Posts Tagged ‘Department of Justice’

LinkSwarm For September 25, 2026

Friday, September 25th, 2026

The Supreme Court green-lights verifying American citizenship for voting, fraud, fraud, and more fraud, Trump gets Greenland without having to buy it, Cruz looks at EPIC City terrorism ties, the Clancy holdout juror speaks, some horrifying child abuse cases, and completely different horrifying murder house, and a surprising amount of Norm Macdonald.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Supreme Court Clears Trump Admin To Use Voter Citizenship Verification.”

    The Supreme Court on Sept. 25 said the Trump administration can use an updated immigration database to verify the citizenship of voters.

    A majority of justices agreed to stay pending the outcome of an appeal of a June order from a federal judge that barred the use of a revamped database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

    U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had found that federal officials were violating the privacy rights of American citizens by disclosing the citizenship status and Social Security numbers, among other data, in the restructured database. She vacated the 2025 update, which connected Social Security information to the system.

    A federal appeals court later upheld the decision.

    Trump administration officials then asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing in a Sept. 8 brief that the order “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by states to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes.”

    Six justices sided with the administration. In a per curiam opinion, they said that claims from the organizations that sued over the updated database “likely lack merit,” including the allegation that federal officials are violating federal laws, because Congress authorized the Department of Homeland Security to request and receive citizenship information and immigration status from other agencies, including the Social Security Administration, in a 1996 statute called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

    The majority also said that keeping in place the prohibition “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies.”

    States regularly use the system. Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden recently said the state in the fall of 2025 ran the names of its 18 million registered voters through the database and identified 2,724 people who may be noncitizens.

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

  • “USDA Targets 170 NYC Retailers in SNAP Fraud Sweep. ‘SNAP benefits should go to Americans, not fraudsters or illegal immigrants,’ White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud Executive Director Scott Brady said.”

    The Trump administration has stopped more than $5.8 billion in SNAP fraud since taking office, and its latest sweep just hit New York City, where hundreds of undercover investigations led to enforcement action against 170 retailers across all five boroughs.

    The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced “Operation SNAP Back” on Friday as part of a broader push against retailer fraud in the nearly $100 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

    “This is just the latest action in the Trump Administration’s fight against fraud. The message is clear, if you accept any portion of an annual $100 billion taxpayer program, you must follow the rules or face the consequences,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said. “We owe it to every American taxpayer to safeguard their hard-earned dollars, and these latest enforcement actions are just a small part of the Food and Nutrition Administration’s efforts to remove criminals and bad actors from food stamps.”

    The cases involve SNAP trafficking, where benefits are exchanged for cash, along with retailers accused of allowing benefits to be used for alcohol and other ineligible non-food items. USDA says penalties can range from temporary suspension to permanent disqualification and monetary fines. Several cases were also referred to the USDA Office of Inspector General for possible criminal investigation and prosecution.

    Investigators used undercover purchases at stores suspected of violating SNAP rules. Some retailers were caught exchanging benefits for cash, while others allegedly processed transactions for prohibited products.

    “SNAP benefits should go to Americans, not fraudsters or illegal immigrants,” White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud Executive Director Scott Brady said. “And thanks to Secretary Rollins, such waste and abuse will stop.”

  • Funny how this keeps happening: “Reporter finds no kids at Somali-run daycares in Seattle.”

    Here’s your reminder that the fraud is still continuing – boldly, even! – after months of nonstop reporting about it.

    Katie Daviscourt of the Post Millennial did some looking into Somali-run daycares in the Seattle area, many of which receive tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars monthly, and you’ll never guess what she found.

    Most showed no signs of kids.

    Many neighbors say they’ve never seen anything that looks like a daycare in the area!

    These families get together, watch each other’s kids sometimes, incorporate as a “daycare,” and collect tens of thousands a month.

    Here’s the PM:

    In total, Daviscourt reported that in just two neighborhoods there were over $5 million in potential abuses of taxpayer funds, and they had gone to over 20 locations reporting to be daycare locations. Under Seattle’s Child Care Assistance Program, daycares can request government funding in order to back their businesses when they are caring for low-to-middle-income families.

  • “Trump Administration Removes 760,000 ACA Enrollees, Citing Fraud and Improper Enrollment.”

    Vice President JD Vance and the White House’s anti-fraud task force canceled Affordable Care Act policies covering more than 760,000 people, the administration announced Tuesday, citing suspected improper and fraudulent enrollments.

    The task force, along with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, estimates the move will save taxpayers $2.2 billion.

    Following the cancellation of 315,000 enrollments, the vice president said officials are going to conduct “additional verification” on about 419,000 more enrollees, whom they suspect may be improperly enrolled or ineligible for the program. Similarly, the Trump administration is banning some insurance brokers who are thought to be complicit in the fraudulent enrollment.

    “We expect that most of these people are fraudulently enrolled,” Vance said. “We’re going to make sure that they’re, first of all, legal residents of the United States of America, and second of all, we’re going to make sure that they actually meet the income threshold requirements in order to receive these Obamacare benefits.”

    Snip.

    “This is what the fraud task force is all about,” the vice president said, alongside CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and other senior administration officials at Tuesday’s press conference. “Saving the American taxpayers money, and on the other hand, ensuring that these programs that are very important” are not victim to waste and fraud.

    Oz noted that CMS has issued termination notices to hundreds of brokers, including 469 in late August, and has placed a moratorium on new agents and brokers while officials investigate the eligibility of the additional 419,000 enrollees.

    “There will be no new brokers for Obamacare in this country for the next six months, and we do not feel at all conflicted about that decision, because most of the fraud, a disproportionate amount of the fraud, is taking place from these individuals,” Oz said.

    The ACA — colloquially known as Obamacare — was passed in 2010 under former President Barack Obama.

    And its baleful effects on health care and the federal budget live on…

  • “California’s Shadow Welfare System for Illegal Immigrants.”

    California runs the nation’s largest welfare system, devoting more than $180 billion annually to food, health care, and other programs for the poor and downtrodden. To sustain the arrangement, the state imposes the nation’s highest tax rates.

    In theory, these programs are supposed to help struggling Californians. In reality, many serve large numbers of illegal immigrants. Today, California oversees a shadow welfare system that allows noncitizens to receive health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance, and even smartphones on the taxpayers’ dime.

    We visited four public-services offices in Southern California, each of which admitted that illegal aliens can enroll in public-welfare programs or receive benefits on their children’s behalf. In total, California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year. The state’s shadow welfare system, it seems, shows no signs of slowing down.

    Local officials were remarkably transparent. In Glendale, we spoke to a welfare officer about California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a state-funded alternative to Supplemental Security Income that provides monthly cash assistance to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled.

    “If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI,” he said. “I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”

    In Los Angeles, we heard more of the same. We asked another welfare officer about the benefits available to illegal immigrants and their children. While some state programs are closed to illegals, we learned, they are open to those aliens’ U.S.-born children.

    “If you were born here and the child was born here, you get money for two,” the officer said of CalWORKs, the state’s version of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. “Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her.”

    These benefits add up. In California, illegal immigrants can qualify for CAPI, public health insurance, and various tax credits. Their children qualify for others, including CalWORKs and, as in other states, Section 8 rental subsidies. All told, a family of five in California with two illegal-alien parents, two U.S.-born children, and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year.

