Happy Independence Day! It’s rained most of the last 24 hours here in central Texas, so the good news is no burn ban means we can set off fireworks, but the downside is significant flooding in the Hill Country (Kerville was particularly hard-hit).
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is now law, employment ticks up, more high profile leftist/media perverts busted, Democrats remain stuck on stupid, some Republicans retire, and proof, yet again, that the rules for the well-heeled are different than for other people.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Employers added 147,000 jobs in June as U.S. labor market continues to defy expectations.” For the MSM, it’s always “unexpectedly” all the way down.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist was arrested and charged after authorities allegedly discovered child porn on his work computer, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday.
Thomas Pham LeGro, a 48-year-old video editor at the news outlet, was taken into custody on Thursday after FBI agents raided his Washington, DC, home and discovered a folder on his work laptop which contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to Pirro’s office.
FBI agents also discovered “fractured pieces of a hard drive in the hallway outside the room where LeGro’s work laptop was found,” during the execution of the search warrant.
The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports and correct records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. The university issued a statement on Tuesday vowing to comply with Title IX on the basis of biological sex and says it will apologize to “disadvantaged” female athletes.
“While Penn’s policies during the 2021-2022 swim season were in accordance with NCAA eligibility rules at the time, we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” Penn President J. Larry Jameson said in a statement. “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
The U.S. Education Department and UPenn announced the voluntary agreement as part of a resolution of a federal civil rights case focused on Thomas, the biological male who won a Division I women’s title for the Ivy League university in 2022. The department’s Office for Civil Rights found that UPenn had violated Title IX by allowing a male to compete in women’s sports and occupy female-only facilities.
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the University for future generations of female athletes.”
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened the Title IX investigation into UPenn on February 6, following President Donald Trump’s executive order “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which interpreted Title IX law on the basis of biological sex rather than gender identity. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.
Trump’s diplomatic method, the exact opposite of what standard diplomats recommend, is a roaring success.
The least diplomatic president in U.S. history is scoring diplomatic victories.
Over the last couple of days, Donald Trump has gotten NATO to agree to a defense spending target of 5 percent and backed Canada off imposing a digital services tax on American tech firms.
He’s done this while being loathed by many of his foreign interlocutors. In fact, Trump has executed a near-complete inversion of the typical diplomatic formula. He’s not nice. He’s not conflict-averse. He’s not euphemistic. And yet he’s gotten results.
The NATO commitment, in particular, is potentially historic and could materially strengthen the position of the Western alliance for the long term.
Trump is violating the usual rules of persuasion. Abraham Lincoln famously said: “It is an old and true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’” Trump doesn’t hesitate to pour on the gall, often in ALL CAPS on Truth Social.
The leading 19th-century French diplomat Talleyrand said, “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’ a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.” Trump says “go to hell” as the start of the negotiation.
He persuades by pressuring.
He coaxes by threatening.
He de-escalates by escalating.
He wins friends and influences people by convincing them he thinks they’re freeloaders and losers.
A lot of this is a function of his personality and his experience as a Gotham real-estate developer with a nose for power dynamics, knack for showmanship, and willingness to court risk. It’s hard to see how his style of international politics will be replicable by a more traditional political figure. But undergirding his approach is a strategic insight into the gap between U.S. military and economic might and that of its allies, and how this meant there was a vast unexploited potential for the U.S. to throw its weight around.
When the U.S president is talking about pulling the plug on NATO, or cutting off trade talks with Canada — as Trump did in response to the proposed digital services tax — it’s going to get everyone’s attention.
The bull standing outside the door of the china shop is a powerful incentive to get along with the bull.
The rest of the conservative movement noticed this no later than, what, 2017? Nice of National Review to catch up…
In a post on social media platform X, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote that $14.6 billion in losses were incurred, while $245 million was seized, as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a separate post on X that hundreds of people were charged in the case.
“Public corruption will not be tolerated as the Director and I vigorously pursue bad actors who violated their oaths to all of us,” Bongino said, describing the case as the “largest healthcare fraud investigation” in the country’s history.
The investigation encompassed 50 federal districts and 12 state attorneys general, according to the DOJ. State and federal law enforcement agencies also took part, according to the FBI.
