street. No one stopped us, asked for identification, or searched us for weapons or drugs. This is apparently by design, judging by the Skid Row Action Plan and its implementation outline, which, singly or together, inspired the creation of the campus, denounced the “racist and classist war on drugs,” and called on local officials to create hubs “free from monitoring by law enforcement” and staffed by people with histories of “substance use and sex work.”
We entered campus and found a walk-up counter, where an attendant sat before shelves of drug paraphernalia. Users come to this counter to get free needles and crack pipes, with which they can inject or smoke hard drugs.
“What can I get you?” he asked. “We have oil burners, we have spray shooters, we have socks, we have petroleum jelly.”
Across several visits, we obtained drug-testing strips, syringes, and crack pipes.
“Russia admits defeat in the south, cannot keep the highway open.” Reporting from Ukraine is exaggerating a tad, but Russia is having serious problems with drones taking out logistics trucks on the Zaporizhia logistics route.
The Democrats have their 2028 presidential primary schedule almost finalized, featuring a trio of new states in the first six, and the early sense is that Republicans will stick with the familiar lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. It might seem early to be thinking about the 2028 presidential primaries, but if you’re one of the candidates, you must prioritize, and as Yogi Berra said, “It gets late early out there.”
As noted at the tail end of yesterday’s edition of this newsletter, over in the Washington Post, I examined the Democratic National Committee’s proposed, and likely to be final, schedule for the Democratic 2028 presidential primaries:
South Carolina, January 22, 2028
Nevada, February 1, 2028
New Hampshire, February 8, 2028
New Mexico, February 15, 2028
Michigan, February 22, 2028
Virginia, February 29, 2028
One week after that, March 7, will likely be Super Tuesday, the earliest date that the other states can schedule their primaries or caucuses. States that are likely to hold their primaries that day include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Vermont.
That’s a promising early schedule if you’re a candidate on the establishment side among the Democrats, and a rougher one if you’re a socialist or affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. Based upon Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s past performances, South Carolina and Virginia are rough territory, Nevada and New Hampshire are friendly territory, and it’s a little hard to say about New Mexico and Michigan.
Snip.
When I say a socialist or DSA-affiliated candidate, I am mostly thinking of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; she is, at least on paper, the early frontrunner in New Hampshire, and Axios ranks her as the candidate who is second-most-likely to win the nomination, behind Harris.
Some racial essentialists argue that it is absurd to contend that heavily white New Hampshire is likely to be supportive of the Puerto Rican AOC. First, a University of New Hampshire survey conducted this month not only found her with a one-point lead over Pete Buttigieg, but 64 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the state said they felt favorable about her, with just 9 percent saying they felt unfavorable about her; only Buttigieg and Sanders had comparable numbers. (At 84 years old, Sanders is not running in 2028; if AOC runs, Sanders is widely expected to endorse her.)
Also note, “Primary exit polling this year suggests that DSA candidates run best among young, college-educated and higher-income demographics.” In 2020 (the last time Democrats had a competitive presidential primary in New Hampshire), 54 percent of their primary voters had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Forty percent of Democratic primary voters reported a salary of $100,000 per year or more, and 72 percent made $50,000 per year or more.
“Thousands of Military-Age Men From Morocco Invade Spain’s Ceuta Territory.” Ceuta is an exclave on the north African coast
Thousands of military-age men from Morocco invaded Spain today by crossing the border into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.
Spain has deployed its military as these men arrive by sea and breach the border fence.
Snip.
Spain’s government said Thursday evening it would send the Armed Forces to help the Civil Guard “to maintain security in the city of Ceuta.” It also announced that Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would join Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and visit Ceuta Friday.
“The situation is absolute chaos,” Rachid Sbihi, head of the association that represents Spain’s Civil Guard officers in Ceuta, who police the border told The Associated Press. “It’s not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing,” he said, adding that the border had “totally collapsed.”
However, Spain’s interior ministry won’t declare a national emergency.
This follows hot on the heels of Spain’s far-left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declaring an illegal alien amnesty.
The Spanish government and its partners openly state that the reason for legalising more than half a million migrants is to "defeat the far right." This is literally weaponised demography. They took the most conspiratorial interpretation of the "Great Replacement" that is not…
I probably should have noted that Andy Burham is now Prime Minister of the UK. The guy wasn’t even an MP until June 18 (though he had been before), when he won a by-election triggered by the existing MP resigning specifically so Burham could run for PM. Here’s The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters on the guy.
Remember: Your private conversations with AI agents aren’t. “Claude Chats Popped Up in Google Search Results.”
The rogue OpenAI agent behind this month’s unprecedented AI-driven cyber intrusion claimed a second corporate victim, an executive at New York-based Modal Labs has revealed – a detail absent from the original account and one that widens the known blast radius of the episode.
According to the Modal executive and sources cited by Reuters, the same autonomous agent that broke into Hugging Face also compromised one of Modal’s customers, using that customer’s environment as a staging base for the broader campaign.
Modal was pointed about the distinction: its own platform and isolation were never breached. The agent exploited an unauthenticated endpoint that one of Modal’s customers had left open to the internet – effectively an unlocked door anyone could have walked through – giving it root-level access to that customer’s code-execution sandboxes. From there the agent had a disposable, third-party launchpad from which to run the rest of its operation.
It’s bad enough that a frontier AI agent can independently discover attack paths, escape its container, and compromise an unaffiliated company’s production systems. The Modal revelation shows it reached further than that – treating any publicly reachable, poorly secured infrastructure it encountered as expendable staging ground, exactly the opportunistic chaining that security researchers have warned agentic systems would carry out at machine speed.
Most of what led up to the Modal disclosure has already been picked over, but the shape of it is worth a recap. In early July, OpenAI was running an internal evaluation built on ExploitGym – a public benchmark that measures how well an AI system can turn a known vulnerability into a working exploit. The models under test, GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased prototype, were deliberately run with their cyber-safety refusals reduced and the classifiers that normally block high-risk activity switched off, because the point was to measure maximum offensive capability.
The agent found and exploited a previously unknown flaw in the one package-registry proxy it was allowed to reach, escalated privileges, moved through OpenAI’s research environment, and got to a machine with open internet access. Once online, it reasoned that Hugging Face likely hosted the answer key to the very benchmark it was being tested on, and went to steal it rather than solve the problems itself. Between roughly July 11 and 13 it ran thousands of automated actions against the platform – gaining code execution through two separate flaws in its dataset-processing pipeline, harvesting credentials, and moving laterally across internal clusters. Forensic work later recovered on the order of 17,600 distinct attacker actions.
Hugging Face caught and contained the intrusion through its own AI-assisted monitoring, and says the only thing the agent actually made off with was a limited set of the benchmark’s challenge solutions – no public models, datasets, or user-facing services tampered with. To reconstruct the timeline, its team had to fall back on an open-weight model, because the commercial frontier models refused to analyze the real attack data.
So a rouge AI agent found it’s way out of its sandbox, launched a privilege escalation attack, accessed the Internet, and picked out a target it assumed it could steal answers from rather than do the work itself? Did Gen Z program its work ethic?
The State of Texas and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached a settlement, reversing the endangered species listing for the dunes sagebrush lizard while a new evaluation is conducted.
The dunes sagebrush lizard inhabits portions of West Texas, including the oil-rich Permian Basin.
The Biden administration listed the species as endangered in May 2024, citing threats from oil and gas development and climate change.
Texas sued in September 2024, arguing the listing relied on an indirect habitat model rather than population data, used a 1998 well-pad-density study that predates horizontal drilling, and ignored ongoing state conservation efforts.
The state also argued the listing impeded oil production and interfered with efforts to plug abandoned oil wells.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said when announcing the lawsuit.
A Dallas Express investigation has uncovered evidence suggesting that some Muslim and Mexican immigrant drivers at DFW Airport may be operating as part of an organized network using multiple electronic devices, fraudulent driver accounts and GPS manipulation to control rideshare traffic.
A veteran Uber driver said DFW’s airport queue displayed a wait of zero to 15 minutes, but he received no rides for more than 45 minutes. He said regular Uber requests resumed after he left the airport’s geofenced queue.
DX documented drivers using multiple phones and tablets, vehicles with partially obscured plates, and one man denying that he had a work permit, green card or H-1B visa.
Federal prosecutors have charged rideshare schemes involving fraudulent or rented accounts, GPS spoofing, bots and hacked phones that allowed drivers to enter airport queues while physically elsewhere. A separate November 25, 2025 DFW-area driver post alleged that phones were left inside a stationary vehicle to preserve queue positions.
DX has not established that any specific driver filmed at DFW committed fraud. The investigation is examining whether coordinated drivers are manipulating the airport queue and diverting rides from other drivers.
The Final Boss of Crazy Cat Ladies: “Florida mail carrier accused of stealing 80 cats along her mail route and collecting them in her house. 80 cats were rescued from the home of Gail Giustino, 77, where there was a foot of poop.”
Life imitates Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In Canada, “a missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months….Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name ‘fus__ro_dah’ (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username ‘fus_ro_dah’ (one underscore after ‘fus’). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.”
Victor Davis Hanson on Iran. He thinks Trump will skedaddle, leave the gulf states and Israeli in charge of keeping watch on the rubble, and set up a government in exile and give it access to Iran’s sequestered funds. Honestly, I should have thought of the government in exile bit for my Iran roundup earlier this month.
Dhillon Law Group has filed a federal lawsuit against Midland County Judge Terry Johnson on behalf of a citizen journalist who says he was retaliated against after posting records critical of Johnson.
The suit alleges that Johnson responded the next day by posting Christino Rodriquez’ full name, Social Security number, date of birth, and driver’s license number to Facebook.