    State leaders are proud of it. In a recent podcast episode, Governor Gavin Newsom bragged about his “controversial” decision to extend Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants. His wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, encouraged people to sign up for the California Earned Income Tax Credit, a program whose promotional materials assure applicants that “no Social Security number” is “no problem.”

    Snip.

    Federal law generally prohibits states from using federal dollars to serve illegal aliens. To dodge those restrictions, California created parallel state- and locally funded programs that allowed the state to extend benefits to illegal immigrants. Perhaps as a result, more than one in four California residents today is foreign-born.

    Medicaid is a good example. Federal law prohibits states from using federal dollars to provide wraparound coverage to illegal immigrants. So, California used a state-funding “bucket” within its Medi-Cal program to extend “full-scope” coverage to illegal aliens. The expansions enrolled some 1.7 million people, costing the state an estimated $10 billion annually—more than twice what the state legislative analyst originally projected.

    California also uses a distinct legal category that enables certain migrants to qualify for state programs. The state deems certain aliens to be “permanently residing under color of law”—living in California with the “knowledge and permission” of immigration enforcement—and allows them to use this designation to enroll in Medi-Cal, CAPI, and other government programs. In practice, because aged or disabled individuals are typically not deported, this means elderly foreign retirees can arrive in California and receive extensive benefits.

    Another way that California shuffles cash to illegal immigrants is through those aliens’ children. CalWORKs allows illegal-immigrant parents to receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born kids. BenefitsCal, the state’s welfare clearinghouse, even tells applicants that the program will accept a “statement” that the applicant “intend[s] to file or [is] taking steps to become federally eligible” to qualify for the program.

    This model—permissive rules and large loopholes—costs the state billions per year. As benefits and eligibility continue to expand, that figure will only increase in the years ahead.

    California shows no sign of paring back this largesse. In 2022, Newsom signed a bill into law that extended taxpayer-funded food benefits to illegal low-income residents. Beginning next October, qualified Californians 55 and older will become eligible for that program, regardless of immigration status. California’s Legislative Analyst estimates that it could cost up to an additional $400 million a year.

    Is there any doubt that California Democrats love illegal aliens far more than citizens? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “The Smell of Corruption at Karen Bass’ L.A. Homeless Authority.

    California Democrats pulled up the ladder to prevent the likes of Nick Shirley and local reporters like JJ Smith, Amy Reichert, and many others from finding out where millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars were fraudulently spent.

    In my story, Karen Bass Feels Heat From Feds Over Millions in Stolen and Laundered ‘Homeless’ Funds, we learned that Bill Essayli, who’s supposed to be the U.S. attorney in Central California (LA area) but isn’t because John Thune can’t do his job, this week announced the arrests and indictments of four individuals who had stolen millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars. They were supposed to house and help the homeless, but they helped themselves instead.

    After the indictments were announced and after the U.S. House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Authority operators to please come to Washington to have a little chat — under oath — the homeless authority announced it no longer wanted to receive federal funding and, in fact, plans to get out of the homeless business entirely.

    Bass and the people in Los Angeles who have run this agency into the ground after bilking taxpayers for years are getting out of the homeless business.

    The California Post reports, “LAHSA will not seek to retain responsibility for the annual application for federal homelessness funding, the Homeless Management Information System, the annual point-in-time count or the coordinated-entry system.”

    The same federal funding that came from your pockets and mine. The same federal funding lost after these alleged California homeless advocates threw piles of cash in front of an industrial fan and pointed it in the general direction of people who deserve to be in prison.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • The enemy within: “Poll: 59% of Dems support military coup against Trump, 32% support assassination.”
  • “FP-7 Pelican Ballistic Missile Used to Strike Moscow! Oil Refinery & Warehouse Hit Hard!”
  • Follow-up: “Satellite imagery shows significant damage to Moscow Oil Refinery after Ukraine’s drone strike yesterday. Multiple strikes are recorded and oil tanks confirmed destroyed. Additionally, a Pantsir booster intercepted a car.”
  • “Big Drone Strike on Perm Oil Refinery! 1,500km from Ukraine!” Multiple strikes on a refinery they previously hit in March.
  • “Kuibyshev Oil Refinery Hit Hard by Drones.” Again.
  • “Ukraine Targets Russian Rail Logistics: Two Trains & Fuel Tank Cars Hit By Drones.”
  • More: “Operation Barrel: Multiple Russian Fuel Trains and Tank Cars Destroyed!”
  • “Multiple Aircraft Confirmed Destroyed at Rostov: An-12 & An-26 Transporters and X2 Mi-8 Helicopters.”
  • “Big JDAM Air Strike on Troop Concentration in Bilytske, Donetsk.” Early in the war, Ukraine couldn’t have carried out a JDAM strike, due to fears of Russian aircraft and SAM batteries, indicating serious Ukrainian degradation of those categories of Russian weapons.
  • “Huge Explosion as Ukraine Hits Fuel/Ammo Storage in Zaporizhzhia.”
  • “Ukraine Hits Warehouse Loaded with Ammunition Shells: Big Blast.” “This was in Huliaipole, Zaporizhzhia.”
  • More winning: “Cuba Hit With National Power Grid Collapse As Oil Sources Dry Up.”

    Cuba’s power grid collapsed once again this week, this time at a national level, leaving millions of people across the island without electricity. This is the sixth time since the US cut off fuel sources to the island since January that the national grid has collapsed and it’s the most utility shutdown events in the country’s recent history.

    Even when Cuba’s grid is in operation, only 30% of the population at most receives electricity at any given time. Many regions stay dark 20 to 30 hours at a stretch. Some provinces have reported 60–90 hours without power. Havana has gone from 4 hours a day early in the year to 18 hours after the fuel cutoff.

    “Protocols are now in place to begin ​the gradual restoration of the system,” said Felix Estrada, an ⁠official with Cuba’s National Electrical Union (UNE). Power had returned to a handful of ​scattered neighborhoods in Havana by late evening, primarily around hospitals, but much of ​the city remained completely dark.

    Many exhausted residents ​of the capital Havana were already without power when the national blackout hit.

    “Yesterday I’d gone without ‌power ⁠for 24 hours. They turned the lights on for an hour, and then the grid collapsed,” said Frank Lorenzo, a 23-year-old Havana resident.

  • The U.S. is spending $500 million on laser weapons, and some have already been deployed in theater.

    Iranian citizens have witnessed some dazzling laser shows recently — but they’re not the kind you’d see at a Metallica concert.

    The US military has been deploying lasers in the Strait of Hormuz to knock out regime hardware, taking out “drones and incoming cruise missiles at a much lower cost than using more expensive kinetic weapons like missiles,” the Department of War recently confirmed.

    The US project to harness laser power has been 50 years in the making and outstrips the capabilities of any other military on Earth.

    A linked story suggests it’s the High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Greg Gutfeld is rightly upset that Austin’s commie twerp of a U.S. rep is more upset at an illegal alien getting shot than the murder of Andrew Wimsatt, an American citizen he theoretically represented.