A statement issued by the DOJ said that criminal charges were filed against 324 defendants, including 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other health care workers across the United States. Officials said that 29 defendants were charged with partaking in transnational criminal groups who allegedly submitted around $12 billion in fraudulent health-related claims to U.S. health insurance companies.
Further, four defendants were apprehended in Estonia based on cooperation with law enforcement agencies in that country, while seven others were arrested at the U.S.–Mexico border or at American airports, the DOJ said.
That organization, federal prosecutors said, is accused of using individuals sent into the United States from other countries to purchase “dozens of medical supply companies located across the United States” before submitting $10.6 billion in fraudulent health care claims to Medicare for medical devices and equipment.
At the same time, that group allegedly exploited stolen identities from U.S. citizens across all 50 states, using their stolen medical information to submit the false claims, according to the DOJ.
In another action announced by the DOJ, federal officials said they filed charges in Illinois against five people, including the owners of two Pakistan-based marketing companies, in relation to a $703 million Medicare fraud scheme.
The defendants allegedly stole Medicare beneficiaries’ confidential information and sold it to laboratories and other medical companies, which then submitted false Medicare claims, according to the statement.
“The defendants allegedly used artificial intelligence to create fake recordings of Medicare beneficiaries purportedly consenting to receive certain products,” the DOJ’s statement said.
Here are some reasons why the Democratic drive to reinvent the party seems to have stalled out—and may have a hard time restarting despite their political opening.
The “’tis but a scratch” problem. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight insists, against all evidence, that his wounds are not that serious—“’tis but a scratch.” Democrats, in the aftermath of losing two of three elections to the widely-disliked Trump and seeing their coalition re-configured by massive losses among both white and nonwhite working-class voters, are still in denial about how serious their wounds are. They are not but a scratch and cannot be fixed by anything less than a full-scale overhaul of the party’s approach and image. Tinkering around the edges, while easier, will not work.
The breaking point fallacy. Democrats have a hard time thinking outside their own views of Trump and the GOP. They are deeply convinced that Trump is perhaps the worst person to ever walk the earth and find it difficult to relate to voters whose views are more mixed. They are convinced that a breaking point from Trump’s actions will inevitably be reached where voters will wake up and realize Democrats were right all along, with happy political results to follow. This fallacy undergirded Democrats’ thinking in the 2024 campaign with rather unhappy results when that breaking point was not reached. Democrats’ reliably florid responses to Trump’s outrage-of-the-day in 2025 indicates that they are still hoping that breaking point can be reached and that they are puzzled, indeed outraged, that voters have not yet mounted the barricades. Conveniently, the expectation of a breaking point let’s Democrats off the hook from changing very much in their own party.
The “whatever it is, I’m against it” problem. In the classic Marx Brothers movie, Horsefeathers, Groucho uncompromisingly asserts: “whatever it is, I’m against it.” That pretty much sums up Democrats’ approach to Trump administration proposals and actions. With very minor exceptions, Democrats have refused to support any of it, even where these actions are popular and/or are targeted at clear areas of Democratic vulnerability that needed shoring up. Little to no effort has been made to stake out a middle ground that recognizes some of Trump’s actions address areas where Democrats have screwed up, while setting out a better (kinder, gentler?) approach that would more effective and less illiberal. Easier though to adopt Groucho’s approach and avoid the uncomfortable need to acknowledge mistakes and convince voters you won’t make them again.
The rising generations chimera. Many Democrats have seized upon the fact that leading Democratic politicians tend to be quite old, if not ancient (hello, Joe Biden!) and decided what is needed is younger Democrats. The changing of the guard—that’ll do the trick! On net, it seems like a no-brainer to move younger cohorts up in the party who can better communicate with young voters where Democrats have been losing ground. But what if these young communicators aren’t communicating anything to voters that would actually help Democrats dig out of the hole they’re in? Then the changing of the guard will only help at the margins.
Take Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic Millennial who pulled off an upset victory in the New York City Democratic primary and will likely be New York’s next mayor. His energy and media savvy are admirable but his radical cultural politics—only lightly sanded off recently—and his wildly impractical economic plans don’t seem likely to change the image of the Democratic Party in a good way. But he nevertheless will be a pole of attraction in the party, just as AOC and “the Squad” were in the aftermath of the 2018 election—and we saw how well that worked out. Democrats’ thirst for generational excitement, whatever its content, will make it even harder than it already was for Democrats to re-orient the party around an effective majoritarian politics.
