An Iran ceasefire (sorta, kinda) holds, still more Californian welfare state fraud, Governor HairGel simply isn’t all there, Colorado steps up its war on the First Amendment, France’s aircraft carrier gets rumbled by a jogging ap, and William Shatner isn’t dying of cancer. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Personally, this has been a damn busy week. I’ve pretty much recovered from my bout of stomach flu, I’m in the home stretch for doing my taxes, and a bunch of other urgencies press.
Rather than provide a specific link, I’m just going to describe what I’m seeing of the ceasefire in the Iranian war. Like cannibalism in the the Royal Navy in that Monty Python skit, when Iran says they’re not lobbing any missiles, the mean that there is a certain amount. Just today, hostile drones were flying over Kuwait. And ships are free to transit the Strait of Hormuz, for values of “free” that include paying Iran protection money. Despite these violation of President Trump’s ceasefire terms, Iran is complaining that it’s no fair that Israel gets to continues kicking Hezbollah’s ass in Lebanon.
Speaking of Lebanon, three days ago the IDF reissued an evacuation notice for all Lebanese residents south of the Zahrani River. Note that the Zahrani is north of the Litani River, Israel’s previous line for evacuation. At this rate, IDF will enter Beirut in a few months…
Gladwin Gill, a 66-year-old psychologist, and his wife, Amelou Gill, a 70-year-old registered nurse, both of Covina, were arrested today on a federal criminal complaint charging them with health care fraud.
According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, the Gills owned and operated the Glendale-based 626 Hospice Inc., which did business as St. Francis Palliative Care.
The Gills allegedly schemed to defraud Medicare by paying illegal kickbacks for the referral of patients who were not dying.
The Gills’ business had a 97% survival rate … for hospice.
The Gills also submitted more than $5.2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for hospice services that either were not medically necessary or were not provided. Medicare paid the Gills more than $4 million on these fraudulent claims.
I’m sure the next part will be a huge surprise.
Gill is originally from Pakistan, and he’s served jail time before.
In 2008, he was sentenced to a year in prison for fraudulent political donations.
In 1995, he served two years in prison for real estate fraud.
He also fired a gun at gas company employees who came to his property to collect an unpaid bill.
Blue state officials can ignore any number of red flags as long as they expect to profit from the grift.
The insiders in Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia have been using social service non-profits, NGOs, and questionable charitable groups as passthroughs for their friends and pet constituencies for years. Billions have been gifted to insiders and friends. And now — at long last — actual taxpayers have gotten wise to the grift. You can thank independent journalists for highlighting these absurd expenses in a much simpler and understandable way than thick books or endless PDFs filled with intentionally confusing stats, opaquely written conclusions, and puffed-up executive summaries that don’t reflect the data can ever do.
And now people living on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ want to know one thing: Where’d all that money go?
It all starts with … Gavin
Because your longtime West Coast, Messed Coast™ correspondent has been highlighting this stupidity for years and chronicled it here and in my other writings, radio shows, and podcasts, I’m going to insist you stipulate that the Homeless Industrial Complex exists and began in earnest from about 2005-2010, when leftist leaders saw that a buck could be made by declaring and funding programs to “End Homelessness in 10 Years.” Obviously, it was a smashing success — for grifting, I mean.
In 2005, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom harrumphed and gesticulated that he would, by dint of his own signature on a proclamation, “end homelessness” by 2015. Other cities followed. Billions went down the toilet as a result. And by toilet, I mean the streets of the Tenderloin and other Skid Rows along the West Coast, Messed Coast™.
There then follows a chart of various attempts to “end homelessness.” I’m sure you’ll be shocked to find out none of them succeeded.
Sen. Tom Cotton: “The New York Times just confirmed what we’ve long suspected: ActBlue knowingly let in fraudulent foreign donations to help Democrats win. Yet another example of the left’s embrace of fraud. Everyone involved must face the full weight of the law.”
“The bombshell Times story comes after a law firm that formerly worked with ActBlue warned the group that they almost certainly lied to Congress about their process of vetting foreign donations.”
After interviewing Gavin Newsom, Adam Carolla thinks “Something’s wrong with him.” “He’s a sociopath. Like he doesn’t really understand anything.”
“Konkivskyi Bridge Destroyed in 60-Day Ukrainian Drone Operation Using Heavy-Lift Drones.” The weird thing is that this is in Oleshky, down from the already-destroyed Antonovsky Bridge, and evidently built up explosive material under the bridge over a period of time.
The moment I heard the smashing of glass, I knew exactly what it was. I had heard that sound dozens of times over the last month. Before I even looked up, I grabbed my phone, turned toward the noise, and started taking photos. Ten feet away, a black Expedition SUV sat with its rear window blown out. Within seconds, a man in a black shirt and backpack sprinted off carrying a laptop, a briefcase, and a gym bag. I ran over, saw the shattered glass, and knew exactly what I had just witnessed: a smash-and-grab. A smash-and-grab is a particular kind of burglary. A thief smashes a car window, grabs whatever looks valuable, and gets out fast. What defines it is not just the speed. It is the confidence. The noise, the alarms, the cameras, the witnesses, none of it matters anymore. The criminal is not trying to avoid attention because attention no longer means consequences.
Without thinking, I took off after him. Just moments earlier, I had been across the street in Portland’s Pearl District with a few dozen volunteers doing a trash cleanup. We were on the sidewalk with gloves and garbage bags, doing what functioning cities are supposed to do: maintain public space, clean up disorder, and take pride in where they live. Then, right across the street, someone did what a broken city has learned to tolerate: smash a car window and steal from strangers in broad daylight. The contrast could not have been clearer. On one side were citizens trying to restore their city. On the other was someone actively tearing it down. Maybe it was that stark line between right and wrong that lit the fuse in me. Maybe I was just tired of watching decent people get victimized while everyone else acted like this was now normal.
I caught up to him as he turned the corner at Northwest 14th and Couch and screamed, “Stop!” Then louder: “STOP!” He looked back, startled, and dropped the first bag. My friend grabbed it and held onto it while I kept running. We ended up in a full sprint. He was at least twenty years younger than me, but adrenaline kept me close. He weaved through traffic, jumped over a garbage can, and slid across the hood of a car like this was routine, like he had done it many times before. Several blocks later, he started to slow down. He ducked behind a parked car, and I chased him around it twice. He was breathing hard and begging me to stop chasing him. I finally caught him and cornered him in a doorway. He shoved me with his left arm. I grabbed his shirt and pushed him back into the door. “Leave me the f*ck alone, bro,” he screamed. I did not let go. I demanded everything back. He tried to pull away, then handed over what he had stolen while repeating, “I didn’t do anything,” over and over. He looked scared, but he also looked stunned. His expression said something I could not ignore: I think I was the first person who had ever chased him down.
My friend called 911. We gave the operator a detailed description, and she told us it would take at least twenty minutes and that we needed to let him go. So we did and he took off running again. But we kept following from a distance so we could continue updating 911 with his location. And once I was no longer right on top of him, the thief stopped sprinting and started operating. That is the part most people do not understand. People imagine smash-and-grabs as chaotic, impulsive crimes, one desperate guy, one reckless decision, one lucky escape. What I witnessed was not chaos. It was choreography. He took off his shoes. Took off his shirt. Cut his jeans into shorts. Within thirty seconds, he looked like a different person. That is not panic. That is a practiced move. That is someone who has done this enough times to have a system.
Then came protection. A middle-aged man in a “Just Do It” Nike hat rolled up on a beat-up bike and grabbed my shoulder. “Stop following,” he said. “I’ll make serious trouble for you.” A random passerby does not physically confront a stranger for following a thief. He does not show up at the perfect moment, get physical
immediately, and start threatening people. That was not random. That was an enforcer, someone whose role was to discourage interference, someone who knew the routine. I knocked his arm off and stood my ground. Once he realized I was not going to back down, he backed off. A moment later, I watched two homeless individuals throw a blanket over the thief as if they were concealing contraband, then casually walk away. If I had not seen it happen, I would have walked right past him.
We called 911 again and gave his updated description and location. Then chaos became a weapon. A woman in a black jacket and mini skirt lunged at me and tried to rip my phone out of my hands. She grabbed it hard, pulling like her life depended on it. Another man rolled up on a BMX bike and grabbed my arm. This was not about stealing my phone. It was about destroying the evidence. They were trying to remove the one thing that made them vulnerable: documentation.
Chinese propaganda outlets linked to the Singham Network have repeatedly sought to raise the profile of self-described “MAGA Communist” Jackson Hinkle as the social media influencer praises the Chinese Communist Party and critiques the Trump Administration and the West.
The China-based propaganda partners of the Singham Network — most notably the pro-CCP Guancha outlet as well as the China Academy and its Wave Media video ecosystem — have repeatedly sought to elevate Hinkle, including hosting him for conferences in Shanghai, giving him favorable interviews, promoting his comments and appearances, and generally pushing his idea of so-called “MAGA Communism.”
Hinkle is openly “Marxist-Leninist” and, despite his use of the “MAGA Communist” label, he has been a harsh critic of President Donald Trump, repeatedly labeling him a “war criminal” as Hinkle openly sides with U.S. adversaries such as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the CCP, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the Iranian regime, and terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
Hinkle has also been promoted in China by Chinese state media outlets, some of which are also linked to Singham’s influence efforts. Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Gov. Greg Abbott said he does not expect Texas to legalize gambling in the next legislative session, signaling a continued roadblock for casino interests that have spent millions trying to influence state elections.
Abbott made the remarks during a press conference Tuesday focused on his property tax plan, held after Galveston County Commissioners Court joined the Lone Star Property Tax Reform Council in support of his proposal.
The governor was asked about gambling, as well as a so-called “fuzzy animal” or “fuzzy bear” exception in Texas law—a colloquial term for a narrow provision allowing certain amusement machines to award low-value, non-cash prizes, which some “game room” operators have cited to justify machines critics say function as illegal gambling devices.
“I don’t know how that works, and I’m not sure about fuzzy bears and things like that,” said Abbott. “We’ll look into the fuzzy bears. All I can tell you is what the law says, and that is, gambling is unconstitutional in the state of Texas, and I don’t see that changing in the next session.”
Abbott’s comments come as casino interests, including groups tied to Las Vegas Sands and the Texas Defense PAC, have poured millions into Texas primary elections in recent cycles. Those efforts failed to unseat lawmakers who opposed expanding gambling.
Colorado is now arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union, pushing an array of measures attacking those with opposing social and political views. The irony is that the state has proved a bonanza for free speech with spectacular legal failures that reaffirmed rather than restricted the First Amendment. Now, the Democratic legislature and governor are back with new unconstitutional measures, including a requirement that lawyers not share information with federal immigration officials as a condition for filing with state courts.
Colorado legislators and judges have spent years attacking core free speech and associational rights. In the last election, the state attempted to strip President Donald Trump from the ballot with the support of a majority of its Democratic-controlled state supreme court. (The effort was later declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court. Colorado could not even get any of the liberal justices to support its actions).
The state is responsible for the efforts to force business owners to create products celebrating same-sex marriages. That effort led to the Masterpiece Cake Shop case and then the 303 Creative case. Even after losing earlier efforts against Masterpiece Cake Shop owner Jack Phillips, the targeting of its owner continued for years. That litigation proved to be a tremendous victory for free speech.
Colorado has also been leading the fight to limit the speech and associational rights of professionals and parents on “conversion therapy.” Recently, that effort led to another massive loss before the Supreme Court in Chiles v. Salazar, resulting in a resounding 8-1 rejection of Colorado’s position. It could only secure the vote of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
After that near-unanimous ruling against the state, Colorado responded by doubling down with legislation to expose any counselors engaged in conversion therapy to heightened legal liability, including waiving any statute of limitations. That case could also result in legal challenges as Colorado continues to spend a fortune on seeking to curtail free speech rights.
Now, the state is defending a new public accommodation law, HB 25-1312, that defines “gender expression” to include “chosen name” and “how an individual chooses to be addressed.”
As in past Colorado cases, the state secured favorable rulings from district court judges. President Biden-nominated U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez refused to grant a preliminary injunction against the Colorado public accommodation law.
The Alliance Defending Freedom is appealing the matter to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on behalf of its clients, XX-XY Athletics and Born Again Used Books. Other appeals are also being brought in the matter.
At the same time, the state has moved forward on Senate Bill 25-276, which imposes a threshold condition for state e-filings that requires lawyers to certify annually “under penalty of perjury,” that they will not use “personal identifying information” from the system to help federal immigration enforcement.
California sheriff deputies try to serve an eviction notice, have the guy open fire on them for their troubles. Do they: A.) Taz him, B.) Shoot him, or C.) Roll over him in an armored vehicle? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Speaking of Shatner, he’s been warning people about crazy “Shippers” (people who imagine relationships between fictional characters) for a while now. Even crazier? When a crazy anime shipper sends a death threat to a voice actress for not agreeing with them that an animated character is crazy shipper’s “soulmate.”
Follow-up: Remember Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, age 47, and her daughter, Sarinasdat Hosseiny, the niece and grandniece of dirtnapped Iranian revolutionary Guard scumbag Qasem Soleimani?
This cute dog is banned from the couch, so the moment its owner leaves the house it races straight onto it – but instantly drops to the floor the second it hears footsteps approaching. 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/WKcjPyr3u8
Everyone favors Voter ID except Democrats trying to cling to power, America’s big stick gets bigger, Trump’s tariffs hit a setback at the Supreme Court, another insane tranny shooter, Ukraine recaptures more land from Russia, another Pulitzer Prize winning leftist pedo, more Paxton lawsuits, and a new party rises on the right in the UK.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
On the personal front, I may need to buy a new dryer. We’ll see what the repairman says Monday…
Are voter ID requirements considered a controversial idea in the eyes of US citizens? If you watch the establishment media or follow leaders in the Democratic Party then you might think bills like the SAVE Act are the end of freedom as we know it. However, outside the echo chambers of DNC propaganda, the vast majority of Americans have no problem whatsoever with people proving their US citizenship before they vote in local and federal elections.
The widespread support for voter ID is undeniable. Surveys from the past year including those from Pew and Gallup show that, regardless of party or ethnicity, Americans citizens want elections to be protected from manipulation through mass illegal immigration.
A Pew Research Center survey from August 2025 found that 83% of Americans favor requiring all voters to show government-issued photo ID to vote. This includes:
95% of Republicans
71% of Democrats
Only 16% of people oppose it.
A Gallup poll from 2024 shows 84% support for requiring photo ID to vote, with 98% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 67% of Democrats in approval.
A recent CNN segment featuring number cruncher Harry Enten confirms that the backing for the SAVE Act is also dominant regardless of ethnicity: 85% of white voter, 82% of Latino voters and 76% of black voters all want voter ID. It’s difficult to find many issues which the American public universally supports at this level.
Democrat leaders, however, don’t care that the majority of their own base wants voter ID laws. Party officials and the left-wing media have engaged in a shameless propaganda campaign designed to frighten the public into opposing the SAVE Act, despite their previous platforms defending majority rule.
That’s because they view voter integrity laws as an existential threat to their power. If they can’t cheat, they can’t win…
The big stick gets bigger. “Ford Carrier Group Enters Mediterranean To Join Biggest US Build-Up Since 2003 Iraq War.”
Open source monitors as well as US and Middle East media have confirmed that the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, has entered the Mediterranean Sea, having sailed passed the Strait of Gibraltar on Friday.
This is the second carrier strike group expected to soon operate directly in the CENTCOM area of responsibility, amid the massive military build-up and pressure campaign against Iran. It was sent from the Caribbean earlier this month, extending its planned deployment.
The USS Mahan Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which is accompanying the USS Gerald R. Ford, is also now crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, maritime tracking analysis shows.
The aircraft carrier will likely take several more days to reach the Middle East and be poised to operate against Iran – so it looks to be in place by start of next week.
According to Bloomberg and other outlets, the US has now amassed the biggest force in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There is administration talk of “limited strikes” – but clearly Washington is getting ready for all escalation scenarios.
The Supreme Court (6-3 in a majority opinion written by CJ Roberts) has ruled that Trump’s tariffs exceeded his authority.
We decide whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the President to impose tariffs.
***
The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it. IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate . . . importation” falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power. We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.
Trump says he has alternative means to impose tariffs. “Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs remain in place… Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.”
In the past 12 months (January 2025 to January 2026) there are fewer foreign-born workers employed and more native-born workers in jobs. The time period roughly corresponds to the first year of Pres. Trump’s second term.
The murder-suicide at a Rhode Island hockey rink on Monday is just the latest in a recent string of murders allegedly carried out by self-identifying transgender perpetrators or by those seemingly inspired by transgender ideology.
Robert Dorgan — who police say shot and killed his ex-wife and one of their sons during a high school hockey game this week — had previously insisted he believed he was actually a transgender woman despite being a man. A local TV station said that “An unnamed woman, who identified herself as Dorgan’s daughter, has since come forward, telling WCVB that her father ‘has mental health issues.'”
“He shot my family and he’s dead now,” she reportedly said. Dorgan, who killed himself after the murders on Monday, had also expressed pro-Nazi sentiments, and according to The New York Post, was adorned with “vile neo-Nazi tattoos.”
He is only the most recent example of high-profile attacks linked to transgender perpetrators or transgender ideology, including mass shootings at Christian schools, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Progress: “Major Manhattan Hospital, Massachusetts Health Care System End ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors.”
Setback: “Judge Orders California Hospital to Resume Gender Transition Procedures for Minors.” Democrats seem to love mutilating children too much to give it up.
“Kansas’ governor vetoed a bill that banned men from the women’s room. The legislature overrode her.” “Even in an uber-red state, Democrat governors are still going to toe the party line.”
Scott Pinkser thinks Trump’s deal with India spells doom for the Russian economy, because they won’t allow those shadow fleet tankers to continue on to China. Quoting Peter Zeihan:
If the Russians have lost their single largest source of income, that will manifest on the battlefield. The Chinese may be supplying the Russians with all the gear that they can pay for, but the key thing there is: pay for.
And if the Russians can’t [pay], then a drone war where the Russians can’t get enough drones is one where the Russians start losing territory.
Price of cucumbers double in Russia. I’m mildly fascinated by those per-country yearly cucumber consumption numbers. 12 kilograms about 26 pounds a year, which doesn’t seem high if you’re including pickles, as that’s only one small jar of pickles every other week. But China’s 55 kilograms a year works out to two pounds a year per person. That’s a lot of damn cucumbers…
Democracy dies in protecting sex offenders that check the right boxes:
Wow I missed that Wesley Lowrey, the ex-WaPo reporter who won a Pulitzer and wrote a famous editorial urging journos to forgo objectivity in lieu of ‘moral clarity,’ was chased out of his journalism professorship for multiple sexual assault allegations.
Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Dallas officials, accusing them of defying a voter‑approved mandate to boost police funding under Proposition U.
Proposition U, approved by Dallas voters in November 2024, amended the city charter to require at least 50 percent of “excess” annual revenue be directed to public safety. The charter language earmarks those dollars first for the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System, then for increasing officer pay and growing the force to at least 4,000 sworn officers.
Paxton’s lawsuit, filed in a Dallas County district court, targets the City of Dallas, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, and Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland Jr. for allegedly underfunding public safety in violation of the charter.
The attorney general argues that city officials “acted beyond their legal authority” by using an improper calculation of excess revenue that drastically reduced the amount legally owed to police priorities.
For the 2025–26 fiscal year, the city’s own projections reportedly show about $220 million in excess revenue above the prior year. But Ireland told the Dallas City Council that excess revenue totaled only $61 million—roughly a quarter of that amount—after excluding large categories of city income from the calculation.
Paxton’s filing notes that the city did not cite any state or federal law restricting the use of the excluded revenue, which would be required to legally omit those funds from the Proposition U formula.
Because of this narrower calculation, the proposed city budget allocates far less money to police pensions, officer pay, and hiring than voters required, Paxton says. The lawsuit contends that Dallas’ current hiring plan leaves the department hundreds of officers short of the 4,000‑officer minimum mandated in the charter amendment.
Paxton’s lawsuit also points to another provision of Proposition U that city officials allegedly ignored altogether. The charter requires Dallas to hire an independent third‑party firm each year to conduct a police compensation survey comparing Dallas officer pay and benefits to those of other major North Texas departments.
According to information obtained by the state, no such survey was conducted, despite the charter’s mandatory language. That failure, Paxton argues, makes it impossible for city leadership to honestly claim they are meeting the voter‑approved requirement to make Dallas police pay competitive in the region.
Blue city functionaries hate funding the police because the hard left can’t get any of their sticky fingers into that pile of money…
Two former Harris County Tax Office employees and two local business owners are facing first-degree felony charges in connection with what authorities say was a coordinated vehicle registration fraud operation.
Court filings allege the group worked together to process registrations and title transfers that bypassed required state safeguards, collecting bribes in exchange for pushing transactions through the system.
Adriana De La Rosa, 43, owner of Bella’s Multiservices in South Houston, has been arrested. Oswaldo “Oz” Perez, 51, who is affiliated with the same business, remains wanted.
Former tax office employees Sarah Ambria Anderson, 31, and Renisha Touche Wilkins, 35, were also charged. Both were dismissed from their positions in April 2024.