  • How shadowy leftist NGOs pay to put their people into government positions.

    We often hear leftists accuse billionaires of buying government, and most times the accusations are at least partly off-base.

    But not always, and sometimes they are literally doing precisely that: putting privately funded leftists into government offices to run a parallel government that nobody ever voted for. It’s a technocrat’s wet dream.

    One such program, funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, placed and paid the salaries of “government employees” strategically inserted into Attorney General offices in Blue states, funding regulations and lawsuits aimed at targets that Bloomberg’s NYU-based NGO program identified as vulnerable to its pressure. The goal was, of course, fighting climate change.

    BREAKING: Bloomberg-Backed Climate Group Paying Salaries of Democratic State AG Officials Quietly Shuts Down Amid Congressional, Legal Scrutiny.

    “A group housed at the New York University School of Law and backed by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg quietly closed its doors in late August amid congressional scrutiny into its funding and operations. The so-called State Energy and Environmental Impact Center’s signature initiative involved placing paid, climate-focused “fellows” in Democrat-controlled state attorney general offices nationwide as those offices sued the oil industry and other energy providers.”

    Think of it as a cousin to “Zuckerbucks,” where a private entity funds a program that places people in government offices as either quasi- or fully government employees, with a mandate to pursue the NGO’s agenda. The same sort of thing happens with grants to news organizations, where an outside group pays for employees or “coverage” of specific issues, and the stories are still technically the product of the news organization, but the content is directed at producing the results desired by the people who cut the checks.

    Snip.

    Bloomberg, cut a big check to NYU, which in turn established a program to place its people directly into the offices of State Attorneys General, where they proceeded to sue and harass businesses targeted by the organization.

    James Comer opened an investigation into the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, and out of the blue, it closed. He sought documents from it, and “poof!” It’s gone.

    Pretty sus, bro. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • How Angela Merkel destroyed Germany’s political center.

    In my view, Angela Merkel bears a grave responsibility for the collapse of the centre and the growing ability of the political extremes to set the agenda.

    The almost one-third of voters who would support Alternative für Deutschland in a national election are not fascists or Nazis. A substantial proportion are disillusioned CDU voters.

    What has disappointed these voters? First, what I see as Merkel’s failures on so many fronts: immigration. Security. Energy. A sustainable strategy for business and economic growth. Digitalisation. Infrastructure maintenance. The list is almost endless.

    Second, the extraordinary denial of reality that, in my assessment, Merkel allowed to take hold when it came to immigrants’ responsibility for antisemitism, violence against women, terrorism and gang crime.

    Coming from Denmark, where we have reliable statistics on all these matters, I find it frankly shocking to listen to the nonsense coming from Germany’s political elite.

    But I would also trace back to Merkel the rise of what is often called “Islamo-leftism” – a tendency that has recently gained ground in Sweden and is also growing in Germany. In Sweden, polls have indicated that 85 per cent of Muslim voters support parties to the left of centre, with almost one in five supporting the Left Party, Vänsterpartiet – a party tainted by antisemitism and the glorification of terrorism. I see no compelling reason to assume that the pattern in Germany is fundamentally different.

    My argument, then, is that it is not only the rise in support for the AfD that can be traced back to Merkel. The same applies to the growing support for parties on the German left that promote the political and religious views of a significant proportion of the people, Merkel invited to Germany. Not least on the Gaza question.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Both Democrats and the international left has derided President Trump’s focus on Greenland, saying the U.S. controlling it was a fantasy. Now that he’s signed an agreement with Denmark, I doubt they’re laughing now.

    The US-Greenland-Denmark agreement has now been published. I haven’t read it, but Arnaud Bertrand has. This is his analysis of the terms, which appear very favorable to the United States, and well calculated to achieve the goal of preventing undue influence over the Arctic by any hostile power.

    Snip.

    To sum up:

    – The US secured a permanent military foothold that even an independent Greenland would inherit whether it likes it or not
    – The US now has veto power over any non-NATO military presence in Greenland, and over who can invest in its strategic infrastructure and resources (beyond NATO and the EU)
    – Denmark signed away its say over the principle of new US bases, with only the right to discuss the “implementation details”
    – Danish authorities no longer set the rules for US military movement across the island
    – And all of it is now justified by the defense of “the American continent”

  • Lindsay Clancy holdout juror Michael P. Desronvil speaks out.

    Michael is a Catholic from a Haitian immigrant family and moved to Massachusetts when he was a young child.

    The liberal women who so badly want to destroy him for refusing to acquit a child killer do not know how to handle that. Their woke brains simply cannot compute how to proceed.

    Several jurors who wanted to let Clancy off the hook have claimed that Michael did not follow the jury instructions, but they have incriminated themselves with statements indicating they had an ideological agenda in the courtroom. Michael says he “kept getting cut off” by these other jurors, who apparently knew his own thoughts better than him.

    This lines up with a statement from a fourth juror who says she was ultimately badgered into changing her vote.”

    A female 4th juror comes forward and says the other jurors were pushing to acquit on *DAY 1*

  • In fact, a whole lot of basic jury procedures seem to have been discarded in the Clancy trial. “Lindsay Clancy jurors broke cardinal rule and used phones to RESEARCH killer mom during deliberations, holdout claims.”
  • “Feds arrest, indict hundreds in Trump voter fraud crackdown: ‘Catching it all over the country.’ The Justice Department says its crackdown on noncitizen voting and election fraud has already produced more than 200 arrests and indictments, with that number possibly doubling soon and state election officials themselves now facing potential charges for looking the other way.”

    Since the Trump Justice Department warned state and local election officials that they could be charged with allowing fraudulent voting activities, more than 200 arrests and indictments have been secured in a crackdown on election fraud and noncitizen voting, and that number could double soon, a top official revealed to Just the News.

    “I think there are a lot of nervous election officials because I think some of them know that they’ve been looking the other way when this is happening, and we’re catching it all over the country,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Monday night in an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

    Dhillon also hinted at further developments in the coming weeks, suggesting her department has developed evidence calling into question New Jersey’s claim that a computer glitch allowed thousands of foreigners to register to vote in that state and about 400 to actually cast ballots in violation of law.

    “I’m not sure we have the correct numbers from New Jersey. They’re not really cooperating with us, and so we will get to the bottom of what happened there. And you know, New Jersey tried to blame a vendor for a mistake or a glitch, quote unquote. But you know, I think there’ll be another side to that story,” she said.

    Snip.

    Over the weekend, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News that his agency is investigating 1,620 cases of voter fraud involving noncitizens and has made 151 arrests. He said his department is also looking into an additional 300,000 cases based on states’ voter rolls.

  • That thing that never happens keeps happening. “DOJ Charges 16 Noncitizens in Voter Fraud Cases.”
  • “More Canadians now die from government-assisted “suicide” than Americans die from gun homicides.”
  • Howard Dean speaks to the ChiComs: “DNC Chairman Emeritus Howard Dean delivered the American welcome address at a China dialogue involving the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank identified in congressional commission testimony as ‘run by Chinese intelligence.’ The Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament, which co-organized the event⁠, has an equally explicit allegiance. Its charter⁠ says it: ‘upholds the comprehensive leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Ted Cruz digs into EPIC City’s ties to CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Ties between the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the proposed EPIC City development in North Texas came under scrutiny during a recent U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing chaired by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

    EPIC City, which has been criticized as an Islamic enclave and housing development exclusive to Muslims, is a proposal from the East Plano Islamic Center.

