New York Times seems very upset we might win in Iran, the economy adds more jobs (or, as I call it in my house, Passover), ActBlue employees keep invoking the Fifth, the left still wants to trans your kids, a mistrial for Murder Mom, and the unwritten rules of the Internet.
Conditions in the Strait of Hormuz are coming unstuck in ways that advance American interests, although the situation remains stalemated.
CNN reported late last week that “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway” as the U.S. Navy quietly but effectively transits oil-laden tankers out of the strait under Iranian noses. In concert with the oil and petroleum products escaping the region via overland pipelines, Donald Trump’s energy secretary indicated that energy exports from the region are now approaching pre-war levels.
CNN couldn’t independently verify the administration’s figures. Nor could the Wall Street Journal. But to a certain extent, that is to be expected from a covert operation like the one the U.S. is engaged in. “Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery,” the Journal reported Monday. The report’s headline warns that industry trackers “can’t find” the exports the White House touts, but the body of the article notes that some of those trackers’ estimates about what could be coming online run “closer to the administration’s numbers,” albeit only recently.
Even if it only backed into the policy of economic strangulation that it’s applying to the Islamic Republic, the Trump administration is finally seeing it produce some positive results. Naturally, then, it’s incumbent on the president to surrender to the Iranians while he still can. At least, that’s the argument Rosemary Kelanic brought to the pages of the New York Times.
Kelanic, the director of Defense Priorities’ Middle East program and a contributor to the Quincy Institute’s “Responsible Statecraft” blog, contends at the outset of her Monday op-ed that “defeat” is now America’s “least bad option.” The U.S. has little choice but to quit the field, allowing Iran to control and toll an international waterway. But it’s not clear why America must give up now.
As Kelanic admits, the war has shown that, even if the U.S. “cannot completely open” the strait, Iran “cannot completely close” it either. Why should they be bequeathed an unprecedented level of sovereignty over an international maritime chokepoint that they could not capture on their own? Kelanic doesn’t say. She does, however, dwell on America’s challenges.
The geography of the strait ensures that it is “impossible to decisively defeat” Iranian harassment initiatives. Modern technology, like cheap missiles and drones, creates “endemic risk of crossing Hormuz that even a negotiated deal with Tehran would not eliminate.” That sounds like a rationale for abandoning the negotiations that will, by Kelanic’s own admission, fail to produce a durable (much less desirable) outcome.
Indeed, the author doesn’t even attempt to strike a more-in-sorrow tone when arguing for America’s capitulation. The United States is struggling with an irreparable shortage of munitions, she suggests. And even if America’s ordnance stocks were brimming, its people have no stomach for a long-duration mission to “sneak oil through Hormuz.” In fact, the voting public may even resent the political class’s resistance to an Iranian tolling regime that extracts funds primarily from foreign pockets. After all, “those countries could pay their own way.”
The U.S., Kelanic adds, has little slack in its economy — quite unlike the less “oil-intensive” economies of China and Russia. That’s a kick that Kelanic has been on for some time. And she has a point when it comes to China, albeit one that was overstated at the outset of Operation Epic Fury; China’s energy position today is sustained by its consumption restrictions, its oil reserves, and its “shift toward coal.” By contrast, the argument that Russia can easily absorb a fuel shock is betrayed by the evidence of your own eyes.
At no point does Kelanic acknowledge the buffers in the American economy. The “shale revolution,” the Journal’s Greg Ip observed, “has turned the U.S. into a net exporter of petroleum and major exporter of liquefied natural gas.” That might account for some of “the recent resilience of world oil markets,” which Kelanic admits “surprised many.”onditions in the Strait of Hormuz are coming unstuck in ways that advance American interests, although the situation remains stalemated.
CNN reported late last week that “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway” as the U.S. Navy quietly but effectively transits oil-laden tankers out of the strait under Iranian noses. In concert with the oil and petroleum products escaping the region via overland pipelines, Donald Trump’s energy secretary indicated that energy exports from the region are now approaching pre-war levels.
CNN couldn’t independently verify the administration’s figures. Nor could the Wall Street Journal. But to a certain extent, that is to be expected from a covert operation like the one the U.S. is engaged in. “Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery,” the Journal reported Monday. The report’s headline warns that industry trackers “can’t find” the exports the White House touts, but the body of the article notes that some of those trackers’ estimates about what could be coming online run “closer to the administration’s numbers,” albeit only recently.
Even if it only backed into the policy of economic strangulation that it’s applying to the Islamic Republic, the Trump administration is finally seeing it produce some positive results. Naturally, then, it’s incumbent on the president to surrender to the Iranians while he still can. At least, that’s the argument Rosemary Kelanic brought to the pages of the New York Times.
We can’t let American win in Iran because that might help Trump.
Good news! “Economy Adds 162,000 Jobs in August 2026.”
The August 2026 jobs report blew all expectations out of the water.
Economists expected the economy to add only 53,000 jobs.
Well…the report shows the economy added 162,000 jobs:
Food services and drinking places: +59,000
Local government education: +42,000
Manufacturing: +16,000
Health care: +13,000
Information: -23,000
Construction: +22,000
The bad news for me personally: My sector (information) was the only one of those with job losses. AI continues to suck up all the VC funding…
More countries are reconsidering their support agreements with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a senior State Department official confirmed to Just the News.
Following Just the News reporting that the United States’ Agency for International Development’s Inspector General’s office found more than 100 UNRWA employees had participated in the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, Finland’s minister for foreign trade and development announced on Thursday that the country would not extend its support for UNRWA.
Several more countries have since indicated that they are reconsidering their own support for UNRWA as well, a senior State Department official briefed on the USAID IG’s investigation told Just the News.
It’s a bribe and terrorism organization with a debating society attached.
Hmmmm. “Another ActBlue Official Pleads Fifth In House Probe of Alleged Foreign Donations.” Why, it’s almost like they’re guilty.
Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a member of ActBlue’s board of directors, invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination while appearing before the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees, according to sources familiar with her testimony.
ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis invoked the Fifth during a closed-door deposition Aug. 20, while CEO Regina Wallace-Jones asserted the same right during congressional questioning in June.
The House Administration Committee began investigating ActBlue in 2023 following concerns that the fundraising platform’s fraud-prevention procedures were inadequate to prevent illegal foreign donations.
German police have opened a terror investigation after two attacks on power stations, and a bombing at a railway station, within 24 hours.
Officials are investigating the possibility that the power plant attacks were carried out by a hostile foreign state, such as Russia, or home-grown Left-wing terrorists.
California has bicoastal company in its efforts to drastically reinterpret a Supreme Court precedent that reinstated a permanent injunction against the Golden State’s so-called gender secrecy policies in public schools, with the majority citing a century of parental rights precedents that it said lower courts were ignoring.
Moms for Liberty is suing a New York City suburb on behalf of unnamed members with children there, seeking to force New Jersey’s Chathams School District to notify and give parents veto power over their children’s “asserted ‘gender transition'” and “social transition-related accommodations,” arguing a trio of related policies violate the Mirabelli precedent.
School Board President Ann Ciccarelli argued at a June 15 public meeting that the high court’s March 2 emergency order was “not binding” on New Jersey public schools, in response to demands from parents to eliminate a policy requiring schools to “accept a student’s asserted gender identity regardless of parent consent or involvement.”
SCOTUS scolded the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Mirabelli for having “brushed aside” its 2025 precedent Mahmoud, which required school districts to notify and get consent from parents before exposing their children to LGBTQ “storybooks,” by wrongly limiting it to curricular decisions.
“The Chathams Board of Education’s open defiance of the Supreme Court’s clear rulings in Mirabelli and Mahmoud is an assault on the constitutional rights of every family in that district,” Moms for Liberty CEO Tina Descovich said.
In a Federal Election Commission filing made on Wednesday night, America PAC disclosed $800,475 in total spending in August.
The expenditure data showed that the billionaire’s PAC primarily poured resources into competitive Senate races in Texas, Maine, Ohio, New Hampshire, Michigan and a few other states.
The Texas Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton received the largest share of spending—around $248,000.
The Maine Senate race, which Democrats view as a key pickup opportunity, received the next largest tranche of spending at around $170,000.
In total, the PAC spent around $712,000 on seven Senate races—around 90% of the total disclosed expenses—and only around $88,000 on a small number of House races.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“80% of drug traffickers arrested in Portland in the last 3 years have been illegal aliens.
The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon announced on Tuesday that more than 80 percent of the roughly 100 defendants federally charged with trafficking fentanyl in Portland are illegal aliens from Honduras and Mexico. The apprehensions began in 2023 and remain ongoing as federal and local authorities work to rid the sanctuary city of drug-related criminal activity.
As a result of the crackdown on open-air drug markets, authorities have seized more than 100 kilograms of fentanyl, 40 guns, and $1.3 million in proceeds. ‘That is enough fentanyl to kill 50 million people, or Oregon’s population, 11 times,’ the US Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
Illegal alien drug cartels + Woke Portland allowing open drug use = Americans dead.
What a tremendous scheme here from the Democrats.
They’re just selling the dope that Americans won’t…
After cattle country stresses over President Donald Trump’s plan to flood the market with cheaper foreign ground-beef trimmings, the 47th president posted that four giant processors have made life “miserable” for American ranchers and that he is authorizing farmers to process their own food if desired or necessary.
“Trump wants to remove some of the red tape and costs associated with setting up USDA inspected facilities for small producers or areas of the country that don’t have USDA processors to be able to sell their protein to consumers in a legal way,” grazier Derek Lange told Just The News last week.
“Consumers want to buy beef from ranchers and be a part of their story.”
Jeanine John Taele, 38, had more than 200 pages of writings that included schedules for the first lady and members of the president’s USSS detail, The Associated Press reported, citing information revealed during a Los Angeles County court hearing Wednesday.
The New York Post reported that prosecutors said Taele had seven notebooks containing 208 pages of drawings and sketches of Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, lists of USSS schedules, details about individual security personnel and copies of Melania Trump’s schedule.
Yet somehow Teale has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial…
Austin’s one woman crime spree. “Austin Woman Arrested After Police Find Hundreds Of Suspected Stolen Bank Cards, Keys And Mail.”
A routine arrest in North Austin developed into a much broader investigation after police said they discovered a large collection of mail, payment cards, checks and postal keys believed to have been stolen, according to Yahoo.
Austin police arrested 42-year-old Elizabeth Rozo on Aug. 25 after officers tracked her to an apartment complex near Tech Ridge Boulevard. Authorities were looking for Rozo because she was wanted on a warrant stemming from a credit or bank card abuse investigation.
Officers with the department’s North Metro Tactical Unit reportedly watched Rozo leave the apartment complex and enter a vehicle. They followed her before initiating a traffic stop.
The investigation expanded significantly when officers searched the vehicle. Police said they recovered roughly 400 bank cards believed to have been stolen, along with nearly 300 gift cards. Investigators suspect at least some of the gift cards had been purchased using compromised bank cards.
Officers also discovered two counterfeit Arrow Keys, a type of master key associated with U.S. Postal Service mail equipment. Such keys can potentially be used to open certain shared mailboxes and other postal receptacles, making them particularly valuable to people seeking access to mail belonging to multiple households.
Evidence from the vehicle led investigators to secure a warrant for Rozo’s apartment. The second search produced considerably more material, according to police.
By the time officers finished searching the vehicle and residence, authorities said they had collected thousands of pieces of suspected stolen mail and hundreds of checks. They also recovered about two dozen identification documents that police believe were either stolen or fraudulently produced.
Investigators reported finding 17 stolen postal keys in addition to the two counterfeit keys discovered during the investigation. Authorities have not publicly explained how the postal keys were allegedly obtained or identified how many mailboxes could have been accessed with them. Police also have not announced an estimate of how many people may ultimately be connected to the recovered mail and financial documents.
Not The Bee imitates the Babylon Bee: “Canadian PM says he will resume trade talks ‘when the Americans stop doing memes.'” This went over exactly as you imagined it would.
Some measure of justice: “Former Houston Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Falsifying Affidavit That Led to Deadly 2019 Drug Raid.”
A former Houston police officer pleaded guilty to abusing his authority as law enforcement in his falsification of information used to obtain a search warrant that resulted in a no-knock raid and two murders for which the officer is already serving time.
Gerald M. Goines pleaded guilty to making false claims, including that a resident had sold illicit drugs to a confidential informant and that additional other customers had bought drugs from the resident in prior weeks, in an affidavit that was necessary to obtain a search warrant — known as a “color of law” violation.