Investigators allege the activity centered on the Scarsdale branch of the Harris County Tax Office, where nearly 200 questionable transactions were processed. According to reporting from KPRC 2, the employees allegedly accepted cash and gifts in exchange for overriding verification requirements tied to insurance coverage, emissions inspections, and residency. Some vehicles were allegedly coded as tax-exempt, allowing customers to avoid paying required fees.
Authorities further allege that Anderson charged approximately $300 per transaction and transported paperwork in a personal binder to avoid detection.
The case reportedly began after employees in another Texas county noticed Bella’s Multiservices promoting vehicle registration stickers on TikTok and Facebook. Social media posts advertised expedited service and claimed inspections were not necessary. That tip prompted an internal review, which eventually led to a criminal investigation.
This is not known as “keeping a low profile.” One wonders if they might also be charged as accessories for Grand Theft Auto.
The first priority is to control who comes to our country, and more importantly, who stays in our country. Restore Britain will not just stop mass immigration; we will reverse it.
Every single illegal migrant will be securely detained, and then deported. The message will be unrelenting: If you are in this country without permission, you will be removed. For the foreseeable future, far more people must leave Britain than arrive.
If a foreign national is unable to speak English, lives in social housing, claims benefits, refuses to work, fails to integrate, commits crime, or even actively hates our way of life and wishes to do us harm, then they must leave, or be made to leave…
Restore Britain will make our communities safe again for women and children. That I promise you. If that means millions go, then millions go.
We’re constantly told that the economy needs vast swaths of low-skilled migrants. We know that’s simply not true. What we need is to get millions of healthy Brits back into work – a radical overhaul of how welfare is delivered. Protecting those in genuine need, but not funding healthy shirkers to live off the back of hard working men and women. If you can work, you must work. It really is that simple.
There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for Restore Britain, given their willingness to tackle the illegal alien invasion head on. The irony is the reform leader Nigel Farage looks poised to go from a fringe figure on the right to being ,i>outflanked on the right without ever being elected Prime Minister…
The face of evil: “This Karen called CPS on students’ parents because they chartered a TPUSA chapter at school…A liberal woman in Maryland, Nancy Krause, is facing mass calls to be charged after she weaponized CPS against Calvert County high school students for starting a TPUSA chapter at their school.”
I hope they sure her for every penny she has, and then some.
Stephen Colbert and James Talarico are lying about Trump blocking an interview. CBS merely told Colbert there were equal time considerations for such an interview, and that he might have to interview other Texasw Democratic senate candidates like Jasmine Crockett.
After text messages obtained by news media appeared to corroborate prior reports alleging that U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23) engaged in a relationship with his now-deceased regional director, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles — which would violate U.S. House rules — her husband has now come forward in a tell-all interview affirming the claims.
Gonzales, however, continues to deny the allegations and now says he is being “blackmailed” following a settlement request from the husband’s attorney.
Santos-Aviles died months after her husband discovered the affair and confronted Gonzales in what authorities ruled a suicide by self-immolation.
The story has set off a bombshell of controversy, with the most recent evidence being released at the beginning of early voting for the March primary election, where Gonzales faces three challengers in the GOP primary.
Santos-Aviles served as Gonzales’ regional director based in Uvalde, overseeing constituent affairs across 11 of the congressional district’s 23 counties near Texas’ southern border.
Emergency responders found her in the backyard of her home on the night of September 13. A gasoline can was nearby where she laid severely burned. She was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead the next day.
News of the affair was first reported by Current Revolt, which was met with silence by Gonzales until an interview with the Texas Tribune wherein he claimed the reports were not true.
Fast forward, and the San Antonio Express News obtained text messages between Santos-Aviles and another former staffer that purportedly show her writing,“I had an affair with our boss.”
This prompted Gonzales’ main opponent in the GOP primary, Brandon Herrera, to call for his resignation, saying an affair would have violated House rules.
“Tony Gonzales must resign. He not only broke House ethics rules by having an adulterous affair with a member of his congressional staff and by using taxpayer money to fund the affair, but he also broke trust with the public by insisting that the initial reporting of the affair was false,” Herrera wrote in a press statement.
Speaking of Texas politicians behaving badly, here’s a story that doesn’t cover anyone in glory.
After personal details about U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt were posted online by a senior John Cornyn advisor, the Houston Republican has filed a police report documenting what some are describing as a possible crime under federal or state law.
Cornyn advisor Matt Mackowiak posted images of documents late last week that purportedly listed Hunt’s address, Texas driver’s license number, and the last four digits of his Social Security number. What Mackowiak seems to have designed as a last-minute attack on Hunt has turned a spotlight on Cornyn’s struggle to remain relevant with Texas voters ahead of the March 3 Primary Election.
Mackowiak, who runs Save Austin Now and was head of the Travis County GOP, is someone I know casually. We followed each other on Twitter before my suspension there, and we’ve bumped into each other at various events. As a political consultant/head of Potomac Strategies Group, Mackowiak has worked for some pretty squishy, swampy Republicans.
Cornyn is being challenged by Attorney General Ken Paxton and Hunt for the GOP nomination. Most public polling has consistently shown Paxton leading the field, followed by Cornyn and Hunt. Recent polls have shown Hunt closing that gap. The “doxxing” of Hunt by a senior Cornyn advisor has led some to suggest that perhaps the incumbent’s polling is even worse.
“The only reason you direct fire at someone behind you in the polls is you thinking their momentum will overtake you,” explained a political consultant not working the race. “Whether Cornyn is worried or not, Mackowiak’s actions make their campaign look desperate.”
Yeah, that was pretty stupid of Mackowiak. His post was evidently designed to ding Hunt over some provisional ballot he wasn’t entitled to file in 2016, and frankly my care meter isn’t even twitching. A three-term incumbent attacking a third place candidate does indeed reek of desperation. That said, in my (admittedly limited) understanding of federal laws on personally identifiable information is that none of that stuff quite qualifies as actual PID, so the Hunt campaign is probably going to see that criminal complaint dismissed.
In one of his more unanticipated endorsements, Trump threw his support behind Republican candidate Alex Mealer in her bid for Congressional District (CD) 9, against state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park) and seven other GOP primary candidates.
The district, currently held by U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-TX-9), was heavily impacted by the GOP-favored redistricting map that passed the Texas Legislature during the summer of 2025 — legislation initiated at the White House’s request and voted for by Cain in the Texas House. CD 9 is one of the five congressional districts expected to flip from blue to red in 2026, with a majority of the current CD 9 folded into the new boundaries of the Democratic stronghold of CD 18, where Green is now running instead.
Trump stated in his endorsement of Mealer, “A West Point Graduate, and Combat Decorated Army Bomb Squad Officer, Alex knows the Wisdom and Courage required to Defend our Country, Support our Military/Veterans, and Ensure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”
Cain was supported by Trump for re-election to the Texas House in a mass endorsement issued by the president for House Republicans who voted to pass education savings accounts legislation. The endorsement did not include any members’ pursuit of an alternative office.
According to a recent survey, Mealer leads the Republican primary for CD 9 with 34 percent of the vote, followed by Cain at 26 percent. When the poll was taken there were 10 candidates in the race, but one, Dwayne Stovall, ended his campaign on Tuesday and endorsed Dan Mims.
Among the other endorsements announced by Trump via Truth Social posts on Monday night was for Jon Bonck in his bid for CD 38, left open by U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt’s (R-TX-38) run for U.S. Senate against incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican primary.
Bonck is up against nine other Republican candidates, including businesswoman Shelly deZevallos, businessman Larry Rubin, and Tomball Independent School District President Michael Pratt. The district’s partisan makeup did not alter after redistricting, remaining at R-65%, per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index (TPI).
“Jon Bonck is an incredible Candidate,” Trump said in his endorsement.
“He is supported by many MAGA Patriots, including Senator Ted Cruz [(R-TX)], Congressmen ‘Doc’ Ronny Jackson [(R-TX-13)], Brandon Gill [(R-TX-26)], Jim Jordan [(R-OH-4)], and Tim Burchett [(R-TN-2)], among others.”
“A successful Business Executive, Jon knows the America First Policies required to Create GREAT Jobs, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A., Unleash American Energy DOMINANCE, and Champion our Nation’s Golden Age,” Trump added.
Trump also endorsed Carlos De La Cruz, brother of Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz (R-TX-15), in his bid for CD 35. The district is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX-35), but went from a TPI rating of D-70% to R-55% due to redistricting — drawing in a number of Republican candidates eyeing the new GOP-favored seat.
“A Brave, 20 Year Air Force Veteran, and now, as a successful Businessman, Carlos has a Proven Record of Success — He is a WINNER!” Trump posted.
“In Congress, Carlos will work tirelessly to Grow the Economy, Promote our Amazing Farmers and Ranchers, Cut Taxes and Regulations,” he continued, with similar language used in his several other endorsements that night.
He also endorsed in the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX-8), throwing his support behind attorney Jessica Hart Steinmann, who served as the director for the Office of Victims of Crime in the U.S. Department of Justice during Trump’s first presidential term.
Steinmann, now with an edge up, is running in a field with five other Republican candidates, including U.S. Army veteran Nick Tran, Deddrick Wilmer, Jay Fondren, and Stephen Long. Businessman Brett Jensen suspended his campaign following Trump’s endorsement.
Trump said of Steinmann, “As a former appointee in my First Term, and now, as a Highly Respected Attorney, Jessica continues to prove that she has the Wisdom and Courage necessary to uphold our Constitution, and ensure LAW AND ORDER.”
Good news: “The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that the VA will no longer report veterans to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) solely because they have been assigned a fiduciary to assist them with their finances. Further, the VA is working with the FBI to remove all the names of veterans who have been unjustly reported to NICS under this guise.
Former Democratic Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson died. Oddly enough, President Trump had good things to say about him.
Well, I didn’t know Jackson, so I’ll always consider him a race-hustling poverty pimp who ran a shakedown operation. He’s probably among the five people most responsible for strained race relations in modern America, behind Obama, George Soros, Al Sharpton and Ibram X. Kendi.
Less frequently recalled is the distress Jackson’s rise caused within the American Jewish community during the 1980s. For many identifiable Jews, and especially for Orthodox Jews, his candidacy was not merely another political development but a moment of rupture. His reference to Jews as “Hymie” and to New York City as “Hymietown” was not dismissed as a careless aside. It was recognized as an anti-Jewish slur, and it left a lasting mark, even becoming the subject of an Eddie Murphy Saturday Night Live skit that captured the moment with uncomfortable precision, as comedy often can.
The episode revealed how quickly old language could reemerge, even from figures celebrated as moral leaders within liberal politics. Jackson’s campaigns compelled Jewish institutions to confront questions about alliance, dignity, and communal security that they had long preferred to manage discreetly. They did more than provoke private discomfort; they produced public argument. On the pages of Jewish newspapers, the debate unfolded in real time, week by week, as each issue went to print, and it was not confined to the usual institutional voices. Orthodox writers, in particular, entered the conversation with a directness that many establishment Jewish leaders found unwelcome but that the moment required.
Three figures responded with unusual clarity. Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, writing in The Jewish Week; Dr. Marvin Schick, writing in The Jewish World; and Rabbi Meir Kahane, writing both in The Jewish Press and in the periodical Kahane: The Magazine of the Authentic Jewish Idea all confronted the Jackson candidacy directly. Each treated Jackson’s candidacy not as an isolated controversy but as a diagnostic moment, asking what it revealed about Black-Jewish relations, the credibility of coalition politics, and the judgment of Jewish leadership itself. They disagreed about almost everything, but they shared one conclusion: The assumptions that had governed Jewish political alliance since the 1960s were beginning to fray.
The desire of western liberal elites to import unassimilated Muslims into the country would pretty much break those assumptions apart.
Dallas officials aren’t the only ones Paxton sued this week: “Texas Sues Temu for Deceptive Marketing and CCP‑Linked Data Harvesting.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton is escalating his campaign against China‑linked tech companies, filing a new lawsuit targeting one of the most downloaded shopping apps in the United States, Temu.
Paxton’s suit names PDD Holdings, Inc. and WhaleCo Inc., the companies behind Temu, alleging they deceptively market the platform as a simple discount marketplace while secretly using it as a vehicle for aggressive data harvesting.
Though PDD moved its principal executive offices from Shanghai to Dublin, Ireland, it still maintains significant operations in China, and Temu has rapidly grown to more than 80 million active users in the United States as of late 2023.
According to the lawsuit, the Temu app is not just a shopping tool—it runs “dangerous software functions” that are “completely inappropriate” for a normal e‑commerce platform.
Paxton characterizes Temu as a digital “trojan horse” capable of bypassing security protocols and creating backdoor access into a user’s private data, all while presenting itself as a harmless way to buy “affordable great products.”
The attorney general alleges that when Texans use Temu, they are unknowingly exposing themselves to a serious digital security threat.
The Temu security threat has been known for a while. Security-aware shoppers will have to forgo such great products as this:
Kurt Schlichter has a word of warning to dog-hating Muslims thinking of moving to the west:
2/16/26 – On Dogs And Those Who Hate Them
Some of us have lived in Muslim countries and understand how they treat dogs, @jaketapper. During one of my deployments, we had to inform the locals, in no uncertain terms, that no, they would not conduct their annual dog cull. In other… https://t.co/eVWowrKwkH
“This is not open to debate. We’re going to keep our dogs as we always have. If you come to our civilization, you’re going to respect our pets, or there’s going to be trouble. John Wick is the moderate position on this issue.”
A fungus among us: “Dangerous superbug spreads in US hospitals…Candida auris infections reported in more than half of US states as healthcare facilities struggle with containment.”
“Western Digital is completely sold out of hard drive production capacity through 2026 due to massive demand from—” (You know exactly what’s coming next, don’t you?) “—AI data centers.”
Uncle Sam assembles another big stick for Iran, the radical leftwing networks in Minnesota continue to get exposed, silver shatters, two state Democrats get clipped in separate forgery cases, the rise of the Amelia memes, Microsoft update breaks everything (again), and are malls actually reviving?
And Neville Roy Singham’s fingerprints are visible everywhere.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As of right this moment, America hasn’t gone kinetic on the Mullahs yet, but we’re assembling an awful big stick.
USS Abraham Lincoln has gone dark, with no transponder or communication, signaling possible preparation for action against Iran.
A third US carrier strike group, USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), is moving into the Middle East theater.
Snip.
Some very interesting developments in the last 48 hours indicate something big is about to happen.
The EU all of a sudden has decided the next thing on their agenda is to declare the IRGC a terrorist group. Curious timing, that.
Minnesota agitators, including elected officials, have been organizing efforts to stalk, harass, and even hunt ICE agents in a Signal group chat that was infiltrated by Cam Higby and others.
It has been insane looking at the messages and the actual people involved.
And now DataRepublican has the donor list … you know, the people actually paying to make sure this all happens.
DataRepublican has also helpfully linked to their social media profiles.
You can download he data yourself. And DataRepublican has already turned in all the captured information to the Feds…
This is the story of how Minnesota became a political laboratory—first for the 2020 George Floyd protests, then for a sustained campaign against federal immigration enforcement. The players are the same. The money flows through familiar channels. And the strategy, according to those who designed it, was always meant to be replicated.
Snip.
Understanding how The People’s Forum operates requires following the money. And the money leads to Shanghai.
Neville Roy Singham is an American tech entrepreneur who sold his software company, ThoughtWorks, for approximately $785 million in 2017. He now lives in Shanghai, where, according to a 2023 New York Times investigation, he “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and finances propaganda worldwide.”
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a Rutgers University-affiliated research organization, published a comprehensive report in May 2024 documenting what it calls the “Singham Network”—a web of nonprofits, fiscal sponsors, and alternative media outlets that share funding, personnel, and messaging.
According to NCRI, The People’s Forum received over $20 million from Singham and his wife, Jodie Evans (co-founder of the anti-war group CODEPINK), between 2017 and 2022. The money moved through a complex network of donor-advised funds and shell companies, including the Justice and Education Fund, the United Community Fund, and the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund.
The People’s Forum has acknowledged receiving Singham funding. In a December 21, 2021 post on X (then Twitter), the organization defended its financial relationship with Singham against critics.
Congressional investigators have taken notice. On September 4, 2025, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith sent a formal letter to [People’s Forum Executive Director Manolo] De Los Santos demanding records and alleging that The People’s Forum had “acted as a foreign agent of the Chinese Communist Party” while enjoying tax-exempt status.
“Public reporting suggests that The People’s Forum has received over $20 million from Mr. Singham and his wife,” Smith wrote. “Multiple reports have found that The People’s Forum is part of Mr. Singham’s network of non-profit organizations that serve as his conduits to spread pro-CCP narratives.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee separately requested that the Department of Justice investigate whether The People’s Forum should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
De Los Santos himself has deep ties to Cuba. According to his biography at the Black Alliance for Peace, he “was based out of Cuba for many years” and “worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations.” The New York Post reported that De Los Santos first traveled to Cuba in 2006 and was there as recently as March 2024. He has been photographed meeting with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Footnotes excised. Snip.
What makes Minnesota different from other immigration flashpoints is the degree to which organizers have been explicit about their strategy.
The NCRI report notes that activists in the Singham network view the 2020 protests as proof that “the ability for mass struggle now exists inside the United States.” This framing treats George Floyd’s death not as a singular tragedy but as a tactical validation—evidence that the right combination of outrage, infrastructure, and outside support can produce transformational results.
De Los Santos’s April 2024 call to recreate “the violent protests of the summer of 2020” was not a slip of the tongue. It was a statement of doctrine.
The IDN’s establishment before Operation Metro Surge began—funded by nearly $1 million from the Bush Foundation—demonstrates pre-positioning rather than organic response. The explicit training of thousands in “rapid response” and “legal observation” tactics, the encrypted communication networks, the coordinated media strategies: none of this materialized spontaneously after Good’s death.
It was waiting.
The evidence assembled here—from congressional investigations, foundation records, tax filings, academic research, and organizers’ own statements—establishes that what is happening in Minnesota is neither spontaneous nor accidental.
The same network that helped turn George Floyd’s death into a national uprising has spent five years building the capacity to do it again. They have studied what worked in 2020, professionalized their operations, secured substantial funding, and pre-positioned infrastructure across Minnesota.
When Renée Good was killed on a Minneapolis street, that infrastructure activated precisely as designed.
Minnesota was chosen—first as the place where 2020 proved the model, then as the laboratory where that model would be refined and redeployed. The current crisis is not an accident of geography or politics.
A collection of far-left groups — led by a Communist activist network tied to CCP-linked millionaire Marxist Neville Roy Singham — is attempting to organize a nationwide anti-ICE school and business shutdown, with anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour declaring that “we will bring this country to a halt.”
The general strike effort, scheduled for this Friday, is an attempt to replicate a Minnesota-wide anti-ICE shutdown which occurred last Friday and which was organized by many of the same far-left groups — but now with designs to do so on a national scale. The planned “National Shutdown” announced early this week includes plans for large-scale marches and a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” around the country.
The Manhattan-based Marxist revolutionary People’s Forum, the left-wing BreakThrough News media outlet, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the far-left Code Pink anti-war group, and the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition are all involved in either promoting or organizing the nationwide shutdown effort.
Just the News recently reported on how the forum, its propaganda machine, and the PSL were key players in pushing last week’s Minnesota-focused shutdown effort. Just the News also previously reported on how these and other radical activist groups have leadership links or financial ties to the funding network backed by Singham, whom others in his network call “Comrade.”
Social media used as organizing platform
The plans for Friday allegedly started with calls by a number of student groups at the University of Minnesota — the Somali Student Association, the Liberian Student Association, the Ethiopian Student Association, and the Black Student Union — who called for “Justice for Alex Pretti & Renee Nicole Good — NATIONWIDE SHUTDOWN” on Instagram on Sunday.
An investigation by Just the News shows that the forum was likely involved in creating the “National Shutdown” website which is now serving as an organizational hub for the coming Friday strike.
Did anyone notice a “nationwide shutdown” today? Mother Nature did a 100,000% better job shutting things down with Winter Storm Fern…
You gotta hand it to those Soros-sponsored district attorneys across the nation because when it comes to playing with fire, they play like they’ve never been burned.
The latest example is Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner. Not exactly a household name across the country,
But one that should be well-known to BattleSwarm readers.
Soros-linked groups have been his single largest financial backing source — helping him bypass traditional party fundraising and local contribution limits.
About a decade ago, Soros contributed about $1.7 million to the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC while Krasner was still a relative unknown in a seven-candidate race for district attorney. The Philly PAC is part of Soros’s nationwide Justice and Public Safety groups that fund “progressive” DAs in blue city contests.
According to public sources, in 2017, Soros’s donation to just one candidate accounted for nearly 30% of all campaign spending in the seven-person race. For his 2021 reelection, Soros groups gave Krasner another $1.2 million, including $259,000 for Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to run ads on Krasner’s behalf. Soros supported Krasner again last year, although I wasn’t able to find the dollar amounts before going to press.