    The Wednesday hearing of the subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action, and federal rights was titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America.”

    Sen. Cruz addressed the fact that Democrat senators failed to attend the meeting, stating that “their campaign is now openly embracing terrorist organizations waging war on America.”

    Cruz heard from witnesses that alleged ties between CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and EPIC City.

    Arielle F. Klepach, senior litigation counsel for the National Jewish Advocacy Center, called attention to the connection in her written testimony.

    She likened the EPIC City development, later rebranded as “The Meadow” following significant backlash, to a pattern of “mega-mosque” building projects in Europe commonly motivated by “Islamist separatism.”

    This movement is a “deliberate attempt to cut Muslim communities off spiritually, intellectually, and culturally from the surrounding secular society,” with the building projects in particular “generally [containing] community-like features such as schools, libraries, and gyms,” according to Klepach.

    “The American version of this pattern is EPIC City,” Klepach said. “CAIR-Texas and CAIR-DFW have publicly defended EPIC City in the disputes, and CAIR’s national leadership has spoken at the EPIC mosque, reflecting an active advocacy relationship between CAIR and the EPIC religious community.”

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was designated a foreign terrorist organization by Gov. Greg Abbott late last year, along with the Muslim Brotherhood.

    The hearing also revisited CAIR’s role as an unindicted co-conspirator to the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The foundation and five of its officials were convicted of “funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas” during a 2008 federal trial. CAIR was not charged in the case.

    Lara Burns, senior research fellow for the George Washington University Program on Extremism, drew the connection between CAIR and Hamas in her written testimony.

    “The United States Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee served as the original Hamas infrastructure in the United States, initially consisting of the HLF (the fundraising arm),” alongside others, according to Burns.

    “At the [2008] trial, still today the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in American history, [various arms of the Muslim Brotherhood] were identified as unindicted co-conspirators/joint ventures as was [CAIR],” she added.

    (Previously.)

  • A father-and-son serial killer house of horror found in Pennsylvania.

    A Pennsylvania father and son have come under suspicion after the son was discovered to be traveling with a woman with a fake ID that used the name of a missing woman.

    Police searched the home of the man and his dad and found the most disturbing scene imaginable.

    he investigation is still unfolding but this is some seriously unsettling stuff going on.

    Here’s the latest from ABC 6 in Philly on the now 7 missing women connected to this case against Eugene Horsch and his deceased father RC:

    Blair Tonzelli was 35 years old when she went missing in 2023. She was the first woman named in this case.

    Police say when Horsch was arrested, he was with a woman in possession of an identification card with Tonzelli’s name on it. The woman allegedly told police Eugene Horsch gave her the ID.

    Amy McHale was 44 years old when she was last seen in 2016. Shortly after news broke of Horsch’s arrest, her family told Action she was last seen at the W. Chew Avenue house.

    McHale had previously been married to Ray Horsch, who has also become a central figure in this case.

    Gabrielle Amarando was 22 years old when she disappeared in 2012.

    A childhood friend of Amarando told Action News that loved ones grew increasingly concerned when they stopped hearing from her…

    Roughly 14 years later, her family got the confirmation they were looking for.

    In August, police said the women were seen in photos and videos recovered during the investigation, in which both are seen alive and then later appearing to be dead.

    ‘Based on the video and photo evidence — if the images in the video are real and not altered in any way, based on their review — the M.E. would believe the individuals depicted in the images are deceased,’ Philadelphia Police Inspector Ray Evers.

    Maribel Fresses was the other woman seen in the videos and photos. She [was] 27 when she disappeared in 2018.

    Police also saw photos and videos of two other unidentified women, both alive and then dead, as well as video of the elder Horsch strangling a woman to death.

    Five urns believed to have the unidentified remains of five women were found in the home.

    Millions of photos and videos have so far revealed that at least 7 women who went missing ultimately met their demise at the hands of the Horsches.

    Shades of H. H. Holmes…

  • UK functionaries go out of their way to protect their precious illegal aliens. “British government mobilizes HUNDREDS of police and defense units to protect migrant boat from British protesters.”

    Third World migrants are being led across the channel by French authorities, where British police then escort them into harbor, put them aboard taxpayer-funded coach buses, and give them a police escort with hundreds of officers.

    Snip.

    Earlier in the day, British protesters gathered by land and by sea to peacefully demonstrate against a group of 60 or so migrants that was set to land in southern England in Gosport.

    Because of the protesters gathered along the coast, authorities had to scramble to find a new landing spot for the “newcomers.” The buses were seen with a massive police escort.

    The reason for the escort was due to the fear that the British protesters would get “mostly peaceful” and attack the invaders or the masked bus drivers who are helping traffic them into the country:

    One GB News reporter summed up the massive taxpayer expenditure that was spent to assist the migrants:

    The whole thing from start to finish today, for this one boat of 60-odd or however many it turns out to be, to go all the way flanked by a massive French ship, then to our [Royal National Lifeboat Institution] boats, then all of those resources pumped into Gosport.

    And THEN, it looks as though because of the local reaction, they’ve decided to not to that, take them down either to Eastport or Dover or somewhere else anyway.

    So goodness knows what the resources are going to be like there.

    We are talking MILLIONS of Pounds today alone, for a group of 60 illegal migrants.

    Is there any doubt the Labour government prioritizes importing illegal aliens into the country over taking care of their own citizens?

  • “Texas Daycare Faces Lawsuit For Running ‘Toddler Fight Club.'”

    Forget about Somali daycare fraud for a moment – have you heard about toddler fight club? A daycare in Fort Worth, TX is facing investigations and litigation after evidence showed staff abusing young children and forcing them to fight each other.

    One mother, Heather Harris, knew something was wrong when she picked up her 4-year-old son at the Arka Montessori Academy of Risinger daycare. He was crying uncontrollably and was covered in bruises. Employees told the mother her son had fought with another child, but their explanations did not add up, according to a lawsuit filed this month by Harris and her husband, Richard Harris. She insisted on seeing the classroom’s surveillance footage.

    The disturbing footage shows staff at the daycare swing a child around like a rag-doll and trying to force him to fight another child.

    I’m skipping right past the obvious “First Rule of Toddler Fight Club” joke to point out that if my (theoretical) kid were forced into that, both daycare and the employees would be facing both a huge civil lawsuit and criminal charges.

  • More horrifying child abuse: “Transgender ICU nurse arrested on multiple counts of abusing NICU baby at Michigan hospital.”

    [Kieran Ansley], a now-former nurse at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital has been charged with child abuse after a 4-month-old girl in his [sic] care was found with multiple broken bones and bruising.

    The injuries were noticed by the infant’s mother during an early morning visit in April, records show. Tests and a full skeletal survey found multiple fractures, including broken leg bones and multiple bruises, court records show. Bruising was found on the infant’s hands, arms, thigh, buttocks, abdomen and tongue, court records show.

    ‘The totality of the findings resulted in a diagnosis of pediatric physical abuse,’ court documents show.