In districts with a Teacher Incentive Allotment, educators receive additional funds from the state toward increasing those teachers’ salaries. Funding is provided to the district for teachers who achieve a recognized, exemplary, and master designation. At least 90 percent of the funding is required to be used for teacher compensation on the campus where the designated individual works.
In order to comply with Texas law, the State Board for Educator Certification is requiring the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to remove “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training materials. Lawmakers have been concerned that materials produced by national board, which offers the National Board Certification, include politicized content.
SBEC members voted last week for the national board to “make updates to materials to come into compliance with Texas state law” and “provide evidence of compliance to [Texas Education Agency] staff by November 2, 2026.”
Few things get people’s attention quite so fast as cutting off money.
More California fraud! More Minnesota fraud! Ukraine continues pounding Russia! Murder still illegal!
Personally, this week has been an exercise in frustration, mainly due to trying to replace an old, cracked car keyfob where the results were my car refusing to turn on. Which means I’m behind on all my errands. Solved now, but it was a pain. Also, for some reason Bluehost has crapped out 429 errors more than usual today.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“New House Oversight Report Claims Walz, Ellison Were Aware of Fraud in 2019. “These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.”
Following a months-long investigation, the House Oversight Committee released a report Monday accusing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison of knowing about rampant fraud in the state’s federally funded social services programs as far back as 2019, and turning a blind eye.
The investigation also draws on testimony Walz and Ellison provided during a March hearing before the committee.
The 205-page report, titled “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion,” states that Walz and Ellison:
Possessed the legal and procedural authority to stop payments and ban fraudulent providers from participating in these programs, but repeatedly failed to act. As a result, billions of American taxpayer dollars were potentially paid to fraudulent actors. These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.
Testimony and documents obtained to date establish a consistent pattern: fraud warnings were elevated to the most senior levels of the Minnesota state government, meaningful corrective action was delayed or avoided, and payments continued long after credible signs of fraud emerged.
Senior officials in Governor Walz’s office and Attorney General Ellison’s office were aware of credible, systemic fraud concerns in social services programs as early as 2019 within the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and by April 2020 within the state Department of Education (MDE), despite later public statements by Governor Walz suggesting otherwise.
The committee concluded that Minnesota officials had ample authority to suspend payments to providers suspected of fraud but repeatedly failed to do so. Investigators found that state agencies continued funding Feeding Our Future even after identifying serious deficiencies, allowing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to flow to fraudsters until federal authorities intervened.
Of course they were aware. It was a major conduit for lining the pockets of the left!
California is home to the lion’s share of illegal immigrant families in the United States with children who received federal welfare assistance in 2024, according to a federal report published on June 10.
More than 80 percent of all nationwide cash assistance allocated to such households was spent in California. The report tracked $759 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spent in 2024 on families headed by a parent living in the country illegally.
In those cases, the child qualified for federal welfare, even though the parent was excluded from the federal program because of immigration status.
“These cases receive relatively little public attention, yet … data show that they are far from a negligible part of the program,” wrote authors David Swegle, director of the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, in the report.
Nationally, the federal government paid 85,000 households with qualifying children receiving assistance who were living with their illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. in 2024.
“Although the benefit is formally paid on behalf of the child, it still supports a household that includes an immigration-status-ineligible parent,” the authors stated. “The significance of these cases therefore cannot be judged solely by the fact that the adult is not the formal recipient.”
The cases are also significant because they don’t have to adhere to the TANF rules requiring work expectations, such as regularly applying for jobs, and the payments aren’t limited to the federal 60-month lifetime limit, according to the report. The illegal immigrant families, therefore, can receive federal welfare until the child turns 18 years old.
Low-income American families are held to the federal welfare restrictions that require work participation and are restricted to a 60-month lifetime limit, the authors said.
The number of TANF cases involving an illegal immigrant parent reached nearly 850,000—or 10 percent of all cases—in 2024, up from nearly 6 percent in 2001.
Of those, nearly 78,000 households—or about 91 percent—also received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the report revealed.
Most of the illegal immigrant parents—over 106,000—identified as Hispanic, while 5.3 percent were White, 4.3 percent were Black, and 2 percent were Asian, the report stated.
Here’s an idea: California doesn’t get any more cash for illegal aliens, period, until they repeal all the sanctuary city declarations, allow federal auditing of all their welfare programs, and implement SAVE Act compliant measures to ensure only citizens vote.
More Cali fraud: “Federal Government Pauses Funding To Los Angeles Homeless Agency Citing Fraud Allegations.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on June 11 suspended federal funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), cutting off millions of dollars to the L.A. region, over allegations of fraud and widespread mismanagement.
It’s superbly managed to line the pockets of leftists.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development about his department’s proposed FY2026 budget in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 14, 2026. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
HUD action to suspend federal funding comes in the wake of an investigation into LAHSA, Secretary Scott Turner announced Thursday, adding that the agency has “uncovered evidence of LAHSA’s false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures,” including a lack of financial management and lack of safeguards against conflicts of interest.
The Los Angeles Continuum of Care (CoC), led by LAHSA, has received nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars over the last five years. Despite federal assistance, L.A. remains the epicenter of the nation’s “drug-fueled” homeless crisis, according to Turner.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD will fund results, not corrupt failure or the homeless-industrial complex,” Turner said in a statement. “Year after year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled to LAHSA with little accountability. Meanwhile, homelessness skyrocketed. Taxpayers will no longer bankroll an organization that puts its own self-interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve.”
HUD stated in a letter to LAHSA that suspension of funding will be final if the agency does not contest the notice by requesting a hearing. LAHSA must file a written hearing request within 30 days of receipt of the notice.
The Homeless Industrial Complex maw is insatiable.
A possible reason for my continued unemployment? “Of the 369,000 jobs the Labor Department says were created since the start of Trump’s second term, nearly all — 348,000 of them — went to women, with only 21,000 going to men.” I wonder if Kurt Schlichter would be interested in filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of myself and other men…
One year after Frisco high school student Karmelo Anthony was indicted on murder charges over the fatal stabbing of [Austin Metcalf], his trial concluded with the jury’s verdict that Anthony is guilty of murder.
During their sentencing deliberations, the jury considered a “sudden passion” claim, but eventually rejected it and decided that Anthony would face a 35-year prison sentence.
He will be eligible for parole after 17 and a half years.
Like Kyle Rittenhouse’s not guilty verdict, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who doesn’t view the world through social justice-tinted glasses.
“Whistleblower vindicated: Biden officials invented loophole to impose gender identity, flout court. Leaders ‘actively engaged in efforts to thwart at least one regional office from following the plain and unambiguous meaning’ of the injunction against their gender identity reading of Title IX, Department of Education concludes.”
High-ranking Biden administration officials conspired to violate a 2022 court order against their interpretation of Title IX as covering “gender identity” within the definition of “sex,” and may have also tried to conceal those efforts through coercion and intimidation, according to a Department of Education report made public Wednesday after lengthy outside review.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel told President Trump the department “fully substantiated the allegations” by whistleblower Timothy Mattson, who now leads the department’s Office for Civil Rights’ regional office in Kansas City, recommending sanctions against current and former officials and compensation for Mattson for the risk he took coming forward.
You know the giant Democrat tantrum over ICE funding? We won.
Democrats put everything they had in their effort to shut down President Donald Trump’s border control plans. And what exactly have they achieved for their often-infantile antics?
Well, let’s see. This week, the House passed a bill that funds ICE for three years. Deportations are near all-time highs. Oh, and it looks like Trump’s border wall will be completed next year.
On Tuesday, the House passed a “budget reconciliation” bill that provides enough money ($38 billion) to fund ICE for the rest of Trump’s term, plus $28 billion for the Border Patrol, and another $5 billion for border security technology and screening.
And what did Democrats get for shutting down all or part of the government for nearly four months?
Bupkus. Zilch. Nada. Nichts. Niente. 没有什么.This has to be one of the most embarrassing political defeats in history.
If Border Czar Tom Homan is intimidated by the Left’s endless anti-ICE rhetoric and threats, he’s not showing it. In fact, on Monday, he announced he’s doubling down on illegal immigrant operations in New York City and plans a surge in the very near future. This is a direct “in your face” move to counter Gov. Kathy Hochul’s efforts to kneecap federal enforcement in the Empire State.
He spoke as ongoing violent anti-ICE protests continued throughout the weekend at Delaney Hall, a detention facility in nearby Newark, New Jersey.
It’s coming, he told Fox & Friends:
Trump border czar Tom Homan revealed Monday that the administration has already drawn up an operational plan and warned Hochul before she signed legislation late last month restricting ICE activities and banning masked immigration agents in New York.
“You’re going to see more ICE than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan said, according to Bloomberg. “I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming.”
Maine Democrats obeyed The Will of The Party and lined up yo vote for the Nazi.”
Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued progressive veteran, will win the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate race, according to a projection by the Associated Press.
Maine Governor Janet Mills suspended her own Senate primary campaign on April 30, effectively handing the nomination to Platner.
Platner has painted himself as an outsider to the Democratic establishment since his fiery campaign launch last fall. In line with those of other progressive and populist candidates, Platner’s political bid has focused on working-class issues, including affordability, universal health care, and labor union relations.
He will advance to face Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins in November. Collins is seen as a moderate Republican, often crossing party lines to vote with Democrats. However, because Collins appeals to a more moderate, centrist bloc of voters, she has received backlash from her supporters on several occasions for voting with her own party, including her vote to advance the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018.
The Senate campaign has been rocked by controversies since last year. In October, CNN and several other outlets uncovered Platner’s past Reddit posts and comments, which included offensive comments about police and sexual assault survivors. He’s since been ensnared in a number of other scandals, including those involving his Nazi tattoo, his marital infidelity, and his past treatment of women.
Remember all that self-serving “when they go low, we go high” blather Democrats mouthed to further the laughable illusion of their moral superiority? They never meant it.
