Iran Strikes: Day 14, lots of counter-drone measures, more welfare state fraud in California and Pennsylvania, a bishop raids the children’s fund, a new refinery rises in Brownsville, Old Glory 1, dirty antifa commie 0, caffeine is good for your brain, BuzzardFeed, and the cutest hotel greeters. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Donald Trump said that he thinks new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father, the former supreme leader, was killed on the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, is alive but “damaged.”
Khamenei has not been seen by Iranians since his selection on Sunday by a clerical assembly, and his first comments were read out by a television presenter on Thursday.
An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the newly appointed supreme leader was lightly injured but was continuing to operate, after state television described him as war-wounded.
“I think he probably is (alive). I think he is damaged, but I think he’s probably alive in some form, you know,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” His remarks were published by Fox News late on Thursday.
Military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island – the loading site for most of the Islamic Republic’s oil exports – were “totally obliterated” by US airstrikes during a historic bombing raid in the Persian Gulf, President Trump announced Friday.
“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The island, located about 16 miles off the Iranian coast, is one-third the size of Manhattan and controls 90% of Iranian crude oil exports.
Trump said the island’s oil infrastructure was not targeted but may be hit in future strikes, if the Iranian regime doesn’t allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Most IRGC facilities have been bombed into oblivion, but the IRGC is still functioning as a Secret Police force, threatening Iranians with death if they take to the streets to protest or rise up against the regime.
Snip.
Iranian state media claim the overnight strikes on Basij checkpoints were meant to stir unrest inside the country.
“This is an attempt to undermine public confidence in Iran’s stable security apparatus. The enemy is trying to open a new internal front,” one outlet said.
Fars news agency reported that at least 10 security and Basij personnel were killed in attacks at several sites across Tehran.
At this point, the crucial war-winning strategy is to destroy the IRGC’s ability to intimidate a populace desperate to get rid of them.
loitering munition-type drones now appear to be operating over Tehran.
More than 10 checkpoints, as well as several mobile IRGC (IRGC) military vehicles in different areas of the city, are said to have been targeted and destroyed by drone strikes. (@etelaf10)
This type of weapon can patrol for a long time over an area, wait for targets to appear, and then strike. This is all the easier when enemy air defense systems are degraded or neutralized.
This could facilitate the emergence of a broader national uprising, by weakening the regime’s control at the street level.
Uncle Sam cues up more Whoop Ass: “The USS Tripoli, and the 2,500 Marines on the amphibious assault ship, are headed to the Middle East to bolster U.S. military power there as the war in Iran enters its third week.” Maybe they’ll be occupying Kharg Island in the near future, and we’ll let China beg us to sell them Iranian oil…
Iran also attacked a refinery in northern Iraq. Maybe Iran is trying to see if they can survive as a state that exports nothing but terror…
Communist China is facing a devastating energy crisis as massive gas lines stretch for miles across the country, with desperate Hong Kong residents rushing across the border to fill their tanks amid fears that escalating war with Iran could cripple global oil supplies.
The scenes coming out of China paint a picture of panic and desperation — exactly what happens when authoritarian regimes fail to secure reliable energy for their people. While President Trump’s America First energy policies have made us energy independent, China’s reliance on hostile nations like Iran has left them vulnerable and scrambling.
Hong Kong citizens, already suffering under Beijing’s iron fist, are now forced to join endless queues just to get basic fuel for their vehicles. The images are reminiscent of the Carter administration’s gas crisis — a stark reminder of what happens when nations don’t prioritize energy independence.
The Carter-era gas lines weren’t from a shortage of supply, they were from the federal government’s monkeying with allocation.
Medicare is federally administered, and hospices must be certified for reimbursements. But the state issues the licenses for hospices to operate.
Three years ago, California’s state auditor sounded the alarm that Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010 – more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.
Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbilled Medicare by $105 million in a single year.
The state revoked 280 hospice licenses, but things have only gotten worse since then.
The CBS News analysis reveals that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state.
It goes downhill from there:
There are about 1,800 licensed hospices in Los Angeles County, California, which is more than six times the national average for the county’s senior population.
Nearly 500 hospices are operating within a 3-mile radius, the densest concentration of agencies in the county.
89 companies are registered to a single building in Van Nuys.
The illegal alien voter fraud that Democrats swear up and down never happens happened again. “ICE arrests illegal migrant who allegedly fraudulently voted in seven federal elections.”
The Department of Homeland Security has announced the arrest of an illegal migrant who allegedly voted in seven federal elections since 2008, despite being deported over 20 years ago.
DHS said Mahady Sacko, who came to the United States illegally from the African country of Mauritania, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the FBI in Philadelphia. He has been charged with voter fraud.
“This criminal illegal alien committed a felony by voting in federal elections dating back to 2008.”
If you’re waiting in long lines at the airport, you can thank Democrats love of illegal aliens. “Democrats Block DHS Funding Despite Airport Delays, Rising Iranian Threat.”
Senate Democrats have blocked another test vote on Thursday, pushed by Republicans attempting to end the ongoing 27-day partial government shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Republican leaders contend that Democrat lawmakers refuse to negotiate in good faith and are only interested in abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a subagency under DHS.
Nairobi-based contractors have seen footage capturing bathroom visits, naked people, and intimate moments, according to an investigation from two Swedish newspapers.
That’s right. This report from the newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten claims Meta is outsourcing video to Sama, a tech firm in KENYA, where human workers pore over millions of hours of video to help train Meta’s A.I. assistant that is paired with the glasses.
See, A.I. isn’t really A.I. That’s just a marketing label. These programs are Large-Language Models (LLMs) that can search and summarize vast quantities of data in a split second, but they require an army of human input to train them so they can provide accurate answers to users. Once the programs run out of data provided by humans, they stall out.
Sama was also used by OpenAI to train its LLM. Why? Well, labor in Africa is CHEAP. If you can pay thousands of workers $2 an hour instead of $30 an hour to train your overhyped search bot, you save billions of dollars.
The other advantage is anonymity … for the companies, that is. If you were paying Americans to watch videos of fellow Americans undressing and having sex, they would probably report it to the media en masse.
What a shock that Facebook “smart glasses” are simply another way to invade your privacy…
“HUGE Storm Shadow Strike on Bryansk Electronics Factory.” Plus a look at the aftermath. “90-94% of its production goes into Russian weapons – semiconductors, circuit boards, power modules for missiles, radars, drones, aircraft and more.” And as we know, Russia has very little in the way of semiconductor production.
Russian planes can barely fly in the right direction. They are catching fire in midair. Technical failures are increasing. Emergency landings are happening one after another…There is a dramatic increase in both military and civilian plane crashes.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are now afraid to even buy tickets. Flights are being postponed indefinitely. This is not a scene from a disaster movie. These images are from Russia.
And for millions of people, airports are now like giant open air prisons. The collapse of the system has reached such a terrifying scale that it can no longer be hidden.
A good bit of this was predicted when sanctions against Russian aviation came down in 2022.
Then there’s the story of civilians flown on an unheated military cargo plane in sub-zero temperatures…
Stephen Green: “I Have Seen the Future of Anti-Drone Warfare, and It’s Dirt-Cheap (Really!)”
Today’s news about Ukraine’s Sting counter-drone caught my eye, and what it might mean for U.S. and other Western forces going forward.
I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they’re both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia’s Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran’s Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.
Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.
So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.
And a local startup firm called Wild Hornets delivered on all three counts.
A typical quadcopter design and just over a foot tall, Stings are made mostly from 3D-printed parts and can be assembled in about two minutes. Unlike some drones that must be launched into the air via catapult (really), Sting takes off vertically like a helicopter before tipping over and using its stubby wings to fly like a plane, with an intercept range of 15 miles or so. Vertical takeoff allows operators to deploy and launch in less than 15 minutes.
The Ukes designed themselves a mini Osprey. That goes boom. Nifty.
There’s a camera on board, which the operator then uses to fly into incoming Geran-2s. With a top speed of about 190 MPH, they’re fast enough to enjoy a reported 80-90% successful intercept rate — and better than 90% in more recent operations. There’s a faster — and presumably more difficult to intercept — jet-powered Geran-3, but they’re much more expensive to build, require more fuel, and have shorter range. Russia uses far fewer of those.
The best part of Sting? The basic model costs about $2,500 to manufacture, compared to an estimated $70k–$80k for each Russian-built Geran-2. The economics of mass drone warfare are brutal.
A federal jury in Philadelphia has delivered a resounding guilty verdict against two Pennsylvania brothers and a longtime associate, convicting them of masterminding one of the most elaborate and prolonged racketeering operations uncovered in recent years. The scheme, which prosecutors say drained more than $32 million from Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program while exploiting vulnerable foreign workers through the H-1B visa system, spanned over a decade and involved layers of deception across multiple states.
At the center of the criminal enterprise – self-dubbed the “Savani Group” – were brothers Bhaskar Savani, 60, a trained dentist from Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Arun Savani, 58, from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Bhaskar controlled the group’s extensive network of dental practices, while Arun oversaw finances and real estate holdings. Together, they built what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described as a “complex web” of sham entities and fraudulent operations, amassing tens of millions through outright fraud “at every turn.”
A third defendant, Aleksandra “Ola” Radomiak, 48, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania—a longtime associate—was also convicted for her role, primarily in the healthcare fraud components.
The multi-faceted conspiracy encompassed several interlocking schemes:
Visa fraud and worker exploitation: The group filed numerous false H-1B visa petitions with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. These applications misrepresented job titles, duties, and other details to bring in foreign workers—most from India—who were dependent on the Savani Group for their legal status. Once employed, many were coerced into kicking back portions of their salaries and paying additional fees back to the enterprise, creating a captive, underpaid workforce.
Healthcare fraud against Medicaid: After the Savani Group’s legitimate dental practices lost their Medicaid contracts due to prior issues, the conspirators pivoted to using nominee-owned shell entities and sham dental practices. They fraudulently billed Pennsylvania Medicaid in the names of non-treating dentists for services that were either unnecessary, never performed, or grossly inflated. This alone resulted in over $32 million in improper payments, robbing taxpayers and depriving the healthcare system of vital resources.
Money laundering and tax evasion: Proceeds from the fraud were funneled through a sophisticated network of financial transactions, including concealment and transactional money laundering. The group also conspired to defraud the U.S. Treasury via wire fraud tied to false tax returns.
Obstruction of justice: When federal investigators closed in, the conspirators actively obstructed a grand jury probe.
Two cooperating government witnesses, Lynette Sharp and Seth Sikes, both pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists and testified against [Benjamin] Song.
Sharp alleged Song admitted to shooting someone when she helped him evade law enforcement after the officer was shot.
Likewise, Sikes alleged that Song said, “Get to the rifles,” and testified he heard gunshots coming from behind him where Song was and turned to see a muzzle flash.
Sharp met Song in 2022, and Sikes met him in 2024 while Song was teaching martial arts at a Fort Worth community center.
Both witnesses testified that they became friends with the defendants.
“I love them,” Sharp said on the stand, after wiping tears.
Sikes testified he and others trusted Song, whom he described as a “very charismatic person” that people would follow.
Cameron Arnold (also known as Autumn Hill), Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris (also known as Meagan Morris), Maricela Rueda, and Song face the most serious charges of attempted murder, discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and providing material support to terrorists.
Other defendants facing lesser charges include Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada.
All have pleaded not guilty.
Sharp and Sikes said group members considered themselves victims of society or those who wanted to protect “marginalized” people.
This ideology led them to become caught up in protest culture, offering a rare glimpse into the inner workings of protestors known as Antifa.
Antifa is modeled after a group that worked as the violent arm of the Communist Party in Germany in the 1930s. Some symbols from the original group are still used by the movement today, such as the logo and the raised-fist salute.
Song, who received an “other than honorable” discharge from the Army, recruited Sharp and Sikes to train with the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), often described as a left-wing alternative to counter the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Sharp and Sikes said they learned gun safety and practiced marksmanship. Various defendants in the Antifa case frequently trained with AR-style weapons, they said.