    More horrifying details snipped. Hell’s too good for him.

  • “Texas Stock Exchange Sees First Listing Transfer. Wall Street is trading its loafers for a pair of cowboy boots.”

    Dallas’ “Y’all Street” continues to capitalize on momentum as the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) enters a new era of growth.

    North Texas has added a stock exchange alongside its iconic stockyards, and companies are beginning to flock to the TXSE’s transfer portal. TXSE opened in July, and September has seen the first corporate commitments and primary listing transfers.

    On September 16, Texas Capital’s Texas Equity Index exchange-traded fund (ETF) and Texas Oil Index ETF became the TXSE’s first primary listings. The company’s CEO, President, and Chairman, Rob Holmes, rang the bell on “Y’all Street” to celebrate the company’s primary listing transfer. Texas Capital was formerly listed on the Nasdaq.

    Holmes stated in a Bloomberg interview about the transfer, “Once this exchange came to fruition, it was our responsibility to look at the three exchanges and pick the best one for Texas Capital.”

    He praised the TXSE’s investor base as an affirmation of the exchange’s technological and strategic innovation. The TXSE saw over $275 million in total investment, with major investors including BlackRock, JP Morgan Chase, and Charles Schwab.

    Competing securities exchanges include the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, both based in New York City.

    Holmes asserted that TXSE’s net present value (NPV) is “better” than its New York rivals.

    “On this exchange, instead of just paying a fee, we pay a fee, but at the end of the day we have a net cash position from the exchange,” he said.

    If someone can explain what that last sentence means, please do so in the comments…

  • “Democrat candidate caught crying in the back of cop car after DUI arrest. Washington state Democratic House candidate Krista Perez was seen crying, praying and sobbing in the back of a patrol car after her DUI arrest.” Washington state has a jungle primary, with two Democratic candidates for House of Representatives District 29-Position 1 (the state has 49 districts of two reps each) facing each other in November, so Republicans won’t be able to take advantage here.
  • Jay Leno’s Law, exempting classic cars from California’s draconian emissions regulations, was signed into law in a rare act of sanity from Governor Hairgel. But note it doesn’t take effect until January 1, 2028.
  • To break AIs, no need to ask it to calculate pi to the last digit. Asking how many “e”s in “seventeen” will do…
  • The many lighting tricks Stanley Kubrick used to shoot Barry Lyndon. (And if you haven’t seen Barry Lyndon, you should. I found it extremely funny…)
  • So Carrot Top tried to kill himself over attempted blackmail using a sex tape? Can’t say I’m a huge fan of his work, but he should avoid trying to off himself. And now, with that thin justification, here’s the classic Norm Macdonald bit on Carrot Top:

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Speaking of Norm Macdonald, if I had Netflix, I would watch this, though I suspect I’ve already seen 75% of it in YouTube clips.
  • “New Underground Railroad Established To Help Lone Black Juror Escape From Angry White Liberals In The North.”
  • “Canada Clarifies That By ‘Assisted Suicide’ They Mean ‘Totally Unsolicited Murder.‘”
  • “Husband In Critical Condition After Attempting Two Minutes Of Beginner’s Yoga.”
  • The Pittie who thinks he’s a cat:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For September 18, 2026

    Friday, September 18th, 2026

    Lots of Democrat/Blue State fraud of varying types (campaign financing, voting, welfare state), hot marine-drone-on-marine-drone action, one of Maduro’s scumbags pleads guilty, the feds investigate Governor Hairgel and his henchmen, corrupt or power-hungry police get slapped down in two different Texas locales, a breakdown of just who is funding the “AI will kill us all” panic, and a Hank Hill meme to represent my continued loathing of restaurant QR codes.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Just as suspected: “Dem Fundraising Giant ActBlue Accepted Illegal Foreign Donations, Covered Up Evidence, House Report Says.”

    ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising giant, may have accepted both fraudulent and illegal foreign contributions — and later concealed the relevant evidence from House Republicans investigating the matter, according to a new congressional report.

    Congressional oversight “found that ActBlue, in its own words, decided to take ‘a more lenient approach’ to fraud prevention in 2024, weakening its fraud-prevention policies at least twice even though internal assessments showed that these changes would result in a measurable increase in fraudulent contributions,” according to the new report.

    “Similarly, internal trainings directed ActBlue’s fraud prevention team to ‘look for reasons to accept contributions’ rather than to examine them closely for indicators of fraud — as required by federal regulation. ActBlue took this lax approach to fraud prevention even though it had detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on the platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources.”

    The report — which is the third released by the Committee on House Administration, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding their investigation into ActBlue — accuses the platform of accepting “illegal foreign political donations” and later undertaking a cover-up.

    ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously wrote in a letter to Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R., Wis.) in 2023, when the investigation began, explaining that donations made by people with addresses outside of the U.S. require a passport number for verification.

    But the report argues the step does little to prevent fraud, as it “only ensures that the entered passport number contains a certain number of characters, not that it is a valid U.S. passport number.”

    ActBlue’s previous law firm, Covington & Burling, told ActBlue in 2025 that Wallace-Jones may have misled Congress in her response because the steps for vetting foreign donations were not always followed, the New York Times reported earlier this year. ActBlue processed $990 million in donations in 2023, including $1.3 million from donors with foreign addresses, according to the Washington Post. ActBlue said it collected passport numbers for 93 percent of the donations with foreign addresses.

    In the new report, the House committees cite internal communications in which ActBlue employees appear to downplay warnings of fraud. “Donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows,” employees wrote in one memo about a “great accept.”

    In another message, an ActBlue supervisor says that a rejected foreign contribution “should have been accepted.”

    “It is a foreign contribution, but the name/email match, the IP/billing match, a full address with the correct country code, and there were previously accepted and successful contributions,” the message says. “The donor uses an Arkansas state code, which isn’t great, but [the] system can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors.”

    On a separate occasion, an ActBlue supervisor said a contribution “set off a lot of” alarms, but suggested the donor should be given the “benefit of the doubt.”

    Democrats always seem to give the “benefit of the doubt” to foreign money flowing into their pockets…

  • “Texas Democrat Caught on Video Explaining $25 Program to Influence Voters.”

    Townhall Media caught Sky McAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, admitting to a scheme involving paying people to influence others to vote for Democrats.

    You know they desperately want Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talerico to win.

    You can’t pay someone to vote for a candidate, but apparently the PAC discovered a way around the rule.

    From the video:

    MCADAMS: We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things. So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially, which is interesting.

    PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: What’s the – what’s this called?

    MCADAMS: It’s called the Paid Relational Program. I think rally Texas is the official name. You can’t pay someone to vote for someone. You can’t be like, “Here’s $25, go vote for me.” You can say, “Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.” And then the class just talks about the importance of…it’s a little gray.

    PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: But right now we could use all the help we can get.

    MCADAMS: If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, “That’s shady as f**k.”