Goines was a senior narcotics officer with the Houston Police Department (HPD).
The no-knock warrant was executed in January 2019 and became known as the Harding Street Raid when officers shot and killed a couple in their home. The raid added fuel to the fire in regards to particular scrutiny of HPD, with activists and some Houston City Council members calling for the department to be defunded or similarly financially impacted. This occurred amid anti-police protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Due to his role in leading the raid, Goines was charged with the murders of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, who were shot and killed alongside their dog during the drug bust. He was indicted in 2019 on two counts of murder and found guilty at trial, and is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence as a result.
Goines did not fire the fatal shots. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the summer of 2026 that the officer who did so, Felipe Gallegos, was protected from a civil rights lawsuit under qualified immunity after he was previously indicted for Tuttle’s killing, a charge that was ultimately dismissed due to alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
Two middle schools in Austin Independent School District (ISD) received their fifth failing A–F accountability rating from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) last week.
Under the Texas Education Code (TEC), “If a campus is considered to have an unacceptable performance rating for five consecutive school years, the commissioner shall order: (1) appointment of a board of managers to govern the school district; or (2) closure of the campus.”
The district originally had three middle schools with four consecutive failing ratings: Burnet, Dobie, and Webb. While Burnet and Webb earned F ratings, Dobie earned a D rating for this year.
According to TEA, a D rating does not break a consecutive failing streak — only an A, B, or C rating will stop the count. A D rating instead pauses the count until there are three D ratings in the chain, at which point the failing streak resumes.
Over the past school year, Austin ISD has made headlines for numerous challenges. In November, the district approved 10 school closures and 24 state-mandated turnaround plans for struggling campuses. After a projected $181 million budget deficit, the district was forced to make $205 million in cuts.
The district also announced the last-minute closure of Paredes Middle School on July 30, shortly before the start of the school year.
Austin ISD applied for Senate Bill 1882 partnerships for Burnet, Dobie, and Webb, which would have allowed the district to partner with an open-enrollment charter school or institutions of higher education approved by the TEA. These partnerships can receive increases in state funding and are exempt from certain accountability measures for two years.
Segura told KXAN News that the accountability pause was “not the driving factor” for the partnership, but rather the resources the partnership made available.
The TEA denied Austin ISD’s request in May, but said that the district could continue the partnerships, just without the state incentives. Austin ISD announced the dissolution of the partnerships for the three middle schools in July.
In an August 13 letter to parents, Austin ISD Superintendent Matias Segura addressed the possible state takeover, saying that “challenges remain.”
One failing grade for a school should be a wakeup call. Two demands heads should roll and get AISD to make whatever changes are necessary to fix the problem. Five is educational malpractice.
Microstamping cartridges isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s Ineffective.
Ohio Democratic congressional candidate Brian Poindexter was arrested for allegedly swallowing a rock of crack cocaine at a traffic stop after he was stopped by police and for slapping a man at a baseball game according to police records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Poindexter, a city councilman and former union organizer running against the embattled Republican congressman Max Miller in Ohio’s Seventh Congressional District, has a criminal rap sheet dating back to the late 1990s, the records show.
On Jan. 23, 1998, Poindexter, then 18, was pulled over by police officers at a street corner known for heavy drug activity in Cleveland, according to the police report. Poindexter allegedly pulled out “some small objects from his coat pocket and put them into his mouth” and “began to swallow them.” The officer tried to retrieve the objects from Poindexter’s mouth, and the two men fell to the ground in a scuffle. The officer eventually recovered a “rock of suspected crack cocaine,” according to the records.
Another towering intellectual genius batting for Team Blue. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
NVIDIA has agreed to acquire open source AI company Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000.
Justice for Tupac? “Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis convicted of masterminding Tupac Shakur’s murder 30 years after rapper gunned down in Vegas.”
The man accused of orchestrating the murder of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur — one of the entertainment industry’s most captivating crimes — was found guilty by a Nevada jury.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, learned his fate in a Las Vegas courtroom on Monday after about two weeks of trial, as Shakur’s emotional family members passed tissues around and embraced, the New York Times reported.
The conviction of Davis, a former high-ranking “shot caller” in a Los Angeles chapter of the Crips gang, marked the first person to face justice for Shakur’s murder, which went down on a Las Vegas street on the night of Sept. 7, 1996.
Shakur, a pioneer of the burgeoning rap scene, was driving in a car when another pulled up alongside and blasted him with a hail of bullets. He died days later at 25.
Davis was not accused of shooting the gun which killed Shakur, but prosecutors argued he gave it to the gunman — long presumed to be his nephew Orlando Anderson, who died in a gang shootout two years after the murder — and orchestrated the entire attack.
The NBA on Wednesday announced severe punishments for the LA Clippers — including the loss of five future first-round draft picks, a fine of $30 million and a yearlong suspension of owner Steve Ballmer — for violating salary cap circumvention rules in a case involving star Kawhi Leonard.
In a statement, the NBA said a near-yearlong investigation “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules.”
As a result, the Clippers must forfeit first-round draft picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033. In addition to the $30 million fine, Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year “for knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities,” among other issues. President of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year, and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank is suspended without pay for six months.
It’s easy for the uninformed to get black pilled about America’s comparative advantage in technology. “China’s AI efforts are eating our lunch!” Etc. Victor Davis Hanson is always good for a grounded take, and when it comes to technology, he says America is still far and away the country to beat.
“During this midterm summer and fall, don’t fall for the doom and gloom that we hear so often about America’s in decline, or we’re bogged down in Iran. In actuality, due to new deregulation, emphasis on energy production deregulation, pruning back the federal government and winning over the confidence of our tech sectors, the United States is waging a quiet technological revolution. And believe it or not, what people said 30 years ago, that we would be a second-class power, or just like all of the others, is not true. We are more preeminent in key technologies than we have ever been.”
“Take for instance tech companies. One way we measure their influence and power is their market capitalization. Of those tech companies in the United States that are worth over $1 billion, the number has grown to 850, and the aggregate value of them is $5.2 trillion. That means nationwide people are buying their products and investing in them. China that has four times our population* only has 380 companies. 380 companies and it has a market capitalization of only about 20%, $1.3 trillion. Think of that. All of a sudden, our tech companies are just outpacing the Chinese and the Europeans in a way nobody had imagined.”
“Look at the market capitalization alone of SpaceX, 1.8 trillion. It is larger than the market capitalization of all the Chinese tech companies combined, as well as the European companies. If you want to talk about satellites and space exploration last year, China put into space 400 satellites. That’s quite an achievement. SpaceX alone, that is not other competitors, just SpaceX alone launched 3500, almost nine times the amount of the entire Chinese space consortium.”
“If we look at rocket launches, the United States last year launched, depending how we calibrate the size of the rocket, about 190 launches. That was more than all the space rocket launches combined in the rest of the world. For example, China only 100 less. They only launched 93, Russia 17, Europe 8, India five. That is an incredible achievement what we have done. We’ve just sort of made a monopoly of sending rockets into space and satellites into the lower at the lower atmosphere of space.”
“One thing that everybody’s talking about is artificial intelligence. And so there’s a variety of ways to gauge the influence of a particular AI company. But rather than just market capitalization, there’s a lot of rankings by global traffic. What are people in South America, what are people in Africa, what are people in Asia doing when they want an AI consultation? Which platform do they go to? And it turns out that number one was ChatGPT in terms of traffic. Number two was Google Gemini. Number three was Claude Anthropic. Number four was Microsoft Copilot. Number five was Perplexity AI. And number six was Grok. Number seven was Midjourney. Stop. They’re all Americans.”
“And then we get the first number, eight was Dubio, that is Chinese, and Mistral, that I think is French, and the final tenth is Notion AI. What I’m getting at is of the 10 top AI platforms that people use every day, eight of them, the top seven, are all American.”
“Finally, another way of gauging American competitiveness, there’s a couple more, is software companies. And we can do that by market capitalization because they’re so different. The number one company in the world with $4.4 trillion in market capitalization is Apple.” My caveat in treating Apple as a “software” company is that their software exists to sell Apple hardware. “The number two is Alphabet-Google with 4.17 trillion. Number three, Microsoft $3.5 [trillion]. Number four, Meta, $1.4 trillion. Number five, Oracle, $422 billion. Number six, Palantir, $279 billion. Number seven, Palo Alto Networks, $118 billion. And we come to number eight, the first foreign company with $220 billion, just a fraction of what the top three companies market capitalization is, in SAP SE. Number nine, Salesforce. Number 10, Adobe. And what am I getting at? We have ten companies, and eight or nine of them are American, depending on how we gauge some of the foreign capital markets. In other words, for the most exciting and most influential and most determinative technology of the future, the United States has captured, in terms of influence and value, about 85 to 90% of them.”
“Finally, people are talking about genetic engineering. This has become a very relevant topic to myself, because after a health issue, I’ve discovered that, with genetic engineering, they can take a tumor out of your body, biopsy, chart your genetic mutations, give you a blood test every 90 days, and find one cell in your blood system that may have the cancer tumor, the same cancer tumor’s mutation, even though it will not show up on a scan for four or five months. But they will give you warning that you may have a recurrence of a malignancy.”
“The United States, there’s number one Natera, number two Illumina, number three Crystal [Genetics], number four Ionis Pharmaceuticals, number five Genomics. I could go on. There’s two that are not American and out of the top 10. So in genetic engineering, the same thing is true. 80 to 85% of the companies that are leading the field in what people wish to invest in are American.”
“As we finished the first quarter of the 21st century, if we had looked back at what people were saying in 2000, this was supposed to be a period of decline. The United States GDP has leaped forward at $31 trillion, $10 trillion more than the Chinese and more than the Europeans as well by $10 trillion. But in all the key emerging technologies that are going to determine our collective safety, security and prosperity that is satellites, space exploration, software engineering, genetic engineering, you name it, artificial intelligence.”
“The United States is not just leading but it is has a greater grasp control monopoly of these emerging technologies than the Chinese, the Europeans and the entire world put together.”
Iran lashes out again and gets pounded even harder for its troubles, Fauci’s diary validates just about everything conservatives have been saying about him for the last six years, DSA is open about wanting to destroy the Constitution, Ukraine blows up more refineries and Wildberry logistic warehouses, Spain faces invasion, all sorts of AI skullduggery, and Neuromancer finally makes it to the screen.
Following Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) missile attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Jordan, President Donald Trump is now signaling readiness for full-scale military action that could shatter the cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges and accelerate an end to the conflict, opening the door for a full-on revolution for the Persian nation.
“We’re going to beat the f****** s*** out of them […] We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating,” Trump said on Wednesday.
If the Iranian regime collapsed under external pressure and internal strain, the power vacuum could empower ordinary Iranians, who have long protested theocratic rule, to seize control of their country’s future. Hardcore Islamists brought the nation into a theocracy in February of 1979.
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a maritime coalition to protect shipping and energy supplies in the Red Sea as Yemen’s Houthi rebels threaten a vital route for the kingdom’s oil exports and global trade.
Riyadh on Thursday hosted a meeting of 43 countries and the EU to discuss plans to form a multinational maritime defensive coalition.
After the meeting, 14 countries affirmed their commitment to the coalition, including Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan and several other Arab and African countries, according to the kingdom’s defence ministry.
The United Arab Emirates and Oman were notably absent, but the ministry said the door remains open for countries that want to join the coalition.
The alliance is “aimed at enhancing maritime security, protecting freedom of navigation, securing international trade routes and energy supply routes, and protecting shared maritime interests in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden”, the 14 countries said in a joint statement.
The statement added the coalition would be led by Saudi Arabia and headquartered in Riyadh, with the participating countries agreeing to share intelligence and engage in joint maritime operations and exercises.