“Trump ally Nikol Pashinyan wins Armenian election, paving way for US-backed peace deal.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party won a majority in the country’s parliamentary elections, marking a victory for Donald Trump after the president endorsed him.
Pashinyan first took power in 2018 in the so-called Velvet Revolution, then won again in the 2021 snap elections triggered by his crushing loss of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War against Azerbaijan. Armenia held its first regular election since he first took power in 2018 on Sunday, during which he won reelection with a vote total far above his closest rival.
The latest preliminary results on Monday gave Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party 49.82% of the vote, the Associated Press reported, with the pro-Russian Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia bloc coming in second with 23.28% of the vote. The Armenia Alliance bloc led by former President Robert Kocharyan is hovering around 10%, while the rest of the splintered opposition remained in the mid to low single digits.
He beat three pro-Russian parties, another black eye for Putin.
Two independent candidates for U.S. Senate have fundraising profiles on ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s key fundraising platform, raising questions about the candidates’ true political independence as they look to capture two long-held Republican seats this fall.
ActBlue allows independent candidates to fundraise on its platforms on a “case-by-case basis,” based on whether a Democrat is in the race, the candidate has an endorsement from the Democratic Party, or the candidate has demonstrated alignment with the Democratic Party’s ideals and policy goals.
But both independent candidates — Seth Bodnar in Montana and Dan Osborn in Nebraska — are running against Democrats, as well as Republicans. While the Nebraska Democratic Party has endorsed Osborn, Bodnar has not received an official Democratic endorsement.
Speaking of ActBlue shenanigans: “Clinton-Appointed Federal Judge Bars Texas AG Paxton’s Lawsuit Against ActBlue.”
A federal judge has barred Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from pursuing his state court lawsuit against ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising platform.
President Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled Thursday that the case represented no more than a retaliation campaign for ActBlue’s political activities supporting Paxton’s opponent in the 2026 U.S. Senate race.
Stearns issued a preliminary injunction preventing Paxton from pursuing the Texas case. The judge found the lawsuit attempted to undermine protected political speech and therefore violated the First Amendment.
“The truth is plain and captured in Paxton’s own declarations: The lawsuit was filed in retaliation for (and in an attempt to suppress) ActBlue’s efforts to fund Talarico’s campaign,” Stearns wrote in the ruling.
Neither Paxton’s office nor ActBlue immediately returned a request for comment.
Paxton filed the initial lawsuit in April in Texas state court as he campaigned as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat.
The suit singled out ActBlue, a Massachusetts-based fundraising platform that claims to have raised billions for Democratic candidates and causes since its founding in 2004. It sought civil penalties and an order blocking ActBlue from accepting certain gift card donations.
The Texas attorney general alleged that ActBlue employed deceptive practices after the fundraising platform resumed gift card and foreign prepaid debit card donations after informing Congress that it had ceased conducting the transactions. Paxton alleged the practices could empower foreign nationals to hide their identities while making political contributions, potentially in violation of state law.
Under Sterns logic, no Republican could ever sue ActBlue for breaking the law because they ran against Democrats using the platform to raise money.
SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk a trillionaire. Maybe he could give me a million to run an anti-Social justice Warrior center here in Austin…
“Basic Health Fixes Doctors Know Work But Can’t Make Money From.” I do own dogs and cook at home for all but one meal a week, but only do strength training once a week.
“How Japan Finally Made It Impossible to Make Babies.” Women in the workforce + culture of overwork + high Tokyo prices = shrinking population. And the rest of the west faces similar (if less currently less severe) demographic problems.
Jeff Childers has an interesting piece on the Democrat Party’s self-inflicted “polycrisis,” when all the Party’s myriad bad decisions and extremist positions all come home to roost at the same time.
If you listen closely to the wind blowing through Washington, D.C., you might hear a faint, high-pitched whining sound. That is not the sound of cicadas fluttering through the cherry blossoms. That is the sound of the Democrat Party realizing that the check has finally arrived, and their credit card was declined. Last month, the Washington Post broke a story that perfectly captures the Democrat Party’s woebegone state:
The DNC expected big money after big Democratic wins. It never came.
The Democratic National Committee has scaled back some of its plans as donors remain reluctant to give, despite candidates’ recent victories.
Ruh-roh.
For the last few years, despite occasional bouts of truth bursting through the costume’s seams, corporate media has generally assured everyone that the Democratic Party is in fine fettle. Sharp as a tack. It is, they say, like a double-decker bus packed with a coalition of highly educated coastal elites, powerful unions, a motivated gang of highly diverse grievance groups, plus legions of narcissistic white boomers who somehow still believe that NPR is the best way to learn what’s going on in the world.
But underneath the hood, the engine was smoking, the transmission was held together by duct tape, and the bus driver was staring blankly at the dashboard trying to remember what to do when it makes that weird noise. The passengers argued about whether the bus should be renamed to something more trans-inclusive, whether to start with a land acknowledgment, and whether that weird noise was actually a microaggression.
Now, the bus has completely stalled out, parked on the side of the highway, and the passengers are sitting inside waiting for someone else to come fix it.
Corporate media is desperately trying to conceal what historians and political scientists call a “polycrisis.” As defined by historian Adam Tooze (and the World Economic Forum, which considered it an opportunity instead of a problem), a polycrisis happens “where disparate crises interact such that the overall impact far exceeds the sum of each part.” It describes where the political ground is destabilized from so many different directions at once that policymakers ultimately become paralyzed, usually while forming another gold-star committee to consider funding a new study on the destabilization.
Tooze explained, “In the polycrisis, the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts.”
Snip.
But amid all those examples, the modern Democratic polycrisis stands out as uniquely spectacular. It’s experiencing the political equivalent of getting audited by the IRS on the same day your Pekinese chews through your internet cable and then your roof caves in right after you opened the insurance cancellation notice.
All the insiders know it. Trad-media is doing its level best to distract and obfuscate, but some recent headlines are flashing red: On April 9th, Bloomberg warned that “Michigan Shows Democrats’ Identity Crisis Up Close.” On March 15th, Axios reported that “Democrats face a post-Trump identity crisis for 2028.” On March 30th, the NDSMC Observer simply called it “The Democratic party’s identity crisis.”
“The Democratic Party has an aura of ineffectiveness,” NDSMC wrote. “This is an existential threat.” The main problem, according to the author, is that the party is now only about opposing Trump— which manifestly is not working. So, the author argued, “with that opposition, there needs to be an alternative message. Something that voters can get behind. An idea. A value. Not the lack of values. Not just anti-MAGA.”
Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, agreed. “You can’t win a presidential election on opposition alone,” he told Axios. Democrats (not MAGA) are fractured. “Democrats are deeply divided over what they’d do if they returned to power,” Axios said. They intend to run against Trump in the 2026 midterms, but realize that won’t work in 2028, when Trump is terming out.
Democrats must “build a message predicated on values rather than reactions,” the NDSMC author fretted, “lest they doom themselves to a future of perpetual minority status, forever living in the shadow of the MAGA right.” But what screamed from the pages was that the author had no suggestions for a message. Not one.
The reason he didn’t is the same reason the Democrats cannot fix this problem. It’s a structural problem broken beyond repair.
Identity crises are the worst. A person or group questioning their very identity is a sinkhole of potential disaster. It’s like the Democrat Party is bored with being a stay-at-home dad named Benjamin, and yearns to move to Las Vegas, change its name to Mercedes, get that special surgery, and become a stripper.
It would be bad enough if identity were the only crisis Democrats were facing. Let’s dissect the anatomy of this rapidly approaching fast-motion disaster.
A polycrisis isn’t just a regular old run of bad luck. It is a structural failure. In any normal political cycle, a party could lose an election, suffer a fundraising dip, or deal with pushback against an unpopular leader. Or even all three. Those problems are manageable. You just replace the leader, change the messaging, and pretend you never actually supported the things you supported yesterday.
But in a polycrisis, the mechanisms for fixing the problems also break. The disease and the cure become indistinguishable. That’s what Democrats face. They are currently trapped in a perfect storm of intersecting, overlapping, cannibalistic calamities, each feeding and feeding off the others.
Democrats core problem is that their party has become an “odd coalition” of wildly divergent interest groups united by only one thing: opposition to Donald Trump. The so-called “No Kings” movement is the problem’s purest expression. No Kings is a hot mess of a tire fire, a janky collection of unrelated grievance groups, united only by deliberately vague policy positions— because articulating any specific proposal would immediately expose that half the coalition actively despises the other half.
When a political party has no articulable platform besides “we are not the other guy,” a polycrisis is not just possible. It becomes mandatory.
Snip.
The 2024 election exposed the fracture for all to see. Kamala Harris won 80% of the Black vote— solid, but a massive 10-point drop from Joe Biden’s 90% in 2020. President Trump secured 20% of the Black vote, the highest level of support from that demographic since George W. Bush in 2000. The shift was even more extreme among Hispanic voters, where Trump narrowed the gap to a mere 3 points, as compared to Biden’s 25-point margin four years earlier.
The shift among young men is particularly stark. Men under 50 split evenly (49% to 48%) between Trump and Harris, erasing a 10-point Democrat advantage from 2020.
Instead of addressing these defecting voters’ concerns, factions within the Democrat party are doubling down on purity tests, which I’ve previously labeled as the “purity spiral.” In Michigan, for instance, progressive Democrats punished the Harris campaign over the administration’s handling of Gaza, proving that for some factions, “wallowing in the illusion of purity” was more important than building a winning coalition. (That’s from last month’s Detroit News.)
The Detroit News wrung its bony hands over the fruits of the state’s recent Democrat primary nomination results, which produced far-left candidates whose views “raise serious questions about their electability.”