    You know, if I were a Soros-backed PAC that was already under investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (AKA the Republican nominee running against Talarico in the 2026 Texas senate race), I’d want to be a lot more circumspect at breaking federal election law…

  • More Minnesota welfare fraud:

    WOAH 🚨 An addiction recovery center in Minnesota accused of stealing millions with fake Medicaid billing has just been exposed to have another account with $25 MILLION

    They’ve used our stolen tax money to buy:

    – 3 Minnesota homes
    – $10.4 million in charges
    – $3.5 million on leather goods and luggage
    – $380k jewelry and watches
    – $150k clothing and shoes
    – One month of LV charges alone was $440,000

    June 2024 spending alone included

    – $35k at Fendi
    – $57k at LV
    – $13k at Hermès
    – $64k private jet
    – $41k Airbnb

    And now a $25 million CD has been discovered

    Some of the craziest items they bought were

    – 3 Minnesota homes

    – Rolex Oyster Mickey Mouse edition that’s 18kt yellow gold with genuine Rolex crocodile band

    – Louis Vuitton trunks and hard-side luggage including additional jewelry trunks

    – Louis Vuitton black mink coat and other fur pieces

    – Gents diamond cluster rings and fashion rings that were 14kt gold pieces with 7–59 diamonds, plus EFFY, Kabana, and Gabriel & Co. platinum diamond rings

    – 18kt yellow gold and diamond Louis Vuitton pendant on an 18kt LV chain, plus other 14kt gold diamond heart pendants and Tiffany pearl and diamond pieces

    – Louis Vuitton Tambour watches

    Again, this is all with our stolen tax money with fake Medicaid billing in Minnesota

    Tim Walz and Democrats allowed this and would have never did anything to stop them if it wasn’t for Trump getting elected

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • More fraud in California. “Twelve People Charged in $10 Million Home Daycare Fraud Schemes.”

    Twelve people are facing federal fraud charges after an investigation revealed that more than $10 million intended to help low-income families pay for childcare was instead funneled to bogus daycare providers.

    In a coordinated takedown early Thursday morning, more than 250 federal, state and local law enforcement officials arrested all 12 defendants and executed 12 search warrants at homes in San Diego purported to be used as daycare facilities.

    “These charges underscore a simple truth: anyone who steals from programs meant to support children will face swift and uncompromising accountability, said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Fraud against these programs is an attack on vulnerable families, and law enforcement will continue to dismantle schemes that exploit them. I want to thank the prosecutors and agents in the Southern District of California whose relentless work exposed this scheme and ensured that those responsible are being held accountable.”

    “Programs that help families access childcare are intended to support children and working parents, not to enrich fraudsters,” said Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Director Michael Krol. “HSI is proud to stand with our federal, state, and local partners to identify and disrupt schemes that steal taxpayer-funded benefits from the communities they are meant to serve. These arrests reflect our commitment to protecting public programs, safeguarding children, and holding accountable those who exploit systems designed to help vulnerable families.”

    “Today’s takedown exposes a sprawling fraud scheme that siphoned more than $10 million from programs designed to help low-income families who depend on subsidized childcare. By following the money, IRS Criminal Investigation uncovered patterns of deceit that revealed twelve ghost daycare operations billing for children who were never present. This was not a victimless crime. It deprived working parents of critical support and eroded trust in programs meant to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. We remain steadfast in our commitment to safeguarding federal funds and ensuring that those who exploit public programs for personal gain are held fully accountable,” said IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman.

    “Shameless attempts to steal taxpayer‑funded childcare funds for personal gain endanger support for some of our nation’s most vulnerable children,” said Special Agent in Charge Robb R. Breeden of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “Working alongside our law enforcement partners, HHS‑OIG will continue to pursue these schemes relentlessly to protect these funds and the families who depend on them.”

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides federal funding to California to help low-income families pay for childcare. In San Diego County, the County of San Diego, Child Development Associates (CDA), and the YMCA administer childcare subsidy programs.

    When CDA or the YMCA determines that a family qualifies for subsidized childcare, the organizations pay the eligible childcare provider directly after the provider submits required monthly attendance records documenting the care provided. The records must be signed by both the provider and parent under penalty of perjury and include the dates and times children are in care.

    California law also requires licensed childcare providers to be present and ensure that children are supervised at all times, except for limited temporary absences when a qualified substitute is present.

    While the 12 federal complaints are unrelated, the scheme was essentially the same: Defendants obtained a California license to operate a home childcare facility and registered with Child Development Associates (CDA) and the YMCA to provide subsidized childcare to eligible families. To receive government-funded payments, the defendants were required to submit monthly attendance records accurately documenting the dates and times they provided care to each child.

    Instead, the defendants knowingly submitted false attendance records claiming they provided childcare on dates and at times when they did not. They also falsely certified, under penalty of perjury, that the information was true and correct. CDA and the YMCA relied on those fraudulent records and issued payments with federal funds intended to pay for childcare actually provided to low-income families.

    The complaints describe how surveillance recordings of the defendants’ licensed facilities conflicted with what the defendants claimed in their attendance records. For example, Abdulrahman Ayman Alawad submitted attendance records claiming to have provided childcare to 23 children in March 2026 and 25 children April 2026, and that he provided childcare every day of those two months.

    My amazing psychic powers tell me that local media reports refer to Alawad as “San Diego Man.”

    But surveillance recordings covering 57 days of those months showed children entering or exiting Alawad’s facility on just one day—coincidentally, the day a state inspector showed up for an unannounced inspection, when children and Alawad himself arrived at the facility after the inspector arrived.

  • “Washington Finally Connected the Dots on Fraud Cases Across the Country.”

    Twenty-seven FBI field offices were working fraud cases that looked local. Then Washington finally put the data in the same room.

    What emerged wasn’t dozens of unrelated problems. The FBI says investigators connected over 40 cases to the same strategic threat and the same group of overseas actors.

    From the FBI:

    Launched in August, the NFDC brings together the FBI, federal law enforcement agencies, Offices of Inspector General, and state partners in a first-of-its-kind effort to identify fraud across taxpayer-funded programs. Rather than evaluating investigations in isolation, the center combines cross-agency data and artificial intelligence to help investigators spot patterns, connect cases, and dismantle organized criminal networks.

    The initiative stems from a broader “whole of government” approach mandated by Executive Order 14395, which established the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

    The discovery came through the new National Fraud Detection Center, launched in August. The center brings together information from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, Treasury, FinCEN, inspectors general, state agencies, and others.

    Instead of examining one suspicious student loan, Medicare payment, or SBA loan at a time, investigators can search for connections across programs and jurisdictions. The center uses data analytics and AI to help spot patterns that individual offices might miss.

    The student-loan investigation offers the clearest example. Individual cases appeared small enough that some might never have attracted major federal attention. Once the data was combined, investigators concluded they were looking at pieces of a much larger foreign-directed operation.

    Fraudsters had figured out something the federal government has struggled with for years: agencies don’t always talk to each other.

    The Government Accountability Office reported in June that agencies can use more than 100 federal data sources to verify whether people qualify for benefits or payments. GAO examined nine major sources and found data-quality problems in every one. It also found no government-wide rules ensuring those systems can efficiently share information.

    The price of those weaknesses isn’t theoretical.

    Federal agencies reported an estimated $186 billion in improper payments during fiscal 2025. Improper payments include errors and overpayments, so they shouldn’t automatically be called fraud. GAO separately estimates that actual fraud costs the federal government somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, based on data from 2018 through 2022.