The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals lifted a block Wednesday on a lower court ruling that prevented the Trump administration from deporting illegal migrants to “third countries” that are willing to accept them.
The Trump administration had appealed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling last week, after he ruled in February that the Department of Homeland Security’s deportation policy was unlawful and violates due process protections under the U.S. Constitution.
The administration argued Murphy’s order violated two previous Supreme Court rulings and created an “unworkable scheme” that threatened to derail negotiations with other countries, along with thousands of deportations, per Fox News.
California’s climate-cult-driven political leaders assumed gasoline demand would fade quickly as electric vehicles took hold. Acting on that prediction, they created conditions that forced refineries to close, blocked new projects, and added regulations expecting everyone would share their disdain for fossil fuels and reliable internal combustion engines.
But reality didn’t match their models. Tens of millions of drivers still rely on gasoline every day, and by shrinking supply faster than demand declined, our eco-activist bureaucrats created a fragile, high‑risk system.
Californians are being warned to brace themselves for the FO phase of the FAFO cycle.
Gavin Newsom’s green agenda and global oil turmoil will risk sending California’s gas prices above a wallet-crushing $8 a gallon — potentially returning drivers to the desperate fuel rationing not seen since the 1970s, state lawmakers and industry experts warned.
With drivers in the Golden State already facing the highest gas prices in the US, Southern California state Sen. Suzette Valladares has urged the governor to scrap California’s cap-and-invest program that charges oil makers for carbon emissions. She dubbed Newsom’s program the “cap-and-tax” scheme, and warned that closing any further oil refineries in the state could trigger economic collapse.
“It’s not scaremongering at all,” Valladares told The California Post of a report from the USC Marshall School of Business that found gas prices could reach $8 a gallon by the end of 2026.
The way things are going, it wouldn’t shock me to see California gas prices hit $8 a gallon this month…
Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”
The FBI is expanding its criminal probe into suspected election irregularities, secretly obtaining a large tranche of voting records from Arizona’s largest county with a recent grand jury subpoena, multiple people familiar with the probe told Just the News.
The sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury probe, said FBI agents are receiving terabytes of electronic election data from Maricopa County, about a month after the bureau first disclosed an investigation into election irregularities by raiding a warehouse near Atlanta and seizing ballots from the 2020 election conducted in Fulton County, Georgia’s largest metropolis.
The subpoena comes five years after the GOP-led Arizona state Senate conducted a lengthy investigation into the 2020 election and concluded there were significant irregularities.
“As Democrats make anti-ICE messaging a centerpiece of their midterm election strategy, a new NBC poll shows that the Democratic Party is more unpopular than ICE. Of the 14 subjects surveyed—a list that also included “AI, that is Artificial Intelligence”—only Iran had a lower approval rating than the Democratic Party.”
Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said about the decision, “Texas has made a noticeable effort to embrace the business community. In doing so, it has created a policy and regulatory environment that can allow the company to maximize shareholder value.”
Its attraction to the state, according to ExxonMobil, is due in part to its de facto status as the company’s home, with 30 percent of the company’s global employee base and 75 percent of its domestic employee base located in Texas. The company is already headquartered in Spring.
“Texas’ legal and regulatory environment, including its modernized business statutes” was also referenced as a strategic reason for the relocation, along with the presence of the Texas Business Court, which ExxonMobil praised as “designed to resolve complex disputes efficiently.”
Thanks to Democrats’ soft on crime policies in California, not even luxury apartments are immune from rampaging mobs.
A group linked to a late-night street takeover forced its way into a luxury downtown Los Angeles apartment tower early Sunday, fighting with staff and leaving shattered glass and overturned furniture behind, according to police and video of the incident, according to the NY Post.
The disturbance happened around 3 a.m. at the Circa LA Apartments on South Figueroa Street, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Authorities told KTLA that a crowd involved in a nearby street takeover moved toward the upscale high-rise and began vandalizing the property.
Video shows a large group gathering outside the building before targeting the lobby. One person is seen throwing an object at a suited employee who appeared to be working near the front desk. The worker initially stood outside but retreated inside as other staff gathered in the lobby.
The crowd soon forced its way into the building. Outside, several people smashed glass doors and windows, while one individual used a metal barricade to ram the entrance.
The Post writes that once inside, members of the group knocked over furniture and ran through the lobby as the scene descended into chaos. At one point, a person appeared to grab a box from the front desk while others rummaged through it before the group dispersed as sirens approached.
This is your city on Democrats…
“Michigan rep not seeking reelection because she can’t “be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while remaining a member of the Democratic Party.” “Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett announced she will not seek re-election and will not run for public office again, saying the decision is faith-based and rooted in her commitment to Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture.”
I have compromised my relationship with Jesus for too long, and I’m grateful God did not give up on me. He gave me time to repent, turn, and be fully devoted to Him
That conviction includes the issues I cannot reconcile with Scripture: abortion, the normalization of the gay lifestyle, and the push to redefine gender.
Pope Leo XIV accepts San Diego bishop’s resignation over embezzlement scandal. Bishop Emanuel Shaleta stepped down from his post at Saint Peter’s Chaldean last month, the Vatican said in a bulletin Tuesday. Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop has replaced him in the interim.”
Shaleta has been charged with eight counts of embezzlement, eight counts of money laundering, and an “aggravated white collar crime” enhancement related to $272,000 in missing funds from the church, according to NBC News, and pleaded not guilty to all charges during a court appearance Monday.
Authorities allege that Shaleta spent months pocketing $30,000 in monthly cash payments from a tenant and hid the crime by moving money from a church account that held funds to help the less fortunate into the church’s operations account.
“PM who ran New Zealand into the ground during Covid flees country for greener pastures.” Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who locked down harder and longer than just about any other country, has emigrated to Australia. Hopefully a Bunyip or Drop Bear will eat her…
BlackRock is like a roach motel: Your money can check in, but it can never check out. “BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) is blocking investors from fully exiting its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund after redemption requests hit 9.3% of shares in Q1, well above the fund’s 5% quarterly cap. It marks the first time withdrawal requests have exceeded that limit.”
“Trump Set To Suspend Jones Act To Help Tame Oil Prices.” The century old Jones Act “that requires American-built ships to be used to transport goods between US ports.” I’m sure that right now Peter Zeihan is already working on a video to celebrate…
Unexpected South Carolina Democrat senate candidate Alvin Greene, RIP. They didn’t even mention his comic book…
Speaking of novelty candidates, Literally Anybody Else is running for mayor of North Richland Hills, a Metroplex city northeast of Fort Worth. That’s the name of the guy running: Literally Anybody Else. His cause for running against incumbent mayor Jack McCarty is “lying to the people about carport regulations.”
Ian McCollum examines whether force reset triggers will destroy the value of existing legal-to-own machine guns. The answer, from recent auction results, is probably not. Particularly eye-opening is two registered drop-in auto-sears, which allow conversion of certain modern sporting rifles to full-auto, went for $40,000 and $52,000. For what is essentially a stamped bit of metal.
Rick Beato has a theory that all those people building AI data centers are going to go bankrupt, because people can run AI tools and datasets on their own computers. He compares this to how recording studios who had borrowed money to buy expensive mixing boards circa 1999 went out of business when Napster crashed the music business. I think his larger point is correct, but I think a lot of musicians were already already into cheaper prosumer digital tools in the early 1990s.
Finally, my excessive Diet Dr Pepper habit is paying off! “Large Study Shows High Caffeine Intake Linked To Reduced Dementia Risk.”
BuzzFeed is buzzard feed. “BuzzFeed, the digital media empire that captured the attention of millennials in the mid-2010s through shareable listicles, viral video content and more, expressed ‘substantial doubt’ Thursday about its ability to continue operations.”
(Hat tip: Clownfish TV, from whom I’ve stolen the buzzard feed line.)
Critical Drinker is considerably less than impressed with The Bride! “Jesus Fuck Mothering Christ. I have seen a lot of crappy movies in my time, but I don’t think I’ve seen many that were so completely determined to waste such an insane amount of money and talent.”
Today’s Habitual Linecrosser:
“Aloha Snackbar.” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one before, but it’s still funny…
More Somali fraud in Minneapolis, Democrats have always been at war with Hamas, the Caspian Sea is no longer safe for Russian assets, Texas tops the U-Haul destination list (again), MST3K gets sold, and Scott Adams departs this simulation.
FA phase: “Somali Suitcase Stash: Feds say $130 million moved from Ohio airport to Minnesota on way overseas.”
Federal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.
Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.
The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.
“Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.
Just the News reported exclusively last week that TSA detected nearly $700 million in cash in luggage leaving the Minneapolis airport in 2024 and 2025, frequently headed on a route to Amsterdam and then Dubai where U.S. officials lost the tracking. The TSA agents routinely alerted investigators during the Biden years, but there was little interest in probing the money movements further until President Donald Trump took office last year.
Find Out phase beginning: “Congress moving quickly to investigate cash-in-luggage exodus from U.S. airports. Sen. Rand Paul also revealed that federal agents are probing the massive cash transfers that move through a network centered in the Minneapolis airport.”
Federal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.
Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.
The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.
“Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.
And the fraud isn’t limited to Minnesota: “Two scammers plead guilty to $68M Brooklyn adult day care fraud scheme.”
Two Brooklyn scammers pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding a whopping $68 million from the state’s controversial Medicaid home care program by paying health care kickbacks for services they didn’t provide at three Big Apple businesses.
Manal Wasef and Elaine Antao, both 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud for referring Medicaid recipients to two Brooklyn social adult day cares and a home health company in exchange for illegal kickbacks and bribes, the US Department of Justice announced on Thursday.
The latest iteration of the Democratic Party’s color-revolution-style operation was on full display in recent days as tensions erupted following the fatal shooting of a left-wing activist by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a federal enforcement sweep in Minnesota. This incident demonstrates that the protest industrial complex, funded by left-wing billionaires, has been on standby, waiting for a catalyzing event to ignite mass mobilization.
MSM, the Democratic Party, and left-wing nonprofits are working hard to manufacture another ‘George Floyd’-type protest or riot by omitting key context about the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent. They conveniently left out her social justice “warrior” role in Minneapolis, including her reported involvement with “ICE Watch” and other operations to disrupt ICE raids in the sanctuary city. These details matter because MSM attempted to manufacture an outrage news cycle, while nonprofits create artificial multi-city protests aimed at shifting public opinion on ICE operations nationwide.
More find out: “Trump Threatens To Invoke Insurrection Act As Left-Wing Chaos In Minneapolis Spreads.”
This is a good question: “Why did all the Dems suddenly become anti-Hamas over the weekend?”
Something very weird happened with the Democrats this past weekend.
I first noticed when I saw this post on X from Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois which was, let’s just say, not exactly subtle.
Apropos of apparently nothing, we’re getting a Shabbat Shalom from Pritzker on a random Friday night. That by itself that would be odd, but whatever.
A whole lot of Democrats followed suit in their 180:
Videos like that are a dime a dozen. If you’ve followed the anti-Israel campus protests over the past 2 years, you’ve seen leftwing mobs openly supporting Hamas proudly and loudly. Democrat politicians, meanwhile, have unequivocally supported the Palestinian Authority and Gaza Health Ministry, which are controlled entirely by Hamas. The support was so strong and so unanimous that Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania made headlines for breaking party lines with his support of Israel!
Legal Insurrection on a similarly mysterious flip. “Having Flipped Against Hamas, Dem Pols In Unison Now Back Iranian Protesters.”
Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.
We covered how Democrats politicians in unison and contrary to every message they’re sent since the October 7 Massacre, declared that public support for Hamas was unacceptable and antisemitic. We asked, What’s Behind the Democrats’ Sudden Pivot on Hamas and Antisemitism?
The talking points just dropped.
Now they’re condemning Hamas.
The Democrats are pure phonies. pic.twitter.com/TUzc1ocsAJ
— Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) January 10, 2026
I think it’s an election set up, they are going to use the “Woke Right” against Republicans not only in the 2026 midterms, but particularly if JD Vance is the Republican nominee in 2028. His proximity and friendship with Tucker Carlson and the Groypers will be a major Democrat theme, but that can’t work unless Democrats switch gears from their anti-Israel, pro-Hamas — and yes antisemitic — persona.