Prior to getting all that Soros money to run for D.A., Krasner defended Black Lives Matter and Occupy Philadelphia members in court — and let’s just say Soros got his money’s worth. Or maybe it’s our money, given how intermingled Soros’s private funds are with taxpayer-funded NGOs purpose-tuned to push his causes.
Snip.
Here’s the quick and dirty transcript of Krasner talking about ICE officers: “This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis — that’s what they are — in a country of 350 million. We outnumber them… If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice.”
What have I been repeating since the first attempt on President Donald Trump’s life last summer?
The left paints its enemies — we are no longer mere political rivals — as enemies, over and over, until some crazy decides to take justice into his own hands.
The FBI raided a Fulton County election office, evidently looking for evidence of the elction fraud carried out against president Trump in 2020. And it might be connected to…Nicolas Maduro?
Silver prices just plunged plunged over $30 an ounce today after a huge run-up. This means I’m either a genius when I sold a small amount of it last week (when prices were above where they are now), or an idiot for not selling all of it…
For three years, the world has waited for the Russian economy to implode. Instead, we watched a “Kalashnikov economy” defy gravity, fueled by high oil prices and a “friendship without limits” with Beijing. But as of January 2026, the gravity of basic math has finally caught up with Vladimir Putin.
The catalyst isn’t just the stalemate on the front lines; it’s a legislative “kill shot” from Washington and a quiet betrayal from the East. Between the new Graham-Trump Sanctioning Russia Act and a mounting domestic liquidity crisis, the Kremlin isn’t just running out of options—it’s running out of time.
The most significant development of 2026 isn’t a new missile system; it’s a tariff. The Graham-Trump Bill, greenlit by the White House on January 7, has fundamentally rewritten the rules of economic warfare. By threatening a mandatory 500% tariff on any country—including China and India—that continues to purchase Russian petroleum or uranium, the U.S. has finally weaponized the one thing Russia’s allies value more than cheap crude: access to the American consumer.
The shockwaves were instantaneous. On January 15, reports emerged that China’s largest state banks, including ICBC and Bank of China, began halting Ruble-denominated settlements. They aren’t waiting for the bill to be signed into law; they are pre-emptively cutting Russia loose to save their own export margins. When Beijing chooses its $500 billion trade surplus with the U.S. over its “strategic partner” in Moscow, the Russian war machine loses its primary life support system.
While the external walls are closing in, the internal floor is rotting. On New Year’s Day, Russia’s VAT officially jumped to 22%. This isn’t a sign of strength; it’s an act of desperation. The Kremlin is cannibalizing its own middle class to plug a federal budget revenue gap that fell 20% short of targets in 2025.
We are now seeing the first signs of a systemic banking fracture. In cities like Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, reports of ATM shortages are no longer fringe rumors—they are the physical manifestation of a “liquidity trap.” When the state raises taxes while inflation remains double-digit and interest rates hover near 20%, the result is a “medically induced coma” for the civilian economy.
Federal officials have charged two contractors with conspiring to disrupt Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Knoxville earlier this month.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee unsealed a multi-count indictment on Friday against Tyler Shane Wells, 33, of Morristown, and 18-year-old Alexander Bonilla Servin of Smyrna.
They are charged with conspiracy to conceal and harbor illegal aliens, conspiracy to forcibly impede federal agents while engaged in performance of official duties, and conspiracy to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, federal agents from discharging their official duties from January 5 through January 13.
Bonilla-Servin is also charged with forcibly impeding federal agents engaged in the performance of their official duties.
Wells appeared in court on Friday and pleaded not guilty to the charges and a detention hearing is set for Monday. A trial date has been set for March 31, 2026.
Federal authorities accuse the two of plotting to block the entrance to a Hardin Valley construction site with Bonilla-Servin’s pickup truck in an effort to impede ICE agents. According to a Department of Justice release, the vehicle was put in position after federal agents were seen surveilling the site. Servin is also accused of hitting agents’ vehicle with the truck as it attempted to enter the site on January 13.
After more than a year of digging, Statehouse candidate Bailey Templeton’s most public records collection shows 1,085 Illinois children under 18 without SSNs had Medicaid bills of $66 million in 2025. That’s up 725% from $8 million for 450 children in 2021.
“It’s roughly $40 million spent on inpatient treatment, that’s a lot of time for children to be in hospitals,” Templeton told The Center Square Friday.
The data only generates more questions for Templeton.
“It raises questions about what would be called medical trafficking, where things are conducted on to children when they’re too young to be able to consent to these things,” she said.
Why, it’s almost like Democrats imported millions of illegal aliens and put them on welfare rolls…
Man tries to kill mayor in the Philippines with an RPG. (Never mind that The Sun calls it a bazooka.)
Idiot Hawaiian Democrat Senator Brian Schatz asks Marco Rubio a really stupid question, and Rubio hands him his ass:
“That’s statutory. The Helms Burton Act, the US embargo on Cuba, is codified. It was codified in law and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just dropped what I’ve been calling the nuclear option.
In an appearance on Katie Pavlich Tonight Thursday, Duffy made clear that withholding $200 million in federal funding isn’t the end of this fight. If California doesn’t come into compliance on the non-domiciled CDL issue, Duffy said, “we will eventually pull their ability to issue commercial driver’s licenses to anybody in California.”
Not just the 17,000 non-domiciled CDLs at the center of this fight. Every single CDL in the state.
I’ve written extensively about this standoff since the FMCSA released its audit findings last September, which showed that roughly 25% of California’s non-domiciled CDLs were improperly issued. I’ve covered the $160 million funding hit. I’ve warned about the decertification authority in 49 U.S.C. 31312 and 49 CFR 384.405, which most people in this industry didn’t even know existed.
This didn’t start with the Trump administration’s September 2025 emergency rule restricting non-domiciled CDLs to certain visa categories. That rule, which limited eligibility to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa holders, has been stayed by the D.C. Circuit since November. The court found that petitioners were “likely to succeed” on their claims that the FMCSA violated federal law in its rulemaking.
The California problem predates all of that.
FMCSA’s August 2025 Annual Program Review found California had been violating federal regulations that existed long before Duffy took office. The state was issuing CDLs with expiration dates extending years beyond drivers’ lawful presence documentation. In one case that still makes my blood boil, California issued a driver from Brazil a CDL with passenger and school bus endorsements that remained valid months after his legal presence expired.
That’s not a new rule problem. That’s a California screwed-up problem.
California agreed in November to revoke all 17,000 improperly issued licenses by January 5, 2026. Then, on December 30, the California DMV unilaterally announced a 60-day extension to March 6, citing the need to ensure it doesn’t wrongfully terminate licenses for drivers who actually qualify.
Duffy’s response on X was blunt: “Gavin Newsom is lying.”
FMCSA never agreed to the extension. California proceeded anyway. On January 7, DOT made good on its threat and withheld approximately $160 million in National Highway Performance Program and Surface Transportation Block Grant funds. That’s on top of the $40 million already withheld over California’s refusal to enforce English language proficiency requirements.
California has more than 700,000 CDL holders. The state is home to the nation’s largest trucking workforce, with over 138,000 truck drivers moving freight through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the agricultural heartland of the Central Valley, and every retail distribution center feeding the country’s largest consumer market.
Under full decertification, California would be prohibited from issuing, renewing, transferring, or upgrading any commercial learner’s permits or commercial driver’s licenses until FMCSA determines the state has corrected its deficiencies. Previously issued CDLs would technically remain valid until their stated expiration dates, but here’s where it gets ugly.
Other states could refuse to recognize California credentials during the noncompliance period. FMCSA could issue guidance declaring CDLs issued by a noncompliant state invalid for interstate commerce. The Commercial Driver’s License Information System, which enables interstate verification, could flag every California license.
For the 700,000 CDL holders in the Golden State, decertification wouldn’t just be an administrative headache.
It would effectively ground them from operating in interstate commerce.
Blue state governors should stop trying to protect their precious illegal aliens and start following federal law.
TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years on the platform now used by more than 200 million Americans.
The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.
Tesla North America announced the completion of a major lithium refinery in Robstown, Texas, with Elon Musk calling it “the most advanced lithium refinery in the world.”
Robstown is just west of Corpus Christi.
In the promotion video, Jason Bevon, the site manager at the Gulf Coast lithium refinery, explains that the refining process used in Robstown is “inherently much more environmentally friendly.” The company claims that the process used by the refinery eliminates hazardous byproducts of the refining process and is more sustainable than traditional methods.
Bevon explained that the refinery “enables us to have access to the critical minerals for energy storage, for battery manufacturing, and ultimately for [electric vehicle (EV)] growth.”
“It enables us to accelerate Tesla’s mission by regionalizing supply chains for battery minerals and materials, by providing jobs, by cutting emissions from the transportation network that is required for these supply chains.”
“It really allows us to usher in energy independence for North America.”
Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy explains that raw lithium needs to be processed into a “chemical in the form of lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide, before being used in batteries,” which is done through refining. Currently, China dominates the global trade and production of key minerals, and leads the world in lithium refinement capabilities.
The need for lithium batteries has grown exponentially in recent years, with lithium batteries being required for EVs, smartphones, laptops, and renewable energy receptacles such as solar panels.
Also, you’re partially paying for it:
This political shift and the operation of the refinery are complemented by recent grants through the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund (TSIF), which was established when the Texas CHIPS Act, House Bill 5174, was signed into law in 2023. The TSIF totals “approximately $948 million in total appropriations” and is used for “semiconductor manufacturing and design,” according to the Texas Economic Development and Tourism Office.
Webb County’s sheriff and his assistant chief are facing federal charges for allegedly using office resources to create and profit from a disinfecting business during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sheriff Martin Cuellar Jr., 67, and Assistant Chief Alejandro Gutierrez, 47, have both appeared before a federal grand jury after turning themselves in. Their indictments have now been unsealed, revealing that they both are accused of misappropriating Webb County Sheriff’s Office funds between 2020 and 2022.
Cuellar is the brother of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo).
According to the indictment, around April 2020 Cuellar opened a for-profit business called Disinfectant Pro Master (DPM), which used resources belonging to the WCSO. He reportedly enlisted Gutierrez and Ricardo Rodriguez, an assistant chief, to assist in the start of the venture that provided disinfecting services to local businesses, residents, and the local school district.
Federal prosecutors allege none of the three made any personal investments in the startup company but used county resources, vehicles, and equipment. DPM also reportedly used county funds on multiple occasions to purchase supplies for the company. Staff from the sheriff’s office were often utilized to conduct the company’s operations during their regularly scheduled shifts according to the indictment.
The indictment also claims records show that payroll was not ever issued from the company to compensate the staff that was utilized to carry out its business.
During its operation, DPM received multiple contracts with local businesses, including a $500,000 contract with the United Independent School District, where Rodriguez served on the school board.
The company eventually closed in August 2022 after UISD did not renew its contract following media coverage and public scrutiny at a school board meeting over the contract being awarded to a board member’s company.
During the duration of the company’s operation, Cuellar, Gutierrez, and Rodriguez each reportedly received over $175,000. It is alleged in the indictment that Cuellar used his revenue to purchase a 10-acre property in Laredo.
As you might expect, Martin Cuellar is a Democrat.
Dwight documents not one but two of state-level Democrat congresscritters (state rep Ayshia “Ajay” Pittman in Oklahoma and former state senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis in Colorado) being involved in forgery scandals.
Nose-ringed leftist “Grace Carol Brown is charged with arson and burglary, and is ‘accused of smashing an exterior window, unlawfully entering the Comal County (TX) Republican Party headquarters, and starting a deliberate fire inside the building’ overnight on January 13/14.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake! “Parents say their trans son killed himself because his church employer wouldn’t let him wear French maid outfit, cat ears.”
Simon Whistler on Every Saudi Gigaproject in Vision 2030. Neom is still a ridiculous pipe dream, and Whistler is far too easily impressed with “zero carbon” claims, but some of these projects are actually worth doing and on-track.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government created the character of Amelia, a purple-haired nationalist Goth girl, for a lame Flash-style game to “combat far right extremism” (i.e., anyone who objects to importing illegal alien Islamist rapists into the UK), but now that she’s been adopted and memed by the right, that move backfired big time.
Louis Rossmann reports that downgrading to an earlier operating system bricks the latest OnePlus Android phone. I’d never heard of OnePlus, but it turns out it’s a Chinese brand, so you shouldn’t be buying it in the first place…
Surprise! American shopping malls aren’t dying off.
Shopping malls, long an economic and cultural fixture of American life, are facing sustained pressure but are not disappearing altogether.
Instead, the sector is undergoing creative destruction, as traditional mall formats give way to new concepts that reflect shifting consumer behavior and market conditions, according to recent industry data.
A research report by Capital One Shopping (COS) outlines the magnitude of the challenge facing the mall sector, citing rising mall closures that remain vacant for an average of nearly four years, as well as vacancy rates that are 112 percent higher than the overall retail vacancy rate.
COS also estimates that as many as 87 percent of large shopping malls could close over the next decade.
At the same time, COS data indicate a reversal of earlier trends. From 2021 through 2025, mall openings exceeded mall closures, suggesting adaptation rather than terminal decline. In 2025 alone, 9,410 new mall stores opened, nearly double the number that closed.
Additional evidence of revival appears in a recent article published by Growth Factor. Author Clyde Christian Anderson reported that indoor mall foot traffic in March 2024 rose 9.7 percent year over year, open-air shopping center traffic increased 10.1 percent, and outlet mall traffic climbed 10.7 percent—each exceeding pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
Every book I bought in 2025, most from early in the year when I still had a contract job and money in the bank…
Here’s a provocative Substack essay that argues that the 2020 Census was systemically, algorithmically polluted by a single data scientist.
The 2020 census was marketed as an “actual enumeration,” a neutral count of people for apportionment and funding. It was not. The same official who helped block a basic citizenship question in 2018, John M. Abowd, then the Census Bureau’s Chief Scientist, pushed through a new, opaque methodology in 2020 called differential privacy. The new system deliberately injected mathematical noise into every block count in America, turning the census from a headcount into a model with knobs. The knob that mattered most was a single parameter, epsilon, a secrecy shroud known only to a small inner circle. Abowd argued that a single added question about citizenship posed an intolerable risk to data quality because there was, he said, not enough time to test it. Then he rushed an untested algorithm that altered every count in every neighborhood. The irony is so sharp it cuts: the man who warned that one question might distort the census approved a method that guaranteed distortion.
Start with the record. On January 19, 2018, Abowd sent Commerce a technical memo urging rejection of a citizenship question. He then testified for several days in federal court. The transcript, nearly 700 pages, cemented a narrative that any citizenship question would degrade data and impede participation. The courts cited this drumbeat of doubt, and the question was blocked. The administration lost the public fight. But the inside fight over how to publish the data was only beginning. Abowd immediately advanced a quiet revolution in disclosure avoidance, adopting differential privacy for the first time ever in a US census. That choice, made outside the glare that attended the citizenship question, had far more sweeping consequences.
Differential privacy sounds harmless. In truth, it is a mechanism that turns correct data into false data according to a secret recipe. Abowd did not merely suppress a few cells in tiny places. Instead, he ran an algorithm across the map that perturbed the population of every census block, and it postprocessed the results so the fabricated numbers looked tidy. The output retained familiar columns, but the counts were no longer the counts. Abowd convinced his colleagues in the Bureau that implementing differential privacy was merely compliance with 13 U.S.C. § 9, its duty to protect confidentiality. Privacy is important. But privacy, as a constitutional matter, follows the enumeration, it does not negate it. A 2021 Harvard analysis of Abowd’s manipulation showed what this means in real life. When researchers simulated the Abowd’s algorithm using public test data, they found that differential privacy moves people around on paper, shifting them from one neighborhood to another in ways that make communities look less diverse and change their apparent political makeup. In plain terms, the system can make a mixed neighborhood look whiter or more uniform, and a balanced district look more partisan than it is. The study also showed that the noise makes it impossible to meet the Supreme Court’s “One Person, One Vote” rule, which requires legislative districts to have nearly equal populations. If each district’s population count is warped by secret noise, some citizens’ votes end up weighing more than others. When a method, by design, destabilizes the precise block totals that redistricting depends on, it stops being disclosure avoidance and becomes statistical alteration. The framers mandated counting people, not blurring them.
The core lever in differential privacy is epsilon, the privacy loss budget. Abowd kept this number secret throughout 2020. Cities, states, researchers, and map drawers who saw the early demonstration files warned that the counts were veering away from reality. They had no way to tell whether errors in their communities were genuine undercounts or synthetic artifacts of the algorithm. Abowd’s system also crippled the ability of local governments, analysts, and other record‑keepers to find and fix mistakes. Normally, if a city discovers a counting error that affects federal funding, it can appeal through the Count Question Resolution (CQR) Program. With differential privacy, that safeguard collapses, because the published data are wrong on purpose, no one can separate genuine miscounts from the algorithm’s fake ones. This nullifies the traditional oversight process and leaves states helpless to correct funding or representation errors. Alabama tried to challenge this secrecy in State of Alabama v. U.S. Department of Commerce (2021), arguing that differential privacy was unconstitutional and illegal, but the court dismissed the case for lack of standing cost the state billions in lost federal funding. Lawsuits and FOIAs followed. Only in 2021 did the Bureau reveal that its chosen global epsilon was 19.61, and even then, the design of the system prevented outsiders from verifying that this figure was actually used. The system was structured so that no one, not even Congress, could audit the dial that governed the size and allocation of the noise across the nation. Abowd’s answer was simply, “Trust me.”
Epsilon is not a philosophy, it is a number with consequences. The average census block contains about 105 people. With an epsilon of 19.61 and the Bureau’s noise allocation strategy, the algorithm effectively invented or erased on the order of ten to thirty people in many small areas. A block of 105 real residents could be published as 95, 115, or even further off, depending on postprocessing and the way the privacy budget was spent in that region. Across millions of blocks those errors do not cancel. They compound in the design of wards, precincts, and districts. Redistricting is a sum of blocks. Distort the blocks, and you distort the districts, the legislatures, and the House. This practice is not merely bad policy; it is plainly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court’s opinion in Department of Commerce v. House of Representatives (1999) made clear that statistical sampling for apportionment is illegal on statutory grounds. Abowd’s algorithmic manipulation is statistical sampling by another name, an unlawful substitution of estimated data for an actual enumeration required by the Constitution.
The proof arrived in March and May of 2022 when the Bureau’s own quality checks exposed a lopsided pattern. Fourteen states had statistically significant coverage errors, eight with overcounts and six with undercounts. The tilt was unmistakable. Democratic-leaning states were widely overcounted. Republican-leaning states were widely undercounted. Florida’s undercount was roughly three quarters of a million people. Texas’s undercount was on the order of a half million. Minnesota and Rhode Island kept seats they would have lost under an accurate count. Colorado gained a seat it did not deserve. Florida and Texas each missed multiple seats they should have gained. Analysts estimate the net effect was a shift of nine House seats away from Republican-leaning states and toward Democratic-leaning states. The Electoral College moved with them. More than $86 billion in federal formula funds followed.
Defenders say the pandemic caused the problem. That explains some fog, not the direction of the wind. The pattern of overcounts and undercounts tracked politics too cleanly to dismiss as random. A privacy method that was sold as neutral in theory coincided with partisan advantage in practice, and the guardians of the method refused to allow a transparent audit of its settings or its state by state allocation. Abowd, a Democrat donor, insisted that publishing epsilon values and the allocation mechanics would let bad actors reverse engineer the data to identify individuals. That claim collapses under basic scrutiny. If the risk of disclosing individuals is truly so sensitive that even the budget of the noise must be hidden, then differential privacy is the wrong tool for a decennial census that decides representation. The constitutional priority is accuracy of the count for apportionment. Privacy can be protected with targeted suppression or an “undetermined” flag for sensitive attributes. What cannot be justified is injecting falsity into the total number of people who live in each place.
If all this is true, President Trump’s call for a mid-decade census is more than justified. The constitution calls for an enumeration of citizens, not an algorithmic approximation poisoned by partisan pollution. A new count is needed to restore accuracy and remove illegal aliens from the census.
Too damn much news out this week. Biden’s “boom” is busted, Charlie Kirk’s assassin is caught, Israel dirtnaps top Hamas kingpins in Qatar, the curse of BlueSkyism, more illegal alien perverts sexually abusing children, more of the evil George Soros funds, and California’s “Jay Leno Bill” dies in committee. Plus some Prog Rock.
The U.S. economy probably added close to a million fewer jobs in 2024 and early 2025 than previously reported, the latest sign that the labor market, until recently a bright spot in the economy, may be weaker than it initially appeared.
The revised data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as part of a longstanding annual process known as benchmarking. But the big downward adjustment comes at an awkward moment for the agency, just weeks after President Trump fired its top official following a separate set of negative revisions last month.
The data released on Tuesday showed that employers added 911,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months through March than had been indicated in the monthly payroll figures. That implies the economy added only about 850,000 jobs during that time — half as many as previously reported.
Police have identified the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah man who authorities say became more political ahead of the shooting and recently expressed animosity toward Kirk.
Robinson, who is believed to have acted alone, came to the attention of the authorities after he contacted a family friend following the assassination, Utah Governor Spencer Cox revealed during a Friday morning press conference. That friend reported Robinson to the local sheriff’s office and Robinson’s father, a veteran police officer, then orchestrated his surrender to authorities at his home in Washington County, Utah.