Snip.
The “round up the usual suspects” problem. In the movie Casablanca, Captain Reynaud (Claude Rains) concludes the film by saying “round up the usual suspects.” The Democrats have an establishment and establishments don’t like change. Thus, there is a built-in tendency to blame messaging, narrative, lack of coalitional input, etc.—the “usual suspects”—rather than deeper problems of culture, economic policy, and class antagonism. Most recently this tendency was on display in the formation of a Project 2029 group drawn from various sectors of the Democratic establishment to craft a new, improved approach for the Democrats. As the Politico article on the group notes:
Some would-be allies are skeptical that such an ideologically diverse and divergent set of policy minds could craft anything close to a coherent agenda, let alone a politically winning one.
“Developing policies by checking every coalitional box is how we got in this mess in the first place,” said Adam Jentleson, who has spent recent months preparing to open a new think tank called Searchlight. “There is no way to propose the kind of policies the Democratic Party needs to adopt without pissing off some part of the interest-group Borg. And if you’re too afraid to do that, you don’t have what it takes to steer the party in the right direction.”
For Texas voters: “17 Proposed Amendments Head to Voters in November.” Expected a more detailed post on this sometime in October.
“Houston Parents Sue HISD Over Daughter’s Secret Social Gender Transition. A Houston family is taking the state’s largest school district to court, claiming their daughter was socially transitioned by school staff in direct defiance of their explicit instructions.”
Terry and Sarah Osborn, the parents of a Bellaire High School student, filed a federal lawsuit against the Houston Independent School District earlier this week, alleging the school socially transitioned their daughter against their explicit wishes. The lawsuit names several individuals, including Superintendent Mike Miles, Bellaire High School Principal Michael Niggli, school counselor Sarah Ray, and multiple teachers.
According to the suit, more than six Bellaire High School employees referred to the Osborns’ daughter—who is biologically female—using a masculine name and male pronouns for two years. The situation began in ninth grade, when the student’s theater teacher distributed a worksheet asking for students’ names and pronouns. Sarah Osborn specifically requested that the teacher use her daughter’s legal name and female pronouns. However, the student altered the worksheet, crossing out the original entry and writing in “he/him” pronouns.
The parents claim they did not learn about the consistent use of male pronouns by teachers until the student was well into her sophomore year. At that point, they formally requested that teachers revert to using their daughter’s biological pronouns. Despite these repeated requests, the lawsuit alleges that the teachers continued using male pronouns.
By the student’s junior year, the Osborns met with Principal Niggli to address the situation directly. They reiterated their concerns about the school’s handling of the matter. Principal Niggli attempted a compromise: teachers would refer to the student only by her last name to avoid using any pronouns at all. The Osborns, however, rejected this compromise and again instructed the school to use their daughter’s legal name and female pronouns.
The lawsuit also notes that the Osborns filed a request under the Texas Public Information Act, seeking employee communications regarding their daughter, HISD’s policies on the use of preferred names and pronouns, and documentation related to the student’s counseling sessions over the years. Elizabeth Rice, HISD’s attorney, responded that the request was too broad and asked for clarification. When the Osborns’ attorney insisted the request was sufficiently specific, Rice again claimed it was overly broad and said fulfilling it would require producing at least 77,344 pages of emails.
The lawsuit argues that HISD’s responses are evidence of “widespread past and ongoing treatment of their daughter as a boy by its employees,” carried out without parental consent and in direct opposition to explicit parental instructions.
The Osborns are asking the court to declare HISD’s policies in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, prohibit the district from using masculine pronouns or an alternate name for their daughter, and award attorney’s fees along with compensatory and punitive damages. The complaint states the district violated the parents’ “fundamental parental rights” under the Fourteenth Amendment and their “sincerely held religious beliefs” protected by the First Amendment.
Not only should the school district pay, but everyone involved in this should having their teaching certificate revoked and never be allowed to teach in the state again.
Yeah, Kerville has been hit hard by the flooding:
More good news: “Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa killed in airstrike, IDF says.” Unlike Democrats, I think it’s a good thing when terrorist leaders get killed.
Diddy do it, but according to a jury, not all of it. “Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was convicted of a prostitution-related offense but acquitted Wednesday of sex trafficking and racketeering charges.”
A steady stream of reports is now developing that suggests Covid vaccinations may indeed hurt fertility and pregnancy outcomes.