So they are up so to something. No one believes they had a change of heart.
And now Democrats have come out supporting the protesters in Iran, despite doing everything dating back to Obama to keep the Mullahs in power.
Snip.
Little history on AOC and Iran:
-She condemned Trump for killing top Iranian regime terrorist Qassem Soleimani
-She condemned Trump for blowing up Iran’s nuclear facilities
-She co-sponsored legislation to prevent the U.S. military from taking action against Iran
Did Iran’s check to Soros bounce? Or does Iran’s hyperinflation and currency collapse mean that they can no longer keep paying off useful idiots?
This account from a Venezuelan security guard loyal to Nicolás Maduro is absolutely chilling—and it explains a lot about why the tone across Latin America suddenly changed.
Security Guard: On the day of the operation, we didn’t hear anything coming. We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.
Interviewer: So what happened next? How was the main attack?
Security Guard: After those drones appeared, some helicopters arrived, but there were very few. I think barely eight helicopters. From those helicopters, soldiers came down, but a very small number. Maybe twenty men. But those men were technologically very advanced. They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before.
Interviewer: And then the battle began?
Security Guard: Yes, but it was a massacre. We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed… it seemed like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute. We couldn’t do anything.
Interviewer: And your own weapons? Didn’t they help?
Security Guard: No help at all. Because it wasn’t just the weapons. At one point, they launched something—I don’t know how to describe it… it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.
Interviewer: And your comrades? Did they manage to resist?
Security Guard: No, not at all. Those twenty men, without a single casualty, killed hundreds of us. We had no way to compete with their technology, with their weapons. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was.
Interviewer: So do you think the rest of the region should think twice before confronting the Americans?
Security Guard: Without a doubt. I’m sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they’re capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They’re not to be messed with.
Interviewer: And now that Trump has said Mexico is on the list, do you think the situation will change in Latin America?
Security Guard: Definitely. Everyone is already talking about this. No one wants to go through what we went through. Now everyone thinks twice. What happened here is going to change a lot of things, not just in Venezuela but throughout the region.
Judicial Watch sued in 2025 to clean up Oregon’s voter rolls.
Confirmed by Portland’s Willamette Week, Secretary of State Tobias Read is now cleaning up those records, and the scope of the clean-up is HUGE.
That process could lead to the cancellation of as many as 800,000 registrations. That’s the number of voters Read says are currently classified as ‘inactive’ on the voter rolls. To be clear, inactive voters do not receive ballots, but their names remain on the rolls.
The cleanup comes as Oregon’s first-in-the-nation vote-by-mail system is under intense scrutiny. President Donald Trump, who blamed mail-in ballots, among other bogeymen, for his defeat in 2020, has amplified historical criticism of Oregon’s system.
There’s nuance here. Essentially, because these voters haven’t cast a ballot in a certain number of years, they no longer get a handy-dandy mail-in ballot sent directly to their home.
That doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t vote, or that they haven’t been involved in some level of electoral shenanigans.
There are reportedly 167,000 people who haven’t voted since 2017 and will be taken off the rolls beginning this month. Another 640,000 are classified as inactive and will be reviewed after that.
Remember that in 2024 President Trump only lost Oregon by some 320,000 votes…
For the first time in 50 years, the U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings and heightened deportation efforts, an enormous victory for the White House as it faces renewed backlash against its heavy-handed enforcement tactics.
The U.S. had net migration of -10,000 to -295,000 due to a combination of deportations, self-exits, and a significant drop in illegal immigration resulting from increased border security measures, according to a new Brookings Institution analysis. Those numbers represent a significant victory for President Trump, whose successful campaign focused primarily on his vow to reverse the record illegal immigration numbers facilitated by President Biden’s lax border policies.
Brookings observes a decline in green cards issued, refugee inflows, temporary visas, paroles and notices to appear, and entries without encountering a border official in 2025 due to the Trump administration’s stricter approach. Those trends will likely continue in 2026 as the administration tightens green card eligibility, further limits visa issuances, and continues to reject applications for asylum or refugee status.
The State Department announced Wednesday that it would pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries “whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates,” the latest in a series of moves designed to decrease immigration from impoverished countries.
Funny what you can do when you actually obey the law and implement the desires of actual citizens rather than Democrat Party elites…
President Donald Trump put another dent in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement, withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and 65 other international organizations dedicated to climate and social justice.
Trump’s order caps a recent trend in which many corporations have also canceled their decades-long commitments to left-wing global alliances, undermining what had been a highly influential worldwide movement that once included the world’s largest nations and companies.
According to a White House statement, Trump’s Jan. 7 executive order directs “all Executive Departments and Agencies to cease participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities that operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.”
On Jan. 8, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would no longer provide funding to the Global Climate Fund, which financed many of the U.N.’s climate initiatives. The United States originally joined more than 190 other nations in the UNFCCC in 1992, when the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty.
This was followed by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which countries committed to CO2 limits and reduction targets, and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which accelerated national governments’ commitments and spending to reduce global temperatures. The U.S. Senate did not ratify either of these subsequent accords.
Thereafter, a number of net-zero corporate alliances emerged to align the private sector with climate initiatives. At its peak, this network included financial and corporate alliances, such as the Net Zero Banking Alliance, the Net Zero Insurance Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, and others.
These alliances operated under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a U.N.-backed multi-trillion-dollar coalition. The Glasgow Alliance focused on financial institutions because they were not only financiers but also dominant shareholders of publicly traded corporations, and thus a critical means of leverage over the private sector.
Net Zero Asset Managers members, for example, included BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, the world’s largest asset managers. These three firms alone are collectively the largest shareholders in more than 40 percent of publicly traded U.S. firms, and 88 percent of the S&P 500, according to a study by George Mason University business professors Sebahattin Demirkan and Ted Polat.
Over the past several years, however, members have begun to exit these organizations amid a conservative backlash and allegations of conflicts of interest and collusion. Much of this backlash occurred in conservative U.S. states, where Republican lawmakers, treasurers, and attorneys general launched boycotts and antitrust investigations of banks and fund managers accused of colluding against oil, gas, and coal companies and of violating their fiduciary duties to investors.
Vanguard quit Net Zero Asset Managers in 2022, and BlackRock quit in January 2025, after which the initiative announced it was suspending activities. In 2023, half of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance’s members quit en masse, facing risks of antitrust prosecution.
“Huge Missile/Drone Strike on Atlant Aero Drone Factory in Taganrog.” “This has been hit twice before.”
They hit the Nevinnomyssk Azot chemical plant with drones, and it’s been hit before. “It has the only units in Russia for the production of methylacetate and high purity acetic acid.”
Ukraine attacks four tankers with drones in the Black Sea. One wonder how much of Russia’s shadow fleet is even left…
Cargo ship Rona, possibly carrying weapons from Iran to Russia, sinks in the Caspian Sea. Looking at that rust bucket, you can well believe it sank without any help from Ukraine. Also, shouldn’t the mullahs be saving those weapons to use on their own people?
Despite breathless headlines warning of a robot takeover in the workforce, a new research briefing from Oxford Economics casts doubt on the narrative that artificial intelligence is currently causing mass unemployment. According to the firm’s analysis, “firms don’t appear to be replacing workers with AI on a significant scale,” suggesting instead that companies may be using the technology as a cover for routine headcount reductions.
In a January 7 report, the research firm argued that, while anecdotal evidence of job displacement exists, the macroeconomic data does not support the idea of a structural shift in employment caused by automation. Instead, it points to a more cynical corporate strategy: “We suspect some firms are trying to dress up layoffs as a good news story rather than bad news, such as past over-hiring.”
he primary motivation for this rebranding of job cuts appears to be investor relations. The report notes that attributing staff reductions to AI adoption “conveys a more positive message to investors” than admitting to traditional business failures, such as weak consumer demand or “excessive hiring in the past.” By framing layoffs as a technological pivot, companies can present themselves as forward-thinking innovators rather than businesses struggling with cyclical downturns.
In a recent interview, Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli told Fortune that he’s seen research about how, because markets typically celebrate news of job cuts, firms announce “phantom layoffs” that never actually occur. Companies were arbitraging the positive stock-market reaction to the news of a potential layoff, but “a few decades ago, the market stopped going up because [investors] started to realize that companies were not actually even doing the layoffs that they said they were going to do.”
When asked about the supposed link between AI and layoffs, Cappelli urged people to look closely at announcements. “The headline is, ‘It’s because of AI,’ but if you read what they actually say, they say, ‘We expect that AI will cover this work.’ Hadn’t done it. They’re just hoping. And they’re saying it because that’s what they think investors want to hear.”
“Trump greenlights Bill proposing 500% tariff over Russia oil trade. US Senator Lindsey Graham said the Russia sanctions bill will allow US President Donald Trump to punish countries that ‘buy cheap Russian oil, fueling Putin’s war machine.'” This seems aimed at India in particular.
The struggle over control of information, censorship, and economic dominance in the digital space is increasingly becoming a fundamental civilizational question. That the European Union now sees not only the EU Commission but also national governments and security apparatuses siding with information diktats, against the fundamental principle of free speech, sends a dangerous signal to the world. The EU has effectively withdrawn from the circle of freedom-oriented state actors.
Into this picture fits a recent report from Italy. A tweet by the founder and CEO of the internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, has caused a stir.
Yesterday a quasi-judicial body in Italy fined @Cloudflare $17 million for failing to go along with their scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any… pic.twitter.com/qZf9UKEAY5
Prince reports that Cloudflare has been hit with a $17 million fine by a — as he calls it — clandestine cabal in Italy. The accusation: Cloudflare refused to participate in an Italian censorship mechanism at the behest of this group.
Specifically, this concerns a system controlled by the Italian media authority AGCOM (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) called the “Piracy Shield.” This blocking system is officially aimed at combating illegal sports and media streaming services. The main targets are the economic interests of major players such as Italy’s Serie A football league, Sky Italia, DAZN, Mediaset, and other large European media and rights corporations.
Private actors, comparable to the so-called “Trusted Flaggers” now familiar in Germany, operate on behalf of the Italian media sector within this system. They report websites, IP addresses, or suspicious domains to the Piracy Shield. The authority then compels internet service providers and infrastructure operators like Cloudflare to implement the corresponding blocks within just 30 minutes. Every advertising minute counts; piracy is indeed a dangerously significant economic factor. The question is: How do states and affected companies enforce copyright? Do they operate under the rule of law and avoid collateral damage, such as backdoor state censorship?
According to Prince, all of this happens without a judicial order or prior review, bypassing due legal process entirely. The measures affect not only allegedly illegal content but also deeply intrude into the technical infrastructure of the internet.
“A middle school band director in the Abilene Independent School District has been busted for possessing child sexual abuse material. Lance Carl Mosley was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.”
“U-Haul Growth Index: Texas Back on Top as No. 1 Growth State of 2025. Florida ranks 2nd for net gain of one-way customers; California last for sixth year in a row.” (Hat tip: Ted Cruz on Facebook.)
Life in deep blue Seattle: “McDonald’s rolls out store ‘no door’ policy – and bans ALL diners from eating in…The McDonald’s restaurant is located in downtown Seattle and it has been nicknamed ‘McStabby’s.’ And, it is situated in an area that has been plagued with crime in recent years.” This is your city on Democrats…
Yes, Democrats are totally rational: “Nebraska Democrat, best known for filibustering trans surgery ban, rips down America 250 exhibits at Capitol.”
Cartoonist, author and political commentator Scott Adams died Tuesday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 68.
His ex-wife and caregiver, Shelly, made the announcement on Adams’ livestream Tuesday morning.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t good news,” Shelly said. “Of course, he waited ’til just before the show started, but he’s not with us anymore.”
Shelly read aloud a “final message” that Adams “wanted to say” on the livestream.
