Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a massive victory in the fight to secure America’s elections. The justices cleared the way for his executive order restricting mail-in voting to move forward, and after months of Democrat officials trying to bury the policy in court, the administration finally has room to breathe.

This is a big deal.

The SAVE America Act is still stalled in the Senate, blocked by Democrats who aren’t even hiding the fact they have zero interest in verifying that voters are who they say they are. Trump’s executive order just got a green light from the nation’s highest court anyway. Election integrity doesn’t have to die in the legislative graveyard to make progress.

Trump signed the executive order, called “Ensuring Citizenship Verification And Integrity In Federal Elections,” in March 2026. It directs his administration to build lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. The Postal Service laid out its implementation plan last week, but the clock is ticking. Some states start sending mail ballots in just a few weeks, leaving the administration little time to get this right before the midterms. More court challenges remain possible.

The victory is real, but it’s not the finish line.

Mail balloting has been a target of Trump’s for years, and for good reason. The Heritage Foundation has long argued that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud, coercion, and chain-of-custody problems than in-person voting. Anyone who lived through the 2020 presidential election, one of the most disputed elections in history, watched that vulnerability play out in real time.

Democrats need to cheat to win. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

It’s official: California just criminalized publicly exposing fraud.

our tax dollars are paying for fraud, and if someone like Nick Shirley exposes this fraud he, not the fraudster, could get in trouble.

More from Nick:

These politicians need the fraud to continue and they sadly use immigrants to do so often. They fund nonprofits and NGOs with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for immigration services, including free healthcare, and have now made ‘immigration support service providers’ essentially a protected class in California.

For example, if I film a hospice or a ‘learning center’ with no patients receiving millions through Medicaid and the owner gives me a paper saying I cannot publish the video, I cannot publish it. If I publish it to expose them and they claim it caused them ‘fear’ or a third party threatens them, I face a minimum $4,000 civil fine plus the legal fees of the individual or group suing me.

This bill was created by the Attorney General’s wife and co-sponsored by CHIRLA, a nonprofit that has received over $80,000,000 in taxpayer dollars for ‘immigrant support services.’ Do you understand how this works yet? When the fraud is exposed, they create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.

By signing this bill, the Governor and California politicians expose themselves as the corrupt politicians they are. This is not the end; the fight has just begun. More to come soon; this is far from over.

An unconstitutional prior restraint First Amendment violation that will be struck down instantly the first time California tries to enforce it.

If it weren’t for voter fraud, welfare state fraud, crazy trannies, violent criminals and pandering to radical Islamic anti-Semites, the Democrat Party wouldn’t have any business model at all…

“Our goal is Communism,” David Jenkins, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, said in 2023.

DSA member Cea Weaver is New York City’s tenant tsarina. She posted via X in December 2017, “Elect more communists.” The next year, she demanded: “Seize private property.”

Weaver’s boss is Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In his Jan. 1 inaugural address, he stated: “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” He told a DSA Zoom call in 2021: The “end goal” should be “seizing the means of production.” Mamdani also said, “The abolition of private property … is preferable to what is going on right now.” These comments loudly echo Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ cornerstone collectivist text “The Communist Manifesto.”

The magnificently named Darializa Avila Chevalier rode Mamdani’s endorsement all the way to the Democrat nomination for New York’s 13th Congressional District.

“I’m a democratic socialist,” she boasted June 29 on MS Now. She also wants to “seize the means of production,” as she advised in a not-quite-deleted September 2019 X post. She confessed that December: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag.” In April 2020, she wrote: “Most of the theory I have read is communism but the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.” The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserved 3,657 such messages that Chevalier thought she had erased.

(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

For months, the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz was Tehran’s ultimate card dominated commentary on the war.

As a narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas had historically passed, it appeared to be a chokepoint Iran could close or severely disrupt at will. It did not need to destroy every tanker. Hitting a small percentage with drones, cruise missiles, speedboats, or mines would spike insurance rates, deter crews and companies, and effectively shut the strait without continuous physical control.

This idea was not new for 2026. It had long been a feature of the Iranian strategic posture, treated as both a military instrument and a political myth-proof that even under pressure Tehran retained a decisive lever over the global energy system. Parts of the Western media and independent analysts amplified the same narrative.

Relying on incomplete open-source shipping data, especially once vessels began sailing dark, many concluded that the United States had been caught unprepared and lacked a realistic path to reopen the waterway. Hormuz, they argued, was effectively closed or closable at Iran’s discretion. That framing was powerful, but also incomplete.

The assumption that Iran’s detection and targeting system could not be dismantled without dramatic escalation proved wrong. Under the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and with significant involvement from the Fifth Fleet and Air Force components, the United States ran a sustained effort to degrade the sensors Iran needed to find and hit ships.

Iran relied on mobile truck-mounted radars, drones, cruise missiles, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats, and naval mines. Inside the narrow strait, ships move in relatively predictable lanes. Iran combined active radars with passive electro-optical and infrared cameras on elevated terrain and islands such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa.

Mobile radars would radiate briefly to locate shipping, then shut down and move before anti-radiation missiles could arrive. Once a ship’s approximate position was known, strike systems could be sent to search.