The alleged gunman is expected to face at least three felony charges, including aggravated murder, obstruction of justice, and felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by NBC News. Cox said state law requires authorities to file the charging documents within three days.
Robinson appears to have become more political ahead of the shooting and criticized Kirk by name at a recent dinner, a family member of Robinson’s told authorities. Robinson said Kirk was “full of hate” and accused him of “promoting hate,” Cox said, though the affidavit, released later, indicates another family member may have made those remarks.
Robinson’s arrest comes after authorities had recovered a high-powered bolt action rifle they believe was used in the assassination, along with unspent rounds that were engraved with antifascist writing.
“Hey fascist, catch,” read the engraving on one round. Another round was engraved with the message “Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao,” a reference to a song favored by resistance movements and revolutionary anti-capitalist partisans.
This is who they chose to kill: the affable man whose main act was having good-faith political debates with college students. The man who, since fatherhood, was turning more toward Christianity as both a purpose and a theme. He was a partisan to be sure, but he was nowhere near the outer limits of the American tradition, especially given his relentless fixation on Lincolnian persuasion as a stabilizing force in a slowly disintegrating polity. The ones who kept losing debates with him didn’t feel that way, of course, but they were only the instrument, not the object, of his work. The object was the millions of Americans who watched, learned, and saw who won again and again—and decided that they wished to side with the winner.
In this way, Charlie Kirk was perhaps the closest thing to Socrates in the American public square. The leftist intellectuals who sneered at him—the rube peddling his simple lines, his crass sophistry, his heartland aw-shucks certainties—would guffaw at the parallel, but it is no less true. He argued—amiably, fairly, relentlessly—until they couldn’t stand it any longer. And like Socrates, they had him killed.
Also like Socrates, his students will now do more for his cause after his martyrdom than they ever did during his life. The Socratic vindication was in his deification through literature at the pens of Plato and Xenophon. Millennia later, everyone remembers the philosopher, but vanishingly few know who ended his life.
The armies of Charlie Kirk, martyr, will be much more vast: not a handful of Athenians but millions of Americans. Their work will not be in philosophical literature but in the politics of the years to come. Whatever benefit accrues to the Republican Party is merely incidental. We are now in the realm of fundamental politics, which is concerned with the nature of the nation and the wielding of power for the common good. The generation of Americans that Charlie Kirk molded will be drawing conclusions about both from his life and his death alike.
After President Trump told Fox & Friends hosts that Charlie Kirk’s assassin is “in custody,” he went on to comment about radical leftist organizations, stating, “We are going to look into Soros. It looks like a RICO case.”
Recall that on Wednesday night, just hours after Kirk’s assassination, President Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office, calling it a “dark moment for America.” He vowed to crack down on radical left movements across the country that have fueled chaos and even death this year.
Then on Thursday night, Texan News reporter Cameron Abrams wrote on X that Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and two dozen others in Congress called for a select committee on “the money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America and the rule of law.”
Just weeks ago, Trump stated on Truth Social that George Soros and his radical leftist son, Alex Soros, “should be charged with RICO because of their support of violent protests.”
Around that time, the “dark money” leftist NGO network operated by Arabella Advisors reportedly lost one of its top funding sources: Bill Gates.
Civil terrorism expert Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising states:
After the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Trump is interested in pursuing a RICO case against George Soros, America’s primary financier of far-left NGOs. What will likely be revealed is a complex web of dark money that observers have warned about for 20 years but never acted on.
At the center of this web are the various George Soros Open Society Foundation legal entities—four separate tax-exempt charities and one 501(c)(4) dark-money channel. Next are the Tides Foundation organizations, funded primarily by the Pritzker family, which include three separate tax-exempt charities and one 501(c)(4) dark-money channel. Following them are the Rockefeller Foundation nexus, NEO Philanthropy, the Ford Foundation, and a host of similar operations, including the Singham network. Collectively, these entities form America’s dark-money ecosystem. They fund permanent protests, bail demonstrators out of jail, finance legal efforts to sue local governments and police departments, influence immigration policy, promote drug decriminalization and criminal-justice reforms, and help elect district attorneys who decline to prosecute crime. On top of all of this, they also have entities like the Working Families Party that elect local politicians.
The money flows from donations to tax-exempt charities into non-tax-exempt 501(c)(4)s, and then trickles down to local groups. From there, funds reach the most radical organizations, which can’t even qualify for 501(c)(3) status and are instead “fiscally sponsored” by parent organizations. Because of this fiscal-sponsorship loophole, the books of these groups remain opaque. Everything from terror financing to protests-turned-riots connects in some way to these foundations.
The revolution against the West is, in effect, a network of tax-exempt charities operating as a powerful parallel government that no one ever voted for. It must be stopped before it’s too late.
A look into Soros-funded terrorist networks is long overdue. Here’s hoping a lot of indictments, bank account freezes and billions in civil forfeiture claims are forthcoming.
Your reminder that the social justice left are horrible people:
Right on cue deranged leftists are celebrating Charlie Kirk being shot
Bluesky, the Twitter spinoff that was once billed as a kinder, gentler alternative to what is now known as X, probably isn’t on death’s door. But after a burst of growth around the election, it’s shrinking and steadily declining in influence, even as other corners of the left thrive during Trump’s second term.
Snip.
Even on a logarithmic scale — on a linear scale, the graph is boring, because everything but Twitter would pretty much just be a flat line — the gulf between X and the other platforms is clear. And since the election, Bluesky has lost ground. More precise data based on the number of unique “likers”, “posters” and “followers” at Bluesky tracks a similar curve, with an initial peak around the election and a secondary peak after Trump’s inauguration but persistent erosion since then. The number of unique posters at Bluesky peaked at just under 1.5 million on Nov. 18, 2024 but has since fallen to an average of about 660,000 on weekdays and 600,000 on weekends: in other words, a drop of more than half.
The decline in Bluesky’s number of unique daily followers is even more substantial. They topped out at 3.1 million on Nov. 18 last year, but are now just under 400,000 per day: almost a tenfold decline. So while a dedicated troupe of Bluesky regulars are still skeeting up a storm, they’re gaining less and less traction, preaching only to the converted.
Snip.
Bluesky was initially popular with Twitter refugees who disliked Musk’s takeover of the platform, some of whom proclaimed that Elon had unleashed the “gates of hell” by restoring banned accounts or predicted that the platform would implode due to a shortage of engineering talent. I suppose I have no problem with this; ironically, the first post in Silver Bulletin history is entitled “In case Twitter goes to zero”. (I wanted a hedge in case it did, although if we’re being honest, I also had one eye out the door as ABC News was beginning to dismantle FiveThirtyEight.) However, this also self-selected for a certain type of user, adherents of an attitude that I call “Blueskyism”.
Blueskyism should not be mistaken for general left-of-center political views. Google search traffic for Bluesky over the past year is highly correlated with Kamala Harris’s vote share, but has some other skews: controlling for the Harris vote, it’s (statistically) significantly higher in states with a large white population and where the percentage of people with advanced degrees is higher. Bluesky is disproportionately popular in D.C., but also in crunchy white states like Vermont and Oregon. Search traffic for Twitter/X over the same period shows the same bias toward highly educated states, but less toward Harris voters4 and actually an inverse correlation with the white population share. (X gets more search traffic in more diverse states.)
Demographics alone only go so far in explaining Blueskyism, however. It’s not a political movement so much as a tribal affiliation, a niche set of attitudes and style of discursive norms that almost seem designed in a lab to be as unappealing as possible to anyone outside the clique.
Emphasis added. Snip.
Some of the most annoying people on the platform have exited for Bluesky.
As compared to other people with a similar level of public prominence — so not heads-of-state or celebrities or NFL quarterbacks — I was a “trending topic” on Twitter as often as just about anyone for a period from roughly 2018-2021. Matt Yglesias and Maggie Haberman also come to mind as other people who share this particular “honor”, which is not a welcome one: it means you’re the main character of the day, the person that other people have decided to dogpile upon.
There’s still some of this. If you tweet about election-related stuff, there is a pervasive tendency to “shoot the messenger” from partisans when the polls aren’t going their way. But much less than there once was: no more of the dogpiles for exceptionally strange reasons that I couldn’t even explain to my IRL friends.
And that’s because this behavior — I guess you could call it harassment but I’m a big boy and I can take it — consistently came from a relatively narrow group of power users, birds of a feather who flocked together, people who could demonstrate their fidelity to the group by picking on the main character. On Bluesky, exactly the same people — and I do mean exactly — attack exactly the same perpetual enemies, but to roughly 1/60th the size of the audience.
So I feel freer using Twitter these days for jokes, memes, and tongue-in-cheek ideas that aren’t meant to be taken entirely seriously, intended to be read as though they’re written in comic sans.
Snip.
What really matters in elections is simply being popular and winning over new converts. Blueskyism, with its intolerance for dissent, is the opposite of that.
Because, yes, while this is personal for me, annoyingness matters in politics.
Snip.
The three essential characteristics of Blueskyism.
The first essential characteristic: Smalltentism
Aggressive policing of dissent, particularly of people “just outside the circle” who might have broader credibility on the center-left. Censoriousness, often taking the form of moral micropanics that designate a rotating cast of opponents as the main characters of the day. Self-reinforcing belief in the righteousness of the clique, and conflation of its values with broader public sentiment among “the base”.
A healthy political movement, you’d think, would welcome people who agree with them on 70 percent of issues, particularly if it sees Trump as an existential threat to democracy and wants a broad coalition against him. Blueskyists do literally almost the exact opposite: their biggest enemies are people on the center-left like me and Yglesias and Ezra Klein. Or center-left media institutions like the New York Times, which are often viewed as more problematic than Fox News.
This aggressive policing of boundaries might at least have been tactically smart during the miraculous Blue Period when Twitter was afflicted with Blueskyism. Yglesias, say, is followed by a lot more Democratic staffers than Ben Shapiro or some actual conservative is.
But now that Blueskyism is losing the battle of ideas, it just draws the tent narrower and ensures that it will remain obscure. There’s nothing more Blueskyist than this, literally creating a “list of shame” of Bluesky posters who remain active on Twitter.
And sometimes, Blueskyists even make violent threats toward people who disagree with them. For instance, the journalist Billy Binion says he recently “logged onto Bluesky to find thousands of people screaming at me, many of whom were telling me to kill myself” after having posted that “billionaires should exist”. There’s some of that on every social media platform, unfortunately, and I’m not going to make assertions about the relative frequency on Bluesky without taking some more comprehensive approach to the question. It certainly shouldn’t have a reputation for civil discourse, however, and this may help to explain the high rate of exits from the platform.
The second essential characteristic: Credentialism
Appeals to authority, particularly academic authority. Centering of the suitability of the speaker based on his or her credentials and/or identity characteristics (standpoint epistemology) as opposed to the strength of his or her arguments, accompanied by the implicit presumption to claim to be speaking on behalf of the entire identity group.
Although Blueskyism is small, its practitioners mostly consist of people within the professional-managerial class: (over)educated blue-state liberals, perhaps people who have drawn the short straw of elite overproduction. You can see that in the demographic data, or in the attitude site management takes: the platform literally just banned people from Mississippi because of a dispute over age verification.
And Bluesky has become relatively popular among academics, which I regard as a problem on various levels. The Democratic Party has already forgotten how to talk to large groups of voters like young men, who have become considerably less likely to complete college than young women. Meanwhile, the experts have made a lot of mistakes, and sometimes the reason is because they’ve become self-serving in pursuit of social media validation or blinded by political partisanship. Increasingly often, I’ll see academics engage in incredibly sloppy argumentation and this seems to be correlated with recent exposure to Bluesky. Because Bluesky is so small, it has a highly specific signature. It’s like if you have some toxic persona on the periphery of your friend group; someone starts speaking in a particular way that you just know they recently hung out with George or Gina.
While academic credentials are one way to gain credibility under Blueskyism, they aren’t the only one. Even though the Google search data suggests that the platform is disproportionately white, an alternative is to claim to speak on behalf of a disadvantaged group. I swear to God, I’m not trying to make this about “wokeness” but there is overlap there.
Perhaps the most prominent example of Blueskyism creeping into real life is when a group of left-leaning public health professionals, who often took a bullying approach during Twitter’s Blue Period, went out of their way to rationalize mass protests after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. Personally, I think it was perfectly fine to join in on these protests; political expression is important (and these protests were usually outdoors and masked). But I also think a lot of other things, like sending your children to school or visiting your dying relatives in the hospital, would have risen to this threshold also, and this group specifically used their credentials to endorse the Floyd protests after having campaigned for those other activities to be prohibited.
Indeed, this controversy recently resurfaced on Bluesky. After Brian Schatz, the Democratic senator from Hawaii, wrote sympathetically in response to a Sean Trende tweet that recalled the hypocrisy of endorsing the protests, he and other “Dem elected/staff/consultants” were blamed on the platform for being “awash in right-wing brainrot.”
The third essential characteristic: Catastrophism
Humorless, scoldy neuroticism, often rationalized by the view that one must be on “war footing” because the world is self-evidently in crisis. Sublimation of personal anxiety as a substitute for political activism or material solutions to the crisis, with expressions of weariness and pessimism signaling virtue and/or savviness.
Although the first two characteristics already limit the appeal of Blueskyism, this makes it worse. Even people who might otherwise be sympathetic to Bluesky have noticed how impossible it is to get away with a joke on the platform, one of the things that X sometimes13 still has going for it. The Bernie-era, Chapo Trap House strain of left-wing discourse also at least had a caustic if sometimes juvenile humor streak. Blueskyism does not.
Instead, the prevailing Blueskyist attitude is often something like this — that we’re in the midst of a “late stage capitalist hellscape” and that you have to be “delusional” to have any amount of hope or optimism”.
Most people outside of Bluesky don’t think like this. Although literally almost zero Democrats are happy with the state of the country, overwhelming majorities of Americans are happy with how their personal lives are going and are able to compartmentalize politics away or recognize that other things matter in life, too.
Conclusion: “A subculture like Blueskyism that sees depression as a rational and even virtuous response is going to select for a lot of miserable people. And misery likes company. So the Blueskyists gather in a corner, exchanging tales of woe, while the rest of us slink away.”
Though there is the usual Silver hemming, hawing and sifting things into ever-finer categories (not to mention his willful denial that “wokeness” is an actual thing, despite so carefully delineating some of its most central characteristics, and his dismissal of the Twitter Files), it’s still worth reading the whole thing. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Rich Hamas honchos throught they could hang out safe in Qatar while their footsoldiers died in Gaza. Wrong.
Israel carried out a strike on senior Hamas leaders in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on Tuesday afternoon.
Qatar quickly accused Israel of “reckless” behaviour and breaking international law after the attack on a residential premises in the city.
The Israel Defense Forces claimed to have targeted those “directly responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre”.
Snip.
According to the Israeli military, it conducted a “precise strike” targeted at Hamas senior leaders in Qatar using “precise munitions”.
Israeli media says the operation involved 15 Israeli fighter jets, firing 10 munitions against a single target.
Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political bureau since 2012 and has played a key role in facilitating indirect negotiations between the group and Israel since the 7 October attacks.
Hamas said members of the group’s negotiating delegation in Doha were targeted but survived the strike. However Hamas said six others, including a Qatari security official, were killed.
According to Hamas, those killed were:
Humam Al-Hayya (Abu Yahya) – son of chief negotiator al-Hayya
Jihad Labad (Abu Bilal) – director of al-Hayya’s office
Abdullah Abdul Wahid (Abu Khalil)
Moamen Hassouna (Abu Omar)
Ahmed Al-Mamluk (Abu Malik)
Corporal Badr Saad Mohammed Al-Humaidi – Qatari internal security forces
“Trump is enjoying his highest approval rating of either term right now according to a DailyMail/J.L. Partners poll. He’s sitting at a solid 55% approval rating.”
Once again, the Supreme Court has stepped in to prevent a rogue district judge from hamstringing the executive branch in performing core executive functions under Donald Trump. And once again, the Court’s conservative majority has dispatched this order without explanation, over an angry and overwrought dissent from the Court’s liberals. This time, however, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stepped up to explain what was going on.
The Court’s order this morning in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo stayed an August 1 order by district judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong-
That name sounds like it came out of a Monty Python skit.
-of the Central District of California, a Biden appointee and former Obama Justice Department official. The order will thus have no effect unless and until the Ninth Circuit rules in the case — perhaps only a brief reprieve, given that the Ninth Circuit previously declined to stay Judge Frimpong’s initial temporary restraining order in the case.
The crux of the case is whether the government may stop individuals in Los Angeles on suspicion of being illegal immigrants on the basis of four factors: “(i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent noted that the order attempted to enjoin Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only from stops based solely on those four criteria, but as Kavanaugh noted, there are inherent problems in the judiciary trying to prospectively micromanage law enforcement in such fashion: “Even if the Government had a policy of making stops based on the factors prohibited by the District Court, immigration officers might not rely only on those factors if and when they stop [the lawsuit’s named] plaintiffs in the future,” and “the District Court’s injunction threatens contempt sanctions against immigration officers who make brief investigative stops later found by the court to violate the injunction. The prospect of such after-the-fact judicial second-guessing and contempt proceedings will inevitably chill lawful immigration enforcement efforts. . . . Judges are not appointed to make those policy calls.” As Kavanaugh added, particular plaintiffs do not have standing to enjoin the government in advance from stops that may or may not involve them and may or may not, depending on the circumstances, violate the Fourth Amendment.
The Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Midway Blitz on Monday to combat the influx of illegal immigration Chicago has seen under Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
DHS said that the program was created in honor of Katie Abraham, a college student who was struck and killed by a Guatemalan national in a drunk driving hit-and-run accident in Illinois.
“DHS is launching Operation Midway Blitz in honor of Katie Abraham who was killed in Illinois by a criminal illegal alien who should have never been in our country. This operation will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “For years, Governor Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets — putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals.”
During Joe Biden’s term, an estimated 233,000 unaccompanied children crossed the border and were completely lost.
The Trump admin has now found 22,638 of these children.
But many of them have suffered unbelievable horrors:
John Fabbricatore, HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement senior advisor, said to Fox News:
We found children who have been raped. We’re talking about debt bondage, where children are being made to work off debt, trafficking debt. We’re talking about children that were brought into situations and then treated like sexual slaves.
So far, 27 of the children Biden lost have been found dead, often from murder or drug overdose.
Children are in horrific environments, just environments that they should not be in, where the sponsor is a heroin dealer and that child winds up dying of a heroin overdose.
Iryna Zarutska was a 23-year-old Ukrainian who fled the war in her country for Charlotte, North Carolina.
Over the weekend, police released video of her being stabbed in the neck by a violent career criminal.
Iryna got on the train, sat down, and immediately went “condition white” (looking at her phone without paying attention to her surroundings).
Let this be a reminder that, if you’re in public, you need situational awareness at all times.
In the blink of an eye, her throat was slashed and she was bleeding out over the floor of the train.
Despite the horror of the crime, the media has remained ostensibly quiet.
The lack of any mention whatsoever of Iryna Zarutska’s murder despite her being a Ukrainian refugee reminds me of USAID’s call for media organizations to “collaborate” and “agree policies on strategic silence.” https://t.co/AkH4dxxrjtpic.twitter.com/nK6NbqvV4j
The optics are incredibly awful for the entire Democratic Party machine.
The brutal killing of Iryna Zarutska (Ukrainian refugee) on a commuter train in North Carolina highlights not only the willingness of leftist corporate media to cover up news stories that jeopardize their woke narratives but also the broader failure of so-called criminal justice reform, which appears to have shockingly backfired and become a major public safety threat. Adding to the mounting outrage, a leftist magistrate judge released the schizophrenic monster on cashless bail (before he killed Zarutska) – another failure point. And then there’s this: far-left nonprofits accelerated the push for disastrous criminal justice reforms.
It’s now widely known that Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, Zarutska’s killer, had been previously arrested 14 times in North Carolina for crimes ranging from assault to firearms possession, and whose own mother admitted he was schizophrenic and should never have been allowed back on the streets, was recently released on cashless bail (before he killed Zarutska) by a progressive magistrate judge despite a two-decade violent crime spree.
But the failures don’t stop with local leftist politicians and rogue progressive judges (or magistrate judges) who embrace woke and enabled criminal justice reform from hell. They extend much deeper – into the shadowy world of the dark-money-funded nonprofit industrial complex, which poured millions of dollars into Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, to push for “reducing the jail population.”
“Another factor in the death of Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail–the left-wing MacArthur Foundation giving Mecklenburg county a $3.3 million grant to reduce the jail population. Specifically as part of racial equity aims,” Daily Wire’s Megan Basham wrote on X.
Basham noted, “Like Soros’ Open Society, the MacArthur Foundation incentivizes local municipalities to make residents less safe by leaving threats like Decarlos Brown on the streets.”
[Yordanis] Cobos-Martinez has a prior criminal history of:
False imprisonment in CA (unknown disposition)
Indecency with a child in Texas (dismissed)
Grand theft of vehicle in Florida (dismissed)
Carjacking & false imprisonment in CA (acquitted on carjacking, convicted of false imprisonment).