“If you’re reading this, things did not go well for me,” the message began. “I have a few things to say before I go. My body fell before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this January 1, 2026.”
After speaking about Christianity, Adams’ message said, “For the first part of my life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent as a way to find meaning. That worked — but marriages don’t always last forever, and mine ended in a highly amicable way. I’m grateful for those years and the people I came to call my family.”
Snip.
In his last decade and a half, however, Adams achieved wide influence through his business advice and political analysis.
His 2013 best seller, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” is one of the most influential and entertaining business books of recent years.
In it, Adams introduced the concept of using systems, rather than goals, to achieve success in life. He also advised readers to accumulate skills — a “talent stack” — rather than traditional credentials.
In 2015, Adams began commenting on politics after observing the first Republican presidential primary debate. When then-candidate Donald Trump responded to a moderator’s question that accused him of mistreating women by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Adams took notice.
A trained hypnotist, Adams predicted that Trump, then a huge underdog, would win the nomination — and the presidency.
Adams drew ridicule for his bold claim. But he looked increasingly prescient as Trump dispensed with his opponents, the Republican establishment and — eventually — Hillary Clinton.
Adams used what he called the “persuasion filter”: Rather than judging whether political rhetoric was true or false, he simply evaluated it based on whether it was persuasive.
Snip.
While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events.
He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.
Snip.
While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events.
He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.
Leftists suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome forget just how funny and influential Dilbert was, and would have done much better listening to Adams’ explanation of how Trump works than their continuing full bore freakout. But that wouldn’t let them assuage their wounded ego with the certainty that they’re simply smarter and better people than Trump and his his deplorable followers in JesusLand…
Radial Entertainment, the entertainment company formed from the merger of Shout! Studios and FilmRise, has obtained full ownership over the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” brand from creator Joel Hodgson’s Alternaversal.
“MST3K” had been jointly owned by Alternaversal and Shout! Studios since late 2015. Radial’s purchase includes all brand assets and intellectual property and follows nearly two decades of Shout!’s multichannel distribution of “MST3K” content. The amount of the final buyout was undisclosed.
Also: “Hodgson will remain involved with the property as brand ambassador and consultant.”
I hope they can keep it going and not screw it up…
New woke Star trek is such garbage people won’t even watch it for free. “Paramount only hit 1,300 live viewers during free YouTube premiere.”
Welcome to day three of the Schumer Shutdown! January 6 was an entirely Fed operation, Hegseth reads the brass the riot act, the Trump Administration claws back some taxpayer dollars, Ukraine hits more Russian oil refineries, Tricolor’s numerous scams, a couple of hacking attacks, Fiddy gets 50, and a Beatles demo tape leads to lunch with Sir Paul.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The “FBI disclosed to Congress that there were 275 ‘plain clothes’ agents interspersed with the crowd that gathered at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” So it was a Fed operation top to bottom. And, of course, they lied about it to congress. I guess calling “Operation MAGA Entrapment” would have been too obvious…
There are some familiar names in this Jason Curtis Anderson list of organizations setting America on fire, but a few new ones as well.
If I were investigating the organizations who are setting America on fire, I’d start here:
Foundations:
1. Open Societies 2. Tides 3. The Neville Roy Singham funds
-Community Justice Exchange -Unity & Justice Fund -Peoples Support Foundation -United Community Fund -Arc of…
-The People’s Forum
-Party for Socialism & Liberation
-Answer Coaliton
-Code Pink
-Tricontinental Institute
-Breakthrough News
-International People’s Assembly
-Venceremos Brigade
2. PAL Action
3. Palestinian Youth Movement
4. Within Our Lifetime
5. Stop Cop City
6. Samidoun (still no arrests)
7. SJP
8. National Lawyers Guild
9. DSA (planning to disrupt military supply chain)
10. AROC (blocks ports)
11. Alliance for Global Justice
12. Dissenters
13. Indivisible
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of the nation’s top military leaders in Quantico, Virginia Tuesday morning to lay out his vision for restoring the military’s “warrior ethos” by rolling back the left-wing indoctrination that’s taken hold at the Pentagon in recent years.
Warning the assembled generals to “do the honorable thing and resign” if they rejected his message, Hegseth called out the leaders for allowing physical fitness standards to slide while diverting valuable time and resources towards politically fashionable causes related to race, gender, and the environment.
“No more identity months, DEI offices, no more dudes in dresses,” Hegseth said. “No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. We are DONE with that sh**.”
The secretary announced that female physical fitness standards will be eliminated from combat roles, reiterating a directive that was first issued in March.
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men,” the Pentagon chief said.
All soldiers in combat roles, regardless of gender, must now meet the male physical fitness standards, Hegseth said, “because this job is life or death.”
“Each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS, for every combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only,” Hegseth said.
Basic physical fitness standards will also be applied to the highest ranking officers.
“It’s unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon, and leading all around the world. It’s a bad look, and it’s not who we are!” Hegseth said. “You need to meet the height and weight standards.”
“Today, at my direction, every member of the Joint Force at every rank is required to take the PT test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year. EVERY year of service.”
Summary: ““The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things.”
Analysis: True.
At least the shutdown did give us this:
President Trump is trolling Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries over their obsession with giving free healthcare to criminal aliens
One story that broke a bit late to include in last week’s LinkSwarm is the Des Moines school district superintendent who turned out to be an illegal alien with a deportation order. With further digging, it seems that Guyana-born Ian Roberts lied about pretty much his entire list of academic accomplishments.
So, he went to St. John’s with his student visa, but got his EdD from an online university no one has heard of and has a plethora of other universities listed without degrees attached.
In addition to this largely inflated and apparently fabricated professional record, Powell notes that there are some dubious awards Roberts claims which are unverifiable as well as claims to police and military service which are hard to confirm.
So who hired him? Would you believe board chair Jackie Norris, former Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama?
More: “Head of Iowa school district arrested for avoiding deportation, found with handgun after chase.”
In a 6-3 vote last Friday, the United States Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to withhold nearly $4 billion in foreign aid funds appropriated by Congress.
The ruling by the conservative majority of the court permits the White House to withhold the funds through a pocket rescission under the Impoundment Control Act.
The move also permanently stays a lower court’s order by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali who had ruled that the administration’s freezing of the funds was likely illegal and that Congress would have to approve the decision to withhold the funding.
The lower court ruling had been temporarily blocked by Chief Justice John Roberts on Sept. 9 after a federal appeals court had declined to put Ali’s ruling on hold.
A tweet from the Department of State celebrated the ruling as a win for the president’s America First foreign policy and for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and lauded the administration’s efforts to rein in what it called, “wasteful, woke, and weaponized foreign assistance and international organization spending.”
Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought announced that nearly “nearly $8 billion in funding for climate-related projects, which he labeled as ‘Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,’ is being canceled.”
So Keir Starmer, the man who refuses to stop importing unassimilated Muslim illegal aliens into the UK, now says they can only solve the illegal alien problem by imposing a mandatory digital ID on all citizens, without which they will not be permitted to work. “The government said the digital ID would be held on people’s mobile phones and become a mandatory part of the checks employers have to make when hiring staff. Over time, it would also be used to provide access to services such as childcare, welfare and access to tax records.”
So the Syrian immigrant who shot up a Manchester synagogue was named Jihad Al-Shamie. You put that in a novel and your editor would reject it as being too on-the-nose. (Hat tip: Stphen Green at Instapundit.)
Would-be Brett Kavanaugh assassin Nicholas Roske sentenced to eight years in prison. Prosecution asked for 30.
“ICE sting at Dallas strip club nabs 41 illegal aliens, rescues sex-trafficking victims.” “ICE busted into the Chicas Bonitas Cabaret and discovered that a tip they received was correct: Illegal aliens were sex trafficking girls to dance at this strip club. Out of 41 illegal aliens, 29 illegally worked at the club. Five were previously convicted criminals.”
“Plano Private School Teacher Gets 20 Years for Sex Crimes Against Student. Jacob Allred pleaded guilty to sexually exploiting a 15-year-old girl at Great Lakes Academy, which specializes in students with learning disorders.”
Virginia Democrats are using the power of the legal system to protect a transgender sex offender from being prosecuted for his crimes. The policy is in line with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger’s views.
Democratic leaders in Fairfax County, the largest county in Virginia, have repeatedly refused to prosecute Richard Cox, a man who has allegedly regularly exposed himself to women and girls in the girls’ locker rooms at two high schools and a recreation center. Cox is being charged for his crimes in Arlington County, where a detective testified he had child pornography and a Fairfax County children’s swim class schedule on his phone.
Republican Jack Ciatterelli has brought the race to a dead heat between himself and Democrat Mikie Sherrill.
But that’s not all.
AFTER this poll was taken, more news broke about Sherrill’s less than stellar record at the United States Naval Academy.
“A cheating scandal in the Naval Academy prevented her from walking at graduation.” Evidently her friends cheated and she refused to testify against them.
“Tricolor Auto’s Failure Has It All – ESG, Woke Capital, Illegal Immigration, Securities Fraud, Government Diversity Programs, BlackRock, etc.”
Tricolor Auto Group, the nation’s seventh largest used car dealer (and 3rd biggest in Texas and California), just filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy – e.g. liquidation. Its target customer had been illegal aliens, and with President Trump deciding to start enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, there has suddenly been a major “market correction” in that market segment. Not only has the customer base largely evaporated, but so have loan repayments, which Tricolor also serviced.
The “tri colors” that the name references are the colors of the Mexican flag – red, white, and green.
While the sudden loss of customers and loan repayments was the catalyst that caused the final collapse of Tricolor, its failure has revealed so much more, including securities fraud, Wall Street ESG gimmickry, race-based federal programs, etc.
Tricolor has securitized more than $2 billion of its very high risk auto loans over the past seven years. The most recent issuance was in June of this year, with JP Morgan Chase and other money center banks peddling more than $200 million of “social bonds” to credulous investors. These securities are certified as “social bonds” by the US Treasury’s CDFI (“Community Development Financial Institution”) program because Tricolor focuses on selling its cars and financial services to underserved communities, specifically Spanish-speaking non-citizens. Tricolor’s CEO, Daniel Chu, was quoted by Barron’s in 2022 as stating, “No one else is providing meaningful dollar credit to an illegal immigrant.”
As documented in this recent Barron’s article (“Tricolor Files for Bankruptcy, The Auto Lender Was Once an ESG Favorite,”) “Financial institutions until recently touted their social bond purchases as part of their commitment to ESG—or environmental, social and governance—principles. BlackRock took a $90 million stake in Tricolor in 2021 as part of its Impact Opportunities Fund focusing on businesses and projects owned, led by, or serving members of minority groups.” Of course BlackRock was involved.
You may recall that a major contributor to the financial crash of 2008 was Wall Street wizards packaging up a bunch of sub-prime mortgages, securitizing them, and then selling those “mortgage backed securities” to investors as something other than perfumed garbage. That is effectively what Tricolor has been doing with its auto loans, with the help of Wall Street.
In a Tricolor press release from March of this year titled “Tricolor Closes $328 Million Securitization to Advance Financial Inclusion at Scale in Underserved Communities,” CEO Chu stated, ”By providing deserving people with access to reliable, affordable transportation, Tricolor, which operates across six states and ranks as the third largest used auto retailer in Texas and California, helps move them into the financial mainstream and reverse systemic financial inequities in America.” Like the other securities issuance I referenced, JP Morgan Chase also promoted these odious securities, along with Barclay’s and Fifth Third Bank.
Per Car Dealership Guy, Tricolor’s bonds have collapsed to a value of 12 cents on the dollar, virtually wiping out the investors who bought those bonds. But as bad as this all sounds so far, it’s actually worse. There was massive fraud by Tricolor, which is causing losses to all parties who did business with it.