I reported on a rat study that clearly showed fertility was impacted after the animals were injected with mRNA Covid vaccines. A recently published study (not peer reviewed yet) looking at data from Israeli women found a substantially higher-than-expected number of eventual fetal losses associated with Covid vaccination during gestational weeks 8-13.
A newly published peer-reviewed study analyzing nationwide data from the Czech Republic has reported a significant association between Covid vaccination and reduced fertility rates in women of childbearing age. The study, which examined approximately 1.3 million women aged 18–39 between January 2021 and December 2023, found that women who received the Covid vaccine before conception had a substantially lower rate of successful conceptions (“SC”, i.e., pregnancies that resulted in live births) compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.
Of course, vaccine mandate advocates swore up and down it was absolutely safe. Meanwhile, it seemsto be harming those with very low chances of dying from Flu Manchu…
“Florida Gov. DeSantis Announces Tax Holiday On Guns.” September 8 through December 21. Your move, Greg Abbott…
On July 1, District Judge Ann Donnelly of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a 16-count indictment against Huawei and its subsidiaries.
Huawei, which is closely tied to the Chinese communist regime, stands accused of racketeering, stealing trade secrets from six U.S. companies, and committing bank fraud.
With Donnelly’s ruling, the case will move forward toward trial. Currently, the proceedings are scheduled to begin on May 4, 2026.
Huawei stands charged with using a Hong Kong-based front company, Skycom, to conduct business in Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions and with misleading banks in order to facilitate more than $100 million in illegal money transfers.
Additionally, the indictment alleges that Huawei engaged in racketeering to expand its global brand.
“Harris County Agencies Reportedly Spent Millions With No Paper Trail.” Even lefty County Judge Lina Hidalgo has been raising the alarm over it. Maybe she didn’t get her cut…
“Famed Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. was arrested for overstaying his visa and lying on a green card application and will be deported to Mexico, where he faces organized crime charges.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Spanish Operator of Proposed High-Speed Rail Liquidates American Subsidiary.” Yet another roadblock to the pie-in-the-sky Texas high speed rail project that will never be built.
So remember that story a while back in New York magazine’s The Cut, when the (I kid you not) Finance Reporter got scammed, withdrew $50,000 in cash from a bank, and handed it to a total stranger? To a lot of people, the details didn’t add up. Can you even withdraw $50,000 in cash without filling in a boatload for forms or triggering fraud warnings? One reporter went digging for the truth, and found out that, yeah, it looks like it’s true and you can just waltz out with that much cash…if you’re related to the Roosevelts.
So Diamond Distributors declared bankruptcy, and the new owners evidently decided, “Hey we can just sell all this consignment inventory we have, not pay the publishers for it, and use the money to pay back this Chase loan.” The publishers disagree…
This week brought not one, but gully washers to the Austin area, so now I’m fighting a war against a zillion millipedes climbing the walls to invade every nook and crevice of my home, so I’ve been spraying a lot of pesticide around windows. A Supreme Court win for Trump, lots of budget wrangles, a look at the burgeoning Democrat Party civil war, antifa finally gets investigated, and more Harvard-bashing from the Babylon Bee.
The Supreme Court on Friday sided with the Trump administration – allowing them to revoke temporary legal status granted to over 500,000 immigrants by the Biden administration.
In a 7-2 vote, the court granted an emergency application filed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that ends the Biden program which granted 532,000 people from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua permission to temporarily live and work in the United States.
This Part 1 report will focus on the George Soros-funded NEO Philanthropy which is funding and orchestrating a massive, nationwide illegal immigration scheme through NEO’s the Four Freedoms Fund.
In the 2024 election, NEO Philanthropy’s Four Freedom Fund sought to raise $5 million to help illegal immigrants stay in the country in the event of a victory by Donald Trump.
A Capital Research report shows NEO Philanthropy and its advocacy sibling received $21 million from the Soros Network to support “advocacy on Latinx rights and empowerment,” change policy in North Carolina, register voters and fund get-out-the-vote efforts among “historically disenfranchised voters” (read: likely Democrats), and boost the Movement for Black Lives.
The Four Freedoms Fund is a donor collaborative of NEO Philanthropy. The Fund primarily focuses on pushing left-of-center immigration policies, including “legalization of undocumented immigrants” through a path to citizenship and comprehensive immigration reform legislation. The Fund is critical of what it calls “anti-immigrant ordinances” created by conservative legislators, including deportations by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).