Recent polling by the Manhattan Institute confirmed the disconnect. The Democrat party is essentially three blocs: Moderates (47%), Progressive Liberals (37%), and a “Woke Fringe” (11%). The median Democrat actually wants border security and safe streets, but the party is held hostage by the 11% who think math is racist, there’s an infinite number of genders, and Karl Marx was on the right track but just didn’t try hard enough.
The problem is even worse than Childers makes it out to be. Where are the “Progressive Liberals” willing to call out the radical woke left on their insane agenda? Nowhere, that’s where. They’re scared to death of being called racist and dragged on Twitter. To deviate even slightly on, say, transing children or letting ICE deport illegal alien rapists, is to invite brutal reprisals ranging from ostracism to termination of employment.
Or being shot by a woke lunatic because you’re a “fascist.”
Moreover, after their long march through the institutions of the left, the levers of power for the Democrat Party apparatus and their Academic/Media Complex/NGO fellow travelers are all in the hands of social justice warriors. Any “Progressive Liberals” with any sort of power are in their 70s or older, and how many of those supposed “47% Moderates” are actually speaking up against the radical agenda? John Fetterman? Bill Maher? Stephen A. Smith? They’re so few and so far outside what today’s Democrat Party considers “acceptable discourse” that we can name them individually. Indeed, the online woke left is already calling all three “fascists.”
Snipping over Childers’ talk of the Democrat “gerontocracy,” since so many are part of those “moderates” losing their grip on power within the Party.
Perhaps the most under-appreciated aspect of the polycrisis is the perplexing psychological condition of the Democrat base. Studies consistently show that liberals report significantly lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being compared to conservatives. Maybe building an identity out of imminent global climate destruction and looming, ever-present fascism was a bad idea.
Progressivism is literally driving them insane.
According to the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, conservatives outnumber liberals 51% to 20% among those reporting “excellent” mental health, while liberals outnumber conservatives 45% to 19% among those reporting “poor” mental health. Read that again— nearly half of liberals self-report having poor mental health. Shocker.
On a 100-point happiness scale, even childless conservatives scored a 63; while childless liberals scored a dismaying 48. So weird.
Perhaps the most under-appreciated aspect of the polycrisis is the perplexing psychological condition of the Democrat base. Studies consistently show that liberals report significantly lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being compared to conservatives. Maybe building an identity out of imminent global climate destruction and looming, ever-present fascism was a bad idea.
Progressivism is literally driving them insane.
According to the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, conservatives outnumber liberals 51% to 20% among those reporting “excellent” mental health, while liberals outnumber conservatives 45% to 19% among those reporting “poor” mental health. Read that again— nearly half of liberals self-report having poor mental health. Shocker.
On a 100-point happiness scale, even childless conservatives scored a 63; while childless liberals scored a dismaying 48. So weird.
Childers is right on the insanity but outdated on some of the components. We’re already seeing an abandonment of global warming talking points among the woke. Trump is their apocalypse. There are too many intersectionality shibboleths to keep straight for woke brains to keep green catechisms in mind. Another possibility is that blacks, Hispanics, and all those Muslim illegal aliens they’ve imported obviously don’t give a rat’s ass about any of it.
Running a modern political campaign requires astronomical amounts of money. For years, Democrats relied on two massive funding streams: small-dollar digital donations via ActBlue, and a sprawling network of government-funded NGOs. Both are now collapsing.
I wonder how much of ActBlue was ever real and not simply foreign and NGO money laundering.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that the Democratic National Committee is facing a massive cash crunch as “top donors have been slow to open their wallets.” The DNC had assured party officials that their resounding 15-point victory in the Virginia governor’s race would open the floodgates. “But big checks did not flood back,” leaving DNC Chairman Ken Martin presiding over a financial and leadership crisis.
Left unsaid: Wealthy Jews in New York used to make up a significant fraction of the Democrats’ fundraising network, but they’ve all been tossed overboard in the name of demonizing “the 1%” and pandering to all the Muslims Democrats (not to mention political parties in Europe) have insisted on importing.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has taken a sledgehammer to the NGO complex. DOGE first targeted USAID, leading to the elimination of over 5,000 programs. These programs were rife with fraud and political grift, with taxpayer money flowing through dizzying arrays of cut-out corporations to Democrat coffers. Musk bluntly explained, “This is one of the biggest sources of fraud in the world— government-funded NGOs.”
The broader recent crackdowns on Medicare fraud, autism services, and daycare funding are systematically cutting off the federal spigot that has long nourished progressive advocacy groups and political operatives. The “blue laundromat” is being condemned, and the DNC is suddenly discovering that running a political party requires actual money and real fundraising, which tends to be harder than making backroom deals with Somalian cartels.
Section on lawfare blowback and indicting Dem corruption skipped, since there seem to be plenty of examples in every LinkSwarm.
An entirely separate problem for Democrats is the collapse of the legacy media infrastructure that has for decades carried water for the progressive platform. Trust in mass media has hit a record low of 28 percent. Viewers are migrating to alternative media, mostly conservative or conservative-adjacent podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience.
Corporate media is shifting rightwards. Within the last six months or so, conservative billionaires Larry and David Ellison acquired Warner Brothers (which owns CNN), independent commentator Bari Weiss was installed as editor-in-chief at CBS News, Jeff Bezos’ new head of the Washington Post fired 13 “climate reporters,” and the list goes on. Furthermore, as you well know, X (formerly Twitter) under Musk’s ownership allows uncensored conservative content…
The Democratic Party’s traditional megaphone is on the fritz. The batteries are running out. Which means they can no longer just scream “racist!” at their political problems and expect them to go away. They can no longer rely on corporate media to promote their narratives and psyops.
They are going to have to work harder to earn audience attention— but their problems are multiplied since they can’t enunciate clear policy positions anyway. They must feel like an aggressive drunk who dominated the barroom conversation through brute force until new management made him take it outside. Now nobody listens, and everybody feels better. And it’s much quieter inside.
Most of the argument on how the contradictions of slavery destroyed the Whig Party snipped.
Like the Whigs, today’s Democrat Party faces a similar irreconcilable fracture line. Not just one. Several of them. Immigration, police funding, and trans “rights” are all solid examples. All of them are potentially slavery questions for the loose Democrat coalition. If the DNC takes a strong position on any of those issues, it will forever fracture the coalition. That’s why they can’t commit.
Take immigration, for example. The progressive wing views open borders and amnesty as a moral imperative rooted in anti-racism. But Democrats’ working-class wing —especially unions, black, and hispanic voters, who are currently all defecting to the GOP— views unrestricted immigration as direct economic competition that drives down wages and overwhelms local resources.
The immigration question cleaves the coalition along lines that cannot be papered over with vague language about “comprehensive reform.” Every time the party tries to stake out a middle position, it simultaneously enrages multiple factions.
Progressives accuse leadership of fascism; the working class accuses leadership of abandonment.
The Whigs were destroyed not by a single catastrophic defeat, but by a slow accumulation of contradictions that ultimately made the coalition mathematically impossible to maintain. Then, snap. That is precisely the dynamic of a polycrisis, and it is precisely what the Democrats are facing now.
In complex systems theory, a polycrisis does not resolve itself gradually. It builds pressure until it reaches a tipping point— a threshold where a final small change —the proverbial camel’s straw— triggers an abrupt, potentially irreversible transformation or collapse.
For the Democratic Party, the 2026 midterms represent that tipping point. They face a brutal structural map, needing four seats to retake the Senate. Midcycle redistricting, wildly exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision striking down minority-majority districts, has scrambled the House battlefield more thoroughly than eggs on a Waffle House grill.
But the most profound implication of where the polycrisis is going, and what it will make politically possible, can best be understood through the Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
The thesis is the current, chaotic, decentralized election system with late counting, mail-in ballots, harvesting, permissive voter rolls, and weak ID requirements. Democrats’ viability depends on that system, and they will fight to the political death to preserve it.
The Hegelian antithesis is the current crisis— the ongoing federal investigations in Georgia, Arizona, and elsewhere, combined with aggressive crackdowns on non-citizen voting and the stalled SAVE America Act, which would mandate ID, citizenship, and strict voter purges.
If the DOJ’s investigations produce credible convictions of election workers or political figures, it will shatter whatever remaining trust exists in the system. The synthesis is the solution that comes next, having been made politically possible by the thesis/antithesis dynamic. In this case, it will probably take the shape of a comprehensive federal elections bill. Maybe the SAVE Act. Maybe something bigger.
Here I think Childers is probably wrong. I think most Democrats have internalized the understanding that their Party is cheating nine ways to Sunday (even if they’d never admit it), and they simply don’t care. Trump is The Devil, and The Devil must be fought by any means necessary. Never mind that the idea that Trump (and by extension all Republicans) is some sort of racist monster is a laughable delusion engendered by the Southern Poverty Law Center literally subsidizing Nazis and the KKK. The idea that Republicans are Evil Racists and that Democrats are The Good People forms a bedrock in their political identities, and they’ll cling to it with religious fervor. Reason had nothing to do with them adopting the social justice worldview and reason cannot talk them out of it.
Thus Democrats will never support the SAVE Act or anything like it as long as the woke mind virus runs the Party. (A much bigger and thornier question is why old-line congressional Republicans refuse to support any strategy that threatens to implement it.)
No, the only path for Democrats out of the social justice wilderness is for their own Trump-like figure to come from outside the Party to cleanse the Augean stables of Obamaism entirely. Right now, Democrats don’t have such a Trump, and their entire SJW-ruled party apparatus stands ready to ensure their hands are never removed from the Party levers of power they’ve dedicated their entire adult life to controlling. The hard left is willing to lose an infinite number of elections rather than relinquish control. Just look to the lengths they took to keep Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. entirely off the 2024 Presidential ballot, and for a Democrat Trump to appear, he would need to be at least a hundred times better known than RFK Jr.