The banks who were packaging Tricolor’s securities also had lines of credit extended to Tricolor. There was a recent regulatory filing by Fifth Third Bank revealing that it was booking a $200 million impairment (loss) for fraud involving one of its customers. In this filing, Fifth Third disclosed that there was “recently discovered alleged external fraudulent activity at a commercial borrower,” and that it “is working with the appropriate law enforcement authorities in connection with this matter.” Barron’s confirmed that this commercial borrower was Tricolor. JP Morgan Chase also has about $200 million in loans outstanding to Tricolor, so it too will almost certainly be booking a massive impairment charge for this unrecoverable debt.
Some of the news reports about the Tricolor fraud state that collateral was “double pledged,” meaning that unbeknownst to the banks lending money to Tricolor, the collateral they thought was backing up their loans was also pledged to other banks.
Tricolor was also the servicer of its “buy here – pay here” loan portfolio, remitting collected payments to the banks who securitized their loans. From my experience dealing with fraud in this arena, it is quite likely that there was some level of kiting / ponzi scheme at work, and a constant inflow of new debt was necessary to keep servicing old debt that was not supported by actual assets.
Working in Tricolor’s favor to perpetuate the fraud was the aura of woke virtuosity that kept the money flowing in, which also helped shield Tricolor from appropriate due diligence by those same woke banks throwing money at it.
Working against Tricolor was President Trump’s immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security issued this press release earlier this week: “Over 2 million Illegal Aliens Out of the United States in Less than 250 days.”
Funny how, after the company’s disasterous social justice rebrand, Keir Starmer’s Labour government bailed out Jaguar/Range Rover to the tune of £1.5 billion after a hack attack, despite the company being owned by India-based Tata.
Remember the lawsuit Texas and other states filed against BlackRock and other companies for prioritizing Environmental Social Governance (ESG) over shareholder return? The case is now moving forward.
A Texas federal judge will allow a lawsuit to proceed wherein a coalition of states, including Texas, sued the world’s largest asset managers for allegedly engaging in antitrust violations and consumer protection practices.
Texas and 12 other Republican-led states filed suit against BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, accusing them of using their “collective power — by proxy voting and otherwise — to pressure the major coal producers to reduce production of coal, and in particular production of the thermal coal used to generate the electricity that powers American homes and businesses.”
The lawsuit alleges that the firms “routinely violated its pledge to investors” by using their holdings to invest and advance “climate goals” as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. “Rather than individually wield their shareholdings to reduce coal output, therefore,” the lawsuit asserts, “Defendants effectively formed a syndicate and agreed to use their collective holdings of publicly traded coal companies to induce industry-wide output reductions.”
Judge Jeremy Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas dismissed, in part, motions by the investing firms to dismiss the case, stating that the states “have identified enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Defendants agreed to collectively pressure coal companies to reduce the output of coal in the relevant markets and disclose future output information.”
The motion to dismiss from BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street was filed back in March, calling the grounds for the lawsuit “based on half-baked and untested theories.”
“We make these investments on behalf of our clients, and our focus is on delivering them financial returns,” Blackrock told The Texan in December last year, after the initial lawsuit was filed.
“The suggestion that BlackRock has invested money in companies with the goal of harming those companies is baseless and defies common sense. This lawsuit undermines Texas’ pro-business reputation and discourages investments in the companies consumers rely on.”
In May, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a “statement of interest” supporting the claims against BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, stating that the case “alleges not merely typical investor behavior, but the active, anticompetitive use of common shareholdings to reduce the production of American coal to the detriment of American consumers and businesses.”
“In sum,” Kernodle writes in the order, “it is plausible that Defendants did what they publicly said they were going to do: use their stock to decrease the output of coal.”
With Kernodle’s order, the suit will proceed with discovery and a trial to determine whether these major investment managers violated antitrust and consumer deception laws.
“BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard — three of the most powerful financial corporations in the world — created an investment cartel to illegally control national energy markets and squeeze more money out of hardworking Americans,” Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a press release following the order by Kernodle.
Being a large investment company with literally trillions in assets, BlackRock has a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies. Despite being on the receiving end of a potentially very expensive, Texas-led lawsuit, they’re also opening a stock exchange in Texas and has a stock fund based solely on Texas companies. Evidently Texas is simply too profitable a state to ignore, lawsuit or no lawsuit.
BlackRock et. al. should abandon ESG, stop tying their fortunes to fighting the boogeyman of “climate change,” get out of leftist politics entirely and narrow their focus to making money for their investors.
President Trump (and parents) rack up Supreme Court wins, more Iran nuke damage assessments, a whole lot of Democrats want to die on the hill of taxpayer subsidies for mutilating your children, and some fast cars. Plus a weird assortment of violent lunatics.
The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Trump administration a win by limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s agenda.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump v. Casa, siding with the Trump administration’s challenge to the scope of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The Court did not, however, weigh-in on the legality of the birthright-citizenship order itself.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, finding that universal injunctions exceed the authority Congress has given to federal courts. Barrett was joined by the Court’s five other conservative justices.
The High Court ruled that lower courts cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its policies against nonparties to the specific case they’re ruling on. For the time being, the justices have partially halted the nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order. They halted the injunctions in areas where their authority is too broad and prevent the executive branch from developing public guidance related to Trump’s executive order.
They punted on birthright citizenship, but a win is a win, and hopefully lower courts will now stop trying to reimport convicted and deported illegal alien felons.
Suchomimus has clear satellite images of the damage Operation Midnight Hammer did to the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear complexes.
UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief: ‘Night and Day’ Difference Between Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Before and After US Strikes. ‘It is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,’ says IAEA’s Rafael Grossi.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the Islamic Republic’s program “significantly,” the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization said Tuesday.
“I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”
Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.
“Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”
After a week’s worth of pounding from the Israel Defense Forces, the Iranian regime was disoriented and defenseless, helplessly exposed to Israeli and American air superiority, like a turtle flipped on its shell and baking underneath the pitiless desert sun. Now was the time to finish the job, not two weeks from now, after (what was left of) the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command structure had time to regroup.
So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.
I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.
If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered. Iran’s nuclear program has either been destroyed permanently or set back decades. The mullahs are very upset, as one imagines murderous religious fanatics tend to be, but also seemingly powerless to do much more than cause a temporary economic ruction by laying mines across the Strait of Hormuz. (Note: In a late-breaking development after this piece had gone to press, Trump announced last night that he had in fact brokered a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.)
This is an unalloyed victory for the forces of sanity and civilization. To those who point to the inevitability of unforeseen “blowback,” I will remind you that Iran and its proxies have been engaging in low-level conflict with America for well over a decade now — who do you think was funding and training the people killing our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years? — and now it is free to try its hand at more of the same, if it wishes, this time without a looming nuclear threat to back it up. America has come out ahead on this in concrete, measurable, and hugely valuable geostrategic ways.
Most importantly of all, none of this would have happened if Kamala Harris were president. Think about that for a moment; think about the road not taken. One can only speculate about hypotheticals, but . . . c’mon now. Look into your heart, you know it to be true. Imagine a President Harris, sitting uneasily atop a Democratic coalition barely held together at the seams: Would she have encouraged Netanyahu in his initial campaign against Iranian military and nuclear assets? Would she have provided the final air support and ordnance necessary to get the job done? With people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, and Zohran Mamdani calling the shots among large segments of her base?
To ask the question out loud is to answer it: no. For that reason alone, it is no exaggeration to say that the shape of the world perceptibly turned for the better on the outcome of last November’s election. You can draw a straight line between Donald Trump’s winning the 2024 race and Iran’s nuclear weapons program now being best described as a series of variably sized craters. If you supported Donald Trump and voted for him in 2024, you should feel proud of it today: Saturday is the most obvious evidence yet of why your vote mattered.
It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.
Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.
Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.
Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.
So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.
For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.
A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.
As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.
A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.
How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?
Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary.
So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.
But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.
The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?
It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.
Russia? Its former Obama-Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.
It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.
Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?
No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50 percent of Chinese-purchased oil passes.
For President Xi, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.
The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.
So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.
We recently learned of a previously concealed tranche of documents likely to shed new light on the past decade of American political controversies. This potentially earth-shaking information is known as “Prohibited Access.”
It was only recently discovered that the FBI’s information system, called Sentinel, had a level of access previously unknown to anyone outside the Bureau and known only to a select few inside. In essence, this was a concealed cache used to hide documents the FBI wanted hidden from discovery.
There is one part of the Sentinel system that is devoted to classified and confidential information, termed “Restricted Access.”
It turns out there is a higher, more secretive level called “Prohibited Access.” To any outside observer or investigator, it would appear that there was no record of Prohibited Access information, even though the existence of Restricted Access documents would be shown.
Accordingly, when prosecutors like John Durham or investigators such as Congressman James Comer were investigating various potential misdeeds, they would not have learned of the existence of documents relevant to their investigation that were kept in Prohibited Access.
Although it remains unclear, there is reasonable suspicion that even FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not aware of this document cache. Alternatively, Horowitz may have known about it but also may have agreed to keep its existence secret, a dismaying possibility for one charged with enlightening Congress and the public.
Logic tells us that, broadly, there could be only two related purposes for this concealed tranche because it prevents those investigating the FBI or its favored parties from even knowing about the existence of the documents; such suggests concealment of information inculpatory to the senior levels of the FBI and/or its favored politicians, as well as exculpatory information about the targets of its biased investigations.
If, by way of a wild hypothetical example, James Comey and Andrew McCabe broke laws to make an innocent Donald Trump appear guilty of “Russian Collusion,” they would not wish a trail of their ugly misconduct to see the light of day, nor reveal proof of Trump’s innocence.
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel should shine a lot of disinfecting sunlight here.
Winning: “Supreme Court Allows States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood.”
The Supreme Court is allowing South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, a win for pro-lifers that will likely clear the way for red states across the country to stop taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines Thursday to permit South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Court, siding with the state against a private challenge brought by the abortion provider and a patient.
The plaintiffs in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that Medicaid patients should be free to sue in order to choose their own health-care providers, while the state claimed they lacked the right to sue.
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
The 1965 Medicaid Act grants patients the ability to choose a willing and qualified provider. Medina dealt with whether patients have the right to sue to go to their preferred provider and whether Planned Parenthood qualified as a provider. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state and argued the case was about healthcare access, not abortion.
South Carolina stopped allowing Planned Parenthood to participate in its Medicaid program in 2018 because of state law barring the public funding of abortion. The move was immediately blocked in court in response to a challenge brought by Julie Edwards, a South Carolina woman who claimed she preferred Planned Parenthood for gynecological care and needed Medicaid coverage.
“States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the South Carolina Department of Health in the case.
Abortion is not “woman’s health care” and should not be treated as such.
SB 12 includes a prohibition on schools assisting in the “social transitioning” of students and also restricts the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity,” while providing that it does not “limit a student’s ability to engage in speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment … that does not result in material disruption to school activities.”
In a press release Monday, the ACLU of Texas, along with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), called SB 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.”
“This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for ACLU Texas, stated in the press release.
“Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them.”
Another Supreme Court win: “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Maryland Parents in Challenge to Mandatory LGBTQ Curriculum.” Which part of “Get your groomer hands off children” was unclear?
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement recently carried out a multi-state operation targeting eleven Iranian nationals in the U.S. illegally as the threat of Iranian terror cells attacking the U.S. intensifies.
Over the last 48 hours, federal agents arrested the eleven Iranians and a U.S. citizen who harbored an illegal immigrant from Iran, a Department of Homeland Security official told NR.
“Under Secretary Noem, DHS has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out—and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
ICE agents arrested former Iranian army sniper Ribvar Karimi in Alabama on June 22. Karimi possessed an Iran army identification card upon his arrest and is currently being held in ICE custody. He entered the U.S. in October 2024 under a K-1 marriage visa but never updated his immigration status.
In Houston, ICE agents arrested Behzad Sepehrian Bahary Nejad, an illegal alien who was armed with a loaded pistol at the time of his arrest. Nejad was previously arrested in August 2017 for assaulting a family member and had a final order of removal prior to his latest arrest. Also in Houston, ICE arrested Hamid Reza Bayat, who a judge had ordered removed from the U.S. 20 years ago. Bayat was convicted twice on drug charges and again for driving with a suspended license.