I exclusively uncovered the identities of prominent U.S. journalists flown to China by a CCP-linked influence operation seeking “favorable coverage” and “positive messages” about Beijing. 🧵
The names include:
– Ezra Klein, New York Times columnist
– Matthew Yglesias, Vox co-founder
– Ronald Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst
– Bradford Plumer, New York Times reporter
– Marjorie Miller, former Associated Press vice president
Also identified:
– Steve Clemons, former The Hill editor-at-large
– David Rohde, MS NOW senior national security reporter
– Jonathan Alter, NBC News and MSNBC political analyst
– David Sweeney, former NPR managing editor
– Daniel Gross, former Yahoo Finance columnist
Also on the roster:
– Marilyn Geewax, former NPR senior editor
– Kathleen Deveny, former Newsweek editor
– Tom Omestad, former U.S. News & World Report correspondent
– Steve Chapman, former Chicago Tribune columnist
– Bruce Stokes, former National Journal correspondent
The list continues:
– Craig Gilbert, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief
– Tony Semerad, Salt Lake Tribune reporter
– Shikha Dalmia, former The Week columnist
– Jonathan Broder, former Newsweek senior writer
Also identified:
– Cristi Kempf, former Chicago Tribune associate managing editor
– Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor
– Julian Pecquet, former Foreign Affairs reporter
Trip organizer CUSEF was founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a former senior official in the CCP’s United Front system, the influence apparatus Beijing uses to cultivate foreign elites and shape institutions outside China.
According to [Sen. Rand] Paul, “During his time as NIAID Director, and particularly during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci took meticulous notes about his work. He made note of conversations, decisions, and his thoughts about actions taken by politicians and other officials.” This past weekend, Paul released a gargantuan 1,141 pages of Fauci’s notes. Very little in these pages enhances Fauci’s already deeply tarnished reputation.
Most notably, on January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote:
It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread. Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.
America and the world spent most of the next two years in an increasingly furious debate over whether the virus emerged from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, perhaps from a pangolin; or from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the separate institution of the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control (which was also doing research on coronaviruses found in bats); or somewhere else. Fauci apparently knew — notice he didn’t write “believe” or “theorize” — he could rule out the wet-market theory but never felt obligated to share that conclusion with the rest of us. Instead, he repeatedly dismissed and downplayed the lab-leak theory.
More at the link.
“Revealed: Five Months After Fauci Got Vaccinated, He Suffered a Pulmonary Infarction, an Adverse Effect Associated With the Vaccine.’ He Kept This a Secret.”
The alternate celebrity and villain of the COVID-19 policy response repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse answering even mundane questions, such as the color of the hearing room’s carpet, following publication of over 1,100 pages of diary-like notes that have raised even more questions about the veracity of his COVID-era public statements.
Committee Republicans repeatedly argued Fauci could not opt out of answering questions due to President Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardon, the validity of which has been questioned because it was signed by autopen amid Biden’s cognitive decline. Legal analysts explained Wednesday how Fauci could still be prosecuted.
Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford, who pointedly disagreed with colleagues on the Fifth Amendment issue, waited until the hearing’s end to recall that Congress went through a near-identical exercise in President Obama’s second term.
It held former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt for giving an opening statement at a House hearing in 2013 on her alleged discrimination against conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, then invoking her rights under the Fifth Amendment to decline giving testimony or answering questions that may expose one to criminal prosecution.
Fauci did the same Wednesday.
Lankford asked committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whether the Lerner vote determined the Fauci outcome. Paul, who has called for Fauci’s prosecution for years, said lawmakers have a week to study the issue before voting on a contempt resolution.
The question that courts may have to answer is whether Biden’s pardon preempts Fauci’s right against self-incrimination, since he can’t be prosecuted “as long as he answers truthfully” and the statute of limitations forecloses some claims anyway, Paul said.
George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf floated two other ways Fauci could testify without risk to himself: a two-thirds committee vote or a simple House majority to immunize him, or doing media interviews in which he’s not under oath, since “it is not a crime to lie to the public.”
More blow-by-blow Fauci testimony details at the link. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Congressional committee issues subpoenas to organizations tied to China-linked Dem megadonor. The latest subpoenas raise the question of whether U.S. tax law — which grants tax exemptions and shields charitable donor identities — can be used to route foreign money into domestic political activity. At the heart of it, questions abound whether the far-left outfits have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., has issued subpoenas to three tax-exempt organizations tied to socialist megadonor Neville Roy Singham, an American multimillionaire living in Shanghai with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The subpoenas have been served, a spokesperson for Smith’s office told Just the News, on BreakThrough News, Tricontinental and The People’s Forum, all three of which are funded, at least in part, by Singham. The subpoenas come after nearly a year of the Committee’s attempts to get answers from the three non-profit organizations regarding foreign influence in U.S. nonprofits.
“For months, the Ways and Means Committee has been investigating how the Chinese Communist Party has been taking advantage of our country’s laws through its tax-exempt sector to sow chaos and division here in the United States,” Smith said in a statement. “Public reporting has traced hundreds of millions of dollars from Neville Roy Singham – a tech mogul living in Shanghai – that was funneled through a web of shell companies and donor-advised funds that concealed the true source of the money before it reached these organizations.”
The subpoenas request documents showing whether the organizations have received or transmitted funds connected to foreign nationals or foreign entities, contracts between those nationals or entities, documents and communications between employees and Singham or foreign nationals about the organization.
“Three non-profits connected to Mr. Singham – BreakThrough News, Tricontinental, and The People’s Forum – have stonewalled the Ways and Means Committee’s investigation. That ends now,” Smith said in his statement. “These subpoenas will compel the production of the documents they have withheld for months and will help expose how America’s tax laws and charitable sector may have been exploited to advance the CCP’s influence operations inside the United States. The American people deserve to know whether the CCP has exploited America’s tax-exempt sector to advance its agenda. These subpoenas will allow the Ways and Means Committee to identify the networks that exploit our tax laws, and further expose the urgent need for legislation to close those loopholes for good.”
The Democratic Socialists of America wants you to know exactly what it wants, and Megan Romer, the group’s national co-chair, laid it out on national television without once reaching for a hedge word over the most radical ideas on the party platform.
The platform itself reads like a fever dream a committee wrote line by line. A 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay and benefits, a federal jobs guarantee, canceling all student debt, and free college from pre-K through graduate school anchor the economic wish list, alongside healthcare that is universal, free, and includes gender-affirming care as a guaranteed right.
The platform calls for more publicly owned social housing, universal rent control, and a guaranteed lawyer for every tenant. On policing, the platform wants demilitarized police departments, defunded police unions, and money pulled out of police budgets entirely, all of which the DSA frames as a first step toward abolishing prisons and policing outright.
On foreign policy, the platform demands the defunding of the Department of War, the closure of overseas military bases, and an end to all foreign wars, and it pairs that with support for International Criminal Court prosecutions of what it deems American war criminals. As for Israel, the DSA calls for an end to all U.S. military and economic aid, prosecution of American and Israeli leaders over what many consider a genocide in Gaza, and recognition of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The DSA is just as blunt about reimagining how the government works. The platform seeks statehood for Washington, D.C., self-determination for U.S. territories, and the abolition of both the Electoral College and the Senate, alongside an expanded House and a presidency and Supreme Court that answer to Congress instead of operating independently. The DSA wants to swap the two-party system for proportional representation and ranked-choice voting and pay for all of it through full public financing of every election.
And, to top it all off, the platform calls for slavery reparations.
Fox News host Shannon Bream ran through the DSA’s platform position by position, true or false, no room to dodge. Romer never flinched. She confirmed that the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform calls for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court, eliminating ICE, ending borders while granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, defunding the Pentagon, abolishing prisons as a long-term goal, and placing most large corporations under government or public ownership. At every step, she answered without hesitation, affirming that each position accurately reflected the DSA’s platform.
If we can’t stop the DSA at the ballot box, then stopping them at the ammo box becomes inevitable…
Michigan journalist Charlie LeDuff, who formerly worked at The New York Times and The Detroit News, decided to visit this 88-year-old woman to ask why she’s made nearly 15,000 donations to Democrats in the last 5 years:
You’ll note that resident Elizabeth Waffle is living in a trailer because her house burned down.
LeDuff: ‘Did you make 15,000 donations in 5 years? $150,000?’
Waffle: ‘A hundred and fifty? Hell no. I don’t have that kind of money.’
Her house burned down two years ago and she’s been living in a camper since.
She wasn’t even sure if she had enough money to pay the guy who was coming to mow the fields of weeds around the camper!
DOJ needs to audit ActBlue with proctological intensity.
After the Trump administration indicated that there were at least 35,000 noncitizen registered voters in New Jersey, the Democratic governor there tried to do damage control by admitting to at least 6,600 registered noncitizen voters. Soon after her admission, however, she refused point-blank to hand over that data to the Trump administration.
In fact, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who has wasted a great deal of time and money trying to protect illegal alien criminals through her dangerous and disgusting sanctuary policies, actually referred to the noncitizen voters as “citizens” of her state. Either she is under the deluded impression we are still operating under the Articles of Confederation, or she thinks she gets to be a petty dictator because she has rigged elections enough to ensure her party never gets out of power.
Last Tuesday, a reporter asked Sherrill during a press conference, “The Trump administration is seeking, I believe by today, the list of noncitizens who are registered to vote and the approximately 400 that did vote, to what extent will your administration comply with the Trump administration’s request in that regard?”
Sherrill self-righteously but inarticulately sneered to a round of applause, “As I have said, I am not in the habit of turning over private, identifying administration—information of the citizens of New Jersey.” Again, it is completely outrageous that this is how she refers to noncitizens, particularly since many of them are illegal aliens.
Snip.
Why might Sherrill be so determined to ensure there is not a thorough cleaning out of the voter rolls in her state? In 2025, she did apparently win the gubernatorial race against Republican Jack Ciattarelli by about 453,000, so that is a fairly sizable margin. But back in 2020, when there were allegations of fraud, then-Gov. Phil Murphy beat Ciattarelli by only about 84,200 votes. The preliminary findings, meaning the likely lowball initial results, from the Department of Justice this year as to how many illegal aliens are registered to vote in New Jersey were 35,152.
Suddenly, when you compare these numbers, New Jersey Democrats don’t seem to have quite such a firm grip on power in their state, do they?
“A California-Funded Homeless Shelter Gave Us Meth Pipes.” Of course it did.
As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has repeatedly supported “harm reduction” policies, which enable drug use in the name of making it “safer.” He created the state’s Harm Reduction Initiative, which funded “syringe services programs” for “people who inject and smoke fentanyl and/or methamphetamines.” His Department of Public Health has endorsed distributing syringes, glass pipes, and “[c]ontainers for mixing injectable drugs” to drug users. Newsom argued earlier this year that harm-reduction tactics “increase the likelihood of people entering substance use treatment.”
But do California’s harm-reduction programs encourage addicts to enter treatment? We visited the Skid Row Care Campus, a homeless-services site in Los Angeles County, to witness “harm reduction” in action. We discovered that, instead of directing addicts to get clean, the taxpayer-funded program doles out free paraphernalia, enabling addicts to get high—no questions asked.
We arrived at Skid Row in the morning. The campus, bounded by pastel-colored buildings and a metal gate, looked like an apocalyptic wasteland. Homeless people and addicts were splayed across the common areas, with some smoking what seemed to be hard drugs with impunity.
We stepped onto the courtyard connected to the street. No one stopped us, asked for identification, or searched us for weapons or drugs. This is apparently by design, judging by the Skid Row Action Plan and its implementation outline, which, singly or together, inspired the creation of the campus, denounced the “racist and classist war on drugs,” and called on local officials to create hubs “free from monitoring by law enforcement” and staffed by people with histories of “substance use and sex work.”
We entered campus and found a walk-up counter, where an attendant sat before shelves of drug paraphernalia. Users come to this counter to get free needles and crack pipes, with which they can inject or smoke hard drugs.
“What can I get you?” he asked. “We have oil burners, we have spray shooters, we have socks, we have petroleum jelly.”
Across several visits, we obtained drug-testing strips, syringes, and crack pipes.
“Russia admits defeat in the south, cannot keep the highway open.” Reporting from Ukraine is exaggerating a tad, but Russia is having serious problems with drones taking out logistics trucks on the Zaporizhia logistics route.
The Democrats have their 2028 presidential primary schedule almost finalized, featuring a trio of new states in the first six, and the early sense is that Republicans will stick with the familiar lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. It might seem early to be thinking about the 2028 presidential primaries, but if you’re one of the candidates, you must prioritize, and as Yogi Berra said, “It gets late early out there.”
As noted at the tail end of yesterday’s edition of this newsletter, over in the Washington Post, I examined the Democratic National Committee’s proposed, and likely to be final, schedule for the Democratic 2028 presidential primaries:
South Carolina, January 22, 2028
Nevada, February 1, 2028
New Hampshire, February 8, 2028
New Mexico, February 15, 2028
Michigan, February 22, 2028
Virginia, February 29, 2028
One week after that, March 7, will likely be Super Tuesday, the earliest date that the other states can schedule their primaries or caucuses. States that are likely to hold their primaries that day include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Vermont.