So I think Childers’ idea of how Democrats might solve the polycrisis is misguided, but his description of that crisis has admirable breadth.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Democratic political fundraising platform ActBlue over its donation processes that allegedly “allow fraudulent and foreign donations.”
According to the New York Times, ActBlue has processed nearly $19 billion in contributions since its 2004 inception. The organization reported $1.8 billion in 2025 alone, a 41 percent increase compared to 2021. Last year, ActBlue saw 1.35 million new donors add to its over 52 million contributions received.
“The radical left has relied on ActBlue as a way to funnel foreign donations and dark money into their political campaigns to subvert our laws and compromise the integrity of our elections,” the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) said in an April 20 press release.
Paxton alleged the organization has lied to Congress and “blatantly ignored state law that prohibits deceptive practices.”
“In 2023, Attorney General Paxton opened an investigation into whether ActBlue was enabling donor fraud in violation of Texas law,” the press release stated.
“ActBlue has cooperated with our ongoing investigation,” Paxton said in August 2024. “They have changed their requirements to now include ‘CVV’ codes for donations on their platform.”
“This is a critical change that can help prevent fraudulent donations,” he continued, adding that “suspicious activity on fundraising platforms must be fully investigated to determine if any laws have been broken.”
In October 2024, Paxton sent a petition for rulemaking to the FEC “detailing how suspicious actors had appeared to be continuing to use ActBlue’s political fundraising platform to make a large number of straw political donations,” the press release said. He also made a criminal referral to the U.S. Department of Justice the same month.
“Amidst the OAG’s investigation and a Congressional investigation, ActBlue claimed it stopped its illegal operations,” the OAG said.
Paxton cited recent reporting from the New York Times in which “ActBlue’s own outside counsel acknowledged that the organization’s representations about its donation safeguards were not true.”
Paxton further alleged that certain safeguards are not consistently implemented, “creating a substantial risk that impermissible foreign contributions may have been processed.”
The OAG said it was able to show that ActBlue processes gift card and prepaid debit card donations, “despite the company’s representations that the opposite is true.” Paxton said these payments could enable fraudulent donations and violations of state and federal election laws due to limited identification requirements.
Reports have ActBlue carrying out the very shady, unethical actions Paxton is accusing them of, allowing foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns and enabling straw donations in the names of people who never donated to Democrats. Such accusations have been flying around almost as long ActBlue has existed, and the persistence of the same “mistakes” over and over again suggest such criminal activity is intentional.
An Iran ceasefire (sorta, kinda) holds, still more Californian welfare state fraud, Governor HairGel simply isn’t all there, Colorado steps up its war on the First Amendment, France’s aircraft carrier gets rumbled by a jogging ap, and William Shatner isn’t dying of cancer. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Personally, this has been a damn busy week. I’ve pretty much recovered from my bout of stomach flu, I’m in the home stretch for doing my taxes, and a bunch of other urgencies press.
Rather than provide a specific link, I’m just going to describe what I’m seeing of the ceasefire in the Iranian war. Like cannibalism in the the Royal Navy in that Monty Python skit, when Iran says they’re not lobbing any missiles, the mean that there is a certain amount. Just today, hostile drones were flying over Kuwait. And ships are free to transit the Strait of Hormuz, for values of “free” that include paying Iran protection money. Despite these violation of President Trump’s ceasefire terms, Iran is complaining that it’s no fair that Israel gets to continues kicking Hezbollah’s ass in Lebanon.
Speaking of Lebanon, three days ago the IDF reissued an evacuation notice for all Lebanese residents south of the Zahrani River. Note that the Zahrani is north of the Litani River, Israel’s previous line for evacuation. At this rate, IDF will enter Beirut in a few months…
Gladwin Gill, a 66-year-old psychologist, and his wife, Amelou Gill, a 70-year-old registered nurse, both of Covina, were arrested today on a federal criminal complaint charging them with health care fraud.
According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, the Gills owned and operated the Glendale-based 626 Hospice Inc., which did business as St. Francis Palliative Care.
The Gills allegedly schemed to defraud Medicare by paying illegal kickbacks for the referral of patients who were not dying.
The Gills’ business had a 97% survival rate … for hospice.
The Gills also submitted more than $5.2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for hospice services that either were not medically necessary or were not provided. Medicare paid the Gills more than $4 million on these fraudulent claims.
I’m sure the next part will be a huge surprise.
Gill is originally from Pakistan, and he’s served jail time before.
In 2008, he was sentenced to a year in prison for fraudulent political donations.
In 1995, he served two years in prison for real estate fraud.
He also fired a gun at gas company employees who came to his property to collect an unpaid bill.
Blue state officials can ignore any number of red flags as long as they expect to profit from the grift.
The insiders in Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia have been using social service non-profits, NGOs, and questionable charitable groups as passthroughs for their friends and pet constituencies for years. Billions have been gifted to insiders and friends. And now — at long last — actual taxpayers have gotten wise to the grift. You can thank independent journalists for highlighting these absurd expenses in a much simpler and understandable way than thick books or endless PDFs filled with intentionally confusing stats, opaquely written conclusions, and puffed-up executive summaries that don’t reflect the data can ever do.
And now people living on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ want to know one thing: Where’d all that money go?
It all starts with … Gavin
Because your longtime West Coast, Messed Coast™ correspondent has been highlighting this stupidity for years and chronicled it here and in my other writings, radio shows, and podcasts, I’m going to insist you stipulate that the Homeless Industrial Complex exists and began in earnest from about 2005-2010, when leftist leaders saw that a buck could be made by declaring and funding programs to “End Homelessness in 10 Years.” Obviously, it was a smashing success — for grifting, I mean.
In 2005, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom harrumphed and gesticulated that he would, by dint of his own signature on a proclamation, “end homelessness” by 2015. Other cities followed. Billions went down the toilet as a result. And by toilet, I mean the streets of the Tenderloin and other Skid Rows along the West Coast, Messed Coast™.
There then follows a chart of various attempts to “end homelessness.” I’m sure you’ll be shocked to find out none of them succeeded.
Sen. Tom Cotton: “The New York Times just confirmed what we’ve long suspected: ActBlue knowingly let in fraudulent foreign donations to help Democrats win. Yet another example of the left’s embrace of fraud. Everyone involved must face the full weight of the law.”
“The bombshell Times story comes after a law firm that formerly worked with ActBlue warned the group that they almost certainly lied to Congress about their process of vetting foreign donations.”
After interviewing Gavin Newsom, Adam Carolla thinks “Something’s wrong with him.” “He’s a sociopath. Like he doesn’t really understand anything.”
“Konkivskyi Bridge Destroyed in 60-Day Ukrainian Drone Operation Using Heavy-Lift Drones.” The weird thing is that this is in Oleshky, down from the already-destroyed Antonovsky Bridge, and evidently built up explosive material under the bridge over a period of time.
The moment I heard the smashing of glass, I knew exactly what it was. I had heard that sound dozens of times over the last month. Before I even looked up, I grabbed my phone, turned toward the noise, and started taking photos. Ten feet away, a black Expedition SUV sat with its rear window blown out. Within seconds, a man in a black shirt and backpack sprinted off carrying a laptop, a briefcase, and a gym bag. I ran over, saw the shattered glass, and knew exactly what I had just witnessed: a smash-and-grab. A smash-and-grab is a particular kind of burglary. A thief smashes a car window, grabs whatever looks valuable, and gets out fast. What defines it is not just the speed. It is the confidence. The noise, the alarms, the cameras, the witnesses, none of it matters anymore. The criminal is not trying to avoid attention because attention no longer means consequences.
Without thinking, I took off after him. Just moments earlier, I had been across the street in Portland’s Pearl District with a few dozen volunteers doing a trash cleanup. We were on the sidewalk with gloves and garbage bags, doing what functioning cities are supposed to do: maintain public space, clean up disorder, and take pride in where they live. Then, right across the street, someone did what a broken city has learned to tolerate: smash a car window and steal from strangers in broad daylight. The contrast could not have been clearer. On one side were citizens trying to restore their city. On the other was someone actively tearing it down. Maybe it was that stark line between right and wrong that lit the fuse in me. Maybe I was just tired of watching decent people get victimized while everyone else acted like this was now normal.
I caught up to him as he turned the corner at Northwest 14th and Couch and screamed, “Stop!” Then louder: “STOP!” He looked back, startled, and dropped the first bag. My friend grabbed it and held onto it while I kept running. We ended up in a full sprint. He was at least twenty years younger than me, but adrenaline kept me close. He weaved through traffic, jumped over a garbage can, and slid across the hood of a car like this was routine, like he had done it many times before. Several blocks later, he started to slow down. He ducked behind a parked car, and I chased him around it twice. He was breathing hard and begging me to stop chasing him. I finally caught him and cornered him in a doorway. He shoved me with his left arm. I grabbed his shirt and pushed him back into the door. “Leave me the f*ck alone, bro,” he screamed. I did not let go. I demanded everything back. He tried to pull away, then handed over what he had stolen while repeating, “I didn’t do anything,” over and over. He looked scared, but he also looked stunned. His expression said something I could not ignore: I think I was the first person who had ever chased him down.
My friend called 911. We gave the operator a detailed description, and she told us it would take at least twenty minutes and that we needed to let him go. So we did and he took off running again. But we kept following from a distance so we could continue updating 911 with his location. And once I was no longer right on top of him, the thief stopped sprinting and started operating. That is the part most people do not understand. People imagine smash-and-grabs as chaotic, impulsive crimes, one desperate guy, one reckless decision, one lucky escape. What I witnessed was not chaos. It was choreography. He took off his shoes. Took off his shirt. Cut his jeans into shorts. Within thirty seconds, he looked like a different person. That is not panic. That is a practiced move. That is someone who has done this enough times to have a system.