In Tempe, Arizona, where they nabbed Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian convicted of threatening a law enforcement officer and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, and U.S. citizen Linet Vartaniann for threatening law enforcement and harboring Eidvand. The pair were arrested after ICE obtained a search warrant and they now face federal charges.
Likewise, ICE arrested two Iranian nationals living together in Colorado Springs, Mahmoud Shafiei and Mehrdad Mehdipour. Shafiei was ordered removed decades ago and has criminal convictions related to drug crimes, and arrests for assault and child abuse. Border patrol encountered Mehdipour in June 2023 and processed him for expedited removal. Both are now in ICE custody as they undergo removal proceedings.
Another Iranian national ICE nabbed is Mehran Makari Saheli, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sahei was previously convicted for being a felon in possession of the firearm and was illegally staying in the U.S. after a judge ordered him removed in 2022.
ICE agents arrested several other Iranian nationals in numerous other states and localities, almost all of whom had criminal convictions for various offenses and are now in federal custody.
How many Democrat district judges had decisions half-written forbidding deportations when the Supreme Court decision came down?
Moderate Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans — concerned about the prospect of a Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are plotting ways to keep the Democratic Socialist out of Gracie Mansion.
Shocked by the 33-year-old state assemblyman’s upset win in the Democratic mayoral primary last night against a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, these Cuomo backers, reluctant Cuomo backers, independents, and Republicans say the only way to beat Mr. Mamdani is to all back one candidate.
“The horse they’re going to back is Eric Adams,” a grocery store magnate and former Republican candidate for New York City mayor, Jon Catsimatidis, tells The New York Sun. “He is backed by the White House, by Washington, and he’ll make sure crime is cleaned up.”
When asked what that means for the Republican nominee for mayor, Curtis Sliwa, whom Mr. Catsimatidis employed at his radio station, the billionaire replied, “He’ll clean up the crime.”
Mr. Catsimatidis ended the call. He didn’t respond to a text asking if he is personally planning to back Mr. Adams. He said to tune into his radio show this evening.
Mr. Catsimatidis told the press earlier this month that he may sell his grocery store empire or move his business out of the city if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor.
Always with the trannies: “Zohran Mamdani Wants To Spend $65 Million on Medical Gender Treatments for Minors and Adults.”
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has quietly proposed channeling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay for medical gender-transition treatments for residents of all ages – including for minors. This city spending would counteract the sustained assault on these medical interventions – coming from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans – which threatens treatment programs even within blue cities and states.
The controversial method of providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes gender-transition surgeries — such as breast removal — to minors in particular is now at the apex of the culture wars. It has also become a flashpoint in Democrats’ battle to redefine themselves in the wake of their brutal losses in the November election.
Authorities in Austin, Texas, have arrested Brian Johnson, known online as the social media influencer “Liver King,” according to jail records.
He faces one charge of terroristic threat, a Class B misdemeanor.
Snip.
The so-called Liver King rose to viral fame with social media posts depicting a barbarian-like “ancestral lifestyle,” including the consumption of raw animal organs, as depicted in the recent Netflix documentary “Untold: The Liver King.”
His persona and the story behind the physique fell apart in December 2022, however, when he admitted in a YouTube video to using steroids.
Speaking of crazy, violent lunatics: “51-year-old Adam Christopher Sheafe has now confessed to crucifying and killing Pastor William Schonemann in Phoenix in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2025.”
“U.S. Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Muslim-Centric EPIC City, No Charges Filed.” As I’ve mentioned before, while investigation was certainly warranted, right now EPIC City looks more like a failed speculative real estate venture than an actual Muslim city in the offing, especially now that the developers have sworn up and down that they won’t discriminate against buyers based on religion. Awful nice of them to agree to obey the law…
This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees,” reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP – which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm “to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees.”
According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged “repeated” efforts to collect those fees.
“Morrissey cancels Stockholm show, saying he and band are ‘travel-weary beyond belief’, citing “’bsolutely zero music industry support’ for full Scandinavia tour.”
“No label will release our music, no radio will play our music … and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”
Last year, he said he had bought back the rights back to the album, as well as his 2014 record ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. He later told Medium that “there are two albums” that he has completed but is unable to release, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’.
“The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title. We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”
He added: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell. The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels do not want to become involved with this Gotcha! Journalism.”
Evidently Morrissey figured out that unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration to the UK was a bad idea way back in 2019. Obviously The Guardian must punish him for his #wrongthink.
I’m not a Morrissey fan, and a significant percentage of my impression of him is everyone from MST3K to Mojo Nixon making fun of him. I can certainly see a musician cancelling a show due to exhaustion, and Morrissey is no spring chicken. But as for “zero music industry support,” dude, it’s 2025. Major labels don’t support anyone unless they can own your entire output, or at least get their sticky fingers into every possible revenue stream. Just pay to have your own CDs pressed and sell them at your (evidently successful) shows.
Another day, another Ken Paxton lawsuit, this one against BlackRock over coal.
Texas and 10 other states have sued three of the world’s largest financial companies, alleging the trio violated antitrust laws to push coal power plants out of commission.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he and 10 other attorneys general sued BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street in federal district court in Tyler, Texas.
“Each Defendant has individually acquired substantial stockholdings in every significant publicly held coal producer in the United States,” the filing asserts.
“Each has thereby acquired the power to influence the policies of these competing companies and bring about a substantial lessening of competition in the markets for coal. And each has used its power to affect a substantial reduction in competition in coal markets.”
The suit then points to the Climate Action 100+ agreement onto which all three firms signed, a 2021 pact that laid out decarbonization commitments; BlackRock and State Street announced their withdrawal from the pact earlier this year.
The lawsuit continues, “Rather than individually wield their shareholdings to reduce coal output, therefore, Defendants effectively formed a syndicate and agreed to use their collective holdings of publicly traded coal companies to induce industry-wide output reductions.”
Paxton’s position seems to be: Pressuring coal companies by yourself is fine, but get together to pressure them collectively is forming an illegal, anti-competitive cartel.
The plaintiffs are asking the court for forced divestiture of each company’s coal plant holdings and to fine the defendants $10,000 per violation under the Texas Business & Commerce code, along with miscellaneous other requests.
In total, seven counts across the various states were brought against the financial titans.
“Texas will not tolerate the illegal weaponization of the financial industry in service of a destructive, politicized ‘environmental’ agenda. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street formed a cartel to rig the coal market, artificially reduce the energy supply, and raise prices,” Paxton said.
“Their conspiracy has harmed American energy production and hurt consumers. This is a stunning violation of State and federal law.”
BlackRock responding that they’re as pure as the driven snow snipped.
Like many other places across the country, Texas’ main power grid — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region — has seen a reduction in its coal power fleet as aged plants retire and nothing new is built.
Coal has fallen out of fashion both politically and within the industry. Environmentalists push for wind and solar to replace it in the power portfolio, while the cheaper natural gas prices around the world have steadily forced coal generators out of commission.
ERCOT currently has 14,321 megawatts (MW) of installed coal and lignite capacity, though about half of that is usually operating at any given time; that’s down from around 20,000 MW of coal capacity in 2015.
This lawsuit is an extension of the fight over the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement in the world of capital — a generally politically progressive phenomenon that tries to push policies like decarbonization and pro-choice views in boardrooms.
Paxton might have difficulty prevailing should the issue come to trial, as there’s no shortage of U.S. agency declarations of “decarbonization” as an official government goal that BlackRock can point to. But I’m pretty sure neither side wants this in court. Especially BlackRock, who is on the wrong side of anti-woke culture shift with Trump II incoming and most of the rest of the corporate world backtracking on social justice and ecomadness.
Expect them and their co-defendents settle to avoid long, nasty bouts of discovery making its way into the news.
Half a year gone already. This week: The debate confirmed that pretty much everything Republican said about Biden being old and out of it was true, people can’t afford housing anymore, the Supreme Court reigns in the administrative state, a whole bunch of layoffs come down the pike, two sorta, kinda coups, fake meat doesn’t pay, and we say farewell to a Texas original. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Joe Biden looked old and disoriented during Thursday’s CNN debate with Donald Trump. He spoke in a quiet and hoarse voice, made some incoherent answers, and often stumbled over his own words.
It was a lackluster performance that played directly into Republican depictions of the 81-year-old president – the oldest president in American history — as too old and frail to serve another four years in office. Trump said as much during the debate.
“He’s not equipped to be president,” Trump said. “You know it and I know it.”
The debate was a highly personal affair between two men who made little effort during their nearly two hours on stage to contain their disdain for one another.
Biden called Donald Trump a “loser,” and a “whiner” with the “morals of an alley cat.” Trump accused Biden of turning the United States into a “third-world nation” and of being the “worst president in history by far, and everybody knows it.”
Trump turned in a spirited performance, hammering Biden on inflation and the immigration crisis under his watch. But Biden’s struggles seemed to be the major takeaway for CNN’s post-debate panel, which reported that senior Democrats are in an “aggressive panic” over their party leader’s apparent frailty.
Speaking about improvements he’s claiming at the border, Biden at one point seemed lost, saying: “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on, the total initiative relative what we’re going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers.”
“I don’t really know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump replied. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
At another point, Biden got visibly lost when talking about his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to wipe out the debt, saying he wanted to make sure “that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with, with, with the Covid, excuse me, with dealing with everything we had to do with, look, we finally beat Medicare.”
“Well, he’s right,” Trump said, “he did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”
He stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump.
The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he’s made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.
And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.
“Biden is toast — calling it now,” said Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state.
In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide, granted anonymity to discuss the matter, called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over: “What did he just say? This is crazy.”
Sales of previously owned homes are sitting at a 30-year low and didn’t move much in May as prices hit a new record and mortgage rates remain high.
So-called existing home sales in May were essentially flat, down 0.7% from April to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 4.11 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors, or NAR. Sales fell 2.8% from May of last year …
The median price of an existing home sold in May was $419,300, a record-high price in the Realtors’ recording and up 5.8% year over year. The gain was the strongest since October 2022. Prices gained in all regions.
The Realtors noted in a release that the mortgage payment for a typical home today is more than double what it was five years ago.
It’s almost as though the Biden Recession, constrained supply (a great deal from blue locale regulation that prevent housing from being built), and high interest rates mean that no one wants to buy or sell.
According to a new report, the average renter can’t afford a typical U.S. apartment.
According to Redfin, the typical U.S. renter household earns about $54,712 per year, which is 17.3% less than the $66,120 needed to afford the median-priced apartment at $1,653 per month. This means that 61% of renters can’t afford their housing without significant financial stress.
Snip.
Inflation, which has surged during Biden’s presidency, certainly exacerbates this issue. Rising costs for essentials like food, gas, and utilities leave renters with even less disposable income to cover their housing costs. Despite promises to address affordability and economic inequality, the Biden administration has doubled down with claims that inflation is going down and that wage growth has outpaced it — which isn’t true. Biden has made it more difficult for Americans to achieve financial stability.
Pixar (part of Disney) (175 people, 14% of the company, who must have been thrilled to get a pink slip and then see unwoke Inside Out 2 go on to be Disney’s biggest movie of the year)
The Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling overturning the 1984 Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council case, striking down a previous decision that granted federal agencies immensely broad power to draw up regulations without congressional approval.
The Court ruled in both Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce — two nearly identical cases — that regulatory agencies will no longer be able to fill in the blanks of vague legislation in 6-2 and 6-3 decisions, respectively. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the first case because she sat on the federal appeals court that had previously heard the case.
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that it is not the place of agencies to clarify ambiguous legislation.
“Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” he wrote. “Courts do. The Framers, as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment.”
Writing a concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the concept of Chevron deference “undermines” many of the principles on which the United States was founded.
“It precludes courts from exercising the judicial power vested in them by Article III to say what the law is,” he wrote. “It forces judges to abandon the best reading of the law in favor of views of those presently holding the reins of the Executive Branch. It requires judges to change, and change again, their interpretations of the law as and when the government demands.”