    Those numbers help explain why connecting databases matters.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Syzran Oil Refinery Hit Hard By Drones: Supplies Russia’s Armed Forces.” I think that’s at least the fifth attack on the oil refinery we’ve reported here.
  • “Big Drone Strikes on Taganrog Drone Factory and Chemical Plant in Tolyatti.”
  • Plus: “Ukrainian Missile Strike on Taganrog Beriev Repair Plant (Repairs A-50 AWACS) and Drone Factory.”
  • “Ukraine Badly Damaged Gepard-Class Frigate in the Caspian Sea! Big Hole in Deck/Hull!”
  • “Operation Vivaldi: Ukrainian Counterattack Near Lyman Liberates Serednie.”
  • “Russian General Confirmed KIA in Ukrainian Drone Strike.” “Russian Major General Anton Grunis was reportedly KIA in Horlivka.”
  • “First Ever Battle Between Marine Drones! Ukraine Wins!”
  • President Trump signs the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026
  • Peter Zeihan explains how Ukraine targets Russia’s shadow fleet in the Black Sea. “What the Ukrainians have done is they’ve contacted every shipping company in the world and said, “Hey, if you’re operating in the Black Sea, A, tell us the name of the ship. B, give us their transponder so we can follow them. C, tell give us their course and D, the ports you expect them to be at and when. And if we can confirm that information as part of our operations, we will not attack those ships. And so far, shipping company in the world is complying except the shadow fleet. Shadow fleet runs dark. Shadow fleet doesn’t report. And that’s the whole point. So, what the Ukrainians have basically done have mapped out the entire commercial world of shipping in the Black Sea and attacking the ships that don’t report.”
  • Evidently the left is the same everywhere: “Maduro Ally Pleads Guilty In Miami To Scheme That Stole Venezuelan Welfare Funds.”

    The former minister of industry for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a global money laundering conspiracy that skimmed millions from a Venezuelan public welfare program.

    According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release, Alex Saab, 54, who was extradited from Venezuela in May and charged days later, conducted a decade-long scheme that defrauded a Venezuelan welfare program for food and medicine, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and associates.

    Saab, a Colombian businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments before federal district Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.

    “Criminals like Alex Saab who stole from the people of Venezuela and worked to exploit and misuse American financial institutions to fund illicit activities will be held accountable,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the news release.

    Saab is accused of bilking the welfare program known as Local Committee for Supply and Production, or CLAP (Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción).

    The ex-minister admitted to using a system of bribes and illegal payments to public officials. Entities controlled by conspirators in the scheme would be rewarded with lucrative contracts from the Venezuelan government to import food and medicine under CLAP.

    Saab and his conspirators did not fulfill the contracts and would instead use fake companies, false invoices and shipping records, and other fraudulent documents to unlawfully obtain millions while concealing their association with the scheme, the DOJ said.

    Saab further admitted he used shell companies outside his country to launder the illegal proceeds around the world, including in the United States.

    I wonder if there’s a book called How To Line Your Pockets With Welfare State Funds that leftists the world over all read…

  • “AOC, Mamdani caught laughing together while names are read at 9/11 Memorial.”
  • “Feds Expand Criminal Probe Into Newsom Travel, Spending. The subpoenas… seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that’s funded Newsom and his overseas travel through private donations.”

    Federal prosecutors have expanded their criminal investigation into Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, issuing subpoenas for six years of records covering his international travel, outside funding, and personal expenses, including money spent on his residence and living costs. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Anderson signed the subpoenas, which concern a criminal investigation in the Eastern District of California.

    The subpoenas, issued in early September, seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has funded Newsom’s overseas travel through private donations. The subpoenas are expected to produce records for a federal grand jury.

    Federal investigators also want communications involving Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who helps oversee his foreign travel and has staffed him at events ranging from the California Hall of Fame ceremony to meetings with foreign heads of government. Prowda is married to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. She declined to comment.

    Investigators also sought communications involving Steve Kawa, Jim DeBoo, Jason Elliott and campaign counsel Tom Willis. All four have longstanding ties to Newsom.

    Kawa, Newsom’s former San Francisco chief of staff, now chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the Protocol Foundation. DeBoo, a former Newsom executive secretary, is the foundation’s secretary. Elliott, another former deputy chief of staff, sits on both the Protocol Foundation board and the rail authority. Willis sits on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Records involving Siebel Newsom were also requested.

    Sounds like a cozy influence-peddling cabal, doesn’t it?

    Plenty of money is up for review. Newsom has directed more than $7.5 million in outside donations to the California State Protocol Foundation since taking office, with roughly $5.1 million coming from leftover inaugural funds. Behested payments are donations that public officials solicit on behalf of outside organizations. They are legal in California but must be disclosed. Newsom has directed roughly $349 million in such payments between 2019 and 2026. The foundation ended 2024 with just $7,790 in net funds after spending nearly $600,000 more than it took in over the previous two years.

    Among its donors are CVS, a Blue Shield-linked foundation, and autonomous vehicle company Zoox, all of which do business in California or operate under state rules. Other contributors include the New Venture Fund and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen. Foundations tied to Democrat megadonors Susie Tompkins Buell and Lisa Stone Pritzker have also contributed. Both women have supported Newsom politically and backed nonprofits associated with Siebel Newsom. The foundation has helped pay for Newsom’s travel to Davos, Munich, London, and China.

  • Democrats pull support for NC House candidate Shelly Headen. Oddly enough, wishing you could shove your political opponents into the ovens at Dachau is still beyond the pale, even for Democrats…
  • What.The Fuck. “Dutch officials say first toddler euthanized under new state law was ‘handled well.'”

    This child was born very prematurely, at only 26 weeks of gestation. It quickly became apparent that the child had suffered severe brain damage, resulting in severe cerebral palsy and a visual impairment. This was compounded by frequent and severe epileptic seizures, which were largely unresponsive to medication. This left the child restless and unable to sleep for long periods. They also had mucus in their lungs, which made breathing and swallowing very difficult.

    Cerebral palsy and epilepsy are serious conditions that require focused care.

    Doctors predicted that the child would not live to adulthood; therefore killing the two-year-old was the best choice for “care.”

    ‘Despite all medical and non-medical interventions, the parents and the doctor observed no improvement in the child’s condition and were convinced that the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of relief.’

    Neither the article, nor the medical committee described how the child’s life was ended.

    Was the child removed from life support and allowed to die?

    Was the child injected with lethal chemicals to stop the heart?

    What is the mania on the left for killing children these days?

  • “Roblox Refuses To Appear at Texas House Hearing on Child Safety. Roblox failed to appear before Texas lawmakers investigating concerns about violent and sexually explicit content on online gaming platforms.”
  • How senators John Kennedy (LA) and Ted Cruz derailed Biden judicial nominees with such trick questions as “What does Article II of the Constitution cover?”
  • “Federal Judge Overturned after Denying Jury Trial, Awarding Plaintiff $1 for Home Demolished by City. The appeals court called the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial ‘fundamental.'”

    A federal appeals court has ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Jeff Brown of the Southern District of Texas abused the discretion of the court when he denied a jury trial to a property owner who sued Texas City for demolishing his house without proper notice.