Disturbing surveillance video shows Cobos-Martinez allegedly kicking and picking up the victim’s severed head in the motel parking lot as it drips blood…
“Russian Oil Tanker in Primorsk Set on Fire by Drones & Smolensk Oil Depot Hit.” Primorsk is a good 1,000km from the Ukrainian border, up near Finland.
The Trump administration announced Wednesday that an unprecedented law enforcement operation has busted a Chinese-based fentanyl drug and money laundering conspiracy, resulting in charges against 22 Chinese nationals, four Chinese pharmaceutical companies and three U.S. citizens.
FBI Director Kash Patel described Operation Box Cutter as a “first-of-its-kind” law enforcement action targeting the threat posed to the American public by China-manufactured precursor chemicals used in the production of fentanyl.
“We’re done playing whack-a-mole,” he said during a press conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“We didn’t arrest a couple of people. We charged an enterprise-wide system in mainland China to include dozens of individuals and banks and companies that are responsible for making these lethal precursors and shipping them here.”
The Dayton, Ohio, grand jury five-count indictment unsealed Wednesday focuses on a Tipp City, Ohio, resident, 39-year-old Eric Michael Payne.
At this rate, with President Donald Trump being one of the most decisive presidents in history, statistics show that his endorsement could undoubtedly lead a candidate to victory.
As Ian Vallencillo, commissioner of Sweetwater, Florida, told the Washington Examiner, Trump is one of “the most popular political figures,” stating that voters “overwhelmingly support Trump’s picks.”
At this rate, with President Donald Trump being one of the most decisive presidents in history, statistics show that his endorsement could undoubtedly lead a candidate to victory.
As Ian Vallencillo, commissioner of Sweetwater, Florida, told the Washington Examiner, Trump is one of “the most popular political figures,” stating that voters “overwhelmingly support Trump’s picks.”
The commissioner is right.
Candidates endorsed by Trump have lost, but very rarely. Former Republican North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson conceded his gubernatorial election against an incumbent after receiving Trump’s approval, partly over a scandal that engulfed the news cycle days before the election.
Similarly, former presidential candidate and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) lost his reelection bid, over years of controversy, anti-Trump skepticism, and a failure to get the Republican Party in the White House in 2012.
During the 2024 federal and gubernatorial election cycles, Trump endorsed 306 candidates. Eighty-nine percent of those candidates now occupy the office they ran for. In the 2022 election cycle, Trump endorsed 195 candidates, 83% of whom were sworn in to office a few months later.
One of those key endorsements includes the key race of Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), who unseated a longtime incumbent, former Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, by a 0.5% margin.
Similarly, in the same election cycle, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) won his Senate race against former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who had been in office since 2007.
The year before that, after former California GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy resigned from Congress in 2023 following a motion for him to step down as speaker of the House from a Trump-endorsed representative, California Assemblyman Vince Fong was elected soon after receiving the nod from the president.
Similarly, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who was challenged by a local Democratic advocate, won his third term soon after Trump endorsed him.
The latest scandal involves a web of shell companies, family members on mysterious payrolls, and taxpayer money that somehow found its way into campaign coffers. Multiple federal agencies are now investigating what appears to be a deliberate scheme to circumvent campaign finance laws through a maze of LLCs and nonprofits. The numbers are staggering: millions in taxpayer funds allegedly embezzled, hundreds of thousands in unreported campaign contributions, and a trail of financial breadcrumbs leading through family businesses.
The politician at the center of this storm? Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida.
Cherfilus-McCormick had won her seat after campaigning against the corruption of her predecessor, Alcee Hastings.
Today, Cherfilus-McCormick finds herself drowning in exactly the kind of investigations she once condemned. The Federal Election Commission has launched a formal probe into her campaign’s alleged violations, while the Office of Congressional Ethics has found “probable cause” that she accepted illegal campaign contributions. The schemes are breathtaking in their audacity: her husband and sister-in-law running an LLC that funneled $725,000 through a nonprofit that then paid her campaign vendors. A political consultant with direct access to these funds, making payments on her behalf while she pretended not to know.
But here’s where my blood really starts to boil. Before entering Congress, Cherfilus-McCormick was CEO of Trinity Health Care Services, a family company that received a $5 million “overpayment” from Florida’s emergency services department – supposedly due to a misplaced decimal point. Instead of immediately returning the taxpayer money, investigators allege she began moving it between family businesses, including companies where she held major stakes. The state had to sue to get its money back.
As expected. “James Talarico Launches Democrat Bid for U.S. Senate. Talarico has positioned himself as one of the more left-wing voices in the Texas Legislature.”
Remember how Adam Carolla said the Palisades fire would used as an excuse for a land grab by the Democrats running Los Angeles and California? Guess what? “Iconic Malibu restaurant is told it can’t rebuild after Palisades Fire.”
An Alpha News reporter participated in a ride-along with ICE agents during the arrest. Wilson Tindi, a Kenya native, pled guilty to sexually assaulting a sleeping woman in Minneapolis in 2014 after breaking into her home. A judge ordered Tindi to be deported, but a federal judge later overturned this ruling. ICE released him after 18 months.
After his release, Tindi became a chief audit officer at Minnesota’s education department. He was later fired after his past became known, raising questions about how he was ever hired in the first place.
Among the most high-profile and controversial legislation passed was a handful of social issue bills — in particular, one establishing civil cause of action against chemical abortion pill providers, and another separating publicly-funded private spaces by biological sex. The former came with its fair share of backdoor negotiations and amendments before it was successfully carried through both chambers, as was the case for multiple priorities of Abbott’s.
One issue which faced an untimely end in the Legislature was the attempted regulation of hemp-derived THC products. Ultimately, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), and Abbott were unable to reach an agreement on Wednesday.
Collateral damage from the death of print magazines. “Publishers Clearing House Winners Say They Are No Longer Receiving Their Lifetime Payments.”
It seems that some leftwing Texas school nurses are practicing malicious compliance.
Texas Education Agency Updates First Aid Guidelines After Controversy Over Withheld Medical Care
The TEA updated their guidance to allow schools to provide “first aid” without parental consent.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has released updated guidelines for how Texas public schools should approach the implementation of Senate Bill (SB) 12, known as the “Parent Bill of Rights,” after recent reports of school nurses not providing first aid to students.
One aspect of SB 12 that caused distress and confusion among lawmakers, parents, and schools alike is the requirement for school districts to receive documentation of notice and consent from parents for their child to receive “medical, psychiatric, and psychological treatment.”
State Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Allen) posted a letter on social media he had sent to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath last week regarding “concerns with the implementation” of SB 12 after reports of how “some school districts are taking an ‘all or nothing’ approach” to the new policy requirements, which has resulted in “band-aids” and “ice packs” being withheld from children.
Following the publication of the letter, which was also signed by the bill author state Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), reports of children not being treated for certain “general care” services began being made public.
“After a thorough review was conducted of the video recordings of the statements, it became clear to me that their actions amounted to serious professional and personal misconduct,” Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse stated late Wednesday. “Conduct that advocates for inciting violence is directly contrary to the values of Texas State University. I cannot and will not tolerate such behavior.”
“As a result, I have determined that their actions are incompatible with their responsibilities as a faculty member at Texas State University,” Damphousse continued. “Effective immediately, their employment with Texas State University has been terminated.”
Damphousse was referring to Tom Alter, who was previously an associate professor of history at Texas State.
Alter had been exposed making comments calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
The European Commission has suffered a major defeat in court over its plans to make large tech platforms pay it to enforce the Digital Services Act.
Meta and ByteDance’s TikTok took the European Commission to court after it presented them with a “supervisory fee” equal to 0.05 per cent of their yearly global net income. The bill was to cover the EU executive’s expenses in monitoring their compliance with the Digital Services Act.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) gives the European Commission oversight of very large online platforms and search engines—ones with more than 45 million EU users a year. To fund this oversight, the Commission has said it will charge these providers an annual fee, based on their average monthly users.
The Commission adopted rules saying how it would set these fees on 2 March 2023. The next month, on 25 April, it classified Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as very large platforms. That November, it finalised the 2023 fees for each.
In two decisions 10 September, the Court of Justice of the EU determined the Commission’s supervisory fees on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok were void for procedural grounds.
To set the 2023 fees, the Commission decided to calculate each platform’s average monthly users using a methodology based on third-party data it attached to each decision.
However, the Court ruled that this methodology for calculating fees should have been established through a delegated act–a process which involves the European Parliament and Council.
The judges said it was incorrect for the European Commission to determine the fees using implementing decisions it devised on its own authority alone.
Jay Leno’s star power wasn’t enough to persuade a California legislative committee to pass a measure to allow owners of classic cars like him to be exempted from the state’s rigorous smog-check requirements.
The Assembly Appropriations Committee on Friday blocked Bakersfield Republican Sen. Shannon Grove’s Senate Bill 712 from advancing for a full vote. Leno had testified in support of the measure in Sacramento earlier this year.
The committee’s members and its powerful Democratic chairperson, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks of Oakland, did not provide a reason for killing the bill during Friday’s hearing, which quickly and with little fanfare announced the fate of 260 other bills that had been placed on the committee’s so-called “suspense file.” Seventy other bills also were killed without explanation.
The Senate and Assembly’s appropriations committees, which both met Friday and rejected hundreds of bills, are supposed to be the gatekeepers for bills proposing to spend taxpayer money. But the committees’ suspense files are where hundreds of politically touchy bills die quietly each year with only a few insiders knowing the real reasons.
Random meme stolen from Facebook:
So I don’t think I’ll be watching all of the Joe Rogan podcasts with Carrot Top or Charlie Sheen, but I suspect I’ll be watching snippets from them, and felt I should make you aware of their existence…
For some reason, all three Top Gear/Grand Tour presents have decided they need to come out with their own gin.
Ten musical pieces you know, but not the names of. I already knew a good number, but a few were new, and a couple of others I didn’t know under their original language name.
President Trump (and parents) rack up Supreme Court wins, more Iran nuke damage assessments, a whole lot of Democrats want to die on the hill of taxpayer subsidies for mutilating your children, and some fast cars. Plus a weird assortment of violent lunatics.
The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Trump administration a win by limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s agenda.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump v. Casa, siding with the Trump administration’s challenge to the scope of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The Court did not, however, weigh-in on the legality of the birthright-citizenship order itself.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, finding that universal injunctions exceed the authority Congress has given to federal courts. Barrett was joined by the Court’s five other conservative justices.
The High Court ruled that lower courts cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its policies against nonparties to the specific case they’re ruling on. For the time being, the justices have partially halted the nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order. They halted the injunctions in areas where their authority is too broad and prevent the executive branch from developing public guidance related to Trump’s executive order.
They punted on birthright citizenship, but a win is a win, and hopefully lower courts will now stop trying to reimport convicted and deported illegal alien felons.
Suchomimus has clear satellite images of the damage Operation Midnight Hammer did to the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear complexes.
UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief: ‘Night and Day’ Difference Between Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Before and After US Strikes. ‘It is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,’ says IAEA’s Rafael Grossi.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the Islamic Republic’s program “significantly,” the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization said Tuesday.
“I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”
Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.
“Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”
After a week’s worth of pounding from the Israel Defense Forces, the Iranian regime was disoriented and defenseless, helplessly exposed to Israeli and American air superiority, like a turtle flipped on its shell and baking underneath the pitiless desert sun. Now was the time to finish the job, not two weeks from now, after (what was left of) the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command structure had time to regroup.
So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.
I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.
If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered. Iran’s nuclear program has either been destroyed permanently or set back decades. The mullahs are very upset, as one imagines murderous religious fanatics tend to be, but also seemingly powerless to do much more than cause a temporary economic ruction by laying mines across the Strait of Hormuz. (Note: In a late-breaking development after this piece had gone to press, Trump announced last night that he had in fact brokered a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.)
This is an unalloyed victory for the forces of sanity and civilization. To those who point to the inevitability of unforeseen “blowback,” I will remind you that Iran and its proxies have been engaging in low-level conflict with America for well over a decade now — who do you think was funding and training the people killing our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years? — and now it is free to try its hand at more of the same, if it wishes, this time without a looming nuclear threat to back it up. America has come out ahead on this in concrete, measurable, and hugely valuable geostrategic ways.
Most importantly of all, none of this would have happened if Kamala Harris were president. Think about that for a moment; think about the road not taken. One can only speculate about hypotheticals, but . . . c’mon now. Look into your heart, you know it to be true. Imagine a President Harris, sitting uneasily atop a Democratic coalition barely held together at the seams: Would she have encouraged Netanyahu in his initial campaign against Iranian military and nuclear assets? Would she have provided the final air support and ordnance necessary to get the job done? With people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, and Zohran Mamdani calling the shots among large segments of her base?
To ask the question out loud is to answer it: no. For that reason alone, it is no exaggeration to say that the shape of the world perceptibly turned for the better on the outcome of last November’s election. You can draw a straight line between Donald Trump’s winning the 2024 race and Iran’s nuclear weapons program now being best described as a series of variably sized craters. If you supported Donald Trump and voted for him in 2024, you should feel proud of it today: Saturday is the most obvious evidence yet of why your vote mattered.
It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.
Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.
Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.
Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.
So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.
For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.
A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.
As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.
A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.
How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?
Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary.
So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.
But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.
The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?
It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.
Russia? Its former Obama-Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.
It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.
Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?
No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50 percent of Chinese-purchased oil passes.
For President Xi, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.
The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.
So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.
We recently learned of a previously concealed tranche of documents likely to shed new light on the past decade of American political controversies. This potentially earth-shaking information is known as “Prohibited Access.”
It was only recently discovered that the FBI’s information system, called Sentinel, had a level of access previously unknown to anyone outside the Bureau and known only to a select few inside. In essence, this was a concealed cache used to hide documents the FBI wanted hidden from discovery.
There is one part of the Sentinel system that is devoted to classified and confidential information, termed “Restricted Access.”
It turns out there is a higher, more secretive level called “Prohibited Access.” To any outside observer or investigator, it would appear that there was no record of Prohibited Access information, even though the existence of Restricted Access documents would be shown.
Accordingly, when prosecutors like John Durham or investigators such as Congressman James Comer were investigating various potential misdeeds, they would not have learned of the existence of documents relevant to their investigation that were kept in Prohibited Access.
Although it remains unclear, there is reasonable suspicion that even FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not aware of this document cache. Alternatively, Horowitz may have known about it but also may have agreed to keep its existence secret, a dismaying possibility for one charged with enlightening Congress and the public.
Logic tells us that, broadly, there could be only two related purposes for this concealed tranche because it prevents those investigating the FBI or its favored parties from even knowing about the existence of the documents; such suggests concealment of information inculpatory to the senior levels of the FBI and/or its favored politicians, as well as exculpatory information about the targets of its biased investigations.
If, by way of a wild hypothetical example, James Comey and Andrew McCabe broke laws to make an innocent Donald Trump appear guilty of “Russian Collusion,” they would not wish a trail of their ugly misconduct to see the light of day, nor reveal proof of Trump’s innocence.
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel should shine a lot of disinfecting sunlight here.
Winning: “Supreme Court Allows States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood.”
The Supreme Court is allowing South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, a win for pro-lifers that will likely clear the way for red states across the country to stop taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines Thursday to permit South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Court, siding with the state against a private challenge brought by the abortion provider and a patient.
The plaintiffs in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that Medicaid patients should be free to sue in order to choose their own health-care providers, while the state claimed they lacked the right to sue.
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
The 1965 Medicaid Act grants patients the ability to choose a willing and qualified provider. Medina dealt with whether patients have the right to sue to go to their preferred provider and whether Planned Parenthood qualified as a provider. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state and argued the case was about healthcare access, not abortion.
South Carolina stopped allowing Planned Parenthood to participate in its Medicaid program in 2018 because of state law barring the public funding of abortion. The move was immediately blocked in court in response to a challenge brought by Julie Edwards, a South Carolina woman who claimed she preferred Planned Parenthood for gynecological care and needed Medicaid coverage.
“States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the South Carolina Department of Health in the case.
Abortion is not “woman’s health care” and should not be treated as such.
SB 12 includes a prohibition on schools assisting in the “social transitioning” of students and also restricts the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity,” while providing that it does not “limit a student’s ability to engage in speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment … that does not result in material disruption to school activities.”
In a press release Monday, the ACLU of Texas, along with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), called SB 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.”
“This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for ACLU Texas, stated in the press release.
“Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them.”
Another Supreme Court win: “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Maryland Parents in Challenge to Mandatory LGBTQ Curriculum.” Which part of “Get your groomer hands off children” was unclear?
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement recently carried out a multi-state operation targeting eleven Iranian nationals in the U.S. illegally as the threat of Iranian terror cells attacking the U.S. intensifies.
Over the last 48 hours, federal agents arrested the eleven Iranians and a U.S. citizen who harbored an illegal immigrant from Iran, a Department of Homeland Security official told NR.
“Under Secretary Noem, DHS has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out—and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
ICE agents arrested former Iranian army sniper Ribvar Karimi in Alabama on June 22. Karimi possessed an Iran army identification card upon his arrest and is currently being held in ICE custody. He entered the U.S. in October 2024 under a K-1 marriage visa but never updated his immigration status.
In Houston, ICE agents arrested Behzad Sepehrian Bahary Nejad, an illegal alien who was armed with a loaded pistol at the time of his arrest. Nejad was previously arrested in August 2017 for assaulting a family member and had a final order of removal prior to his latest arrest. Also in Houston, ICE arrested Hamid Reza Bayat, who a judge had ordered removed from the U.S. 20 years ago. Bayat was convicted twice on drug charges and again for driving with a suspended license.
In Tempe, Arizona, where they nabbed Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian convicted of threatening a law enforcement officer and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, and U.S. citizen Linet Vartaniann for threatening law enforcement and harboring Eidvand. The pair were arrested after ICE obtained a search warrant and they now face federal charges.
Likewise, ICE arrested two Iranian nationals living together in Colorado Springs, Mahmoud Shafiei and Mehrdad Mehdipour. Shafiei was ordered removed decades ago and has criminal convictions related to drug crimes, and arrests for assault and child abuse. Border patrol encountered Mehdipour in June 2023 and processed him for expedited removal. Both are now in ICE custody as they undergo removal proceedings.
Another Iranian national ICE nabbed is Mehran Makari Saheli, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sahei was previously convicted for being a felon in possession of the firearm and was illegally staying in the U.S. after a judge ordered him removed in 2022.
ICE agents arrested several other Iranian nationals in numerous other states and localities, almost all of whom had criminal convictions for various offenses and are now in federal custody.
How many Democrat district judges had decisions half-written forbidding deportations when the Supreme Court decision came down?
Moderate Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans — concerned about the prospect of a Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are plotting ways to keep the Democratic Socialist out of Gracie Mansion.
Shocked by the 33-year-old state assemblyman’s upset win in the Democratic mayoral primary last night against a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, these Cuomo backers, reluctant Cuomo backers, independents, and Republicans say the only way to beat Mr. Mamdani is to all back one candidate.
“The horse they’re going to back is Eric Adams,” a grocery store magnate and former Republican candidate for New York City mayor, Jon Catsimatidis, tells The New York Sun. “He is backed by the White House, by Washington, and he’ll make sure crime is cleaned up.”
When asked what that means for the Republican nominee for mayor, Curtis Sliwa, whom Mr. Catsimatidis employed at his radio station, the billionaire replied, “He’ll clean up the crime.”
Mr. Catsimatidis ended the call. He didn’t respond to a text asking if he is personally planning to back Mr. Adams. He said to tune into his radio show this evening.
Mr. Catsimatidis told the press earlier this month that he may sell his grocery store empire or move his business out of the city if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor.
Always with the trannies: “Zohran Mamdani Wants To Spend $65 Million on Medical Gender Treatments for Minors and Adults.”
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has quietly proposed channeling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay for medical gender-transition treatments for residents of all ages – including for minors. This city spending would counteract the sustained assault on these medical interventions – coming from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans – which threatens treatment programs even within blue cities and states.
The controversial method of providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes gender-transition surgeries — such as breast removal — to minors in particular is now at the apex of the culture wars. It has also become a flashpoint in Democrats’ battle to redefine themselves in the wake of their brutal losses in the November election.
Authorities in Austin, Texas, have arrested Brian Johnson, known online as the social media influencer “Liver King,” according to jail records.
He faces one charge of terroristic threat, a Class B misdemeanor.
Snip.
The so-called Liver King rose to viral fame with social media posts depicting a barbarian-like “ancestral lifestyle,” including the consumption of raw animal organs, as depicted in the recent Netflix documentary “Untold: The Liver King.”
His persona and the story behind the physique fell apart in December 2022, however, when he admitted in a YouTube video to using steroids.
Speaking of crazy, violent lunatics: “51-year-old Adam Christopher Sheafe has now confessed to crucifying and killing Pastor William Schonemann in Phoenix in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2025.”
“U.S. Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Muslim-Centric EPIC City, No Charges Filed.” As I’ve mentioned before, while investigation was certainly warranted, right now EPIC City looks more like a failed speculative real estate venture than an actual Muslim city in the offing, especially now that the developers have sworn up and down that they won’t discriminate against buyers based on religion. Awful nice of them to agree to obey the law…
This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees,” reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP – which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm “to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees.”