This is a huge blow to the unchecked administrative state and a key decision in helping reign in untrammeled executive regulatory power.
This looks like it will put a crimp in Biden’s amnesty plans: “SCOTUS rules 6-3 that there’s no constitutional guarantee for non-citizen spouses to be admitted to the US.”
Russia’s newest S-500 air defense system has been deployed to Crimea to defend against ATACMS strike. Result? It was destroyed by an ATACMS strike. “This is a big embarrassment for Russia, that its newest and best missile system has had its clock clean by 30-year-old missiles.”
“War crimes arrest warrants issued for top Russian officials. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s former defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov.” It would make one hell of a Dog The Bounty Hunter episode…
Andrew Cuomo (D-isgrace) admits that the bogus Trump hush money kangaroo trial should never have been held. “If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn’t running for president. I’m the former AG in New York. I’m telling you, that case would have never been brought. And that’s what is offensive to people. And it should be!” Broken clock, twice a day.
Federal judges in Missouri and Kansas issued separate rulings on June 24 blocking key sections of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, which is designed to lower student loan payments and forgive debts.
A new version of the program that would reduce payments and shorten maximum repayment periods was set to take effect in July.
U.S. District Judge Michael Crabtree for the District of Kansas ruled that the Republican states were likely to succeed in their claim that the department lacked explicit congressional authority to enact this portion of the program.
“Defendants have offered colorable, plausible interpretations of the Higher Education Act that could authorize the SAVE Plan, but those interpretations fall short of clear congressional authorization,” Judge Crabtree, who was appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote on Monday.
However, he declined to block the program entirely, expressing concerns about the practicality of reversing parts of the plan that had already been implemented. He also said that Republicans’ delay in filing their lawsuits undermined their arguments that there was an immediate need to halt the entire program.
In a separate decision on the same day, U.S. District Judge Judge John Ross for the Eastern District of Missouri, also a President Obama appointee, blocked the department from forgiving “any further loan[s]” under SAVE until he decides the full case. His order said that such actions would likely strip state loan operators of revenue.
Judge Ross also suggested that the SAVE program might have exceeded the authority of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and that Missouri would likely be harmed by the program.
Just imagine if a Republican judge got a chance to rule on it…
“Kenya Protesters Storm Parliament, Police Fire Live Rounds, After Lawmakers Unleash Eco-Austerity.” Seems like $2.7 billion in taxes to serve nebulous “green” goals is unpopular in a country where the per capita GDP is $2,099. Thanks, IMF…
And an attempted coup in Bolivia evidently failed. President Luis Arce is a bit of a socialist scumbag, so it remains to be seen if he intends to follow in Venezuela’s footsteps to economic ruin.
Not only are the massive crowds a problem, but this year the Saudi city is under an excessive heat warning, with highs at times having reached between 110 and 115°F during the day, and 100°F even at night. This has resulted in what could be a record amount of heat injuries and deaths by the pilgrimage season’s end. On Monday the Saudi weather service recorded a temperature of 125 degrees Fahrenheit at Mecca’s Grand Mosque.
Many of the dead were “unauthorized pilgrims” who hadn’t paid their Hajj fee. “This group was more vulnerable to the heat because, without official permits, they could not access air-conditioned spaces provided by Saudi authorities for the 1.8 million authorized pilgrims to cool down after hours of walking and praying outside.”
More accused perverts in classrooms. “Former Denton ISD Coach Arrested for Online Solicitation of a Minor. A mother from another school district says she tried to warn Denton ISD of an inappropriate encounter her daughter had with district employee Justin Wallace Carter.”
“A Uvalde County grand jury has indicted former school district police Chief Pete Arredondo and another former district officer on charges of child endangerment, the first criminal charges brought against law enforcement for the botched response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Arredondo and Adrian Gonzales face felony charges of abandoning or endangering a child.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A fun edition of What’s My Line featuring America’s most decorated war hero.
Kinky Friedman, RIP. He was a Texas original, an entertaining musician, a successful author, and the last interesting Democrat in Texas. Dwight already posted “The Ballad of Charlie Whitman,” so I direct you over there. I have an inscribed (not to me) first of A Case of Lone Star, and I should probably read that next.
A new stock exchange headquartered in Dallas will launch next year aimed at competing with New York City’s exchanges, whose rules and regulations some companies have found onerous.
TXSE Group Inc. is founded and operated by James Lee, who says the company has already raised $120 million for the project — the largest backers of which are BlackRock and Citadel Securities.
BlackRock is a surprising name to be investing in a major initiative in Texas. After all, BlackRock’s previous headlines have been about various Texas retirement funds divesting from BlackRock over the company’s leftwing “Environmental Social Governance (ESG)” investing policies and their hostility to the oil and gas industry. Indeed, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink was a poster boy for ESG, but seems to have had at least a partial change of heart over ESG, saying he’s “ashamed” to use the term anymore, instead being less hostile to fossil fuels and supporting a strategy of “transition investing” in decarbonization technologies. (Maybe getting their stock downgraded over ESG had something to do with that.) Stefan Padfield says “Fink has apparently simply replaced ESG with ‘conscious capitalism,’ which suggests nothing much has really changed given that ‘ESG is conscientious capitalism in practice.’ He also notes that BlackRock’s stock price has under-performed the S&P 500 over the last 12 months.
The last time we looked into Citadel Securities was because they had apparently been caught with their hands in the GameStop naked shorts cookie jar at the same time they were telling trading platform (and investment recipient) Robinhood to stop allowing retail customers to buy GameStop.
The plan was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. TXSE Group intends to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later this year. It will operate virtually but also eventually establish a physical presence in Dallas.
“Changes in equities trading markets are driving more volume to exchanges and more choices for issuers and sponsors,” Lee said in a press release.
“TXSE will ultimately create more competition around quote activity, liquidity and transparency, resulting in more consistent and reliable markets that benefit investors, global issuers and liquidity providers alike.”
Lee added, “Texas and the other states in the southeast quadrant have become economic powerhouses. Combined with the demand we are seeing from investors and corporations for expanded alternatives to trade and list equities, this is an opportune time to build a major, national stock exchange in Texas.”
TXSE sees Nasdaq’s and NYSE’s approaches to compliance and non-financial regulations, such as diversity targets, as heavy-handed and onerous.
“BlackRock is proud to be a founding investor in the Texas Stock Exchange to increase liquidity and improve market efficiency for BlackRock’s clients and other investors in the U.S. capital markets,” BlackRock Vice Chairman Mark McCombe told The Texan in a statement.
“TXSE is well positioned to capitalize on the Texas economy and strength of the state’s business environment. We look forward to engaging with the other investors on the benefits of the TXSE’s unique value proposition.”
This follows other similarly aimed projects that BlackRock and others have partaken in over the last decade — a list that includes things like Members Exchange, RFQ Hub, and Luminex Trading. Given the state’s growth and regulatory posture, those backing this new project see a unique investment opportunity.
This states the obvious: Texas has a pro-business, pro-growth regulatory environment, while New York (city and state) has a hostile, anti-growth regulatory environment.
No points for guessing which political parties control which state.
Not mentioned, but a distinct possibility, is that many big business owners see the Trump kangaroo court conviction as a potential threat to themselves. If Democrats are willing to use a weaponized judiciary to go after their political enemies, the law be damned, then who might be next? A presence in New York, even only a listing on the New York stock exchange, may now be perceived as a much bigger potential liability than it was. With companies moving their physical presence from failing blue states like New York and California to Texas, it make a great deal of sense to do the same in as many legal venues as possible.
A kangaroo trial reaches its kangaroo conclusion, Biden’s ludicrous Gaza pier floats away and sinks, ESG lawsuits get the green light, the Libertarians nominate a hard left social justice warrior, and the NRA picks up a Supreme Court win. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The kangaroo trial where they tried Trump on supposed violation of a federal offense in a state courtroom and the judge decreed that the jury didn’t need to come to a unanimous opinion to find Trump guilty found Trump guilty. I expect this to result in expedited appeal and equally expedited overturning.
Result? “Today, the Trump campaign announced a record-shattering small-dollar fundraising haul following the sham Biden Trial verdict totaling $34.8 million – nearly double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign on the WinRed platform.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public (subscribers can check out the extensive 6,800 word report here).
According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.
According to the report, the effort also involved;
a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;
the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;
Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.
Furthermore, companies like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy were mentioned as part of a concerted effort to de-platform and financially de-incentivize individuals and organizations deemed threats by the IC. This approach represents a significant escalation in the use of corporate cooperation to achieve what might essentially be considered censorship under the guise of national security.
Nina Jankowicz And The Alethea Group
Remember Nina? A huge fan of Christopher Steele – architect of the infamous Clinton-funded Dossier which underpinned the Trump-Russia hoax, and who joined the chorus of disinformation agents that downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, Jankowicz previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.
Jankowicz compares the lack of regulation of speech on social media to the lack of government regulation of automobiles in the 1960s. She calls for a “cross-platform” and public-private approach, so whatever actions are taken are taken by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, simultaneously.
Jankowicz points to Europe as the model for regulating speech. “Germany’s NetzDG law requires social media companies and other content hosts to remove ‘obviously illegal’ speech within twenty-four hours,” she says, “or face a fine of up to $50 million.”
By contrast, in the US, she laments, “Congress has yet to pass a bill imposing even the most basic of regulations related to social media and election advertising.” -Public
In a 2020 book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, Jankowicz praises a NATO cyber security expert for having created a “Center of Excellence,” a concept promoted by Renée Diresta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, in which she made the case for the (now failed) Disinformation Governance Board that Jankowicz would briefly head up.
One year later, Jankowicz began working with ‘anti-disinformation’ consulting firm, Althea Group, staffed by “former” IC analysts.
Lots more at the link.
Remember when fast food was cheap food you bought to treat kids or didn’t feel like cooking? Now 78% of Americans surveyed think it’s a luxury good they can’t afford. Thanks, Joe Biden!
Also, one of Putin’s dachas burned down, though it’s so far from the theater of operations that it may be unrelated.
“Biden’s Gaza ‘Pier to Nowhere’ a Disaster and National Embarrassment, Breaks Apart.” Evidently the pier can only work in seas with waves smaller than three feet, and 4.5′ chop and 20 MPH gusts KO’d it. Also, no less than four U.S. vessels have run aground in the process of trying to build and move this thing. That’s some mighty fine pier-building, Lou.
The Supreme Court unanimously handed the National Rifle Association a win Thursday in the gun rights group’s effort to revive a 2018 First Amendment lawsuit accusing a New York official of causing damage to the NRA’s relationships with banks and insurers.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a unanimous opinion that found the NRA “plausibly alleged” that Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York‘s Department of Financial Services, illegally retaliated against the pro-Second Amendment group after the Parkland, Florida, high school mass shooting that left 17 people dead.
The question before the justices was whether Vullo used her regulatory power to force state financial institutions to cut off ties with the NRA in violation of constitutional First Amendment protections.
Vullo, who worked in former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, said her regulations targeted an insurance product that is illegal in New York, which is dubbed by critics as “murder insurance.” In essence, such insurances are third-party policies sold via the NRA that cover personal injury and criminal defense costs after the use of a firearm.
“Here, the NRA plausibly alleged that Vullo violated the First Amendment by coercing DFS-regulated entities into disassociating with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy,” Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote in her decision.
A mysterious shooting in North Carolina north of Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, not far from where some of America’s most elite U.S. Special Operations forces live and train is under investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division as well as local police. The shooting in Carthage, North Carolina occurred May 3 at 8:15 p.m. following a phone call about a suspected trespasser near a Special Forces soldier’s property.
Two Chechen men who spoke broken English were found near the soldier’s home. The family alleges the suspected intruder, 35-year-old Ramzan Daraev of Chicago was taking photos of their children. When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued and Daraev was shot several times at close range. A second man, Dzhankutov Adsalan, was in a vehicle some distance from the incident and was questioned by authorities and then released. The Moore County Sheriff’s office is leading the investigation.