Then came protection. A middle-aged man in a “Just Do It” Nike hat rolled up on a beat-up bike and grabbed my shoulder. “Stop following,” he said. “I’ll make serious trouble for you.” A random passerby does not physically confront a stranger for following a thief. He does not show up at the perfect moment, get physical
immediately, and start threatening people. That was not random. That was an enforcer, someone whose role was to discourage interference, someone who knew the routine. I knocked his arm off and stood my ground. Once he realized I was not going to back down, he backed off. A moment later, I watched two homeless individuals throw a blanket over the thief as if they were concealing contraband, then casually walk away. If I had not seen it happen, I would have walked right past him.
We called 911 again and gave his updated description and location. Then chaos became a weapon. A woman in a black jacket and mini skirt lunged at me and tried to rip my phone out of my hands. She grabbed it hard, pulling like her life depended on it. Another man rolled up on a BMX bike and grabbed my arm. This was not about stealing my phone. It was about destroying the evidence. They were trying to remove the one thing that made them vulnerable: documentation.
Chinese propaganda outlets linked to the Singham Network have repeatedly sought to raise the profile of self-described “MAGA Communist” Jackson Hinkle as the social media influencer praises the Chinese Communist Party and critiques the Trump Administration and the West.
The China-based propaganda partners of the Singham Network — most notably the pro-CCP Guancha outlet as well as the China Academy and its Wave Media video ecosystem — have repeatedly sought to elevate Hinkle, including hosting him for conferences in Shanghai, giving him favorable interviews, promoting his comments and appearances, and generally pushing his idea of so-called “MAGA Communism.”
Hinkle is openly “Marxist-Leninist” and, despite his use of the “MAGA Communist” label, he has been a harsh critic of President Donald Trump, repeatedly labeling him a “war criminal” as Hinkle openly sides with U.S. adversaries such as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the CCP, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the Iranian regime, and terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
Hinkle has also been promoted in China by Chinese state media outlets, some of which are also linked to Singham’s influence efforts. Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Gov. Greg Abbott said he does not expect Texas to legalize gambling in the next legislative session, signaling a continued roadblock for casino interests that have spent millions trying to influence state elections.
Abbott made the remarks during a press conference Tuesday focused on his property tax plan, held after Galveston County Commissioners Court joined the Lone Star Property Tax Reform Council in support of his proposal.
The governor was asked about gambling, as well as a so-called “fuzzy animal” or “fuzzy bear” exception in Texas law—a colloquial term for a narrow provision allowing certain amusement machines to award low-value, non-cash prizes, which some “game room” operators have cited to justify machines critics say function as illegal gambling devices.
“I don’t know how that works, and I’m not sure about fuzzy bears and things like that,” said Abbott. “We’ll look into the fuzzy bears. All I can tell you is what the law says, and that is, gambling is unconstitutional in the state of Texas, and I don’t see that changing in the next session.”
Abbott’s comments come as casino interests, including groups tied to Las Vegas Sands and the Texas Defense PAC, have poured millions into Texas primary elections in recent cycles. Those efforts failed to unseat lawmakers who opposed expanding gambling.
Colorado is now arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union, pushing an array of measures attacking those with opposing social and political views. The irony is that the state has proved a bonanza for free speech with spectacular legal failures that reaffirmed rather than restricted the First Amendment. Now, the Democratic legislature and governor are back with new unconstitutional measures, including a requirement that lawyers not share information with federal immigration officials as a condition for filing with state courts.
Colorado legislators and judges have spent years attacking core free speech and associational rights. In the last election, the state attempted to strip President Donald Trump from the ballot with the support of a majority of its Democratic-controlled state supreme court. (The effort was later declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court. Colorado could not even get any of the liberal justices to support its actions).
The state is responsible for the efforts to force business owners to create products celebrating same-sex marriages. That effort led to the Masterpiece Cake Shop case and then the 303 Creative case. Even after losing earlier efforts against Masterpiece Cake Shop owner Jack Phillips, the targeting of its owner continued for years. That litigation proved to be a tremendous victory for free speech.
Colorado has also been leading the fight to limit the speech and associational rights of professionals and parents on “conversion therapy.” Recently, that effort led to another massive loss before the Supreme Court in Chiles v. Salazar, resulting in a resounding 8-1 rejection of Colorado’s position. It could only secure the vote of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
After that near-unanimous ruling against the state, Colorado responded by doubling down with legislation to expose any counselors engaged in conversion therapy to heightened legal liability, including waiving any statute of limitations. That case could also result in legal challenges as Colorado continues to spend a fortune on seeking to curtail free speech rights.
Now, the state is defending a new public accommodation law, HB 25-1312, that defines “gender expression” to include “chosen name” and “how an individual chooses to be addressed.”
As in past Colorado cases, the state secured favorable rulings from district court judges. President Biden-nominated U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez refused to grant a preliminary injunction against the Colorado public accommodation law.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is appealing the matter to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on behalf of its clients, XX-XY Athletics and Born Again Used Books. Other appeals are also being brought in the matter.
At the same time, the state has moved forward on Senate Bill 25-276, which imposes a threshold condition for state e-filings that requires lawyers to certify annually “under penalty of perjury,” that they will not use “personal identifying information” from the system to help federal immigration enforcement.
California sheriff deputies try to serve an eviction notice, have the guy open fire on them for their troubles. Do they: A.) Taz him, B.) Shoot him, or C.) Roll over him in an armored vehicle? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Speaking of Shatner, he’s been warning people about crazy “Shippers” (people who imagine relationships between fictional characters) for a while now. Even crazier? When a crazy anime shipper sends a death threat to a voice actress for not agreeing with them that an animated character is crazy shipper’s “soulmate.”
Follow-up: Remember Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, age 47, and her daughter, Sarinasdat Hosseiny, the niece and grandniece of dirtnapped Iranian revolutionary Guard scumbag Qasem Soleimani?
This cute dog is banned from the couch, so the moment its owner leaves the house it races straight onto it – but instantly drops to the floor the second it hears footsteps approaching. 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/WKcjPyr3u8
Kash Patel is following the money, and may soon release the answer to who’s funding and controlling domestic terrorists Antifa:
FBI Director Kash Patel tells Just the News that the bureau is “on the verge” of unmasking the command structure and financing for anarchist groups like Antifa that have unleashed unrest around America and has also identified potential new criminal activity related to the abuse of federal law enforcement and intelligence.
“We are looking at so many different leads on criminal activity by those who are in positions of power, and we’re not going to stop until every single one of those is fully exposed,” Patel said during a wide-ranging interview this week on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show.
When asked whether more indictments against those accused of weaponizing government may be ahead, he said: “the documents are provided either to Congress or the courts of law and we make every referral we can under the Department of Justice.
“These indictments that you’ve seen, and the ones that you’re going to see coming up here in this near future, are just the beginning,” he added.
The director, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has pressed his team to uncover tens of thousands of pages of documents long withheld from Congress that chronicle abuses by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in scandals spanning from Russiagate and Ukraine impeachment to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
Those documents have already led to the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly making false statements to thwart Congress during an investigation of news leaks and the indictment Thursday of former National Security Advisor John Bolton for the mishandling of classified information.
Patel asked Americans to be patient, saying some of the abuses of a weaponized government were systematically built over many years and are complex to unravel.
“I have to remind the audience of one thing. Everybody’s like, it’s seven months. What have you guys been doing? Well, they spent 20 years building this diseased temple of corruption,” he said. “It takes a little bit of time to defeat it and beat it down. I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to look at the work the men and women of the FBI have done so far in these seven, eight months, and just imagine what we’re going to do come the year’s end.”
Patel said one area where the FBI has made rapid progress is the tracking of financing and command structures of anarchist groups like Antifa that have fomented unrest in American cities, attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rounding up illegal immigrants and antisemitic movements on college campuses.
He said there are indications that some support may come from overseas enemies and U.S. nonprofit groups that have tax exemptions from the IRS.
“Look, the thing I can tell you is that money doesn’t lie, and the thing we’re doing at the FBI is following the money,” Patel explained. “And thanks to President Trump, we now have Antifa designated, rightfully so, as a domestic terror organization. And we have had multiple investigations going on.”
Patel said those probes are “mapping out the money, and we are using social media and the influencers that the President had here just this last week, because they’re the ones on the ground, getting us ground level intelligence, because law enforcement isn’t able to enter these spaces, and these people are brave enough to do it.”
Here’s Glenn Beck breaking down the various moving parts of Antifa, from the foot soldiers to the funders:
If you’ve been following the story on BattleSwarm (see here and here, just for starters), a lot of the names (George Soros, Tides Foundation, Alliance for Global justice, Open Society Foundations, ActBlue, etc.) are familiar, though he’s missing Arabella Associates, and Fidelity and Schwab are going to be a shock for some.
“Look, I’m I am not accusing anyone here. I’m just saying this is pretty much off the top of my head. I’m just showing the connections that have a very strong odor attached to them. And I’ve followed these people long enough to know this is the way it works.”
I’m hoping Patel has enough evidence to decapitate all the hydra heads once and for all.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has stepped up pressure over Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s Powered by People PAC. Like Trump, he’s going after the left’s money when they misbehave, and now he’s asking for Powered by People to be shut down entirely.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has escalated his legal fight against Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, filing an amended petition to strip the corporate charter of his group Powered by People.
Paxton says the organization been deceptively fundraising and doling out “Beto Bribes” to Democrat lawmakers who fled the state to break quorum.
“Robert and his unlawful influence scheme, Powered by People, have deceived donors, bought off Texas politicians, and unlawfully assisted runaway Democrats in avoiding arrest,” Paxton said Friday. “As much as Robert and the sell-out Democrats might wish to ignore them, we do have laws that must be followed. I have asked the court to enforce its previous TRO, throw Beto behind bars, and revoke Powered by People’s charter for its unlawful conduct. There must be consequences.”