According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged “repeated” efforts to collect those fees.
“Morrissey cancels Stockholm show, saying he and band are ‘travel-weary beyond belief’, citing “’bsolutely zero music industry support’ for full Scandinavia tour.”
“No label will release our music, no radio will play our music … and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”
Last year, he said he had bought back the rights back to the album, as well as his 2014 record ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. He later told Medium that “there are two albums” that he has completed but is unable to release, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’.
“The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title. We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”
He added: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell. The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels do not want to become involved with this Gotcha! Journalism.”
Evidently Morrissey figured out that unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration to the UK was a bad idea way back in 2019. Obviously The Guardian must punish him for his #wrongthink.
I’m not a Morrissey fan, and a significant percentage of my impression of him is everyone from MST3K to Mojo Nixon making fun of him. I can certainly see a musician cancelling a show due to exhaustion, and Morrissey is no spring chicken. But as for “zero music industry support,” dude, it’s 2025. Major labels don’t support anyone unless they can own your entire output, or at least get their sticky fingers into every possible revenue stream. Just pay to have your own CDs pressed and sell them at your (evidently successful) shows.
To hit or not to hit Iran, that is the question, illegal alien friendly judges land themselves in hot water, some party switch shenanigans in Florida, the Texas Senate passes some bills (good and bad), and updates on the proceedings against several disgraced politicos. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Also, Texas residents should remember that the Sales tax Holiday starts tomorrow.
Tenacity is the most important virtue of national leaders at war, which allows them to press on with no assurance of victory, fending off tremendous political pressures to fold. Winston Churchill displayed this quality in 1940. In June of that year, Germany appeared unstoppable. Paris and the entirety of Western Europe had fallen. The Luftwaffe was grinding down the grossly outnumbered British pilots, and German invasion barges were being assembled in Belgian ports. Even then, with Britain desperate for U.S. support, the American national debate on interventionism, prompted by the outbreak of war in September 1939, continued to break decisively in favor of the isolationists.
Exploring an accommodation with Germany appeared as the eminently reasonable and prudent course of action because of Herr Hitler’s generous offer to leave Britain and its vast empire intact. When British parliamentarians pressed Churchill to explain his plan, he confessed to his intimates that he had no plan at all. He was determined to just keep buggering on.
Then the situation became bleaker still for the British and for Churchill personally. In June 1941, the German army smashed its way into Russia, advancing rapidly toward what looked like an imminent victory. Although the Wehrmacht’s swift conquests promised to wholly remedy Germany’s only weakness—its lack of petroleum—the isolationists in the U.S. Congress remained dominant. Meanwhile, at home, London was abuzz with talk of Churchill’s heavy drinking, his personal dependence on gifts from his Jewish friends to pay for his extravagant tastes and, above all, his utter lack of strategy—he had failed to offer any path at all that could conceivably lead to victory.
Things looked grim all around. In North Africa, the brilliant German tactician Erwin Rommel was outmaneuvering British forces with ease. Much worse were the first reports of Germany’s astonishing technological progress: the world’s first jet fighter that could easily outfly every single British and American fighter; the world’s first air-to-surface missile (Fritz X) that, in September 1943, would sink the Italian battleship Roma (to prevent it from surrendering to the Allies); and the Tiger tank that could crush British armor.
Nevertheless, the isolationists in Congress refused to fund even a prosaic piston-engine fighter project—the P-51 Mustang, the war’s best Allied fighter—which was developed with fast-dwindling British funds.
Churchill’s answer? Just keep buggering on.
Snip.
Whereas Churchill’s problem was an isolationist Congress that constrained a generally sympathetic president, Netanyahu enjoyed ample support on the Hill but faced an American administration determined to cut Israel down to size and to remove him from power.
As Israel fought a major, multifront war in October 2023, key U.S. officials encouraged domestic uproar against Netanyahu and worked to constrain him and even collapse his government.
That was not all the president’s doing, but Joe Biden’s administration was stacked with Barack Obama’s leftovers, who ran the gamut of pathological Israel haters, from Samantha Power to Robert Malley—the red-diaper baby of Stalinist Jewish parents in Paris whom I met in my youth when they were working for Algeria’s National Liberation Front, which was not merely fanatically anti-Israel but also declaredly anti-Jewish, much like Yemen’s Houthis today. With the CIA mostly very hostile (as it has been since it was established in 1947, as declassified documents fully reveal), only the Pentagon harbored some friends of Israel—although that hardly stopped the administration from using every trick in the book to delay mid-war weapons supplies to Israel.
Netanyahu faced a concerted campaign, directed from Washington, that brought together Israeli nonprofits and Netanyahu’s political opponents. Almost from the get-go, Netanyahu had to overcome calls and protests by well-educated—and some even well-meaning—Israelis and American Jews, as well as all the usual suspects in European capitals and almost every other world government incessantly demanding a cease-fire, not as a pause, but as an end to the war.
Worse still, several of Israel’s retired and barely retired generals threw their weight behind the cease-fire push. Some did so with the authority of true heroes, such as Yair Golan, the head of the unsubtly named The Democrats (a merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz Parties) and former IDF deputy chief of staff no less. Golan jumped into his small car on Oct. 7 to successfully rescue people with his handgun, as did the former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate Israel Ziv, now a very successful security contractor overseas after distinguished service, who became the guru of an entire cabal of retired generals, including some who served in Netanyahu’s government until they left it to oppose him. Then, inevitably, there were tawdry time-servers who somehow became generals without doing much other than talking, like Amos Gilead, who’s well known and much-favored in U.S. officialdom because of his hostility to Netanyahu.
All those former generals demanded the same thing, albeit at different times: to stop the war with no way of recovering the Israeli hostages and no way of forcing Hamas to accept supervised disarmament, therefore allowing it to use a cease-fire to reconstitute.
Furthermore, these generals offered no solution whatever to the Hezbollah dilemma in the north. The day after the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah started launching rockets against Israel. If Israel did not attack, Hezbollah forces, then assuredly the most powerful non-state army in the world, was certainly capable of burning every Jewish town and village north of Haifa with countless rockets (the number 110,000 that was widely circulated turned out to be simply invented) while targeting power stations, Ben Gurion Airport, port facilities, every chemical plant and refinery, and every air base with thousands of guided missiles. If Israel were to attack, those massive barrages would immediately begin.
As Netanyahu pondered this dilemma, he had to deal not only with his security establishment but also with unremitting pressure from Washington. A mere few days after Oct. 7, the Biden administration intervened and made clear its opposition to an Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah—a position it would maintain over the next year. In fact, when Israel finally eliminated Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on his bunker on Sept. 27, 2024, Biden’s reaction was an irate “Bibi, what the fuck?”
The Biden administration displayed a similar hands-off attitude toward Iran’s proxy in Yemen, allowing Tehran to pile more pressure on Israel. The Houthis joined the fight with their skirts, sandals, and Iranian supplied anti-ship missiles and drones that not only deprived Israel of its secondary Red Sea sea port access but also targeted commercial vessels, blocking navigation in the area and forcing shipping companies to find longer, more expensive routes, thereby augmenting U.S. and international pressure on Israel to end the war. Washington allowed Iran to stop maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Suez Canal without any retaliation against Tehran and its own maritime traffic, while Western disarray was compounded by the spectacle of very expensive European navies doing nothing much even as their Mediterranean ports lost all their Asian traffic.
This shameful passivity reinforced the Israeli conviction that France, Italy, and Spain, unable and unwilling to defend even their own direct material interests, would only yield to Muslim demographic and political pressure in other respects as well. Only the British joined the United States in eventually striking the Houthis, though mostly symbolically and nowhere near the sustained and targeted campaign required to destroy Houthi capabilities.
Between American permissiveness toward Iran’s multipronged campaign and Washington’s support for Netanyahu’s domestic opposition, calls for a Gaza cease-fire intensified and became the default position across the political landscape, from Israel’s left and even moderate center to most European governments, in addition to the Biden administration.
It is against this backdrop that Netanyahu’s pure resolve must be understood. With this remarkable array of forces, external and internal, bearing down on him, his tenacity was the only thing that mattered.
Read the whole thing.
The Houthis in Yemen are in the find out phase, as U.S. forces just blew up a vital oil port.
Fresh US airstrikes on Yemen Thursday marked the single-deadliest known attack under President Donald Trump’s new campaign targeting the Houthi rebels. The Pentagon has been intensely bombing Yemen since March 15, when the Gaza truce collapsed.
A Houthi spokesman announced Friday that the attacks killed 38 people and wounded 102 others. The death toll was hours later updated to at least 74 killed. The operation mainly targeted and destroyed the Ras Isa oil port, which sent massive fireballs shooting into the night sky.
The final pillar of the plan, calling to “confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism,” is laden with potentially controversial social proposals.
This section identifies “ghost guns”—unregistered weapons without a serial number, often created via 3D printer—as one such contributor, and calls to “[r]ein in the proliferation” of such weapons, “encourage state adoption of extreme risk protection orders, and drive other executive and legislative action including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
It also called for “advancing inclusion” as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic to “mitigate xenophobia and bias.”
This would be in order to “address hate crime reporting barriers faced by disadvantaged communities by promoting law enforcement training and resources to prevent and address bias-motivated crimes,” according to the SIP.
Additionally, the plan encouraged “teaching and learning of civics education that provides students with the skill to fully participate in civic life,” and promoting “literacy education for both children and adult learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation.”
The change at the border between President Biden and President Trump is nothing short of staggering, and two numbers best tell that story: 189,604 and 20.
The first is the number of illegal immigrants Border Patrol agents caught and immediately released into the U.S. in December 2023, at the depths of the Biden border chaos.
The second is the number of illegal immigrants agents caught and released into the U.S. in February — roughly one-hundredth of 1% of the total in Mr. Biden’s worst month.
For years, Border Patrol agents have been telling anyone who would listen that catch-and-release was the driver of illegal immigration.
Migrants who had a reasonable sense that they could live and work in the U.S. would pay $10,000 or more to smugglers to reach the border. If their chances of release were slim, they wouldn’t pay or make the trip.
Mr. Trump’s policies have drastically cut the chances of catch-and-release from 778 per 1,000 border crossers in December 2023 to just 2 per 1,000 in February.
“New Mexico Judge Resigns After Housing Alleged Tren De Aragua Member. The resignation occurred a few days after law enforcement arrested illegal alien Cristhian Ortega-Lopez…Democrat Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano resigned after police arrested an alleged Tren De Aragua (TdA) gang member.”
FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the bureau has arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction, accusing the Dugan of obstructing an arrest of illegal immigrants last week.
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest,” Patel said in a brief statement shared on X – which was subsequently deleted and re-posted. “Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
The days when Democrats can blithely ignore immigration laws are coming to a close.
Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), the second most powerful Senate Democrat, announced Wednesday his decision not to run for another term after nearly three decades in the world’s greatest deliberative body.
Durbin, 80, is ending his Senate career after five terms, the longest tenure of any Senator in Illinois history. His retirement opens up a deep blue seat in 2026 and will create a leadership competition for Senate Democrats amid frustration with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and generational turnover within the party.
Remember, in Minnesota, crimes aginst designed hate objects are perfectly legal. “Progressive Minnesota Prosecutor Lets State Employee Off with No Charges for Alleged Tesla Vandalism.”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s office is seeking diversion for Minnesota Department of Human Service employee Dylan Adams after he allegedly vandalized at least six Teslas in Minneapolis while walking his dog….
Progressive County Attorney Mary Moriarty took office in 2023 and has faced strong criticism for her soft-on-crime approach. On several occasions, Moriarty has shown leniency to violent criminals, including suspects charged with murder and sexual assault, leading to disputes with prosecutors and outrage among victims’s families.
Is she Soros-backed? You better believe it. I hope Elon Musk sues all of them for everything they own…
Well, this is disturbing. “Stunned cops allegedly find 180K rounds of ammo packed in minivan driven by two Mexican nationals.”
Two Mexican nationals pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Colorado were found with 180,000 illegal rounds of ammunition in the back of their van, according to federal prosecutors.
Caesar Ramon Martinez Solis, 41, and Humberto Ivan Amador Gavira, 24, were pulled over late last month for failing to dim their headlights and using a turn signal in Canon City, 35 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.
Officers then found 180 boxes stacked in the back of the van — each labeled as having 1,000 rounds of ammo, mostly .308 but also 30 boxes of 7.62, the feds said.
Ammunition in back of minivan.
The federal government’s main website on COVID-19 information has been taken down and replaced with a new version discarding the natural-origin theory of the coronavirus that was pushed by the Biden administration.
Where the previous website pushed vaccine and testing information, the White House is now displaying scientific proof that the virus was man-made and leaked from a Chinese virus lab while calling out U.S. officials and agencies that it says “obstructed” the truth from the American people.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is named along with Dr. Peter Daszak, Dr. David Morens and other public officials who are accused of engaging in “a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation” and to hide incriminating evidence.”
Now will Democrats finally accept the truth, or continue clinging to the “wet market” origins like they cling to all their other lockdown lies?
“Hegseth Denounces Journalists Who ‘Won’t Give Back Their Pulitzers for Discredited Stories as Pulitzer Board Facing String of Setbacks in Trump’s Lawsuit. He insists he is the subject of ‘hit pieces that ‘come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax.'” Soon the legacy media can be financially, as well as factually and morally, bankrupt.
So the Russians captured a Bradley in Ukraine. After analyzing how it compares to their own BMPs, they want one.
The Russians have gotten a closeup look at an M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle and seem to like it better than their own armored vehicles.
The Bradley offers more protection and can fire more accurately than its Russian equivalent, the BMP-3, according to a Russian report that was leaked onto a Telegram channel earlier this month.
Experts told Task & Purpose that the report appears to be legitimate.
Priority legislation that would raise the homestead exemption for elderly and disabled homeowners by $50,000 passed the Texas Senate on Wednesday. With other planned exemption increases, elderly homeowners would receive a total of $200,000 in homestead exemptions.
Senate Bill (SB) 23 and Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 85 raise the school tax homestead exemption — a reduction in the taxable value of a home — for age 65 and over homeowners from $10,000 to $60,000. The proposal is estimated to cost the state $1.2 billion through the next biennium.
Both passed by a 30 to 1 vote with the lone “no” coming from state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas), which is the first “no” vote against a homestead exemption increase in the Senate in multiple sessions.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick prefaced this proposal in an early-April press conference, during which he said he and Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) were working together on the item.
This is on top of the planned standard homestead exemption increase from $100,000 to $140,000.
Just in case you hadn’t heard: Pope Francis dead at 88. “The pope, who led the Catholic Church for twelve years, passed away just one day after Easter Sunday when the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Despite his ongoing health problems, he made several appearances during Holy Week, including a trip to St. Peter’s Basilica and a visit with Vice President JD Vance on Sunday.” Sic transit gloria mundi.
Hijacking thwarted. “A U.S. man hijacked a small plane in Belize on Thursday, stabbing two passengers and a pilot, before one of the stabbed passengers fatally shot him, officials in Belize and the United States said. The plane then landed safely.”
Pizzo, considered a possible candidate for governor in 2026, said unaffiliated voters helped elect him to office. He added that the state party needed new leadership, but Democratic leaders didn’t want him to be it. The party that his late father volunteered for in the 1960s, he said, “is not the party today.”
“Here’s the issue: The Democratic Party in Florida is dead. But there are good people that can resuscitate it. But they don’t want it to be me,” he said.
Pizzo’s stunning announcement — which caught Democrats completely by surprise — of a switch to no party affiliation is just the latest blow for Florida’s beleaguered Democratic Party. The state currently has 1.2 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, and no Democrat holds statewide elected office — a far cry from Florida’s former status as the ultimate swing state.
It’s got to hurt to have the Minority leader of the third largest state in the union leave your party because it’s too radical. Especially since a quarter century ago Florida was still The Land of the Hanging Chad…
Florida party switch shenanigans the second: “David Jolly, a former Republican U.S. Congressman in Florida’s 13th Congressional District who left the GOP amid his distaste for President Donald Trump, has now registered as a Democrat. He’s also launched a political committee, Florida 2026, ahead of what many expect to be a gubernatorial bid.” I doubt someone who left office in 2017 is going to be at the top of anyone’s list, and Charlie Crist’s post-Republican career hardly offers a blueprint for success in Florida politics…
“Disgraced former Representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) was sentenced Friday to 87 months in federal prison for wire fraud and identity theft, completing his remarkable rise and fall from a newly elected swing-seat congressman to widely ridiculed conman whose colleagues expelled him from the House..”
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has opened an investigation into Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) over donations made to her 2024 campaign by the Democratic fundraising organization Act Blue.
The FEC began its probe after receiving a complaint from the conservative Coolidge-Reagan Foundation in late March.
The complaint alleges that Crockett received 53 separate donations of $595 from a 73 year old supporter named Randy Best through the Act Blue portal.
However, when one of Crockett’s opponents for 2026 spoke to Best’s wife, she denied that the couple knew anything about donations, raising concerns that the Act Blue donations may have been made by others with donations being given under false names.
Crockett’s campaign received more than $870,000 in donations through Act Blue.
At this point, I think we have to assume that ActBlue was consciously constructed to enable fraud.
In the latest scandal to rock the state’s largest public school district, on Friday, a federal jury found Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) former chief operating officer, Brian Busby, and vendor Anthony Hutchison, guilty on 33 charges related to a long-running bribery scheme.
The scheme, which prosecutors say began as early as 2011, included kickbacks to Busby as well as cash payments to former HISD board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones and multiple other officials in exchange for lucrative contracts for construction, landscaping, mowing, and maintenance at district schools.
In some instances, Hutchison overbilled the district by $6 million through his exclusive contract to provide mowing and landscaping for the entire district. He also obtained contracts through Skillern-Jones to complete projects at several schools using funds derived from a 2012 voter-approved bond referendum.
After a trial that lasted nearly four weeks, both Busby and Hutchison were convicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery, filing false tax returns, and witness tampering. Hutchison was also convicted of wire fraud.
Skillern-Jones, who also later served as a Houston Community College trustee and worked for Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis (D-Pct. 1), entered a plea deal in 2021 and admitted that she had received $12,000 in cash from Busby in a Walmart parking lot.
Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld says that the people at the top of Marvel comics, Dan Buckley, David Bogart and David Gabriel, have done a horrible job, especially with X-Men, and have to be fired.
And speaking of people getting fired for being bad at their job, Alyssa Mercante fired from Kotaku. Asmongold: “Put the fries in the bag.”
Democrats still want to trans your kids, censorship shellgames squashed, Google is declared a monopoly, socialists behave badly, more illegal alien depravity, some 2026 contenders jump in, pie-in-the-sky plans for high speed rail in Texas bite the dust, more Cybertruck drag-racing, and a Very Good Boy indeed.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Yes, Democrats are still all in on transing your kids. “Dad shares horrifying story of his daughter being groomed and transitioned behind his back at school.”
Just yesterday, a dad named Dustin Gonzales in the Jeffco Public School District of Colorado spoke at a school board meeting and shared a heartbreaking story that’s now all too familiar: his daughter was groomed by teachers and gender-transitioned behind his back.
Dad claims his daughter changed her gender identity secretly with a school therapist, who kept him in the dark about it.
The school didn’t ask me or inform me, they replaced me. By the time I found out, I was already labeled ‘the problem.’ My objections weren’t treated as concerns, they were treated as opposition. my voice was dismissed as ‘hateful,’ my presence undermined.
The father claims the school then got the therapist and an investigator involved, to separate the girl from her dad.
I’m here to make sure what happened to me, to my family, never happens to another parent in this district.
The father is now at risk of losing his daughter as a result of a new Colorado bill that would take kids away from parents who aren’t “affirming.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has just killed the Biden administration’s last-ditch effort to shelter the government’s Ministry of Truth, the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
In a new op-ed published by The Federalist (a target of the GEC along with yours truly), Rubio writes;
GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, D.C., few things ever truly die. When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.
Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.
Alphabet’s Google illegally dominates two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for U.S. antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its ad products.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers.
The decision clears the way for another hearing to determine what Google must do to restore competition in those markets, such as sell off parts of its business at another trial that has yet to be scheduled. It is the second court ruling that Google holds an illegal monopoly, following a similar judgment in a case over online search.
Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their digital ad inventory. Along with ad exchanges, the technology lets news publishers and other online content providers make money by selling ads. Those funds are the “lifeblood” of the internet, Brinkema wrote.
“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” Brinkema wrote.
However, antitrust enforcers failed to prove a separate claim that the company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi called the ruling “a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”
“A 13-year-old boy in California was allegedly sexually abused and murdered by his soccer coach and, as it turns out, the soccer coach was an illegal alien. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged a detainer with the Los Angeles County jail for Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, a 43-year-old Salvadoran citizen living unlawfully in the United States, the agency confirmed Wednesday to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Garcia-Aquino is accused of killing 13-year-old Oscar ‘Omar’ Hernandez, a San Fernando Valley, California, resident found dead earlier in April.”