NEO Philanthropy (formerly Public Interest Projects) is a New York-based nonprofit that serves as a fiscal clearinghouse for left-of-center causes. The group serves as a vehicle for left-of-center foundations to pool resources, hosts donor-advised funds, and sponsors various advocacy projects.
The organization is the fiscal sponsor of left-of-center entities, including the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, a voter mobilization group. Disbursing grant money remains one of NEO’s primary functions; NEO Philanthropy gave close to 60 percent of its total expenditures as grants.
Inside Philanthropy described NEO as “an intermediary that doesn’t have its own resources for grantmaking.” The group receives funding from major left-of-center donors institutions including the Atlantic Philanthropies, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Gill Foundation, the Pew Trusts and the Carnegie Corporation, among others. The organization and similar left-of-center groups that engage in “nonpartisan” voter registration have received criticism for appearing to favor the registration of voters exceptionally likely to vote for Democrat candidates.
According to a 2016 report, an Obama administration appointee managed a fund that George Soros used to bankroll election-related activities likely increasing the number of “voters of color” and “improving odds” of electing preferred candidates.
Karen Narasaki, a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, managed the Soros-backed NEO-linked Shelby Response Fund. Narasaki worked as a corporate attorney at Russia Collusion hoax conspirator Perkins Coie in Seattle.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed Congressional Republicans on Tuesday over their lack of action on cutting the government waste and abuse identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Back in March, Congress passed the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, which maintained funding for USAID at the FY 2024 level, effectively extending existing funding for the purportedly “rogue agency” through September 30, 2025.
The “Big Beautiful Bill,” which narrowly passed in the House of Representatives last week, reportedly includes $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including the largest-ever welfare reform.
But because it is a reconciliation bill, Senate rules limit the cuts to “mandatory” spending only, such as Medicaid and Food Stamps, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller explained on X. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory, so they are not addressed in the Big Beautiful Bill.
Many conservatives have expressed disappointment that Republicans have failed to codify any meaningful cuts in wasteful discretionary spending, as identified by DOGE, in separate bills. Meanwhile, the director of the National Economic Council promised last week that “way more spending cuts” are coming later this year.
In a post on X, DeSantis put the heat on Republicans to do just that, pointing out that DOGE Chief Elon Musk “took massive incoming,” which included “attacks on his companies” and “personal smears” while leading the DOGE effort. “He became public enemy #1 of legacy media around the world,” DeSantis wrote. “To see Republicans in Congress cast aside any meaningful spending reductions (and, in fact, fully fund things like USAID) is demoralizing and represents a betrayal of the voters who elected them,” the governor added.
“House Republicans plan to tee up its first Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut bill next week targeting foreign aid, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) revealed on Wednesday.” Call me thick, but I just don’t see how Republicans can beat a Democratic filibuster without reconciliation, and I don’t think they can use that for this bill.
Hispanic moderates increasingly resemble white moderates politically. They are voting their ideology and political views not their group identity. This is further illustrated by examining Hispanic moderates’ more specific political views.
1. Hispanic moderates think the Democrats have moved too far left. In a 2024 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint, three in five Hispanic moderates agreed the Democratic Party had moved too far left on economic issues and about the same felt they’d moved too far left on “cultural and social issues.”
2. Hispanic moderates are hawkish on illegal immigration. In the same survey, more of these voters thought “America needs to close its borders to outsiders and reduce all levels of immigration” than believed “people around the world have the right to claim asylum and America should welcome more immigrants into the country.” Most Hispanic moderates endorsed a combination of border security and more legal immigration.
Also in that survey, net support (support minus oppose) among Hispanic moderates for a proposal to “use existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border” was 59 points (63 percent to 4 percent). Similarly, Hispanic moderates supported by 36 points restricting “the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.” And they backed deputizing “the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States” by 34 points.
3. Hispanic moderates are tough on crime and supportive of law enforcement. Hispanic moderates supported by 53 points a proposal to “increase funding for police and strengthen criminal penalties for assaulting cops.” These voters even supported by 17 points a draconian proposal to “change federal law so that drug traffickers can receive the death penalty.”