Paxton first sued O’Rourke and Powered by People last week, accusing them of misleading donors by soliciting money through ActBlue under the guise of supporting Democrats’ political fight, while using the funds for personal expenses such as private jets, luxury hotels, and dining. That same day, a Tarrant County court issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting such fundraising.
According to Paxton, O’Rourke defied the order less than 24 hours later at a Fort Worth rally, telling the crowd, “there are no refs in this game, f*** the rules,” while directing them to donate via the same ActBlue link cited in the lawsuit. The attorney general responded with a motion for contempt, seeking fines and jail time.
Declaring that the stakes are so high that you don’t need to obey the rules would seem to be a particularly foolish approach when dealing with an Attorney General as determined and tenacious as Ken Paxton.
I can’t help but wonder if these actions haven’t handed state and national Republicans enough probable cause to take a deep dive into the structure and financing of ActBlue (which has been caught committing campaign financing fraud on numerous occasions) with the same digital forensic tools DOGE used so successfully to disentangle USAID graft conduits. That sort of discovery might turn up all sorts of shady financial shenanigans, of which illegal foreign contributions may only been the tip of the iceberg. Such a move could not only bring about a vast number of indictments, but also cripple already-lagging Democratic fundraising efforts into 2026 and beyond.
The new filing adds a quo warranto claim, asking the court to terminate Powered by People’s authority to do business in Texas for violating criminal laws, including felony bribery and hindering the apprehension of a fugitive.
A quo warranto claim is a fairly ancient legal revocation that basically says you done screwed up so bad that you no longer have the right to exist, hand over your charter.
The final cherry of irony on Beto’s Screw-up Sundae is that Democrats have just given up on their quorum break (just like the last two times they pulled this maneuver) for the just-started second special session, and it’s a near certainty that Gov. Abbott’s redistricting initiative (and a lot of his other legislative priorities) will pass despite Democrat grandstanding.
To hit or not to hit Iran, that is the question, illegal alien friendly judges land themselves in hot water, some party switch shenanigans in Florida, the Texas Senate passes some bills (good and bad), and updates on the proceedings against several disgraced politicos. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Also, Texas residents should remember that the Sales tax Holiday starts tomorrow.
Tenacity is the most important virtue of national leaders at war, which allows them to press on with no assurance of victory, fending off tremendous political pressures to fold. Winston Churchill displayed this quality in 1940. In June of that year, Germany appeared unstoppable. Paris and the entirety of Western Europe had fallen. The Luftwaffe was grinding down the grossly outnumbered British pilots, and German invasion barges were being assembled in Belgian ports. Even then, with Britain desperate for U.S. support, the American national debate on interventionism, prompted by the outbreak of war in September 1939, continued to break decisively in favor of the isolationists.
Exploring an accommodation with Germany appeared as the eminently reasonable and prudent course of action because of Herr Hitler’s generous offer to leave Britain and its vast empire intact. When British parliamentarians pressed Churchill to explain his plan, he confessed to his intimates that he had no plan at all. He was determined to just keep buggering on.
Then the situation became bleaker still for the British and for Churchill personally. In June 1941, the German army smashed its way into Russia, advancing rapidly toward what looked like an imminent victory. Although the Wehrmacht’s swift conquests promised to wholly remedy Germany’s only weakness—its lack of petroleum—the isolationists in the U.S. Congress remained dominant. Meanwhile, at home, London was abuzz with talk of Churchill’s heavy drinking, his personal dependence on gifts from his Jewish friends to pay for his extravagant tastes and, above all, his utter lack of strategy—he had failed to offer any path at all that could conceivably lead to victory.
Things looked grim all around. In North Africa, the brilliant German tactician Erwin Rommel was outmaneuvering British forces with ease. Much worse were the first reports of Germany’s astonishing technological progress: the world’s first jet fighter that could easily outfly every single British and American fighter; the world’s first air-to-surface missile (Fritz X) that, in September 1943, would sink the Italian battleship Roma (to prevent it from surrendering to the Allies); and the Tiger tank that could crush British armor.
Nevertheless, the isolationists in Congress refused to fund even a prosaic piston-engine fighter project—the P-51 Mustang, the war’s best Allied fighter—which was developed with fast-dwindling British funds.
Churchill’s answer? Just keep buggering on.
Snip.
Whereas Churchill’s problem was an isolationist Congress that constrained a generally sympathetic president, Netanyahu enjoyed ample support on the Hill but faced an American administration determined to cut Israel down to size and to remove him from power.
As Israel fought a major, multifront war in October 2023, key U.S. officials encouraged domestic uproar against Netanyahu and worked to constrain him and even collapse his government.
That was not all the president’s doing, but Joe Biden’s administration was stacked with Barack Obama’s leftovers, who ran the gamut of pathological Israel haters, from Samantha Power to Robert Malley—the red-diaper baby of Stalinist Jewish parents in Paris whom I met in my youth when they were working for Algeria’s National Liberation Front, which was not merely fanatically anti-Israel but also declaredly anti-Jewish, much like Yemen’s Houthis today. With the CIA mostly very hostile (as it has been since it was established in 1947, as declassified documents fully reveal), only the Pentagon harbored some friends of Israel—although that hardly stopped the administration from using every trick in the book to delay mid-war weapons supplies to Israel.
Netanyahu faced a concerted campaign, directed from Washington, that brought together Israeli nonprofits and Netanyahu’s political opponents. Almost from the get-go, Netanyahu had to overcome calls and protests by well-educated—and some even well-meaning—Israelis and American Jews, as well as all the usual suspects in European capitals and almost every other world government incessantly demanding a cease-fire, not as a pause, but as an end to the war.
Worse still, several of Israel’s retired and barely retired generals threw their weight behind the cease-fire push. Some did so with the authority of true heroes, such as Yair Golan, the head of the unsubtly named The Democrats (a merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz Parties) and former IDF deputy chief of staff no less. Golan jumped into his small car on Oct. 7 to successfully rescue people with his handgun, as did the former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate Israel Ziv, now a very successful security contractor overseas after distinguished service, who became the guru of an entire cabal of retired generals, including some who served in Netanyahu’s government until they left it to oppose him. Then, inevitably, there were tawdry time-servers who somehow became generals without doing much other than talking, like Amos Gilead, who’s well known and much-favored in U.S. officialdom because of his hostility to Netanyahu.
All those former generals demanded the same thing, albeit at different times: to stop the war with no way of recovering the Israeli hostages and no way of forcing Hamas to accept supervised disarmament, therefore allowing it to use a cease-fire to reconstitute.
Furthermore, these generals offered no solution whatever to the Hezbollah dilemma in the north. The day after the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah started launching rockets against Israel. If Israel did not attack, Hezbollah forces, then assuredly the most powerful non-state army in the world, was certainly capable of burning every Jewish town and village north of Haifa with countless rockets (the number 110,000 that was widely circulated turned out to be simply invented) while targeting power stations, Ben Gurion Airport, port facilities, every chemical plant and refinery, and every air base with thousands of guided missiles. If Israel were to attack, those massive barrages would immediately begin.
As Netanyahu pondered this dilemma, he had to deal not only with his security establishment but also with unremitting pressure from Washington. A mere few days after Oct. 7, the Biden administration intervened and made clear its opposition to an Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah—a position it would maintain over the next year. In fact, when Israel finally eliminated Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on his bunker on Sept. 27, 2024, Biden’s reaction was an irate “Bibi, what the fuck?”
The Biden administration displayed a similar hands-off attitude toward Iran’s proxy in Yemen, allowing Tehran to pile more pressure on Israel. The Houthis joined the fight with their skirts, sandals, and Iranian supplied anti-ship missiles and drones that not only deprived Israel of its secondary Red Sea sea port access but also targeted commercial vessels, blocking navigation in the area and forcing shipping companies to find longer, more expensive routes, thereby augmenting U.S. and international pressure on Israel to end the war. Washington allowed Iran to stop maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Suez Canal without any retaliation against Tehran and its own maritime traffic, while Western disarray was compounded by the spectacle of very expensive European navies doing nothing much even as their Mediterranean ports lost all their Asian traffic.
This shameful passivity reinforced the Israeli conviction that France, Italy, and Spain, unable and unwilling to defend even their own direct material interests, would only yield to Muslim demographic and political pressure in other respects as well. Only the British joined the United States in eventually striking the Houthis, though mostly symbolically and nowhere near the sustained and targeted campaign required to destroy Houthi capabilities.
Between American permissiveness toward Iran’s multipronged campaign and Washington’s support for Netanyahu’s domestic opposition, calls for a Gaza cease-fire intensified and became the default position across the political landscape, from Israel’s left and even moderate center to most European governments, in addition to the Biden administration.
It is against this backdrop that Netanyahu’s pure resolve must be understood. With this remarkable array of forces, external and internal, bearing down on him, his tenacity was the only thing that mattered.
Read the whole thing.
The Houthis in Yemen are in the find out phase, as U.S. forces just blew up a vital oil port.
Fresh US airstrikes on Yemen Thursday marked the single-deadliest known attack under President Donald Trump’s new campaign targeting the Houthi rebels. The Pentagon has been intensely bombing Yemen since March 15, when the Gaza truce collapsed.
A Houthi spokesman announced Friday that the attacks killed 38 people and wounded 102 others. The death toll was hours later updated to at least 74 killed. The operation mainly targeted and destroyed the Ras Isa oil port, which sent massive fireballs shooting into the night sky.
The final pillar of the plan, calling to “confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism,” is laden with potentially controversial social proposals.