The vulnerability was that every radar emission could be detected. American aircraft responded systematically with anti-radiation missiles while visual and intelligence efforts located the passive sensors. This was the core of what some involved called “draining the swamp.”

Iran had redundancy, but the number of sensors was finite. Hundreds of precision strikes gradually reduced Iran’s ability to see traffic in the strait. As the detection layer thinned, the effectiveness of the strike systems declined with it.

Parallel efforts neutralized mines with unmanned vessels and declared the southern lane near Oman largely clear. Convoys moved under escort, often at night with the automated information system (AIS) off. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis radars and standard missile (SM)-family interceptors formed the backbone; drones and Apache helicopters armed with laser-guided rockets provided additional cover. American ships also engaged IRGC speedboats that closed on the convoys.

On the commercial side, the United States addressed insurance barriers. In early March, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for maritime trade.

The DFC, working with the Treasury and CENTCOM, established a revolving reinsurance facility of roughly $20 billion-later expanded with private partners including Chubb-focused on hull, machinery, and cargo cover. Early uptake was limited. As Iranian success rates fell, more vessels joined.

Results have been significant. CENTCOM has reported assisting well over a thousand commercial vessels and moving hundreds of millions of barrels since the spring. Independent trackers often showed lower numbers because much of the traffic sailed dark. Pre-war throughput was 20 million to 21 million barrels per day.

Flows through Hormuz remain below that, but combined with the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline and Saudi Arabia’s pipeline to Yanbu in the Red Sea, volumes recovered enough to keep oil prices in the $85 to $95 range-elevated, but far from the predicted catastrophe.

The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.

The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.

U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice conceded that Americans are allowed to carry in Postal Service buildings.

Snip.

On August 18, a federal judge ruled against Biden’s “ghost gun” ban, saying it violates multiple parts of the Constitution….Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Biden’s “Ghost Gun” rule violates the 2nd and 5th Amendments,

Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is being upheld and gun rights expanded.

The cases against cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and subordinates Michelle “Jamie” “Alex” Zajko and Daniel “Hastur” Blank were made inactive on Aug. 14; All scheduled future trial dates were canceled.

LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested together following a national manhunt on Feb. 16, 2025 in rural western Maryland. They were found with a cache of weapons in their two box trucks. They had spent years moving around the country as members of the Zizians, a radical transgender cult who has been linked to at least eight violent deaths.

The three initially faced only misdemeanor trespassing, firearms and obstruction charges after an elderly Frostburg-area property owner reported that they had arrived in box trucks and asked to camp on his property.

Authorities later added charges involving the alleged illegal possession and carrying of concealed and loaded firearms.

LaSota, a biological male who identifies as a woman and uses the name “Ziz,” is the founder and ideological leader of the Zizians. The group is made up of transgender vegan extremists, several of whom have elite educational backgrounds in science and mathematics. Members embraced an esoteric ideology combining leftist transgender politics, anarchism, rationalism and veganism.

Snip.

Though the state charges have been suspended, LaSota is being held on a federal detainer request on a federal indictment of being a fugitive from justice in possession of firearms and ammunition. On Tuesday, he was transferred into federal custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.

Zajko, meanwhile, is awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania. She was charged in June with murdering her adoptive parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, on New Year’s Eve 2022. The case had gone cold for years before the surprise announcement by prosecutors in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Authorities allege Zajko traveled from Vermont to her childhood home in Chester Heights on the night of her 30th birthday and participated in the execution-style killings.

(Previously.) (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

“Other crimes included rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, DUI, robbery and attempted murder.” Also: “They also arrested members of MS-13, 18th Street Gang, and Tren de Aragua gangs.” MS-13 and Tren de Aragua we’ve covered here before. According to Wikipedia, “The 18th Street Gang, also known as Eighteen St, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic (largely Mexican and Central American), street gang from Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest street gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000–50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America.” Evidently they’re enemies with MS-13.

Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief appeared in a Travis County courtroom Friday morning as the criminal case stemming from the controversial 2023 Lotto Texas jackpot moves forward.

Grief appeared alongside his attorney before District Judge Dayna Blazey in the 167th District Court. Prosecutors and attorneys representing the entity formerly known as the Texas Lottery Commission were also present.

Court records show Grief waived formal magistration Friday. Another hearing concerning his personal-recognizance bond was set for October 16.

Shortly after Friday’s proceedings, Travis County District Attorney José Garza formally announced that a grand jury had indicted both Grief and the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission for abuse of official capacity.

The indictments were handed down April 21.

According to Garza’s office, the charges stem from the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing and allege that the commission, along with high-level management officials Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd, intentionally and knowingly misused government resources.

The DA’s office alleges the conduct was authorized by Grief, who was serving as the commission’s executive director at the time.

The indictment concerns the drawing in which a New Jersey-based lottery purchasing operation acquired nearly every possible number combination and won a $95 million jackpot.

Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving $300,000 or more.

The whole affair stinks to high heaven, and I have to think at least some Lotto Commission employees were in on it.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Wire that she is suing California for leading the charge in the lawsuit against the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger.

“California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator. And once again California is defying common sense to raise costs around the country,” Bird wrote. “That makes this a dispute between states, and the Constitution says those can only be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.