That’s a promising early schedule if you’re a candidate on the establishment side among the Democrats, and a rougher one if you’re a socialist or affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. Based upon Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s past performances, South Carolina and Virginia are rough territory, Nevada and New Hampshire are friendly territory, and it’s a little hard to say about New Mexico and Michigan.
Snip.
When I say a socialist or DSA-affiliated candidate, I am mostly thinking of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; she is, at least on paper, the early frontrunner in New Hampshire, and Axios ranks her as the candidate who is second-most-likely to win the nomination, behind Harris.
Some racial essentialists argue that it is absurd to contend that heavily white New Hampshire is likely to be supportive of the Puerto Rican AOC. First, a University of New Hampshire survey conducted this month not only found her with a one-point lead over Pete Buttigieg, but 64 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the state said they felt favorable about her, with just 9 percent saying they felt unfavorable about her; only Buttigieg and Sanders had comparable numbers. (At 84 years old, Sanders is not running in 2028; if AOC runs, Sanders is widely expected to endorse her.)
Also note, “Primary exit polling this year suggests that DSA candidates run best among young, college-educated and higher-income demographics.” In 2020 (the last time Democrats had a competitive presidential primary in New Hampshire), 54 percent of their primary voters had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Forty percent of Democratic primary voters reported a salary of $100,000 per year or more, and 72 percent made $50,000 per year or more.
“Thousands of Military-Age Men From Morocco Invade Spain’s Ceuta Territory.” Ceuta is an exclave on the north African coast
Thousands of military-age men from Morocco invaded Spain today by crossing the border into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.
Spain has deployed its military as these men arrive by sea and breach the border fence.
Snip.
Spain’s government said Thursday evening it would send the Armed Forces to help the Civil Guard “to maintain security in the city of Ceuta.” It also announced that Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would join Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and visit Ceuta Friday.
“The situation is absolute chaos,” Rachid Sbihi, head of the association that represents Spain’s Civil Guard officers in Ceuta, who police the border told The Associated Press. “It’s not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing,” he said, adding that the border had “totally collapsed.”
However, Spain’s interior ministry won’t declare a national emergency.
This follows hot on the heels of Spain’s far-left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declaring an illegal alien amnesty.
The Spanish government and its partners openly state that the reason for legalising more than half a million migrants is to "defeat the far right." This is literally weaponised demography. They took the most conspiratorial interpretation of the "Great Replacement" that is not…
I probably should have noted that Andy Burham is now Prime Minister of the UK. The guy wasn’t even an MP until June 18 (though he had been before), when he won a by-election triggered by the existing MP resigning specifically so Burham could run for PM. Here’s The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters on the guy.
Remember: Your private conversations with AI agents aren’t. “Claude Chats Popped Up in Google Search Results.”
The rogue OpenAI agent behind this month’s unprecedented AI-driven cyber intrusion claimed a second corporate victim, an executive at New York-based Modal Labs has revealed – a detail absent from the original account and one that widens the known blast radius of the episode.
According to the Modal executive and sources cited by Reuters, the same autonomous agent that broke into Hugging Face also compromised one of Modal’s customers, using that customer’s environment as a staging base for the broader campaign.
Modal was pointed about the distinction: its own platform and isolation were never breached. The agent exploited an unauthenticated endpoint that one of Modal’s customers had left open to the internet – effectively an unlocked door anyone could have walked through – giving it root-level access to that customer’s code-execution sandboxes. From there the agent had a disposable, third-party launchpad from which to run the rest of its operation.
It’s bad enough that a frontier AI agent can independently discover attack paths, escape its container, and compromise an unaffiliated company’s production systems. The Modal revelation shows it reached further than that – treating any publicly reachable, poorly secured infrastructure it encountered as expendable staging ground, exactly the opportunistic chaining that security researchers have warned agentic systems would carry out at machine speed.
Most of what led up to the Modal disclosure has already been picked over, but the shape of it is worth a recap. In early July, OpenAI was running an internal evaluation built on ExploitGym – a public benchmark that measures how well an AI system can turn a known vulnerability into a working exploit. The models under test, GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased prototype, were deliberately run with their cyber-safety refusals reduced and the classifiers that normally block high-risk activity switched off, because the point was to measure maximum offensive capability.
The agent found and exploited a previously unknown flaw in the one package-registry proxy it was allowed to reach, escalated privileges, moved through OpenAI’s research environment, and got to a machine with open internet access. Once online, it reasoned that Hugging Face likely hosted the answer key to the very benchmark it was being tested on, and went to steal it rather than solve the problems itself. Between roughly July 11 and 13 it ran thousands of automated actions against the platform – gaining code execution through two separate flaws in its dataset-processing pipeline, harvesting credentials, and moving laterally across internal clusters. Forensic work later recovered on the order of 17,600 distinct attacker actions.
Hugging Face caught and contained the intrusion through its own AI-assisted monitoring, and says the only thing the agent actually made off with was a limited set of the benchmark’s challenge solutions – no public models, datasets, or user-facing services tampered with. To reconstruct the timeline, its team had to fall back on an open-weight model, because the commercial frontier models refused to analyze the real attack data.
So a rouge AI agent found it’s way out of its sandbox, launched a privilege escalation attack, accessed the Internet, and picked out a target it assumed it could steal answers from rather than do the work itself? Did Gen Z program its work ethic?
The State of Texas and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached a settlement, reversing the endangered species listing for the dunes sagebrush lizard while a new evaluation is conducted.
The dunes sagebrush lizard inhabits portions of West Texas, including the oil-rich Permian Basin.
The Biden administration listed the species as endangered in May 2024, citing threats from oil and gas development and climate change.
Texas sued in September 2024, arguing the listing relied on an indirect habitat model rather than population data, used a 1998 well-pad-density study that predates horizontal drilling, and ignored ongoing state conservation efforts.
The state also argued the listing impeded oil production and interfered with efforts to plug abandoned oil wells.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said when announcing the lawsuit.
A Dallas Express investigation has uncovered evidence suggesting that some Muslim and Mexican immigrant drivers at DFW Airport may be operating as part of an organized network using multiple electronic devices, fraudulent driver accounts and GPS manipulation to control rideshare traffic.
A veteran Uber driver said DFW’s airport queue displayed a wait of zero to 15 minutes, but he received no rides for more than 45 minutes. He said regular Uber requests resumed after he left the airport’s geofenced queue.
DX documented drivers using multiple phones and tablets, vehicles with partially obscured plates, and one man denying that he had a work permit, green card or H-1B visa.
Federal prosecutors have charged rideshare schemes involving fraudulent or rented accounts, GPS spoofing, bots and hacked phones that allowed drivers to enter airport queues while physically elsewhere. A separate November 25, 2025 DFW-area driver post alleged that phones were left inside a stationary vehicle to preserve queue positions.
DX has not established that any specific driver filmed at DFW committed fraud. The investigation is examining whether coordinated drivers are manipulating the airport queue and diverting rides from other drivers.
The Final Boss of Crazy Cat Ladies: “Florida mail carrier accused of stealing 80 cats along her mail route and collecting them in her house. 80 cats were rescued from the home of Gail Giustino, 77, where there was a foot of poop.”
Life imitates Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In Canada, “a missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months….Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name ‘fus__ro_dah’ (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username ‘fus_ro_dah’ (one underscore after ‘fus’). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.”
Victor Davis Hanson on Iran. He thinks Trump will skedaddle, leave the gulf states and Israeli in charge of keeping watch on the rubble, and set up a government in exile and give it access to Iran’s sequestered funds. Honestly, I should have thought of the government in exile bit for my Iran roundup earlier this month.
Dhillon Law Group has filed a federal lawsuit against Midland County Judge Terry Johnson on behalf of a citizen journalist who says he was retaliated against after posting records critical of Johnson.
The suit alleges that Johnson responded the next day by posting Christino Rodriquez’ full name, Social Security number, date of birth, and driver’s license number to Facebook.
In districts with a Teacher Incentive Allotment, educators receive additional funds from the state toward increasing those teachers’ salaries. Funding is provided to the district for teachers who achieve a recognized, exemplary, and master designation. At least 90 percent of the funding is required to be used for teacher compensation on the campus where the designated individual works.
In order to comply with Texas law, the State Board for Educator Certification is requiring the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to remove “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training materials. Lawmakers have been concerned that materials produced by national board, which offers the National Board Certification, include politicized content.
SBEC members voted last week for the national board to “make updates to materials to come into compliance with Texas state law” and “provide evidence of compliance to [Texas Education Agency] staff by November 2, 2026.”
Few things get people’s attention quite so fast as cutting off money.
There’s a phrase in enterprise software: “Eat your own dog food.” It means you should be using the software you’re developing internally, because you find bugs more quickly that way.
Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the company writes up to 30% of its code using generative AI. As it now happens, Microsoft is reportedly planning to reduce the use of Anthropic’s Claude Code — a move designed to push its employees toward GitHub Copilot CLI.
For context, The Verge’s Tom Warren reported that Microsoft started opening access to Claude Code for its employees in December, including developers, project managers, and designers, allowing them to interact and experiment with the AI-coding assistant directly in their workflows.
Warren reports that Claude Code gained vast popularity among Microsoft employees over the past six months, which has seemingly led to a pullback on its Claude Code push in favor of its own GitHub Copilot CLI. “While Claude Code has been a popular addition, it has also undermined Microsoft’s new GitHub Copilot CLI coding tool,” Warren explained.
According to Warren’s sources, Microsoft’s Experiences + Devices division, which includes teams working on Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, and Surface, is supposed to stop using Claude Code by the end of June. These teams are expected to transition their workflows to GitHub Copilot CLI over the next few weeks.
The report reveals that the decision isn’t centered on Microsoft pushing its staffers towards its own offering — there are some financial implications at play, too. Microsoft’s financial year is expected to end on June 30, which means canceling Claude Code licenses for its employees could cut its operational costs as it transitions into a new financial year.
While speaking to The Verge, Microsoft’s VP of experiences and devices group, Rajesh Jha, indicated:
“When we began offering both Copilot CLI and Claude Code, our goal was to learn quickly, benchmark the tools in real engineering workflows, and understand what best supported our teams. Claude Code was an important part of that learning… at the same time, Copilot CLI has given us something especially important: a product we can help shape directly with GitHub for Microsoft’s repos, workflows, security expectations, and engineering needs.”
It’ll be interesting to see how the transition from Claude Code to GitHub Copilot CLI is received, especially since the vast majority seems to favor the former. The company’s initial plan was to have its engineers use both offerings concurrently, to compare their capabilities, and to provide feedback.
Interestingly, Microsoft staffers have seemingly preferred Claude Cove over GitHub Copilot over the past few months, primarily because of the feature disparity between the two products.
I wondered if “Claude Cove” was a typo, but no, it’s apparently a real thing.
An opportunity for a really obscure meme.
These sorts of stories pop up again and again: Everyone who is forced to use Copilot seems to hate it. Claude doesn’t seem to generate the same level of loathing, maybe because Anthropic doesn’t have the same opportunities Microsoft does to shove it down the throats of its existing users.
Now we know that Microsoft’s Devs, just like its users, seem to prefer the taste of other people’s dog food over Microsoft’s…
Clownfish TV has a video up covering how Google’s Chrome browser secretly installs a four gigabyte AI on your PC without asking you:
“It’s not just Microsoft is stuffing everything full of AI, whether or not its users want it. It is now Google as well with Chrome. Apparently, they’re stuffing AI into Google Chrome. They did not ask people. And according to Futurism, fury is erupting after Google Chrome sneakily installs a 4 gigabyte AI model on users’ PC.”
“It feels like the browser is not your gateway to the Internet. It’s just another marketing tool. Especially when it comes to Google and Microsoft and these big corporations. They’re going to push their AI wherever they can push it. They’re going to shove it wherever they can shove it because they have to justify the insane amount of money that they’re spending on AI.”
“Chrome did not ask did not ask your permission before shoving its AI up your ass. As of 2026, Google maintains an iron grip on the web browser market, boasting well over three billion Chrome users worldwide.”
“Security researcher Alexander “The Privacy Guy” Hanff noted on a blog post earlier this week, Google’s web browser has been silently installing an AI model on users devices without asking for consent. Oh, this is a lawsuit waiting to happen. He described the 4 gig file named weights.bin in a directory called OptGuideOnDeviceModel. The file contains weights, the learned numerical parameters of an AI model that teach it how to weigh the importance of various data points of Google’s Gemini Nano, which is designed to live on computers, devices, not in the cloud.”