This section identifies “ghost guns”—unregistered weapons without a serial number, often created via 3D printer—as one such contributor, and calls to “[r]ein in the proliferation” of such weapons, “encourage state adoption of extreme risk protection orders, and drive other executive and legislative action including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
It also called for “advancing inclusion” as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic to “mitigate xenophobia and bias.”
This would be in order to “address hate crime reporting barriers faced by disadvantaged communities by promoting law enforcement training and resources to prevent and address bias-motivated crimes,” according to the SIP.
Additionally, the plan encouraged “teaching and learning of civics education that provides students with the skill to fully participate in civic life,” and promoting “literacy education for both children and adult learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation.”
The change at the border between President Biden and President Trump is nothing short of staggering, and two numbers best tell that story: 189,604 and 20.
The first is the number of illegal immigrants Border Patrol agents caught and immediately released into the U.S. in December 2023, at the depths of the Biden border chaos.
The second is the number of illegal immigrants agents caught and released into the U.S. in February — roughly one-hundredth of 1% of the total in Mr. Biden’s worst month.
For years, Border Patrol agents have been telling anyone who would listen that catch-and-release was the driver of illegal immigration.
Migrants who had a reasonable sense that they could live and work in the U.S. would pay $10,000 or more to smugglers to reach the border. If their chances of release were slim, they wouldn’t pay or make the trip.
Mr. Trump’s policies have drastically cut the chances of catch-and-release from 778 per 1,000 border crossers in December 2023 to just 2 per 1,000 in February.
“New Mexico Judge Resigns After Housing Alleged Tren De Aragua Member. The resignation occurred a few days after law enforcement arrested illegal alien Cristhian Ortega-Lopez…Democrat Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano resigned after police arrested an alleged Tren De Aragua (TdA) gang member.”
FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the bureau has arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction, accusing the Dugan of obstructing an arrest of illegal immigrants last week.
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest,” Patel said in a brief statement shared on X – which was subsequently deleted and re-posted. “Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
The days when Democrats can blithely ignore immigration laws are coming to a close.
Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), the second most powerful Senate Democrat, announced Wednesday his decision not to run for another term after nearly three decades in the world’s greatest deliberative body.
Durbin, 80, is ending his Senate career after five terms, the longest tenure of any Senator in Illinois history. His retirement opens up a deep blue seat in 2026 and will create a leadership competition for Senate Democrats amid frustration with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and generational turnover within the party.
Remember, in Minnesota, crimes aginst designed hate objects are perfectly legal. “Progressive Minnesota Prosecutor Lets State Employee Off with No Charges for Alleged Tesla Vandalism.”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s office is seeking diversion for Minnesota Department of Human Service employee Dylan Adams after he allegedly vandalized at least six Teslas in Minneapolis while walking his dog….
Progressive County Attorney Mary Moriarty took office in 2023 and has faced strong criticism for her soft-on-crime approach. On several occasions, Moriarty has shown leniency to violent criminals, including suspects charged with murder and sexual assault, leading to disputes with prosecutors and outrage among victims’s families.
Is she Soros-backed? You better believe it. I hope Elon Musk sues all of them for everything they own…
Well, this is disturbing. “Stunned cops allegedly find 180K rounds of ammo packed in minivan driven by two Mexican nationals.”
Two Mexican nationals pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Colorado were found with 180,000 illegal rounds of ammunition in the back of their van, according to federal prosecutors.
Caesar Ramon Martinez Solis, 41, and Humberto Ivan Amador Gavira, 24, were pulled over late last month for failing to dim their headlights and using a turn signal in Canon City, 35 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.
Officers then found 180 boxes stacked in the back of the van — each labeled as having 1,000 rounds of ammo, mostly .308 but also 30 boxes of 7.62, the feds said.
Ammunition in back of minivan.
The federal government’s main website on COVID-19 information has been taken down and replaced with a new version discarding the natural-origin theory of the coronavirus that was pushed by the Biden administration.
Where the previous website pushed vaccine and testing information, the White House is now displaying scientific proof that the virus was man-made and leaked from a Chinese virus lab while calling out U.S. officials and agencies that it says “obstructed” the truth from the American people.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is named along with Dr. Peter Daszak, Dr. David Morens and other public officials who are accused of engaging in “a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation” and to hide incriminating evidence.”
Now will Democrats finally accept the truth, or continue clinging to the “wet market” origins like they cling to all their other lockdown lies?
“Hegseth Denounces Journalists Who ‘Won’t Give Back Their Pulitzers for Discredited Stories as Pulitzer Board Facing String of Setbacks in Trump’s Lawsuit. He insists he is the subject of ‘hit pieces that ‘come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax.'” Soon the legacy media can be financially, as well as factually and morally, bankrupt.
So the Russians captured a Bradley in Ukraine. After analyzing how it compares to their own BMPs, they want one.
The Russians have gotten a closeup look at an M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle and seem to like it better than their own armored vehicles.
The Bradley offers more protection and can fire more accurately than its Russian equivalent, the BMP-3, according to a Russian report that was leaked onto a Telegram channel earlier this month.
Experts told Task & Purpose that the report appears to be legitimate.
Priority legislation that would raise the homestead exemption for elderly and disabled homeowners by $50,000 passed the Texas Senate on Wednesday. With other planned exemption increases, elderly homeowners would receive a total of $200,000 in homestead exemptions.
Senate Bill (SB) 23 and Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 85 raise the school tax homestead exemption — a reduction in the taxable value of a home — for age 65 and over homeowners from $10,000 to $60,000. The proposal is estimated to cost the state $1.2 billion through the next biennium.
Both passed by a 30 to 1 vote with the lone “no” coming from state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas), which is the first “no” vote against a homestead exemption increase in the Senate in multiple sessions.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick prefaced this proposal in an early-April press conference, during which he said he and Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) were working together on the item.
This is on top of the planned standard homestead exemption increase from $100,000 to $140,000.
Just in case you hadn’t heard: Pope Francis dead at 88. “The pope, who led the Catholic Church for twelve years, passed away just one day after Easter Sunday when the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Despite his ongoing health problems, he made several appearances during Holy Week, including a trip to St. Peter’s Basilica and a visit with Vice President JD Vance on Sunday.” Sic transit gloria mundi.
Hijacking thwarted. “A U.S. man hijacked a small plane in Belize on Thursday, stabbing two passengers and a pilot, before one of the stabbed passengers fatally shot him, officials in Belize and the United States said. The plane then landed safely.”
Pizzo, considered a possible candidate for governor in 2026, said unaffiliated voters helped elect him to office. He added that the state party needed new leadership, but Democratic leaders didn’t want him to be it. The party that his late father volunteered for in the 1960s, he said, “is not the party today.”
“Here’s the issue: The Democratic Party in Florida is dead. But there are good people that can resuscitate it. But they don’t want it to be me,” he said.
Pizzo’s stunning announcement — which caught Democrats completely by surprise — of a switch to no party affiliation is just the latest blow for Florida’s beleaguered Democratic Party. The state currently has 1.2 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, and no Democrat holds statewide elected office — a far cry from Florida’s former status as the ultimate swing state.
It’s got to hurt to have the Minority leader of the third largest state in the union leave your party because it’s too radical. Especially since a quarter century ago Florida was still The Land of the Hanging Chad…
Florida party switch shenanigans the second: “David Jolly, a former Republican U.S. Congressman in Florida’s 13th Congressional District who left the GOP amid his distaste for President Donald Trump, has now registered as a Democrat. He’s also launched a political committee, Florida 2026, ahead of what many expect to be a gubernatorial bid.” I doubt someone who left office in 2017 is going to be at the top of anyone’s list, and Charlie Crist’s post-Republican career hardly offers a blueprint for success in Florida politics…
“Disgraced former Representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) was sentenced Friday to 87 months in federal prison for wire fraud and identity theft, completing his remarkable rise and fall from a newly elected swing-seat congressman to widely ridiculed conman whose colleagues expelled him from the House..”
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has opened an investigation into Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) over donations made to her 2024 campaign by the Democratic fundraising organization Act Blue.
The FEC began its probe after receiving a complaint from the conservative Coolidge-Reagan Foundation in late March.
The complaint alleges that Crockett received 53 separate donations of $595 from a 73 year old supporter named Randy Best through the Act Blue portal.
However, when one of Crockett’s opponents for 2026 spoke to Best’s wife, she denied that the couple knew anything about donations, raising concerns that the Act Blue donations may have been made by others with donations being given under false names.
Crockett’s campaign received more than $870,000 in donations through Act Blue.
At this point, I think we have to assume that ActBlue was consciously constructed to enable fraud.
In the latest scandal to rock the state’s largest public school district, on Friday, a federal jury found Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) former chief operating officer, Brian Busby, and vendor Anthony Hutchison, guilty on 33 charges related to a long-running bribery scheme.
The scheme, which prosecutors say began as early as 2011, included kickbacks to Busby as well as cash payments to former HISD board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones and multiple other officials in exchange for lucrative contracts for construction, landscaping, mowing, and maintenance at district schools.
In some instances, Hutchison overbilled the district by $6 million through his exclusive contract to provide mowing and landscaping for the entire district. He also obtained contracts through Skillern-Jones to complete projects at several schools using funds derived from a 2012 voter-approved bond referendum.
After a trial that lasted nearly four weeks, both Busby and Hutchison were convicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery, filing false tax returns, and witness tampering. Hutchison was also convicted of wire fraud.
Skillern-Jones, who also later served as a Houston Community College trustee and worked for Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis (D-Pct. 1), entered a plea deal in 2021 and admitted that she had received $12,000 in cash from Busby in a Walmart parking lot.
Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld says that the people at the top of Marvel comics, Dan Buckley, David Bogart and David Gabriel, have done a horrible job, especially with X-Men, and have to be fired.
And speaking of people getting fired for being bad at their job, Alyssa Mercante fired from Kotaku. Asmongold: “Put the fries in the bag.”