The FBI told Fox News, “Our law enforcement partners at the Moore County Sheriff’s Office contacted the FBI after a shooting death in Carthage. A special agent met with investigators and provided a linguist to assist with a language barrier for interviews.”
A district judge has granted a pilot’s request for a class-action lawsuit against American Airlines for allegedly investing pension funds into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds.
The case revolves around the allegation that American Airlines—headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas—violated its fiduciary obligation to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) “by investing millions of dollars of American Airlines employees’ retirement savings with investment managers and investment funds that pursue political agendas” through ESG initiatives.
“By pursuing ESG goals, Defendants gave Plan assets to fund managers, such as BlackRock, who allegedly ignored financial returns as the exclusive purpose and lowered the value of Plan participants’ investments,” the order states.
In addition to being disloyal to the employees, the plaintiff, Bryan Spence, argues that American Airlines’ investments were “imprudent because it is well known that ESG funds are associated with poor performance given the detrimental effects of such activism on stock prices.”
“To remedy these alleged ERISA violations, Plaintiff filed this lawsuit individually and on behalf of a proposed class of Plan participants and beneficiaries,” the order says. “ERISA authorized participants in a qualifying plan to bring an action on behalf of other participants to enforce the statute’s fiduciary obligations and remedial provisions, as well as recover all losses to a plan caused by a breach of a fiduciary duty.”
Two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a large, mysterious new Internet hosting firm called Stark Industries Solutions materialized and quickly became the epicenter of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government and commercial targets in Ukraine and Europe. An investigation into Stark Industries reveals it is being used as a global proxy network that conceals the true source of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against enemies of Russia.
At least a dozen patriotic Russian hacking groups have been launching DDoS attacks since the start of the war at a variety of targets seen as opposed to Moscow. But by all accounts, few attacks from those gangs have come close to the amount of firepower wielded by a pro-Russia group calling itself “NoName057(16).”
As detailed by researchers at Radware, NoName has effectively gamified DDoS attacks, recruiting hacktivists via its Telegram channel and offering to pay people who agree to install a piece of software called DDoSia. That program allows NoName to commandeer the host computers and their Internet connections in coordinated DDoS campaigns, and DDoSia users with the most attacks can win cash prizes.
Microsoft’s announcement of the new AI-powered Windows 11 Recall feature has sparked a lot of concern, with many thinking that it has created massive privacy risks and a new attack vector that threat actors can exploit to steal data.
Revealed during a Monday AI event, the feature is designed to help “recall” information you have looked at in the past, making it easily accessible via a simple search.
While it’s currently only available on Copilot+ PCs running Snapdragon X ARM processors, Microsoft says they are working with Intel and AMD to create compatible CPUs.
Recall works by taking a screenshot of your active window every few seconds, recording everything you do in Windows for up to three months by default.
These snapshots will be analyzed by the on-device Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and an AI model to extract data from the screenshot. The data will be saved in a semantic index, allowing Windows users to browse through the snapshot history or search using human language queries.
Who wouldn’t want AI recording and monitoring their every move? Yet another reason never to turn on Windows Copilot+…or use a Windows machine at all.
Time for an update to this old classic
Though Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan survived by the skin of his teeth, a majority of Republican Texas House members say they won’t vote for him for speaker.
A majority of the 2025 Republican House caucus opposes Democratic committee chairs, and effectively will not support another term for Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), the group said in a letter released on Friday.
“In a collective effort to respond to Republican voters and reform the Texas House, we will only vote for a candidate for speaker pursuant to the Platform and the Caucus By-Laws who will only appoint Republicans as committee chairs,” the brief letter and joint statement reads.
It adds, “The absence of a member’s or nominee’s name from this statement does not necessarily mean the individual is opposed to this statement. All members and nominees are invited to sign on to this statement.”
Forty six current or presumptive members signed the letter, including 23 members who voted for Phelan’s speakership last year.
One of those signatories, GOP nominee in House District 70 Steve Kinard, has a difficult general election fight against state Rep. Mihaela Plesa (D-Dallas) in a D-52% district.
The letter includes signatures from each of the 21 “Contract with Texas” signatories, most of whom campaigned specifically against Phelan’s speakership. That contract also includes a ban on Democratic committee chairs, though has 11 other planks to its demands as well.
Last session, a parliamentary maneuver precluded a vote on the question of banning Democratic chair appointments, though the idea had gained steam among GOP House members and was included in the party’s list of legislative priorities. It is likely to be featured again.
In a March interview after being pushed to a runoff and state Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) announcing his challenge for the gavel, Phelan said he would not back down on the appointment of Democrats as committee chairs.
Snip.
This release makes Phelan’s path toward a third term as speaker much more difficult. Should this group hold, ostensibly opposed to Phelan, it will be impossible for him to win the Texas House Republican Caucus endorsement. However, the speaker could give in on some concessions, such as Democratic chair appointments, and win back this group’s support.
GOP caucus rules require members to vote for the body’s nominee, presumably enforced by the bylaws, though no section exists in that portion of the document laying out penalties for voting differently than the caucus has chosen. It’s happened before, for example last year when three members — state Reps. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) and Nate Schatzline (R-Fort Worth), and now-former member Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City) — voted against the caucus nominee, Phelan, and for Tinderholt.
Article IX of the Texas Republican House Caucus bylaws lays out the procedure for selecting a speaker candidate. It requires the selection process to be conducted by secret ballot until a member receives two-thirds support from the body, currently 58 votes; if no candidate reaches that line, the last-placed candidate will be eliminated from the contest and that will be repeated until one candidate reaches 58.
Should the vote reach a third round, the threshold needed will drop to three-fifths support — currently at 52 votes. Should nobody reach that line, after a fourth round of voting, all nominations will be withdrawn and the floor reopened.
Depending on what happens in November with potential flips, those 58- and 52-lines may shift.
This intra-caucus vote will occur in early December, per the rules.
Libertarians nominate a social justice warrior Chase Oliver for their Presidential candidate. A fair number of Libertarians are saying they’ll vote for Trump now…
“I believe this is one of the most important elections of my lifetime, and I’m supporting Trump. I know that I’ll lose friends for this. Some will refuse to do business with me. The media will probably demonize me, as they have so many others before me. But despite this, I still believe it’s the right thing to do.”
The physics PhD said that he refuses to live in a society where people are afraid to speak their minds.
Red Lobster followup: Turns out Red Lobster is privately owned by seafood supplier Thai Union. And just who did Red Lobster buy all that “endless shrimp” from? No prizes for guessing…
“George Miller’s Furiosa is projected to take in only $31 million at the box office. When adjusted for inflation, that’s the worst Memorial Day box-office haul in 43 years.”
Will wokeness and the Biden recession kill off comic shops? Also, is Disney looking to outsource comics from Marvel?
World’s largest Buc-ee’s to open. “The new center is located in Luling, Texas, and will open its doors to the public the morning of June 10, according to a news release from the company. The new 75,000-square-foot center is symbolic for the Luling community, as it will replace the city’s current Buc-ee’s store, which was the first Buc-ee’s travel center built in 2003.” (Hat tip: Dave.)
“Donald Trump Found Guilty Of Being Donald Trump.” “‘It was an open and shut case,’ said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass. ‘There wasn’t any way he could sit there being Donald Trump and just get away with it. We were given strict orders to hold him accountable for being Donald Trump, and that’s what we’ve done.'”
Israel’s Iran strike is shrouded in mystery, California is shockingly “permissive” on sex trafficking children, Warhammer goes woke, and a new Doom speed-running record. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Senior US military sources:The target of the Israeli strike was an Iranian military base in Isfahan near Natanz, not the nuclear facilities themselves. “The Israelis hit what they intended to strike,” The targets within this strike included Iranian air defense systems at the air base including those used to protect their nearby nuclear facilities. It was a message to the Iranians, “We can reach out and touch you.” The Russian made air defense systems were shown to be ineffective. There was one target but multiple strikes within that target. The Israelis used missiles and unmanned aircraft – in other words no manned aircraft (F35’s or others) were used as part of this strike
Both Israeli and Iranian sources are being cagey about what actually was hit. Right now it’s looking like it was a very limited strike, almost just a “See? We can hit them if we want to” strike to satisfy the Biden Administration’s endless calls for “restraint” while they continue to pound Hamas into a fine red paste. But it does offer a certain amount of support for the Kayfabe theory of Middle East politics…
The penalty for the equivalent of child trafficking in “progressive,” “forward-thinking,” “compassionate” California is a maximum penalty of a year in jail, and a minimum of two days in jail, plus a $10,000 fine which may or may not be paid depending on sentencing details.
Plenty has been said in recent years about soft-on-crime policies in states led by Democrats, and with good reason. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that political movements that believe the execution of preborn children is morally and legally permissible would also enforce such loose penalties for child endangerment and exploitation. But this seems, even for liberals, unconscionable.
Thankfully, it’s not that way everywhere. Other states with right-leaning leadership handle child predation, shall we say, “differently.”
But California especially loves setting sex offenders free if they’re illegal aliens.
It turns out that Katherine Maher is no ordinary ascendant progressive media executive. No, this woman’s social-media history reveals her to be the Kwisatz Haderach of white wokeness, presumably bred through generations of careful genetic selection to be the supernaturally perfect embodiment of Affluent White Female Liberalism. (As many have noted, she not only acts but looks like Titania McGrath.) It’s vaguely unreal: If there was a trendy progressive take floating around on Twitter and popular within media circles, then you can reliably bet she was there to voice it in the most preeningly insulting way possible.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, who also offers lots of choice Chris Rufo commentary on tweets from Maher.)
“Texas Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne (R-TX-24) has taken out a full-page advertisement in the New York Post in an effort to recruit law enforcement from New York City, encouraging them to ‘escape New York and move to Texas. Sadly, the corrupt and crumbling Empire State is so purposefully anti-law and order, that you should no longer put your careers and lives in the hands of politicians who couldn’t care less about you or your families,’ the advertisement states.”
I’ll take “Headlines You Don’t Want To Read At Breakfast” for $400: “New York Suffers Record Rise in Potentially Deadly Disease Caused by Rat Urine. New York City has seen a record jump in the number of human leptospirosis, a disease caused by rat urine that can cause kidney damage, liver failure, and even death.”
“A far-left extremist that firebombed a pro-life office in Wisconsin in 2022 has been sentenced to 7.5 years in federal prison, along with three years of supervised release and a $32,000 fine.”
Republicans aim to use ballot initiatives to overturn unpopular Democratic Party policies. “Republicans in Washington are moving to get three major ballot initiatives passed. These measures will repeal Democrat-passed policies that are becoming unpopular among locals. The three changes would repeal the state’s sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, end an attempt to ban natural gas, and a change to the laws to strip squatters of their rights.”
You’ll need to click Show More for this one:
i remember in feb and march of 2020 being astonished by this lockdown idea and loudly yowling "do you have any idea what shutting down the world for 2 weeks would do to global supply chains and economic function?"
Has Warhammer gone woke? “I can’t help thinking that you finally started to bow to pressure from ‘Modern Audiences,’ and you were almost certainly encouraged to do this by a sudden infusion of investment money from BlackRock.”
The moment you make any concession, no matter how tiny, you’ve already given the game away. You’ve made it known that you’re prepared to bow down to their demands if they put enough pressure on you. And so, inevitably, their demands are never going to end. They’ll literally never be happy because there’s always going to be some other thing, some other piece of problematic lore, some other rule or exclusionary detail that has to be altered to comply with their constantly evolving demands, and all in the name of inclusion and diversity.
Because these people don’t care about your hobby, they don’t care about integrating into a community of like-minded individuals. All they care about is that the community bends and reshapes itself to suit them, until eventually they bend it so much that it breaks. People like that are complete and utter poison for any hobby, any fandom, any franchise. All they ever manage to do is stir up conflict, resentment and division, driving people away and turning fans against the very company that tries to pander to them, because their very reason for existing is to undermine and destroy the thing they claim that they’re trying to save.
And if you’ve got any common sense whatsoever or any love for the fandom that you’re so passionate about, you’ll think very carefully before bending the knee to them.