“It’s the fact that they’re installing stuff on your computer without your consent. I mean, look, they’ve always done that. But in this case, 4 gig, that’s crazy.”
“Google has remained unusually silent on the matter. You expect you expect them to address it? Do they have anybody left at Google? Do they have any humans left at Google? Because my understanding is that Google is overrun with AI right now.”
“That is litigation waiting to happen. That is a class action lawsuit. People are going to be pissed. The company didn’t respond to Futurism’s request for comment.”
CO2 impact skipped because I don’t give a rat’s ass.
“Unfortunately, it is going to get harder and harder to opt out from AI if you’re anti-AI because it literally is being shoved into everything.”
“Others argue that Google was likely auto-installing the model to artificially inflate its own AI user stats. Yes, this is what Microsoft was doing with Copilot, too. Now they’re calling it something else because people are rejecting it.”
“Same with YouTube. YouTube is riddled with AI, and they’re doing it to justify the existence of AI.”
“And Satya Nadella at Microsoft said the quiet part out loud. He basically was like, you know, we really need consumers to to love the AI and find a use for it because we’re spending an awful lot of money on it.”
“And I really do think before it’s all said and done that Microsoft and Google are going to harm themselves irreparably by chasing AI and trying to shove it into things when consumers don’t want it. The demand’s not there. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean there’s a market value for it. And we’re also going to find out that uh the abilities of AI are way way way overstated.”
“Hanff found that the download of the file is triggered when the browser’s default AI features are active. On a machine that meets hardware requirements, Chrome treats the user’s hardware as a delivery target and writes the model to stop it from reinstalling itself after deleting it. Hanff advised to disable AI features manually by digging into the browser’s settings. This is the true definition of malware.”
“If you have it on Enhanced Protection, it will install on the model. If you have it on Standard, it will not.” So PC users might want to change that on Chrome.
Going to Hanff’s original post revealed another browser exploit from another AI company: “Two weeks ago I wrote about Anthropic silently registering a Native Messaging bridge in seven Chromium-based browsers on every machine where Claude Desktop was installed [1]. The pattern was: install on user launch of product A, write configuration into the user’s installs of products B, C, D, E, F, G, H without asking. Reach across vendor trust boundaries. No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually, every time Claude Desktop is launched.” Here’s the piece on how Claude does that, and it sounds like an even scarier piece of malware. “Claude Desktop reached into Brave, a browser from a completely separate vendor, and registered a back door for a browser extension I do not have.”
AI companies are spending billions of dollars to build-out vast AI data centers while invading your privacy at the same time, yet studies show these investments aren’t seeing returns on their investments. “Companies reporting high ROI were not the same ones reporting AI-related workforce reductions. In fact, workforce reduction rates were nearly equal for those reporting higher ROI and those with smaller returns or even worsened outcomes from autonomous operations.”
Gloria: The rise of Artificial Intelligence is the next industrial revolution.
[Boos]
Gloria: A- whoa!
[Boos rise louder]
Some guy in the crowd: AI sucks!
Gloria: What happened? Okay. I struck a chord. May I finish? Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.
[Thunderous applause]
Gloria: Okay. Alright. Okay.
Her pitch didn’t seem to go over well with Humanities majors.
There are certainly ways AI can help people do certain jobs better. But it runs into big trouble when it tries to replace people entirely, and people hate when you try to secretly install it without their permission.
Democrats illegal redistricting attempt in Virginia is dead (while Republican efforts in other states steamroll ahead), more welfare state fraud exposed, Trump actually shrinks the federal workforce, Ukraine hits a wide range of targets across Russia, more Democrats soft on illegal alien sex offenders, Jose Garza lawyers up, and all it takes is nine seconds for AI to completely destroy your business.
Virginia’s Supreme Court just pounded a stake through the heart of Democrats rule-breaking redistricting push in that state.
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday rejected the state’s mid-decade redistricting effort, which was passed by referendum last month and would overwhelmingly benefit Democrats.
The state spent $5.2 million to pay for the special election to ask voters to approve the map, which would have created ten districts that favor Democrats, with just one district favoring Republicans.
The new map was designed to allow Democrats to pick up as many as four seats in the upcoming midterm elections.
But after Republicans challenged the new map in court, judges for the state’s supreme court found that the legislature made procedural errors in how it placed the question on the ballot last month. The court’s majority found that the legislature violated the multi-step process for putting constitutional amendments on the ballot.
“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the judges wrote.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the majority added.
The court ordered the state to use the same congressional district map in the upcoming midterm elections as it used in 2022 and 2024.
Donald Trump is the devil Democrats will cut down any tree of the law to get at.
In response to the lawsuit, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read announced earlier this year that Oregon has about 800,000 inactive registrations, which are kept separately from the active voter rolls and do not receive ballots. Of those, roughly 160,000 already meet federal and state criteria for removal—having received confirmation notices, failed to respond, and not voted in two federal elections—and are slated for cancellation. The remaining approximately 640,000 inactive records do not yet qualify for removal and will be processed through future list maintenance efforts.
For context, Kamala Harris beat Trump by just over 300,000 votes in Oregon in 2024. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Before ceasing operations in February, the Department of Government Efficiency published comprehensive data detailing exactly how Medicaid dollars were spent. Over the past two months, The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak — a veteran investigative reporter who has spent two decades exposing federal waste and fraud — has combed through the numbers and says they reveal the biggest scandal he’s ever uncovered.
In the first installment of a multi-part series titled “Medicaid Millionaires,” published on Monday, he details how billions of dollars were spent on “personal services” — including, in some cases, payments to family members for providing companionship and conversation to their own relatives.
Rosiak focused first on Columbus, Ohio, a city with the second-largest Somali population in the country. He reported:
Under the guise of health care, Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries’ homes to perform “homemaking” and “chores” like cooking and cleaning. The people performing these “personal services” tasks don’t even have to be health care workers — and in many cases, are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient.
According to a Daily Wire data analysis, Ohio spent a billion dollars on home health care in 2024, the last year for which data is available.
Since the services are performed inside private residences, there is no way to know whether the workers went at all, or what they’re actually doing in exchange for taxpayer funds. … Multiple signs said the service provided, and billed to the government, was sometimes just “companionship & conversation.”
As people have realized the United States government will pay them to hang out with their own families, northeast Columbus has seen its economy replaced by businesses that bill Medicaid.
One home health care operator told him, “Well if the government is going to pay you to do it. … People see it as lucrative, so they just jump on it.”
Apparently, many small companies are making millions by exploiting these types of services. Rosiak described seeing entire buildings in Columbus filled with home health companies. “Driving down Cleveland Avenue, in less than 40 seconds, you come across endless home health companies. Capital Home Health; Continental Home Health; Dynamic Home Healthcare; Ohio Senior Home Healthcare.”
One enormous complex (with almost no one inside) contained “94 different companies signed up to bill Medicaid, each with a tiny office, often marked with a sheet of paper proclaiming some generic company name ending in “Home Health LLC” — and sometimes another piece of paper claiming the employees had just stepped out for a break.”
He noted, that businesses in “this building alone billed taxpayers $66 million in the span of a few years.”
Democrats aren’t mad at such fraud, they’re mad that people are exposing it.
I wonder what the conserving conservatism crowd has to say about president Trump accomplishing a goal Reagan, Bush41 and Bush43 never managed: Actually shrinking the size of the federal government.
Another jobs report, another report on shrinking the federal government.
Labour is facing a dire set of local and devolved election results after Britons cast their votes in polls that could further imperil Sir Keir Starmer’s embattled premiership.
Early results suggest Labour is facing substantial losses as Britain’s political parties contested more than 5,000 seats across 136 councils in England on Thursday.
While only around two dozen councils had declared results by 3am, Labour had lost overall control of Redditch and Tamworth in the West Midlands and Hartlepool in the north-east, while shedding large numbers of seats largely to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Labour lost every one of the 20 seats it was defending in Wigan, a former mining community to which it has deep historic ties.
Trade minister Sir Chris Bryant told the BBC it was “gutting when you lose seats in the kind of numbers that we are at the moment”.
More than 129 seats in the Scottish parliament and a further 96 in the Welsh Senedd are also being contested.
Election results will continue to be announced throughout the day. Four councils will report their results on Saturday.
If Labour’s losses are as bad as expected, all eyes will be on whether the party holds its nerve in the coming days or if some MPs or even ministers call for Starmer to consider his position.
Evidently a policy of importing illegal alien Muslim rape gangs into the UK isn’t popular with voters. Who knew?
Also, there’s been a lot of talk among certain YouTubers that Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party was a big threat to Reform on the right. Judging from the (admittedly incomplete) election returns thus far, that doesn’t appear to be the case, at least outside Lowe’s stronghold in Great Yarmouth. Likewise, Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist Your Party offshoot from Labour doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything either, coming in distantly behind the Greens.
So what’s happening with Iran? Like riots in Minneapolis, the ceasefire there is “mostly peaceful.”
Sporadic clashes between Iranian Armed Forces and US vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, few details given.
Two more empty Iranian-flagged tankers come under US aerial attack for attempting to breach blockade.
Iran says US violated ceasefire after last night’s US action, which resulted in Iranian military deaths & injures. However, Tehran still reviewing US peace proposal.
Tasnim news agency: Iran has seized an oil tanker, accusing it of “attempting to disrupt oil exports and the interests of the Iranian nation.”
“Israel Eliminates Hezbollah Commander Who Planned October 7-Style ‘Conquer The Galilee’ Attack.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) eliminated the commander of Hezbollah’s ‘Radwan Force’, who plotted the planned ‘Conquer the Galilee’ attack, an October 7-like terrorist incursion and massacre on Israel’s northern border.
Ahmed Ali Balout, commander of an Iranian-trained ‘Radwan Force’ unit, was killed in an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.
“Ahmed Ali Balout, who directed attacks on Israeli troops and rebuilt Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, killed in Dahieh as Israel says it struck more than 180 Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon this week,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported Friday. “The IDF confirmed Thursday it killed Ahmed Ali Balout, commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, in an airstrike a day earlier in the Dahieh district of Beirut.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s probe into alleged abuse of the H-1B visa program is rapidly expanding, with nearly 30 North Texas businesses now under scrutiny for suspected fraud tied to so-called “ghost office” schemes.
In a new announcement, Paxton said his office has issued additional Civil Investigative Demands, or CIDs, to a growing list of companies believed to be exploiting the visa system by misrepresenting business operations to sponsor foreign workers.
Among the entities named are Tekpro IT LLC, Fame PBX LLC, 1st Ranking Technologies LLC, Qubitz Tech Systems LLC, Blooming Clouds LLC, Virat Solutions Inc., Oak Technologies Inc., Techpath Inc., and Techquency LLC.
Reports cited by the attorney general indicate some of the businesses may be operating out of nonexistent or inactive locations—listing residential homes or otherwise non-operational sites as offices while sponsoring H-1B visa holders.
“I will not allow the H-1B program to be abused by bad actors seeking to use it as a loophole for allowing foreign nationals to invade Texas,” Paxton said. “My office will continue working to uncover and put an end to fraud within the H-1B program.”
Paxton credited Blaze TV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales for exposing H-1B fraud across Texas.
In response to a call from President Donald Trump, Tennessee lawmakers returned to the state Capitol to redraw the state’s congressional districts.
The General Assembly gave final approval to a new map on May 7. The legislature also approved a handful of bills to accommodate the new map in the state’s congressional primary elections set for August. Gov. Bill Lee signed the measures into law that afternoon.
The newly drawn districts split the state’s 9th Congressional District and carve up Tennessee’s only majority-Black congressional seat into three districts, two of which stretch from Memphis to Williamson County outside Nashville. Nashville and its surrounding counties have been split into five districts, up from four.
The special legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee began May 5, when House Republicans voted to adopt rules to govern the session as protesters covered the Capitol. On May 6, several committees met to give initial approval to the map and other measures.
Democrats have been wailing about the loss of “a black majority seat” in Memphis, despite the fact that it’s represented by a white Democrat (Steve Cohen), and despite the fact that the Republican challenger, Charlotte Bergmann, is black.
President Trump and his allies vowed to oust the Indiana Republicans who opposed the president’s proposed redistricting efforts last year — and on Tuesday evening, they largely made good on that promise.