Evidently the cartels have expensive taste. “A federal grand jury has charged two men who allegedly tried to smuggle five high-caliber sniper rifles to Mexico last month, and prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of the firearms, five .50-caliber Barrett long guns and four magazines for .50-caliber bullets. Wednesday’s charges of unlawful smuggling of goods from the United States stem from the March 12 arrest of Oscar Sanchez Gonzalez and Arturo Martinez Aguilar as they allegedly attempted to drive to Mexico over the Calexico West port of entry.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Smith says people asking him to run is an indictment of the Democratic Party.
“I have no choice, because I’ve had elected officials, and I’m not going to give their names, elected officials coming up to me. I’ve had folks who are pundits come up to me. I’ve had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature. I’m not a politician. I’ve never had a desire to be a politician,” Smith told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Smith reiterated that because of the number of people asking him to consider a run, he has to leave the door open.
Smith usually strikes me as a moderately annoying “hot take” artist, but he has been condemning the Democrat Party about their lurch to the right on several issues, and has discussed that with the likes of Dave Rubin. Smith has no business running for President, but would be immediately be a more sane alternative than anyone else named as a Democratic front-runner.
When police raided a factory in Georgia, they found dozens of Chinese nationals being kept in near slave-like conditions, and authorities say they were pressed into service by a forced labor trafficking ring.
Last month, agents from several agencies raided Wellmade Industries in Cartersville, Georgia, 40 miles north of Atlanta, and what they found shocked them, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Federal officials said that around 60 Chinese nationals were being held in tiny rooms and forced to work long hours in the flooring manufacturing plant. The exploited workers at Wellmade are just a few of the many exploited workers the Trump administration has rooted out.
ICE Homeland Security Investigations Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Steven N. Schrank said the conditions these workers were living in was “horrific,” and noted that he and his fellow agents were investigating eight other locations for similar offenses.
Three Wellmade Industries officers were arrested, including company owner, Zhu Chen, his nephew, Jiayi Chen, and company associate Jian Jun Lu.
At the bond hearings for the suspects, assistant district attorney Austin Waldo claimed that officials of the company immediately confiscated the workers’ travel and ID documents as soon as they arrived at the plant to make it harder for them to leave.
Well, this would have made my Nvidia roundup had it dropped a day earlier, and not in a good way. “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang boarded a private jet to Beijing shortly after the U.S. Commerce Department announced new export licensing requirements for the company’s H20 AI chips for the Chinese market. Once there, Huang met with the head of a Chinese state-backed trade body, where he reaffirmed Nvidia’s commitment to the Chinese market despite a deepening trade war.”
Baltimore student: “Hey, doesn’t Maryland law require a United States flag in every classroom?” Baltimore County Board of Education: “Hey, you’re suspended and we’re calling the cops on you.”
The East Plano Islamic Center’s planned development faces continued scrutiny from Texas officials.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate EPIC for potential religious discrimination.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Cornyn expressed concern that a “master-planned ‘community of thousands of Muslims’” could violate the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by discriminating against Christians, Jews, and other non-muslim minorities.
“Religious discrimination, whether explicit or implicit, is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” wrote Cornyn. “Religious freedom is a cornerstone of our nation’s values, and I am concerned this community potentially undermines this vital protection.”
Sanity in the UK: “U.K. Supreme Court Rules Males Don’t Qualify as Women Under Anti-Discrimination Law, in Landmark Ruling.”
The United Kingdom’s supreme court ruled Wednesday that males who identify as women do not fall qualify as women under anti-discrimination law, a monumental decision that will have major consequences for British law.
The high court defined “woman” based on sex rather than gender identity, keeping it within the bounds of scientific reality rather than giving into the demands of left-wing activists. The ruling specifically addressed the question of whether transgender-identifying males who obtain a gender recognition certificate — a legal document acknowledging them as women — enjoy the same protections extended to females under Britain’s 2010 Equality Act, an anti-discrimination law that covers nine protected characteristics and applies to various sectors of British life.
“The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological women and biological sex,” said Lord Patrick Hodge, deputy president of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, in announcing the ruling.
Bad news: A house exploded two miles from me. I actually heard it, and thought that one of my dogs had run into a wall or something. Worse news: The house belonged to Sara Felix, who I know from the Austin science fiction community, and her husband was in the house at the time. The silver linings are that he’s now out of surgery, though badly burned, and that the family hadn’t actually moved into the house, and were still living in their old house in the same general area.
When your band name stops being ironic: “New Pornographers Drummer Joe Seiders Arrested for Possession of Child Porn.” I have a few of their albums I bought 15 years ago. I considered embedding “Breakin’ the Law” for ironic effect, but it’s a lousy song. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
A foster mom in Missouri is facing multiple charges of abuse and is accused of trading a teenage girl she was guardian of for a pet monkey, authorities said.
Brenda Ruth Deutsch, 70, of Lincoln County, was charged with two counts of abuse or neglect of a child and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, according to Lincoln County Prosecutor Mike Wood. She was taken into custody last weekend.
Deutsch has fostered more than 200 children for about 15 to 20 years, Wood told NBC News.
While it’s tempting to chalk this up to more “annals in human depravity,” given the age of the alleged perp, I have to wonder if some mental illness/senility/Alzheimers was involved.
Anderson Ronaldo Reyes Giron — a member of the “Most Wanted” list — was taken into custody on April 2 by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas Highway Patrol for charges related to deadly conduct from shooting a firearm in Travis County, as well as theft of property in Williamson County. He’s originally from Honduras, from which he came illegally, and was arrested by the Austin Police Department in August 2024 for the afore-listed charges before being let out on bail.
Thanks again, Austin.
“Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Texas National Guard continue to work together with the Trump Administration to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal activity between ports of entry,” a press release from Abbott’s office stated upon announcement of Giron’s arrest.
Giron has been wanted since February 2025 when Travis County issued a warrant for his arrest following the firearm violation, and then when Williamson County similarly filed a warrant after his theft incident.
Former Texas Congresswoman Mayra Flores has officially thrown her hat into the ring to challenge the indicted Congressman Henry Cuellar (R-TX-28) and his 20-year-plus tenure representing Texas’ 28th Congressional District in Washington, D.C.
“I am deeply honored to announce my candidacy for Congress—a chance to serve the people and uphold the values that make our nation great,” Flores posted on X upon announcement of her challenge to Cuellar’s seat.
The first female Mexican-born former congresswoman, Flores comes to the drawing board with experience in Texas elections — first scoring a seat in a special election to represent the Lone Star State on the federal stage after Democratic Congressman Filemon Vela resigned in 2022, allowing her to flip the historically Democratic 34th Congressional District. Flores flipped parties from Democratic to Republican in the early 2000s, primarily citing pro-life motivations.
She also ran against Rep. Vicente Gonzalez twice (D-TX-34), losing first in the 2022 general election and second in 2024, although she notched her numbers up significantly the second time around — losing the election by a 2 percent margin.
Cuellar maintained his seat during the 2024 general election against Republican candidate Jay Furman with nearly 52 percent of the vote — a race rumored as potentially dangerous for Cuellar due to his indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that year after an FBI investigation in 2022 for alleged bribery and money laundering in coordination with his wife, Imelda Cuellar, and the country of Azerbaijan.
TX-28 favors Democrats with a rating of D-51% per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index, although President Donald Trump made history in the district during the November election — winning Webb County’s presidential vote, the first Republican president to claim victory there in a century.
Until Flores’ announcement, the only other notable contender for Cuellar’s seat was Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, who flipped parties in December 2024.
For more on Cueller’s indictment, see here and here.
“With Attorney General Ken Paxton officially running for U.S. Senate against Sen. John Cornyn, the race to replace him is heating up. After former U.S. Attorney John Bash became the first to enter the race, State Sen. Mayes Middleton has now launched his own campaign for Texas attorney general, pitching himself as a conservative fighter ready to take the reins.” I regularly get press releases from Middleton’s office, and he seems a pretty solid conservative.
The U.S. Department of Transportation officially terminated a $63.9 million federal grant intended for the planning and development of a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the move will save taxpayers millions while allowing Amtrak to focus on improving existing operations.
Personally, I’d kill Amtrack and hand the assets to the states to subsidize if they felt like.
Originally pitched as a private venture, the Texas Central Railway project aimed to connect two of Texas’ largest cities with a 205-mph bullet train, promising a 90-minute travel time.
The project has faced strong opposition from landowners and lawmakers since it was proposed in 2009.
As cost estimates soared from $12 billion to over $40 billion, the project became increasingly reliant on federal funding.
Duffy was blunt in his assessment: “Underwriting this project is a waste of taxpayer funds and a distraction from Amtrak’s core mission of improving its existing subpar services.”
“If the private sector believes this project is feasible, they should carry the pre-construction work forward, rather than relying on Amtrak and the American taxpayer to bail them out,” Duffy added.
State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown) posted on X, “Thank you to President Trump and Secretary Duffy for standing up for taxpayers and terminating the $63.9 million grant to Amtrak for the proposed high-speed rail project between Houston and Dallas.”
Even the $10 billion version was a boondoggle that wouldn’t have made money and required taxpayer subsidies to stay afloat, and more likely never would have been completed anyway. High speed passenger rail works in Japan because they already had high urban density and an existing rail system and culture to support it. Texas has none of those things, and even if it was built it would never be profitable here (or just about anywhere else).
And just to drive the point home: The highest density high speed rail in Japan seats 1,634 passengers. Assume passengers pay $100 a ticket each way, the train is entirely full, and the Texas high speed rail train runs six times a day (all optimistic and unlikely assumptions), 365 days a year, and you get $357,846,000 a year in gross revenue, which means, even without the including the cost to run the train, it would take just under 112 years to make back the initial investment.
Despite his new position as a vice chair of the DNC, gun control weasel David Hogg wants to primary old Democrats. In this particular task I wish the little weasel the best of luck.
This is your mayor on social justice. “The mayor of South Fulton faces an eviction action at an Atlanta apartment complex, Fulton County court documents show, adding another development to what’s been a turbulent year so far for the city leader. Mayor Khalid Kamau, who has gone recently by Mayor Kobi, has had eviction proceedings initiated against him in Fulton County Magistrate Court by an apartment complex at 6200 Bakers Ferry Rd. Court documents show the complex filed to initiate eviction after alleging Kamau failed to pay rent in March.”
Snip.
Documents show the amount of past due rent was listed at $1,663.77. A late fee of $100, utilities of $39.77 and “other fees” amounting to $175 are also being sought.
Kamau has been at odds in recent weeks and under scrutiny from the South Fulton City Council over his spending and alleged “abuse” of the position.
He in turn has defended himself from what he has termed the City Council’s “overreach” after his access to city buildings was revoked and his budget frozen in February, and said he has faced resistance from the council throughout his tenure.
The move by the city council came after reports on the mayor’s trips — which spanned four continents in four months — as well as updates at City Hall that included a film studio and refurbished conference/pool table room. The City Council voted to redistribute several pieces of new electronic equipment to the city IT department and send back the film studio.
I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to learn that Kamau is a Democratic Socialist…
Your feel-good dog story of the week: A dog named Buford kept a two-year old boy safe after the latter wandered seven miles from his home. Another article states that Buford is an Anatolian Pyrenees.
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Leftwing crooks attempt to cover their tracks, employment numbers are up, Trump’s tariffs already bring some quick action, Eric Three Phones beats the wrap, the criminal leftwing racketeers lined up against Telsa, and Tren de Aragua scumbags show up well the hell out in the countryside.
U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials attempted to delete one terabyte of financial data to “cover their crimes,” Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chief Elon Musk alleged Monday.
After President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month targeting USIP for reductions, DOGE visited the organization’s Washington headquarters, prompting a dramatic standoff.
Prior to DOGE’s arrival, USIP employees reportedly barricaded themselves inside their offices and had to be physically removed by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers. At some point, USIP employees allegedly attempted to scrub damning records, but, according to Musk, the DOGE engineers were able to recover the entire archive.
“They deleted a terabyte of financial data to cover their crimes, but they don’t understand technology, so we recovered it,” Musk posted on X.
The recovered data includes detailed financial transfers tied to individuals and groups in Afghanistan and Iraq.
USIP was receiving “$55M in congressional (taxpayer) funds” every year, the DOGE X account posted, adding that “prior management would sweep excess funds into its private Endowment” which has no congressional oversight.
“In the past 10 years, USIP has transferred ~$13M to its private Endowment, mainly used for private events and travel,” DOGE posted on X.
USIP contracts cancelled by the Trump administration, according to DOGE, include:
– $132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, an ex-Taliban member who was Afghanistan’s former Chief of Protocol.
– $2,232,500 to its outside Accountant, who attempted to delete over 1 terabyte of accounting data (now recovered) after new leadership entered the building
– $1,307,061 to the Al Tadhamun Iraqi League for Youth
– $675,000 for private aviation services
Mohammad Qasim Halimi is the former Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs in Afghanistan, according to the Doha forum. He is currently a member of the National Council of Ulema, the highest religious authority in Afghanistan. The National Council of Ulema is responsible for ensuring that all Afghan policies conform to Sharia law.
The Al Tadhamun Iraqi League for Youth is a United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) project that allegedly “works to strengthen youth participation in democratic processes” by “building a network of young activists to develop skills in leadership, negotiation and communication.”
According to Foundation For Freedom Online (FFO) director Mike Benz, USIP had been “bribing Afghan Taliban warlords to keep the drugs flowing.”
So graft, fraud, wire fraud, banking fraud, destruction of evidence, and supporting terrorism, all at the same time!
Trump’s tariffs are already bringing results. “Israel removes all remaining tariffs on US imports. Israel and the US signed a free trade agreement in 1985, and some 98% of goods are tax-free.”
When Collins pressed him on whether such escalation could turn into a full-fledged trade war, [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent dismissed the idea. “Not a trade war. Depends on the country,” he said, before explaining that history favors the United States in such disputes.
“Remember that the history of trade is, we are the deficit country. The deficit country has an advantage,” he explained. “[The others] are the surplus countries. The surplus countries traditionally always lose any kind of a trade escalation.”
His message to foreign governments was clear: Acting hastily would be a mistake. “As a student of economic history or a professor of economic history, I’d advise against it,” he said. When Collins sought further clarification, he reinforced the point: “I would say that doing anything rash would be unwise.”
Bessent’s remarks leave no doubt that Trump’s trade policies are rooted in historical precedent and strategic calculation. While globalists may panic, the Trump administration remains confident that America is in a stronger position than its trade partners. And history is on our side.
Bessent’s message is clear: Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.
We absolutely want a strong economic and security alliance. It’s not going to be the whole world because China is going to have its own sphere as well, but what we wanna have within our sphere is a few things in the past the United States didn’t exactly ask for.
We’re going to want balanced trade, where in the past we were happy to let the manufacturing go elsewhere. We’re going to want others to essentially own their own defense burdens … everybody take primary responsibility for their own defense.
Snip.
It’s not that Trump doesn’t want free trade, it’s that free trade doesn’t exist right now for the American people. It only exists in the starry-eyed fever dreams of Reaganite commentators who think that’s how the world actually works.
“Reaganite” is the wrong word here, since Reagan’s trade strategy was specifically geared to help win the Cold War, which it did. Nor was Reagan a zero tariff fundamentalist, as shown by his policies on automobiles and steel. Zero tariff fundamentalism is more of a libertarian policy, where it was postulated to be beneficial even if the other side (like China) didn’t remove tariffs on their end. Trump obviously operates under different imperatives, and employs (as I’ve noted before) tit-for-tat game theory strategy.
And if we’re talking about the Democratic Party’s theoretical conversion to post-Cold War free trade starting with Bill Clinton, then the proper term is probably neoliberalism, a word that bears a whole lot of additional baggage.
Exports made by Americans are taxed by other countries while we let them import their cheap products for essentially free, giving Americans price cuts but making it impossible for American companies to compete unless they outsource production elsewhere. That is exactly what has happened over the last few decades and it has destroyed countless American towns.
Trump’s whole schtick is to impose economic tit-for-tat in the hopes that other countries will drop their tariffs on U.S. goods. In that case, we actually get closer to free trade. It also allows us to invest in American manufacturing because we cannot rely on rising superpowers like China for all our industrial needs.
Whether or not that strategy works is up for debate.
“Sen. Mike Lee Introduces Legislation to Ditch the TSA: ‘Too Much Groping, Too Little Benefit.'”
The proposed measure would officially abolish the TSA three years after it is enacted into law and also would require the Departments of Homeland Security and Transportation to create and submit a reorganization plan to Congress.
Tuberville echoed the frustrations expressed by Lee, calling the TSA “a bloated agency—riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars—that has led to unnecessary delays, invasive pat downs and bag checks, and frustration for travelers.”
As we first pointed out on Sunday morning, former Wall Street Journal journalist Asra Nomani unveiled one of the most comprehensive reports on the NGO network behind at least one Tesla Takedown protest.
Nomani’s investigative report, which focused on 24 groups, revealed that these protests were far from organic and likely fueled by rent-a-protesters.
Snip.
In an article for the @FairfaxTimes, I wrote about how the local protests in Tysons, are a window into how the protests are AstroTurf, not “grassroots.” What this case reveals is the way that a multi-million dollar professional protest industry manufactures outrage in top-down political theater, agitprop, or agitation propaganda, and now criminal offenses.
From a spreadsheet linked in that article, here are the NGOs behind the attacks:
50501
ActionNetwork
Action Network Fund
ActUp New York Inc., ACT UP New York, the “AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power”
Climate Defenders
Climate Defenders Action Fund
Arizona – Coconino County Democratic Party
California – Aliso Niguel Democratic Club
California – California Democratic Party
California – Democratic Club Of Carlsbad
Florida – Broward County Democratic Party
Florida – Democratic Progressive Caucus of Palm Beach County Inc.
Florida – Osceola Young Dems
Florida – Rainbow Democrats of Central Florida
Illinois – Democratic Party of DuPage County
North Carolina – Durham County Democrats
Ohio – Eastside Cuyahoga Democratic Clubs
Texas – Harris County Democratic Party, Cypress-Tomball Democrats
Democratic Socialists of America
Disruption Project
Housing Works Inc., providing “assistance & expertise to homeless persons living with AIDS or HIV-related illnesses”
Indivisible Action
Indivisible Project
Mobilize.us, run by MobilizeAmerica Inc. – owned by EveryAction, the parent company of NGP VAN
MoveOnorg Civic Action
Not Above the Law Coalition — Coalition members as of 6/9/2023: American Oversight; Center for American Progress Action Fund; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW); Common Cause; Congressional Integrity Project; Constitutional Accountability Center; The Criminalization of Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies; Daily Kos; Defend Democracy Action Project; Defend the Vote Action Fund; DemCast USA; End Citizens United/Let America Vote; Fix Democracy First; Free Speech For People; Greenpeace USA; Indivisible; J Street; League of Conservation Voters; MoveOn; NextGen America; Our Revolution; People For the American Way; People Power United; Public Citizen; Public Wise; Secure Elections Network; Sierra Club; Stand Up America; Wisconsin Democracy Campaign; and The Workers Circle. SOURCE: press release
Planet Over Profit
Public Citizen Foundation
Public Citizen Inc.
Rise and Resist Inc.
Stand Up America Inc., established to “mobilize progressive Americans”
Swing Left, dedicated to “help Democrats win”
Tax Reformers LLC, running “TaxElon.us” (“an offshoot of TeslaTakedown.com”)
On Tuesday morning, former Biden administration “disinformation czar” Nina Jankowicz repeatedly refused to disclose who’s funding her new gig – the ‘American Sunlight Project’ – which cropped up after a stint at the USAID-funded UK-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) – for which she registered as a foreign agent while serving as their Vice President.
To review – Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, and was then selected to head the Biden DHS’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board – which was quickly dismantled amid criticism over censorship under the guise of fighting disinformation.
Four months later, she launched “The Hypatia Project” for CIR – where she was the Vice President until April 2024, at which point she co-founded the American Sunlight Project.
Fast forward to this morning, Jankowicz was evasive when asked by Republicans during a congressional hearing on disinformation about her funding…
As it turns out, Jankowicz’s co-founder at the American Sunlight Project is Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos, a “communications professional” who worked for the Biden DoD, and is “one of the people who launched the call for a boycott of Tesla.”
Alvarez-Aranyos comes from a wealthy and prominent family in the Dominican Republic. His father, Luis Álvarez Renta, is a well-known Dominican financier. Carlos is a nephew of the renowned fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.
A mixed bag in April 1st elections. Republicans easily retained two congressional seats in Florida and won a voter ID ballot proposition in Wisconsin, but lost a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that Elon Musk and others had poured a lot of money into.
In a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, the Democratic National Committee said Trump exceeded his authority in the March 25 order by requiring voters to prove they are U.S. citizens, preventing states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day, and threatening to take federal funding away from states that do not comply.
Snip.
‘The Executive Order seeks to impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote, cast a ballot, and participate in our democracy — all of which threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters and none of which is legal,’ according to the lawsuit, which was filed by longtime Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias and other lawyers at his firm.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leaders of the Democratic minorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, are also plaintiffs in the case.