4. Hispanic moderates are opposed to Democrats’ stance on transgender issues. In a 2023 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot, voters were offered the following three choices:
States should protect all transgender youth by providing access to puberty blockers and transition surgeries if desired, and allowing them to participate fully in all activities and sports as the gender of their choice;
States should protect the rights of transgender adults to live as they want but implement stronger regulations on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors; or
States should ban all gender transition treatments for minors and stop discussion of gender ideology in all public schools.
The first position here, emphasizing availability of medical treatments for trans-identifying children (euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming” care) and sports participation dictated by gender self-identification, is unquestionably the default position of the Democratic Party. Indeed, to dissent in any way from this position in Democratic circles is still enough to earn one the sobriquet of “hateful bigot”—or worse. Yet less than a fifth of Hispanic moderates (19 percent) endorse this position. Nearly twice as many of these voters endorse the strictest position: that medical treatments for transgender children should simply be banned, as should discussion of gender ideology in public schools. And 45 percent favor the second position, advocating stronger regulation on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors. Together, the latter two positions make it four-to-one among Hispanic moderates against the Democratic position.
5. Hispanic moderates want cheap, reliable energy not a renewables revolution. Cost and reliability is what Hispanic moderates really care about when it comes to energy. Given four choices of their energy policy priorities in a 2024 YouGov climate issues survey for AEI’s Center for Technology, Science and Energy, 49 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them. Another 25 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Together that’s 74 percent of Hispanic moderates prioritizing the cost or reliability of energy. In contrast, just 21 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important. (Another 4 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security).
Unsurprisingly given this pattern, it turns out that Hispanic moderates just don’t care very much about the climate change issue. In the survey, voters were asked to assess their priorities for the government to address in the coming year. Among 18 options, climate change ranked 14th, beating out only global trade, drug addiction, racial issues, and the problems of poor people.
In terms of general energy strategy, when presented with a choice among three options—a rapid green energy transition, an “all of the above” energy policy, and emphasizing fossil fuels—Hispanic moderates strongly prefer an “all of the above” approach to energy policy including oil, gas, renewables, and nuclear. Only a fifth support a rapid transition to renewables—actually less than support flat-out stopping the renewables push. Hispanic moderates’ preference for an “all of the above” energy strategy is reinforced by their answers to a binary question asking if they preferred using a mix of energy sources versus phasing out fossil fuels. The overwhelming judgement: 71 to 29 percent against eliminating fossil fuels.
So Democratic Party policy falls into two categories for moderate Hispanics: The ones that are low priority, and the ones they actively hate.
The Democratic Party is indeed in trouble, and once Jeffrey Blehar gets past the requisite NRO anti-Trump sneers, he correctly fingers the social justice culprits.
The Democratic Party is being pulled apart by horses: On one hand, the party is increasingly held in contempt by once reliable voter demographics (Hispanics, African Americans, working-class men) as out-of-touch elitists taking orders from the Ivy League and the progressive ultra-left. On the other hand — and just as relevantly — the party is crippled from within by that same hard-left faction, which has held the ideological whip-hand over Democrats’ social agenda for a decade now.
These people are the problem. The inflexibly ratcheting social demands of the progressive activist/academic elite are the reason Democrats are in enormous trouble and will be even after Trump is forgotten. And these people are both practically and (more importantly for Democratic politics) morally entrenched within the party at all levels except the top strategic layer. They will not concede power easily, if at all. A civil war thus brews in the Democratic Party’s intellectual/activist wing against its reform-minded moderates. (Grab your popcorn.)
I’m not sure that the entire cadre of “reform-minded moderates” with any appreciable role within the party itself could fill a high school basketball arena. Within the ranks of the DNC itself, I doubt they could fill a Denny’s. But the corrupt wing of the party has indeed come to the realization that the policies of the insane wing are so unpopular that the corrupt wing is in danger of longer being able to rake off its usual graft, hence the crisis. Too bad for them that they’ve essentially ceded the Party’s entire ideological apparatus to the insane wing, and the predominately over-60 corrupt wing has no viable way to change course or purge their own institutions.
Another obvious example beckons: The hilarious plight of David Hogg, the whippet-faced punk set to be voted out of his newly acquired vice chairmanship at the Democratic National Committee next month for being a mutinous weasel, is emblematic of how the Democratic Party is currently consuming itself in internecine war. Hogg, recall, was essentially given the gig by a bunch of older, clueless Democratic Party grandees who voted for him in the hopes he would help bring disaffected young progressives back into the fold. Instead Hogg understands himself to be working not for the Democratic Party, but rather for the progressive movement — hence his announcement that he would use his position and powers to support primary challengers to insufficiently woke Democratic incumbents.