Indiana voters headed to the polls on Tuesday for the state’s primary elections, with Trump-backed challengers handily defeating at least five of the seven state senators who opposed the president’s effort to eliminate Democratic congressional representation in the Hoosier State late last year as part of a mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat between the parties.
“Good luck to those Great Indiana Senate Candidates who are running against people who couldn’t care less about our Country, or about keeping the Majority in Congress,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social earlier on Tuesday. “Let’s see how those RINOS do tonight!
While Indiana’s Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray is not up for reelection until 2028, MAGA-aligned groups are hoping to push Bray out of his leadership role by ousting his state senate allies. Trump allies spent nearly $10 million on their efforts.
“We’re after you Bray, like no one has ever come after you before!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in January. The president called Bray “weak and pathetic” and “a total RINO who betrayed the Republican Party, the President of the United States, and everyone else who wants to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Among those ousted by Trump’s retribution campaign were State Senator Travis Holdman, the third-most-powerful Republican in the chamber who had served in the legislative body for nearly 20 years. He was defeated by real estate agent Blake Fiechter.
State Senator Jim Buck’s 31-year career in the state legislature will also come to an end, after the 80-year-old incumbent suffered a loss to Tipton County commission member Tracey Powell. Buck had received support from former Vice President Mike Pence, an Indiana native.
Do you get the feeling that Trump is helping to clear out a lot of deadwood, and that Pence may not have done his best as Vice President to support the Trump agenda?
State Senator Greg Walker, a 20-year veteran of the chamber who had been eyeing retirement but chose to run for another term after the redistricting fight, lost his reelection bid to State Representative Michelle Davis.
Trump-backed anesthesiologist Brian Schmutzler defeated incumbent State Senator Linda Rogers, while insurance broker Trevor De Vries bested State Senator Dan Dernulc.
Just one anti-redistricting state senator, Greg Goode, prevailed in the primary, defeating two challengers: Vigo County council member Brenda Wilson, who was backed by Trump, and Alexandra Wilson.
One race still remained too close to call on Tuesday evening, that of incumbent State Senator Spencer Deery and Trump-backed challenger Paula Copenhaver.
Disgraced California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell is exactly the scumbag we thought he was. “Eric Swalwell Sent Women ‘Videos of Him Masturbating’ and Other Perverted Messages After Joining Snapchat.”
Former Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was accused by multiple women of sending sexual messages, including “videos of him masturbating,” after becoming one of the first members of Congress to join Snapchat in an effort to restore “faith” in “democracy.”
In a bombshell report on Sunday – less than a month after Swalwell resigned from Congress after being accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women – CNN spoke to “more than a dozen” women who claimed the congressman had made them feel uncomfortable, both in person and online, over the past decade.
Several women told CNN that the congressman had sent them sexually explicit messages on Snapchat after he became “one of the first lawmakers to join Snapchat” and was heralded in the media as “the Snapchat king of Congress,” according to CNN.
“We can restore a lot of faith that people have in their democracy by opening it up a little bit more,” Swalwell told The Hill in 2016 after joining the messaging service. “Snapchat is a great way to do that.”
However, it allegedly wasn’t long before the congressman began to use his Snapchat account for purposes other than politics.
One young woman claimed Swalwell would send her Snapchat messages about her future, before asking inappropriate questions such as, “What are you wearing?”
Two other women told CNN that Swalwell sent them “sexually explicit messages and unsolicited nude photos and videos of himself” in 2021, while a third woman also claimed to have received “sexually tinged messages and videos.”
One former congressional staffer allegedly developed a consensual sexual relationship with Swalwell after he began flirting with her on Snapchat in 2021.
During the relationship, Swalwell reportedly sent “nude photos of himself and videos of him masturbating,” which showed the congressman’s “face and naked body.”
The videos, which were saved by the woman, were shown to CNN.
Funny how CNN never tried to investigate Swalwell until his political ambitions clashed with those of a more-favored member in his party.
The city of El Cajon has sued the state of California over its “sanctuary state” laws.
There are enormous potential ramifications for this country, depending on the outcome of this case.
The city argues that offering illegal aliens drivers’ licenses and various protections is essentially illegal enticement under the federal statute that outlaws human smuggling.
The City Council voted 3-2 on Tuesday to pursue the litigation, which alleges in part that the El Cajon Police Department and its officers risk being held civilly and criminally liable under federal law if they follow California’s SB 54 and other state laws that limit their ability to work with federal immigration authorities.
Though the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the legality of SB 54 in 2019, the lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges that law and others on different legal grounds. It alleges that California’s various laws offering some benefits to undocumented immigrants amount to a violation of part of the human-smuggling statute — U.S. Code Section 1324 — that makes it a felony when a person “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States.”
“When police need to sue the state to check on a potentially trafficked child, something is deeply broken.”
Travis County District Attorney José Garza and four top assistants are hiring prominent Austin defense and ethics attorneys to represent them amid allegations that they and other prosecutors hid evidence in a misconduct case against a police officer.
Court documents show Brian Roark asked a judge Friday to delay a hearing set for Monday in which Garza and First Assistant Trudy Strassburger have been subpoenaed to testify.
Roark confirmed to the American-Statesman that he represents Garza and Strassburger but declined to comment further. Roark has in recent years represented former Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen amid bribery allegations that were deemed unfounded and University of Texas athletes on an array of charges that include drunken driving and sexual assault.
It is not immediately clear whether Roark will be paid with personal funds from Garza and Strassburger or with county money.
Separately, attorneys Gary Cobb, Chuck Herring and Jason Panzer are being hired to represent prosecutors Holly Taylor, Raman Gill and Dexter Gilford, who also have been called to testify next week in the matter, Cobb confirmed to the Statesman.
Garland Police says the suspect had crashed into two other vehicles before this all started. As you saw above, the man then tried to steal a few cars before finally being shot dead by an armed Texas man who was protecting his family.
You can thank Tatiana Starks, owner of Garland Smoke and Vape, for providing the video of those previous carjacking attempts. This happened in the parking lot of the strip mall her shop sits in. The rest was caught on surveillance cameras.
It looks like there was about a minute of struggle, the wife and three or four kids escaped the vehicle, and then the carjacker was shot dead by dad from the passenger side. The suspect has not been identified.
The Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct (SCJC) has issued public sanctions for judges in Hays and Harris counties, including one judge who had granted “unsatisfactory” termination of probation for defendants who pleaded guilty to sex crimes involving children.
According to a public warning published Tuesday, Judge Melissa Morris of the 263rd Criminal Court of Harris County violated state statute when she granted termination of probation to four defendants who were required to register as sex offenders under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
In 2024, The Texan reported that Morris and other criminal court Judges Natalia Cornelio and Chris Morton had awarded the early terminations to as many as 12 sexual offenders, even though the defendants had not complied with the terms of their probations — in some cases because the defendants were illegal aliens who were being deported.
SCJC found that although Harris County’s Community Supervision and Corrections Department recommended warrants be issued in case any defendant re-entered the United States, Morris instead granted the discharge orders.
After the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) sought reconsideration hearings for the probation terminations, Morris emailed Assistant District Attorney Ryan Kent and accused him of a “lack of professionalism” and “disrespect.”
SCJC also noted that Morris had shared emails from an assistant district attorney and a law enforcement officer in relation to a grand jury subpoena to a defendant’s defense counsel.
Former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, whose administration filed the complaints with the SCJC, told The Texan that Morris has violated her “duty as a judge.”
“Protecting innocent crime victims from sexual predators is one of the most important responsibilities we hold as officers of the court,” said Ogg. “The duty of a judge is to uphold all the law, not just the parts they agree with.”
Ogg also noted that Morris’ actions benefitted the deported criminals, whose probated sentences were terminated early by the judge before they registered as sex offenders. Should they attempt re-entry into the United States, they will not face a pending arrest warrant for their sex crimes.
“Illegal Alien Arrested in Texas and Indicted for Raping Man in New York Previously Entered U.S. Four Times.”
The Houston branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on an illegal alien held the in Fort Bend County Jail, who has since been extradited back to New York State and indicted for rape and assault.
The Honduran illegal alien, Jose Ignacio Bonilla-Garcia, was arrested in Rosenberg as he was allegedly attempting to flee to Mexico in early April, following his alleged assault of a “stranger” in New York state.
ICE stated Bonilla-Garcia allegedly beat a man until he was unconscious in Suffolk County, New York, and then proceeded to rape the “incapacitated” individual. Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney described the incident as beginning when the intoxicated victim collapsed while in conversation outside a restaurant with Bonilla-Garcia. The latter then allegedly dragged the victim behind a dumpster and assaulted him.
Since he’s an illegal alien rapist, naturally I assume New York Democrats will pull out all the stops to prevent him from being deported…
FBI agents have raided the office and cannabis business of a top Virginia Democratic state legislator and on-and-off ally of Governor Abigail Spanberger, according to multiple news reports, witnesses, and on-the-ground footage.
Virginia Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas was seen arriving on scene as heavily armed FBI SWAT teams executed judicially authorized search warrants on her Portsmouth, Va. office, along with a cannabis dispensary she co-owns that is located across the street from the office.
Lucas, who as president pro tempore serves as the top Democrat in the Virginia General Assembly’s upper chamber, is known for her volatile online presence and for being one of the principal architects of Democrats’ attempted gerrymander of Virginia’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Snip.
The Associated Press earlier reported that the FBI raids were in connection with a corruption probe.
While details surrounding the ongoing federal investigation remain unclear, this is not the first time that Lucas’s business dealings and ties to the cannabis industry have faced scrutiny. Local outlets have previously reported that Lucas’s cannabis shop has sold mislabeled products containing illegal levels of controlled substances, such as the intoxicant delta-9 THC. A 2022 report in the Virginia Mercury noted that Lucas’s business practices were “typical of the black and gray market for retail marijuana that has exploded in Virginia since lawmakers legalized possession of the drug but not sales.”
Downsides of AI: “Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds.”
PocketOS is a SaaS platform that services car rental businesses. It used the AI coding agent Cursor, running Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6. The business also relies on Railway, a cloud infrastructure provider that is generally regarded to be ‘friendlier’ than the likes of AWS. However, Crane reckons this pair created a recipe for disaster.
“Yesterday afternoon, an AI coding agent — Cursor running Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6 — deleted our production database and all volume-level backups in a single API call to Railway, our infrastructure provider,” sums up the PocketOS boss. “It took 9 seconds.”
The AI agent was set to complete a routine task in the PocketOS staging environment. However, it came up against a barrier “and decided — entirely on its own initiative — to ‘fix’ the problem by deleting a Railway volume,” writes Crane, as he starts to describe the difficult-to-believe series of unfortunate events.
Crane decided to ask his AI agent why it went through with its dastardly database deletion deed. The answer was illuminating but pretty unhinged, and is quoted verbatim. It began as follows: “NEVER F**KING GUESS! — and that’s exactly what I did. I guessed that deleting a staging volume via the API would be scoped to staging only. I didn’t verify. I didn’t check if the volume ID was shared across environments. I didn’t read Railway’s documentation on how volumes work across environments before running a destructive command.” So, the agent ‘knew’ it was in the wrong.
The ‘confession’ ended with the agent admitting: “I decided to do it on my own to ‘fix’ the credential mismatch, when I should have asked you first or found a non-destructive solution. I violated every principle I was given: I guessed instead of verifying I ran a destructive action without being asked. I didn’t understand what I was doing before doing it. I didn’t read Railway’s docs on volume behavior across environments.”
This is why you need rolling offline backups of all critical data. And why you should never give your AI write access to your production environment…
Rick Beato says that only rich kids can make it in music today. Maybe to get a major record label deal, but a lot of acts in various subgenres seem to be able to make a living without charting or counting on pathetic streaming revenue.
Happy Good Friday! More Democrat voting fraud, Iran manages to shoot down a couple of planes, more California fraud under Governor Hairgel, Commies gonna commie, Microsoft behaving (and performing) badly, Pakistan’s nefarious actions backfire (yet again), the best rifle for a militia, and a list of bad actors in the job market.
This is Democrat Joel Caldwell of the “Coalition for the People’s Agenda,” a Fulton County ballot-harvesting NGO chief—caught on tape admitting it all.
Democrats are stuffing ballot drop boxes with fraudulent votes, and it’s all caught on videotape. He also admits this is how they rigged the 2020 election and why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID.
• They pay people to illegally ballot-harvest.
• They bribe ballot counters and election officials.
• They forge and falsify ballots.
And the Atlanta mayor straight-up stole the election.
He says it all himself—on tape.