Democrats are still all in on transing your kids. “New Colorado bill would penalize ‘misgendering’ in public places, use it as justification to take your kids away.”
“Migrant influencer” who bragged about squatting in Americans’ homes is deported. “Leonel Moreno, who encouraged illegal migrants to ‘invade abandoned houses’ in sick TikToks, was sent back to the narco state [Venezuela] this week, after President Trump resumed deportation flights to the country.”
The economic policy of the Democratic Party is grifterism.
Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy solutions. Sometimes, however, Democrats deliberately fail to coherently describe the meaning of their actions, and then it becomes even harder to ascertain meaning. Such is the case with the basic economic policies of Democrats. Many on the right like to say that Democrats support socialism, but that’s not wholly true given how many capitalist components exist inside Democrat economic policies. Similarly, it is inaccurate to describe Democrat economics as being purely capitalistic because wealth redistribution is one of their core competencies. Some say that the Democrats enjoy government control of capitalist entities, rendering their economic persuasion fascist in nature. Yet, even that is inaccurate, given that fascist states view their economies as a source of nationalistic pride and strength, while Democrats tend to abhor nationalistic pride in the United States.
It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?
It’s Grifterism. (I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)
Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.
Snip.
4. The Grifters: Well, we’re finally here. By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the Grifters are up to, but let’s be clear that this class consists of more than just government workers. The Grifter class includes all of the intelligentsia: the university professors, the traditional journalists, the lobbyists, the Hollywood elite, the “BigLaw” attorneys, and, most of all, the NGO crowd. Further, not every government worker is a Grifter—the military, the police, the justice system, and many other government offices that provide what economists call “Public Goods” all house highly necessary government employees. (Those employees are not Grifters—they are Productives, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of government workers are in fact Grifters.)
But let’s get back to the NGOs (a term I use in this article interchangeably with non-profit entities), as they reveal the true level of perfidy perpetuated by the Grifters. If you have been paying attention for the last two months, you are probably aware that DOGE and brilliantly relentless and patriotic volunteer data analysts like Data Republican have uncovered the widespread prevalence of U.S. federal agencies taking your tax dollars and using them to fund dubious efforts by various NGOs. This wicked grift cycle goes like this: (1) Taxpayers pay taxes required because Grifters establish programs that require funding; (2) Congress approves such funding in the vaguest possible terms of intent and appropriates those funds to a federal agency run by Grifters; (3) the Grifters in that agency interpret Congress’ intent in the broadest manner possible and provide funds to NGOs that employ other Grifters with six-figure salaries; and (4) that NGO then engages in some sort of woke cause such as training transgender farmers—a cause very few taxpaying voters would vote for if they only knew about it.
The cycle of grifting prospers beyond just NGOs: the universities receive taxpayer funding to indoctrinate our youth; the lobbyists curry favor with the Grifters to improve their business opportunities; the journalists cycle in and out of government, spreading the Grifter ethos as truth; Hollywood pays homage to it all, infecting American brains with woke ideas that Grifterism is noble; the BigLaw attorneys become rich navigating the vast regulatory schemes that are the lifeblood of Grifterism, and the members of the Grifter class constantly cycle in and out of the various organizations that benefit most from their economic parasitism.
The Grifters are the only class of Grifterism that fully benefits from the corrupt system; in fact, the system exists by, for, and because of the Grifters—almost all of whom are voting for Democrat candidates who themselves wallow in the pig trough of Grifterism. “But wait!” you may say, “Government workers are not Billionaires, they are not wealthy. How is that a grift?” Grifters in government generally enjoy wages in excess of the national median income; they are entitled to retirement plans largely unheard of in the private sector; they have healthcare and other benefits that far exceed those of equivalent private workers; and, most of all, they enjoy job security that is unmatched by any other sector of American society. Most Grifters are unfirable—they have life tenure. Finally, they have the power to pull the strings of the entire Grifter class for their own benefit—back-scratching and beak-wetting are their secret ways of communication.
The Democrats are obviously struggling with coming to terms with the rejection they faced last November. They’re always bad at introspection and taking responsibility for anything, but this is like nothing I’ve seen in all of my years in politics. It’s gotten to the point where I have to read at least one or two of the 2024 post mortems in the mainstream media every day to get my fix. Yeah, it’s a blast watching them not get it. The real joy for me, however, is seeing the myriad ways that they are finding to not come to the proper conclusions about why they lost.
They’ve been so reluctant to face their Pandora’s boxful of problems that they didn’t even start making attempts until just before the second Trump term was underway. In days of yore, the Democratic National Committee would have called an all-hands-on-deck meeting for around 6 AM on the morning after the election to begin plotting how to win the next one. Not only that, the Dems would have some plans in their back pockets and some viable candidates for the future on their bench. That Democratic Party and political machine no longer exist.
The reason for that is one that they will probably never admit to themselves. The decimation of its candidate bench and the party’s long-term planning ability can be laid squarely at the feet of the man who they worship above all others: His High Holiness the Lightbringer Barack Obama.
Democrats had long been invested in identity politics but went all-in to the exclusion of anything else after Barack Obama won in 2008. As my friend Stephen Green mentioned a few times last year, the Dems sold an idea in 2008 rather than a candidate with a record. Of course, that was because Obama had no record to speak of at the time.
They got kinda hooked on that.
The party higher-ups and their media mouthpieces spent the next eight years hero worshiping and not attending to the mundane nuts and bolts of keeping a successful political machine running. While they were “oohing and aahing” over the emperor’s new clothes, the emperor was sucking the life out of the party’s future. Who needed a bench when all they had to do was anoint a candidate who checked off a “historic first” diversity box on his or her résumé?
They were so invested in the diversity route that the DNC gamed the 2016 primary to make it nigh on impossible for anyone to beat Hillary Clinton — the candidate they’d unceremoniously thrown on the trash heap eight years earlier in favor of Obama because he checked off a higher-priority diversity box.
None of the Democratic Party rules applied in 2020. The Dems went with Joe Biden because he was essentially an emotional support stuffed toy who made them feel better because he had a connection to Obama. Biden immediately got them back in the identity politics game by promising to pick a Black female running mate.
We know the rest of this story.
The real problem for the Democrats in 2024 wasn’t Joe Biden’s late exit or Kamala Harris’s short campaign — no combination of circumstances was going to enable either of them to beat Donald Trump. The Dems’ real problem is what the party is now about. Things like biological males competing in girls sports and hanging around in their locker rooms. Things like drag queen story hours in first-grade classrooms. Things like “Free Palestine” lunatics attacking synagogues.
Things that they really haven’t backed off of after getting shellacked last year.
So more social justice victimhood identity politics and more Orange Man Bad. That, abortion and gun control are pretty much all they have… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Bruen on the march: “Justice Dept. Investigates L.A. Sheriff Over Concealed Carry Permit Delays.”
The Justice Department said it was investigating whether the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had violated the Second Amendment rights of residents through what it said was a pattern of long delays in issuing concealed carry permits.
The department said the investigation, announced in a news release on Thursday, was part of a larger push to protect gun rights across the United States. It added that it could open similar investigations in “any other states or localities that insist on unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of their ordinary, law-abiding citizens.”
The Supreme Court has upheld Second Amendment rights in recent years, but, the Justice Department wrote in the announcement, some states “have resisted this recent pro-Second Amendment case law.”
The department called California “a particularly egregious offender,” saying it had passed laws restricting the right to bear arms. It said some areas of California had also imposed excessive fees and lengthy wait times on concealed carry permits.
The investigation follows a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2023 by gun rights advocates who claimed it had taken more than a year to obtain a concealed carry permit from the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Last year, a federal judge agreed that the Second Amendment rights of two individuals in the lawsuit had most likely been violated when the county made them wait 18 months before they received a decision on their permits. The Justice Department said it believed others had also experienced long delays in obtaining permits in the county.
The Sheriff’s Department wrote in a statement that it respected the Second Amendment and that it was committed to processing all concealed carry permits, but it added that it was facing a “staffing crisis” and had a backlog of cases. It said it had around 4,000 applications to process, with only 14 people to review them.
Last month, President Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to assess “any ongoing infringements” on Second Amendment rights in federal agencies across the country.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Ms. Bondi wrote in the news release announcing the investigation in Los Angeles, “and under my watch, the department will actively enforce the Second Amendment just like it actively enforces other fundamental constitutional rights.”
A victory in the war against lower court judicial overreach. “Supreme Court Shuts Down Activist Judge, Lets Trump Cut $250 Million In DEI Training For Teachers.”
The Supreme Court on Friday overruled an activist judge in Boston, allowing the Trump administration to slash $250 million for more than 100 teacher training grants for DEI and other woke programs.
In a 5-4 decision nine days after the request, the Supremes sided with the Trump administration’s emergency request to stay the court order by judge Myong J. Joun of the federal District of Massachusetts – who had ordered the Trump administration to “immediately restore” the “pre-existing status quo prior to the termination.”
According to the ruling – which is likely to narrow the ability of district courts to halt agency actions involving grant function, Joun lacked authority to order the Trump admin to restore the funding.
The Supreme Court upheld the Biden administration’s regulations on “ghost guns” Wednesday, finding that guns assembled using at-home kits are subject to the same rules as traditional firearms, including requirements that they carry a serial number and that purchasers undergo a federal background check before buying them.
The justices ruled 7-2 in Garland v. VanDerStok to preserve rules imposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 2022 to combat what the government called an explosion of “ghost gun” usage in criminal activity. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Second Amendment issues aside, the Supreme Court missed an opportunity to par back some post-Chevron regulatory overreach.
He’s outa there: “South Korean court removes president from office, says he violated duties. The Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol over his martial law gambit. South Korea will elect a new president within 60 days.”
A Manhattan judge on Wednesday dismissed the federal corruption charges levied against New York City Mayor Eric Adams last fall, partially granting the Trump-era Department of Justice’s request to drop the case.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho, who presided over the Democratic mayor’s case in the Southern District of New York, permanently dismissed the charges in a highly anticipated decision.
In February, the DOJ ordered federal prosecutors to stop pursuing the case and subsequently asked the judge to dismiss the case without prejudice. That would have allowed prosecutors to refile charges against Adams in the future if the DOJ wanted to do so.
Ho dismissed the indictment with prejudice, meaning the prosecution cannot be revived based on the same evidence used in the original case.
The DOJ’s move, spearheaded by former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, sparked accusations that the Trump administration and Adams were engaged in a “quid pro quo” agreement, in which the mayor’s charges would have been dropped as a way of ensuring his cooperation with enforcing the White House’s immigration agenda. Adams denied the allegations of a quid pro quo.
In his order, Ho wrote that dismissing the case without prejudice “would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”
The Biden-appointed judge described that perception as “inevitable” and concluded that “it counsels in favor of dismissal with prejudice.”
Adams requested a dismissal with prejudice, to which the DOJ did not object.
In September, Adams was indicted on five counts of corruption related to his alleged acceptance of benefits, such as free luxury travel from Turkish officials, in exchange for pressuring city inspectors to open a new Turkish consulate building in Manhattan without a proper fire inspection. Adams pleaded not guilty.
The New York City mayor has suggested his indictment was politically motivated because of his criticisms of the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies.
Given that Adams was a Democratic mayor of New York City, my working assumption is that he’s dirty as sin in general, but not necessarily for this particular case. And it’s entirely possibly that the Biden Administration did indict him for daring to question open borders. Also, even if guilty, dismissing his charges might be justified in the same way that a mobster who turns state evidence gets their charges dismissed. (Honestly, three different iPhones seems like overkill. One iPhone and two burner phones for different dirty deals seems sufficient, unless you’ve got so much dirty going down that you need to use the Stringer Bell SIM card swap to keep all the balls in the air. On the other hand, were the FBI to raid my house for some reason, they too might seize three iPhones: One working, and two old, mostly broken models…)
But wait! Adams says that, while he’s still a Democrat, he’s running for re-election as an Independent. Maybe he figures (correctly) that his heretical questioning of The Message means he has no chance to win a Democratic primary…
EuroElites are hoping that lawfare can succeed there even though it failed against Trump: “French Court Sentences Marine Le Pen to Jail, Bars Right-Wing Presidential Hopeful from Running in 2027.”
A French court on Monday sentenced right-wing leader Marine Le Pen to jail and barred her from seeking public office again for five years, preventing her from running in France’s 2027 presidential election after she was found guilty of embezzlement.
A member of the French Parliament, Le Pen and others were accused of misusing 4.4 million euros, or $4.8 million, in European Parliament funds to pay staff who were working for her National Rally party. In violation of European Union regulations, the alleged embezzlement occurred between 2004 and 2016. She was found guilty alongside eight members of Parliament and twelve assistants. The French right-wing leader has denied any wrongdoing.
Le Pen faces a prison sentence of four years, with two of those years suspended; a $108,000 fine; and ineligibility to run for office for five years, effective immediately. She is expected to appeal the ruling.
But even if she does appeal, the political ban will likely remain in place unless she is victorious. Meanwhile, her prison sentence will be suspended during the appeals process. The ban doesn’t affect her parliamentary position.
There’s widespread belief that “embezzlement” charges like this would never be employed against politicians that hew the EU line.
Earlier this month, President Trump wrote to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying he wanted to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, emphasizing “I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran. . . . I’m not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily.” This weekend, the Iranians rejected direct negotiations but left the door open to indirect negotiations. This is all occurring as a quarter of the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 bombers are at the joint U.S.-United Kingdom military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. A U.S. military conflict with Iran feels increasingly plausible.
Snip.
Northrop B-2 Spirits are what the U.S. Air Force uses when it needs to drop very powerful bombs in a very stealthy manner. Among those very powerful bombs is the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) Bunker-Buster, a 30,000 pound bomb that is described as “the most powerful and deeply burrowing non-nuclear bunker buster on earth.” In fact, the B-2 is the only plane that can carry a MOP.
The MOP is exactly the sort of weapon you would use if you wanted to hit Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. On March 25, Iranian state media “showed Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Mohammad Baqeri and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force commander, showing off what Iranian media said was an ‘underground missile city.’”
(Howard Altman of The War Zone noted that from what viewers could see in the video, “The munitions are stored out in the open in long continuous tunnels and large caverns with no, or at least limited, blast doors or separated revetments. That could result in devastating consequences should the facility be breached in an attack. The lack of these protective measures could lead to an absolutely massive chain reaction of secondary explosions.”)
As of May 2024, Iran has 42 declared facilities and at least 8 suspected facilities in its nuclear program.
Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested over three dozen individuals—including suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua—near Dripping Springs, a small town a half-hour west of Austin.
Law enforcement also seized narcotics during the Tuesday raid and took nine minors into custody.
Texas continues to cement itself as a hub for capital investment with the opening of a new Lone Star State-based stock exchange on Monday.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced plans to establish its own exchange in Dallas back in February — which came on the heels of the Texas Stock Exchange being founded in June last year.
“As the state with the largest number of NYSE listings, representing over $3.7 trillion in market value for our community, Texas is a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere,” NYSE Group President Lynn Martin said in a press release at the time.
Now, March 31 is opening day for the Texas-based New York Stock Exchange, which Martin said will “allow companies to capitalize on the pro-business dynamics in Texas.”
The NYSE also announced that the first security to be listed on the Texas exchange will be the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).
TMTG describes itself as a “social media and technology focused company” where its goal is to “end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back.” Its most well known product offering is the social media platform TruthSocial.
Headquartered in Florida, the company debuted on the NYSE in March 2024 under the ticker “DJT” and skyrocketed to a market valuation of at least $8.4 billion on an undiluted share basis during its first day of business; it currently sits around $4.37 billion in market capitalization.
“We’re honored to become the initial listing for NYSE Texas, which is a great fit for TMTG as we diversify into financial services and other realms,” said TMTG CEO and Chairman Devin Nunes.
“Texas provides a fantastic climate for business and entrepreneurship that aligns with TMTG’s mission. This listing, alongside our plans to reincorporate in Florida, shows we’re part of a growing movement to take our business to states that value free enterprise and personal freedom.”
After attending a “transgender conference” at the University of Texas at Austin, State Rep. Brian Harrison is demanding an end to the school’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.
Harrison (R-Midlothian) is calling for the university to be defunded unless it terminates the department, along with its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
“The Texas government has failed Texans, by weaponizing their tax dollars against them, their values, and their children, and I won’t stand for it, especially in light of what I recently discovered on my undercover visit to the University of Texas campus yesterday as they were hosting a transgender conference,” Harrison stated.
He warned that if the programs are not immediately dismantled, he will attempt to strip UT Austin of taxpayer funding in the upcoming state budget.
On Tuesday, Harrison shared photos captured at the 32nd Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Student Conference.
One featured a banner promoting an art exhibit called “TRANSCENDENCE: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy.” The banner shows two black men standing in front of a cross.
The event agenda for day one of the conference included a lecture titled “Keeping Time: Queer-Crip Temporal Attunement Through Tarot.”
Pamphlets and flyers throughout the library advertised “Resources for Trans Folks,” which primarily focused on the use of cross-sex hormones or mutilating surgeries used to appear like the opposite sex.
One flyer directed students to UT’s University Health Services for medical transition procedures and to the UT School of Law’s Gender Affirmation Project for legal name and gender changes.
The flyer was created by The Queer and Trans Student Alliance, which is an agency of the UT student government.
The Trump witchunt trial is suspended, PA Democrats give up the steal, the ruble collapses, a real estate developer is busted for bribery, thrash metal TDS, and an unexpected voice of sanity and reason from…Cenk Uygur?
Judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponed the sentencing hearing in President-elect Donald Trump’s New York criminal case, which had been planned for next week, in light of Trump’s election.
Merchan is giving Trump’s legal team more than a week to file its motion asking for a dismissal under the argument that his return to office provides him a new host of immunity-related defenses.
Trump’s lawyers will be required to file by December 2, after which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have until December 9 to respond.
Snip.
While Trump could face up to four years in prison, the more likely sentence in the case — should it move forward — would be probation, which could include some combination of a fine or community service, as the former and future president is a first-time offender.
“Just as a sitting President is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a letter filed Tuesday.
Trump’s team had requested a December 20 deadline to file.
Bragg, for his part, has argued in favor of freezing the case for the entirety of Trump’s term in office, and then revisiting the sentencing at the end of Trump’s tenure.
But Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove have argued dismissal of the case “is necessary under the Constitution and federal law to facilitate the orderly transition of Executive power — and in the interests of justice — following President Trump’s victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote in the 2024 Presidential election.”
To paraphrase Instapundit, we’ve entered some sort of hellworld where Cenk Uygur is a voice of moderation and reason, calling out far left pollster Allan Lichtman for blowing his election call, whereupon Lichtman shrieks that Uygur is committing “blasphemy” against him. Everyone and their dog has posted this, but I’m linking to the Asmongold clip because his seems to be the shortest.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to reinstate its “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran, targeting Tehran’s economic stability and its ability to support militant proxies and nuclear development, The Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing sources close to the transition team.
The sources revealed that the administration plans to impose stricter sanctions, particularly on Iran’s oil exports, which serve as a critical revenue source.
The anticipated sanctions could drastically reduce Iranian oil exports, which currently exceed 1.5 million barrels per day, up from a low of 400,000 barrels per day in 2020. Experts suggest that these measures would severely impact Iran’s economy. Bob McNally, an energy consultant and former US presidential adviser, indicated that reducing exports to a fraction of current levels would leave Iran in a far worse economic position than during Trump’s first term.
In a followup to yesterday’s story, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state entities to divest from investments in Communist China. “One investment group specifically highlighted in Abbott’s letter is the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), which manages billions of dollars in assets for both university systems. UTIMCO has come under scrutiny after a Texas Scorecard investigation revealed its investments in more than 50 Chinese companies.”
El Salvador’s gang prison doesn’t play around. A whole lot of this would (rightfully) be considered cruel and unusual punishment, but we should veer more in this direction rather than putting illegal alien rapists up in hotels…
Sherman Roberts, who led the City Wide Community Development Corporation, was indicted four years ago for a bribery scheme involving former Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway and former City Council Member Carolyn Davis for their support of loans and low-income housing tax credits for his apartment projects.
He now faces up to five years in prison and is expected to be sentenced in March.
Roberts paid Davis several thousand dollars in cash, and promised future payments after her council tenure ended, in return for Davis’ support of his projects — Serenity Place, Runyon Springs, and Patriot’s Crossing — according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Roberts was a Democratic Party donor, but in fairly piddling amounts for a real estate developer…
The DOJ wants Google to sell off Chrome. Well, that would be a start in addressing their monopoly position in Internet searches, but would hardly be sufficient. They should also have to spin off YouTube. And because consumers were directly harmed by their monopoly, they should be required to add 2GB of storage a year for every Gmail user for 20 years, he said self-interestedly. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The time of the turning: “Sold-out NYC crowd ERUPTS, chants USA as President Trump attends UFC 309 with Elon Musk, RFK Jr, Speaker Johnson.”
Shocking news from the world of science: Weed isn’t good for you. “According to their findings, exposure to cannabis was associated with a range of cancers – breast, pancreatic, liver, thyroid, testicular and lymphoma – that also develop quickly and are more aggressive.”
Sweden’s Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg is deeply afraid of…bananas.