The future looks even more grim for the Democrats for structural reasons. The 2030 census is expected to subtract a swath of House seats (and thus electoral votes) from California and New York, in favor of red states like Florida and Texas. While this bodes ill for remaining Republican incumbents in those states (who can expect to be brutally redistricted away by 2032), it bodes in many ways even worse for the remaining Democrats, who will be left fighting over the division of a shrinking pie.
Understand: A significant number of those currently angry with the Democrats are angry at them for their failure to resist Donald Trump volubly enough, not for being too far to the left. These are the people Democrats absolutely must carry reliably as part of any victorious national coalition, given their preponderance within the party electorate. They will make demands accordingly. If anything, expect the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in its biggest states to lean even more progressive in years ahead as the moderates lose internal battles for position.
There are no Democrat moderates, only Zuul. Assuming Zuul is a 400-pound, purple-haired tranny screaming about Gaza…
After five years of letting Antifa run wild in the Pacific northwest, the FBI is finally investigating.
The FBI has indicated it will investigate the attack on a Christian group and the cops who came to intervene after a Memorial Day weekend melee in Seattle.
After the attack and outrageous response by Seattle’s Mayor Bruce Harrell, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino issued this statement: “We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert. Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”
I claimed in this must-read background story, Seattle Attack Offers More Proof That Antifa Thugs Are Just Democrat Anti-Christian Shock Troops, exactly what the title says, and that these anti-Christian attacks are nothing new. Further, after watching these groups for years, I can attest that the Seattle and Portland Antifa groups intermingle and help each other out, as Andy Ngo points out above.
Hopefully the current investigation will also target their finding sources and start bringing RICO charges against the entire terrorist network. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“[Texas] House Passes Immigration Enforcement Bill Mandating Local ICE Cooperation. Lawmakers approved legislation requiring counties with jails to enter into immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government.”
President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders designed to fast-track the development and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors on Friday culminating a dramatic policy shift aimed at revitalizing the U.S. nuclear energy sector.
Flanked in the Oval Office by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump declared nuclear power “a hot industry” and praised it as “very safe and environmental.”
Burgum called it “a huge day for the nuclear industry,” and added, “Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of over regulation of an industry.”
These orders aim to strip away what the administration describes as decades of regulatory overreach that have stifled innovation and stagnated the industry. “America’s greatness has always come from innovation,” Burgum said. “We led post-World War Two in all things nuclear. But then we’ve been stagnated. We’ve choked it with over regulation.”
The first of Trump’s executive orders directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to accelerate research and development, speed up reactor testing at national labs, and initiate a two-year pilot program for reactor construction.
A second order clears regulatory hurdles for the DOE and the Department of Defense (DOD) to build reactors on federal land — efforts that will bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) entirely by using the agencies’ own regulatory authority.
The Trump administration has intensified the U.S.-China trade war by suspending exports of critical American technologies to China, including jet engine parts, semiconductor design software, specialized chemicals, and industrial machinery. The move follows Beijing’s recent decision to restrict shipments of rare earth minerals to U.S. firms. In a further escalation, Washington also announced plans to begin revoking visas for Chinese students in sensitive research fields.
Snip.
Adding to the trade tensions, sources familiar with the matter told The New York Times overnight that the U.S. Commerce Department had suspended certain export licenses allowing U.S. companies to supply engine parts and technology to China’s state-owned aircraft manufacturer, Comac (Commercial Aircraft Corp of China).
Comac has stockpiled engines and parts in anticipation of potential trade restrictions. Still, over time, the move could significantly undermine China’s aviation. The company’s C919 passenger jet—its flagship jet to challenge rival Boeing and Airbus—relies heavily on GE Aerospace–Safran’s LEAP engines.
Keep in mind that certain semiconductor parts had already been embargoed under Biden. A complete embargo of semiconductor parts is going to screw China’s semiconductor industry, as some of those parts simply can’t be sourced locally, to say nothing of losing access to trained maintenance techs, software upgrades, etc.
Ukraine claimed credit for two explosions in Vladivostok, which is on Russia’s Pacific coast and is a whopping 6,800km from Ukraine.