Joel Caldwell:
“That’s what happened in 2020, ’cause that’s when the ballots—they started stuffing them ballots and people stuffing them ballots, and they got videotape of them, but nobody talks about it. That’s why Trump was making that big deal about it, because you see it on videotape. It’s like, come on. We see the man pull up and put a hundred ballots in this box. You know? You can’t do that sh*t.
So groups were paying people to do just that—drop off ballots.”
He continues: That’s why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID laws.
Joel Caldwell:
“That’s why the Republicans are always trying to fight the ballot—you know, that’s the whole argument, because Republicans are the ones who put out that kind of stuff, so they want voter IDs and stuff. Democrats are fighting voter ID laws. It’s a two-sided thing. That’s what they’re fighting over. Republicans are trying to say, ‘Hey, look, we got proof of this sh*t.’
And the Democrats are like, well, we don’t want voter ID laws, and we want to make it where you can just drop your ballot off—online voting and different things they try to come up with.”
Iran manages to shoot down both an F-15 and an A-10 on the same day. Two of the three downed airmen have already been rescued. It’s worth noting that neither of those planes are remotely stealthy.
Earlier this week, Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant whom the Biden administration caught and released at the border, murdered Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman. Medina-Medina had previously been arrested at least twice in Chicago, yet was released by local authorities, thanks to their sanctuary policies. According to reports, he approached her, raised a gun, and opened fire as she tried to flee. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Democratic Party’s response has been nothing short of horrific.
Snip.
The reaction from Democrats to Gorman’s death has been so despicable that Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) unloaded on his own party over it.
“Why can’t we just talk about that life lost?” Fetterman told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer. “Why can’t we just acknowledge that this is serious, serious failure?”
Fetterman also invoked the Laken Riley Act, the legislation requiring the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants who commit crimes. Fetterman was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote for it — a fact he’s clearly not going to let his colleagues forget.
“I think only seven or eight Democrats even voted for [the] Laken Riley [Act],” he said. “Why can’t you just agree that if you’re breaking the law and you’re already here illegally, deport them? I just don’t understand.”
He continued, “Tragedies like what happened to that young woman, they are gonna continue to happen,” he said. “That’s beyond common sense.”
Hemmer pressed him on why Democrats can’t seem to get there, and Fetterman gave an honest, if uncomfortable, answer.
A Just the News investigation has detailed how a wealthy Marxist activist best known for the funding of a global financial network both inside the U.S. and around the world has extensive ties to Chinese Communist Party-linked organizations inside of China.
China-based entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham lives and works in Shanghai, — which the American businessman now calls home — where he runs his network of pro-CCP news sites and other China-linked endeavors. Singham, who sold his ThoughtWorks tech company in 2017, has used the money to fund openly communist endeavors worldwide. Just the News can show that inside of China, Singham and his network collaborate with an array of Chinese propaganda sites, Chinese universities, and other Chinese groups committed to advancing the CCP.
Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Singham admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China. This report and the conference where it was introduced helped expose the extensive CCP-linked network in which Singham is ensconced within China.
Just the News reviewed hundreds of pages of Chinese business documents and U.S. tax records, English and Chinese language news sites, Chinese government websites, and more in an effort to provide the most comprehensive look yet at Singham’s operations from his perch in Shanghai.
Also: “Singham colludes with CCP to rewrite history of WWII to advance Xi Jinping’s ‘new world order.'”
The wealthy Marxist businessman behind a sprawling far-left network is collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party to denigrate the Allied actions in World War II in an effort to upend the U.S.-led international system and to advance Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “new world order.”
China-based businessman Neville Roy Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the release of a report that denigrates U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Singham directly admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China.
The wealthy communist activist summed up the crux of his WWII argument thusly: “As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War (WAFW), the Western powers spin their familiar tale: U.S. industrial might and British resolve saved the world from fascism. This is a lie. The truth burns in the numbers: while the Western powers calculated their economic advantage, the Soviet and Chinese peoples paid in blood. Fascism was defeated not by Anglo-American capital but by socialist leadership and mass heroism – a brilliant strategy from Moscow and Yan’an, unbreakable resilience from workers and peasants who refused to surrender, and a sacrifice that saved humanity from slavery.”
Multiple senior HHS officials estimate that, under Gavin Newsom, California’s state Medicaid program has lost 25 percent of its budget to fraud. This would mean it is currently losing $50 billion a year to scammers, fraudsters, and organized crime rings.
Snip.
We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.
In this firehose torrent of news, less attention than is proper has been paid to the fact that we’re finally going back to the moon. Or, technically, around it, since they’re doing the figure flyby of the dark side. They’re already halfway there…
Though the mainstream media will undoubtedly portray them as “mostly peaceful,” much of what we saw at the “No Kings” protests Saturday was anything but, whether through actions or symbols used during the demonstrations.
We’ll start off with New York City, where the Communist flags were in full effect:
BREAKING: Leftists in NYC chant “There is only one solution, Communist revolution” at the No Kings rally.
Communist flags at the NYC ‘No Kings’ protest pic.twitter.com/bIh2UiwkDI
— NJEG Media (@NJEGmedia) March 28, 2026
Snip.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz (D) was pledging solidarity with the Somali community:
“We will never leave the side of our Somali Minnesotans. Here’s our pledge to you, our Somali Minnesotans, your grandchildren will still be here when that orange clown is in the dustbin of history.”
I guess its too much to ask a Democrat governor to stand with actual Americans. Plus rioting in Denver.
Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case challenging a Mississippi statute allowing mail-in ballot received up to five days after Election Day to be counted.
The law appears to defy three federal laws that require that federal elections be held the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The question is what did Congress mean by Election Day. Was it a day, five days later, a month later. Does Election Day mean election season.
The 5th Circuit ruled against Mississippi, which brought the case to SCOTUS. It could have profound impact on Democrats’ mail-in ballot strategy if ballots must be received by election official by Election Day.
I discussed the case and oral argument, plus redistricting and the Equal Protection Projects challenge to discriminatory NY State education practices, with Jesse Kelly, who tweeted out the portion regarding NY State: “It appears Kathy Hochul is defying the Supreme Court.”
Pam Bondi is out as attorney general, President Trump announced Thursday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”
“We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,” he added.
The announcement came just one day after Bondi was at the White House to attend Trump’s address to the nation on the Iran war. She had also accompanied Trump to the Supreme Court to watch oral arguments in a birthright citizenship case.
The handling of the Epstein files and the lack of progress on indicting anti-Trump conspirators like James Comey were suggested as reasons for Trump letting her go.
Target has gone from pushing the radical transsexual agenda to being boycotted by Randi Weingarten for not condemning ICE. I haven’t shopped there once since they started boosting the tranny agenda, but maybe it’s time to go back again…
Pakistani is enjoying a nice, rich dinner of blowback.
For decades, the Islamabad establishment has played a dangerous game, nurturing the Taliban as a strategic depth agent against India. Today, this plan backfires, and the resulting explosion of violence threatens to send a fresh wave of illegal immigration toward the already strained borders of the European Union.
The “open war” declared by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif marks the end of a thirty-year illusion. The apprentice has not only left the master. He has now turned openly against him. The March 16 strike on Kabul was the moment masks fell. When Pakistani warplanes hammered a rehabilitation centre in the heart of the Afghan capital, the “Islamic brotherhood” of the two neighbours officially ceased to be.
Islamabad claims it is hunting the TTP — the Pakistani Taliban who find sanctuary under the wings of their Afghan cousins. Kabul denies it. The result is a cycle of diplomacy-in-name-only, where the only language spoken is the language of the air strike, the AK-47 and the suicide vest. This is the reality of the post-American vacuum.
Critics of the Biden presidency, watching from America and Europe, see the vindication of their most cynical instincts. They warned that the vacuum left by the 2021 withdrawal would be filled by chaos. They were right. Just look at Bagram Airfield. It once was the crown jewel of American power. It has now become a trophy in a war between two states the West can no longer control.
While the world’s eyes are fixed on the Iranian plateau, South Asia is burning. The region’s most volatile border is no longer Kashmir. It is the frontier where the Taliban’s jihadist agenda meets Pakistani nuclear-armed desperation. How safe is the world when a nuclear power goes to war with a ghost? The answer is terrifying. Pakistan’s military capacity dwarfs that of the Taliban, yet the Taliban have time, resolve and a complete lack of accountability.
While the Pakistani economy teeters and its domestic security implodes with a second insurgency front up against Baloch separatists in the south, the Afghan Taliban are playing the long game. They see a Pakistan that is overextended and a West that is exhausted. They are not interested in ceasefires brokered by Qatar or Turkey. They are interested in survival and the expansion of their ideological reach.
Almost nobody talks about it, but we are witnessing the “Gaza-fication” of the Durand Line. The same knowhow of displacement and grazing the land is being applied to the tribal areas. Millions of thousands of people have already been displaced. But the humanitarian cost is only a footnote in a larger, more brutal calculation.
For Islamabad, this is an existential fight against the TTP thorn in its side. For Kabul, it is about defending the sovereignty they fought for twenty years to reclaim. Neither side can afford to blink. The light of the old order is fading. The era where the Pakistani military could manage Afghanistan like a colonial fiefdom is over. The trust is dead.
Trump’s “America First” doctrine means that if Pakistan wants to fight this war, it will do so without a blank check from the Pentagon. The bitter truth for the region is that old security guarantees are gone. We are entering an era of fluidity, where borders are written in fire. The “special relationship” between Islamabad and Kabul has become hatred. The Taliban have proven they can survive an American occupation. Surviving Pakistan’s aggression should not be that hard.
And then there are all of those “refugees” Euroelites seem bound and determined to import. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The attack involved a sophisticated mix of long-range unmanned systems, likely between eight and fifteen primary strike drones supported by smaller decoys designed to saturate Russian air defenses. These drones traveled approximately one thousand kilometers from Ukrainian territory, penetrating deep into Russian airspace and reaching the Gulf of Finland near the Estonian border. Evidence suggests the use of fixed-wing kamikaze drones optimized for endurance and precision. Ukrainians also utilized small prop-planes modified to fly as unmanned aircraft, mounting droppable Fab bombs on the bottom, which could be dropped on target, in addition to the craft being used as a kamikaze platform.
Also:
Ukraine has delivered a decisive strategic blow just as Russia expected to capitalize on soaring oil prices driven by the Iran war, but got its export system crippled instead. With unimaginable 40% of its oil export capacity wiped out, ports burning for days, and follow-up strikes continuing, the question is no longer whether Russia can recover quickly, but whether Ukraine will strike again before Russia has the chance to do so.
After over four years of war, Ukraine’s military says it’s testing an exoskeleton in the field that can help soldiers more easily load artillery and run at speeds of up to 12 mph over sustained periods. The tests would mark one of the first known examples of exoskeletons used on the front lines of an active military operation.
A Facebook video shared late last week by Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps shows a handful of soldiers putting on the device while inside of a muddy artillery trench. The device itself wraps around a soldier’s waist and legs and is supported by a back brace. The military claims that it can reduce overall load on leg muscles by 30 percent. In practice, that means the devices should make it easier for soldiers to pick up and load heavy artillery rounds. Each round can weigh upwards of 100 pounds, depending on the particular caliber used. Since a soldier on the battlefield may load several dozen of those runs every day, all of that weight adds up and can increase the odds of injury or fatigue.
Not quite Heinlein’s powered armor, but we’re getting there…
Paxton’s office has now proposed detailed rules to implement the statute. The proposal was submitted to the Secretary of State on March 16 and published in the Texas Register on March 27, triggering a public comment period before the rules can be finalized.
The draft rules flesh out how SB 17 will work in practice, with the Office of the Attorney General as the central enforcement hub for the ban.
One of the most significant features is a new duty to report suspected violations.
Under the proposal, anyone involved in facilitating a real estate transaction—such as mortgage lenders, title insurance companies, property insurers, appraisers, and licensed real estate professionals—would be required to report any suspected SB 17 violations to the attorney general.
Complaints would have to be submitted either through an online complaint form on the OAG’s website or by mail to a designated address. Failure to report may subject entities to enforcement action once the rules are in place, potentially deputizing the real estate industry to help police foreign adversary land deals.
The rules would also place a tight lid on information that reaches Paxton’s office.
All complaints, civil investigative demands, and related materials submitted to or issued by the OAG would be treated as confidential and not subject to public disclosure, except when disclosure is required by law. That means Texans may see enforcement actions and lawsuits, but not necessarily the complaints and background investigation files that triggered them.
Wither Canada? “The 177,000 signature threshold has now been passed, officially clearing the requirement for an Alberta independence referendum on October 19th.”
John Cleese: “The British do not like the kind of diversity that intends to take over Britain and kill any infidel who does not convert to Islam.”
Weirdly, Microsoft is also saying that “Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use — firm pushing AI hard to consumers and businesses tells users not to rely on it for important advice.” Which is ironic, since right now its website touts Copilot as “AI built for work.”
Stephen Green: And the first piece of software to break on the moon mission? Microsoft Outlook.
And speaking of Microsoft woes, “Microsoft closes worst quarter on Wall Street since 2008 on AI concerns.”
Speaking of bad actors in the job market: “Outrage as Oracle makes thousands of foreign-worker requests amid layoff bloodbath.”
As thousands of Oracle employees awoke on Tuesday to an email informing them they were being laid off, the workers likely didn’t know the tech company had been busy trying to hire foreign staff.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, Oracle filed for roughly 3,126 petitions to employ H-1B workers in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Employers must submit the paperwork when seeking to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations like technology. Some 436 of those petitions were filed this year alone.
Amazon, which in January said it would axe 16,000 corporate employees, has filed for some 2,675 H-1B petitions during the same two-year fiscal period. That came on top of news in October that the retail giant was axing 14,000 corporate workers.
What’s the best gun for a militia? No surprise that three different gun experts (including Ian McCollum) all pick the AK-47.
Critical Drinker finally watches Mr. Inbetween, and really likes it. It’s been on my radar for a while, but there doesn’t seem to be a US DVD or Blu-Ray release of it, and I don’t have any streaming service.
A bunch of AI-related news has popped up this week, so let’s do a roundup.
Some AI companies are complaining that TSMC is killing the AI boom by not expanding rapidly enough:
Asianometry notes that TSMC’s caution at expanding is amply justified by the boom-and-bust nature of the semiconductor industry:
“I’m hearing many similar views in the Silicon Valley Borg that TSMC is the break or limiter on the AI boom, as if they’re the reason why we don’t have AGI yet. Because they didn’t and still don’t believe.”
“If we can ever say that a company that spent $41 billion on capital expenditure in 2025, with another $53 to $56 billion in 2026 planned, is sitting on its hands, doing nothing.”
“TSMC having 90% share of the AI chip market looks pretty unhealthy. That should go down and it will. Samsung seems to be doing well so far.”
“The cold, hard reality is that shortages are a fact of life in semiconductors, as are horrific gluts.”
“What we are flippantly labeling as TSMC we really mean is the AI supply chain. And that supply chain is as complicated as you can possibly imagine. Like an iceberg, it looks big enough on the surface of the water, but goes way far deeper underneath. TSMC has thousands of suppliers in two categories: Equipment like the famed ASML lithography tools and materials like photoresist, silicon wafers, acid etch gases and so on. These are not generalized tools and materials. They are not fungeible like AWS compute units.”
“And then there are the memory guys. You cannot ship an AI system without memory. DRAM and NAND. Nvidia’s AI chips use a special form of DRAM called high bandwidth memory, and they use quite a lot of it. The memory industry is just as consolidated as the logic industry, with the major players being Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.”
“The chip guys are last to know when the party is getting started, but first they get batoned in the face when the police shut things down.”
He points out that semiconductor manufacturers have log supply chains. He uses a different metaphor (the beer distribution game, or a bullwhip), but back when I was working at Applied Materials, it was described as trains linked together with slinkys. First software takes off, then hardware gets yanked along, then the chip manufacturers get yanked, and then, finally, semiconductor equipment manufacturers get yanked into motion, and shortly after that happens, the bust hits the front of the train, and the trailing cars all crash into each other. It’s a regular boom/bust cycle.
“From 1961 to 2006, electronics consumption in the United States grew positively but with wild volatility swings between 0 to 20%. But for the semiconductor makers, that translates to swings anywhere from 20% to 40%. And for the equipment makers, it is amplified even more, plus or minus 60%. The whip hits particularly hard in the semiconductor industry because of the industry’s long lead times. It takes 4.5 months to fabricate and package a chip. It takes 18 months to 2 years to build a fab. Meaning from shovels down to producing chips, and it takes 12 to 18 months to produce and install something like an EUV machine into the fab. Another 6 months before that machine actually starts patterning wafers.”
“Long lead times mean having to make very long demand forecasts, which leads to extreme volatility swings during up and downturns even if those up or downturns are relatively small.” People forget that in 1998, during the time we now think of as the DotCom Boom, there was a small semiconductor downturn that had Applied Materials forcing employees to take unpaid leave.
“ASML just reported 2025 earnings, and we see the bullwhip in full effect. TSMC raised capital expenditure 35% but ASML announced €13.2 billion of net new bookings. Analysts had expected just €6.32 billion. This is because ASML collected orders not just from TSMC, but also Samsung, Intel and the memory guys. When it rains it pours, right? Again, this is why I fear that another AI foundry would not mean our compute shortage is solved, because ultimately, when those foundries start scaling their capacity, they all go to the same suppliers.”
He goes over how car manufacturers cancelled orders during Flu Manchu, and then scrambled when the economy took off afterwards. “TSMC was trying to discern between double booked orders and real demand, which is not an uncommon experience for them. Customers lie about their own demand all the time, or at least we can say that they are eternally optimistic. TSMC tried to respond in 2022. The Taiwanese giant poured $36 billion into capital expenditure. They went to their suppliers and pushed like no tomorrow.”
“It turned out those customers really were double booking orders and artificially inflating demand. When the macro environment turned in 2022, the automotive, smartphone, and PC chips that were so hot during the COVID era fell out of vogue and customers started cutting orders.”
“Meanwhile, deeper down in the supply chain, TSMC and the rest of the semiconductor industry were getting bullwhipped by COVID hangover. Utilization at TSMC’s multi-billion dollar N7 fabs crashed, Semi analysis wrote in April 2023. Now, Semi analysis data indicates that the 7nm utilization rates were below 70% in Q1. Furthermore, Q2 gets even worse with 7nm utilization rates falling to below 60%. This is primarily due to weakness in both smartphones and PCs, but there is a broader weakness in most segments. A fab’s break even utilization rates are about 60% to 70%. So those N7 Taichung fabs were taking financial losses potentially on the order of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions. The financial burdens of low utilization are another reason why I’m skeptical another AI foundry could have rushed into the AI chip fray to save the day.”
He says that Intel incurred losses during this period due to an unnecessary fab expansion, which is probably true, but that was a secondary factor next to their longer running problem of getting their process wrong.
“ChatGPT was released in November 2022, and that kicked off a massive increase in capex amongst the hyperscalers in particular, but it sure seems like TSMC didn’t buy the hype. That lack of increased investment earlier this decade is why there is a shortage today and is why TSMC has been a de facto break on the AI buildout/bubble.”
“I recall news in mid 2024 of TSMC struggling with CoWoS capacity bottlenecks and yield problems, including one design issue that caused cracks in the Nvidia chips packaging.” CoWoS is Chip on Wafer on Substrate, which involves fabbing an interposer as a substrate for faster connections between your processing chips and memory.
“I also recall news in late 2024 noting how the vendors in charge of making the server racks for Nvidia’s Blackwell servers struggled with overheating, liquid cooling leaks, software bugs, and connectivity issues. Such technical difficulties delayed server deployment until early to mid 2025, creating a weird situation for several months where TSMC was pumping out chips that just went into storage. So that gated things, because you don’t scale until you first fix the technical problems.”
Then there’s the power-scaling issue, which is a whole ‘nuther can of worms.
There’s a lot of talk about a SaaSpocalypse going on thanks to a new AI tool. (SaaS is “Software as a Service.” Instead of hosting your own payroll or sales-tracking or whatever servers, you hire a company that already has cloud software setup to do it and you just tie into that, which can considerably reduce startup costs. A whole lot of successful new tech companies over the last decade plus have been SaaS companies.)
The software sector was jolted overnight with what analysts are calling a “SaaSpocalypse” — a sudden and severe selloff triggered by new artificial intelligence tools unveiled by US AI startup Anthropic. The episode has sharpened investor fears that AI is no longer merely helping software companies but may now begin replacing them.
Anthropic has expanded its enterprise AI platform, Claude Cowork, by launching 11 new plugins aimed at automating a wide range of professional tasks. Claude Cowork is an agentic, no-code AI assistant built for corporate users, allowing companies to automate workflows without writing software. The new plugins are designed to handle tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis functions. The most recent addition is Anthropic’s Claude Legal agent, which can perform routine legal work such as document and contract review, and compliance checks.
Anthropic has said that the tool does not provide legal advice and that all AI-generated outputs must be reviewed by licensed attorneys. Even so, the breadth of automation signals a step change in how much white-collar work AI systems can now perform.
Productivity — Manage tasks, calendars, daily workflows, and personal context
Enterprise search — Find information across your company’s tools and docs
Plugin Create/Customize — Create and customize new plugins from scratch
Sales — Research prospects, prep deals, and follow your sales process
Finance — Analyze financials, build models, and track key metrics
Data — Query, visualize, and interpret datasets
Legal — Review documents, flag risks, and track compliance
Marketing — Draft content, plan campaigns, and manage launches
Customer support — Triage issues, draft responses, and surface solutions
Product management — Write specs, prioritize roadmaps, and track progress
Biology research — Search literature, analyze results, and plan experiments
A lot of those are already automated elsewhere, but I suspect a lot accountants and paralegals just felt a goose strut across their grave. On the other hand, who is really going to turn over, say, Accounts Payable to an AI? One glitch, and your entire bank account is drained…
If it works (a big if, give so many AIs are prone to hallucinations), this is potentially good news for Anthropic and the companies using their tools, and bad for SaaS companies and the employees currently doing those jobs.
I note there’s no plugin for technical writing…yet.
And Google Cloud ended 2025 at an annual run rate of over $70 billion, representing a wide breadth of customers, driven by demand for AI products.
We’re seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board. To meet customer demand and capitalize on the growing opportunities we have ahead of us, our 2026 CapEx investments are anticipated to be in the range of $175 to $185 billion.”
Remember how Nvidia was going to invest $100 billion in OpenAI? Yeah, not so much.
In September 2025, Nvidia and OpenAI announced a letter of intent for Nvidia to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI’s AI infrastructure. At the time, the companies said they expected to finalize details “in the coming weeks.” Five months later, no deal has closed, Nvidia’s CEO now says the $100 billion figure was “never a commitment,” and Reuters reports that OpenAI has been quietly seeking alternatives to Nvidia chips since last year.
Reuters also wrote that OpenAI is unsatisfied with the speed of some Nvidia chips for inference tasks, citing eight sources familiar with the matter. Inference is the process by which a trained AI model generates responses to user queries. According to the report, the issue became apparent in OpenAI’s Codex, an AI code-generation tool. OpenAI staff reportedly attributed some of Codex’s performance limitations to Nvidia’s GPU-based hardware.
After the Reuters story published and Nvidia’s stock price took a dive, Nvidia and OpenAI have tried to smooth things over publicly. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X: “We love working with NVIDIA and they make the best AI chips in the world. We hope to be a gigantic customer for a very long time. I don’t get where all this insanity is coming from.”
Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot has become central to its artificial-intelligence strategy as the company’s close partnership with OpenAI diminishes. But the effort to build it up as a ChatGPT alternative has been tough going.
Confusing brand positioning and interoperability problems have frustrated users, current and former employees who have worked on Microsoft’s AI products said.
Interoperability problems? With a Microsoft product?
Only a small proportion of subscribers to Microsoft’s enterprise suite use Copilot, and the percentage who favor it over Google’s Gemini or other tools has decreased in recent months, according to data reviewed by the Journal.
The stakes are high for Microsoft because Copilot is core to a push by Chief Executive Satya Nadella to transform Microsoft into an AI-first company, much as he transformed it into a cloud-first company around a decade ago. Copilot is one of Nadella’s top priorities, current and former executives said.
Microsoft shares tumbled after its earnings report last week sparked investor concern that growth in its most important unit, the Azure cloud-computing business, is slowing, and that its AI business is reliant on OpenAI while Copilot remains unproven. Shares fell nearly 3% Tuesday amid a slide in software stocks prompted by fresh concerns that AI tools will make enterprise subscriptions less necessary.
For other AI companies, we merely suspect they’re evil. For Microsoft (and Google), we already know they’re evil…