Saudi Arab wants you to know that he stands with Israel because Palestinians suck:
An Arab man from Saudi Arabia in a message to Palestinians:
"Who are you trying to fool? You have no land and no case. This land belongs to Israel for the people of Israel. You Palestinians are evil in any country you set foot on!"
California starts backing away from letting boys compete in girls events. Timidly and halfheartedly, to be sure, but something vaguely resembling progress. Gavin Newsom’s secret 2028 presidential race polling must show that tranny pandering is killing him in any general matchup…
A bill to make Daylight Savings Time permanent has passed both the Texas house and senate and heads to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk to be signed, but can’t take effect until federal law changes to accommodate it.
MSNBC’s new prime time lineup, which debuted on May 5th, failed to connect with viewers in its first three weeks as the network saw its audience decline to near record lows – especially in the key 25-54 age demographic.
Overall for May, MSNBC dropped 41% in the primetime demo and 34% in the total day demo compared to May of 2024. In total viewers, the network was down 33% across total day and 24% in prime time. MSNBC’s total day demo viewership sank to 49,000 average viewers and 73,000 in prime time – its second worst ever showing for a month behind January of 2025.
Fox News was the only of the big three networks to see year-over-year gains for May, up 21% in total viewers and 22% in total day demo viewers compared to 2024. In prime time, Fox gained 23% in total viewers and was up 32% in the demo.
CNN was down 24% in total day viewers and 27% in the daytime demo, while in prime time the network dropped 18% in total viewers and 21% in the demo. CNN’s prime time average came in at only 426,000 total viewers, compared to Fox News’s 2.5 million viewers and MSNBC’s average of 877,000 viewers.
Why would you even bother to advertise on MSNBC? 79,000 is less people than fill a big college football stadium on a Saturday…
Speaking of CNN, the red-pilling of Jake Tapper continues apace. His son is a gamer and high school football player who wants to be a policeman, so naturally lefty sorts immediately assumed he was a racist.
And despite his book tour, Tapper’s ratings are down as well. Why, it’s like viewers believe Tapper will continue to lie to protect Democrats in the future…
100% of studio headed by woman who won’t hire white people laid off.
The city of Austin wants to spend $5.8 million on art about hybrid plant women for an airport expansion.
The Austin City Council is set to vote again on art for the airport expansion. After postponing the vote because of outrage for using out of town artist. Well they're back at it. 🧵 1/5 Item 1 the biggest chunk: Saya Woolfalk not to exceed $5.8 million is out of NYC pic.twitter.com/SiApWQVc4P
In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, devised a way to turn ordinary wood into a material stronger than steel. It seemed like yet another headline-grabbing discovery that wouldn’t make it out of the lab.
“All these people came to him,” said Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood, “He’s like, OK, this is amazing, but I’m a university professor. I don’t know quite what to do about it.”
Rather than give up, Hu spent the next few years refining the technology, reducing the time it took to make the material from more than a week to a few hours. Soon, it was ready to commercialize, and he licensed the technology to InventWood.
Now, the startup’s first batches of Superwood will be produced starting this summer.
“Right now, coming out of this first-of-a-kind commercial plant — so it’s a smaller plant — we’re focused on skin applications,” Lau said. “Eventually we want to get to the bones of the building. Ninety percent of the carbon impact from buildings is concrete and steel in the construction of the building.”
To build the factory, InventWood has raised $15 million in the first close of a Series A round. The round was led by the Grantham Foundation with participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders Vision, and Muus Climate Partners, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.
InventWood’s Superwood product starts with regular timber, which is mostly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The goal is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood. “The cellulose nanocrystal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber,” Lau said.
The company treats it with “food industry” chemicals to modify the molecular structure of the wood, he said, and then compresses the result to increase the hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules.
“We might densify the material by 4x and you might think, ‘Oh, it’ll be four times strong, because it has four times the fiber.’ But it’s actually more like 10 times stronger because of all these extra bonds that get created,” Lau said.
The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better.
Some grains of salt are probably in order here, as this sounds just a little too good to be true, and there are always concerns about material longevity. But materials science is constantly advancing, so maybe this actually will pan out.
“Elon Musk Leaves Job Of Making Government More Efficient For Much Easier Job Of Sending Humans To Mars.”