    In an opinion issued earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals also threw out Brown’s determination that homeowner Michael Ramirez was only entitled to $1 in nominal damages for the destruction of his house, but the court’s ruling hinged on the right to a jury trial guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

    “Because ‘the right of jury trial is fundamental,’ federal courts must ‘indulge every reasonable presumption against waiver,’” Justice Leslie H. Southwick wrote in the decision.

    “Indeed, a ‘motion for trial by jury under this rule should be favorably received unless there are persuasive reasons to deny it.’ Those reasons must be ‘strong and compelling’; otherwise, the motion should be granted, and it is an abuse of discretion not to do so.”

    Ramirez’ clash with Texas City began after a fire in April 2022 damaged the home he bought for $90,000, which he planned to renovate and resell for an estimated $230,000.

    Three days after the fire, the City sent a “Notice of Substandard Structure and of Abatement,” labeled the building a “clear and imminent danger,” and said it would be “abated without further notice.” But Ramirez hired an architect with experience in fire restoration who advised that the damage was primarily superficial and that the home was repairable.

    Ramirez then contacted city officials to secure repair permits, but alleged that city employees gave him conflicting information. He also said City Attorney Kyle Dickson assured him the property would be demolished only with his approval. While awaiting approval, Ramirez said he stored tools and appliances in the house valued at $15,000.

    Instead, the city demolished the home without further notice on May 9, 2023, more than one year after the fire.

  • Louis Rossmann offers an update to a previous story he did, where Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going after Taylor for taking land deeded to them to use as parkland and instead using it for a commercial data center.
  • “FBI Agent Wanted To Criminally Investigate Elon Musk.”

    An FBI agent pitched investigating Elon Musk for his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to an email released on Sept. 15.

    FBI agent Kevin Gounaud wrote in the Feb. 22, 2025, missive to a supervisor that he wanted to recommend opening a criminal investigation into the person or people at the Office of Personnel Management who approved transmitting an email to government workers about what they had done the previous week.

    That person was conspiring with Musk “to violate government-wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know,” Gounaud said.

    “Furthermore, Musk used a non-government system (Twitter) to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes,” he said.

    “In doing so, because he is monetized … he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization and/or advertising revenues.”

    Gounaud compared Musk’s action to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct government business.

    Yes, because running a private email server to facilitate foreign bribes is just like looking for patterns of government waste…

  • “Georgia’s youngest mayor makes history again by getting impeached in just 10 months.”

    The mayor is a nonpartisan position, but we all know this kid is a future shining star of the Democratic Party. Stockbridge, Georgia’s youngest elected mayor has been shown the door less than a year into the job, the city confirms.

    Here’s Breitbart:

    [Jayden] Williams — who recently turned 23 — was initially stripped of certain privileges in July before the City Council impeached the mayor on grounds of malfeasance, misfeasance, and violation of his oath of office, then returned to executive session on Saturday to vote for his removal, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

    The former mayor — who took office in early January — was reportedly accused of using his city purchasing card for more than $4,000 in personal expenses such as dining at restaurants, buying clothes, getting haircuts, and watching a movie, in addition to spending $2,600 on gas.

  • Clayton Cramer on Why Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill Matters.

    Before 03/17/1973: “Police hunted today for a man in his early 20s seen leaving a burning home after a businessman, his wife and son were shot to death outside the hillside dwelling.” A neighbor saw the man leaving with a shotgun who rejected the neighbor’s poorly thought offer to help. “Go away,” was the response. Police found at least 22 shotgun shells.

    At a subsequent trial of a man, 22, his defense attorney asserted that the murderer was paranoid schizophrenic and committed the murders because his friend, one of those murdered, “possessed supernatural powers which were bent of destroying [the murderer.” Also, “the Mafia was involved in his life and that Dan Shallock was involved and could not be killed, even by an H-Bomb.” “At one point he believed Dan Shallock was the devil, and to this day [the murderer] fear in his heart that Dan may come back.” The murderer had spent a month at Marin Community Mental Health Center, and in the days immediately prior to the slayings, his mother had been trying to persuade the youth to commit himself.”

  • If you’re confused about the thunderclap of “AI will kill us all” doom forecasting this week, Director Blue has a visual breakdown.

    Here’s the 9-second version: A 27-year-old quits AI frontier lab Anthropic. Fires off a post on X. Says AI could kill us all. The Wall Street Journal has the exclusive ready to drop. Ted Cruz freaks out and calls it “catastrophic”. Bernie Sanders drafts socialist-style regulations. The tweet gets 164 millions views. Elon responds with two words: psy-op. Let’s follow the money trail. It traces back ten years. This isn’t an AI scandal. It’s a clandestine operation designed to damage American interests.

    Go over there for details, I’m just going to pull out the names of the people and orgs running the psy-op for future reference:

    • Anthopic series A investor Dustin Moskovitz and wife
    • Cari Tuna, who fund
    • Coefficient Giving, who gives money to
    • Redwood Research
    • Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
    • Center for AI Safety
    • AI Policy Institute
    • Open Philanthropy, run by
    • Holden Karnofsky, who is married to
    • Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, sister of
    • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. More names:
    • Jacob Coxon
    • Evan Hubinger
    • Samuel Marks
    • Jaan Tallinn
    • China
    • Max Tegmark
    • Future of Life Institute
    • Alexander Berger

    Hope you enjoy the bullet point summary of the visual summary…

  • Speaking of AI drama, here’s the story of a century-old math puzzle being solved, and suspicions that OpenAI stole the work of two math guys.
  • “Texas police department shut down for failing to provide ‘public benefit’ after arresting mom over dirty water Facebook post.”

    The Texas police department that arrested a mother for criticizing the town’s dirty drinking water on social media has been ordered to disband after the state ruled that it provided no “benefit to the community.”

    The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement sent Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws a letter on Sept. 9 revoking the city’s license to operate its own police department — determining the department had “failed to meet minimum standards” as a law enforcement entity, KETK reported.

    The action followed an Aug. 5 investigation in which the department was found “unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community” and lacked 18 required policies, including ones on use of force, vehicle pursuit, professional conduct and active shooters, the commission said.

    Texas has ordered the Trinidad Police Department to disband after it arrested Jennifer Combs for posting about the town’s dirty drinking water.

    Police defended the arrest, claiming Combs’ post had created “fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community” — despite the city itself posting a notice urging residents to boil their water to “avoid harmful bacteria” on April 21, weeks before her arrest.

    Despite the mounting contradictions, Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory doubled down — calling the case against Combs “cut and dry.”

    Police also arrested a supporter of Combs, citizen journalist Winston Noles, for misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he displayed a “f–k bad cops” sign outside city hall, FOX 4 reported.

    Combs’ arrest quickly drew national attention, prompting Gregory to drop the felony charge against her and the state to launch its investigation into the department.

    Let’s hope other police departments get the message that their authoritah does not override the First Amendment. (Previously.)(Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “City of Fulshear dismisses chief of police.”

    Fulshear Police Chief Kenny Seymour has been relieved of his duties effective immediately.

    Fulshear is west of Houston and south of Katy.

    At a Sept. 15 meeting, Fulshear City Council voted unanimously to dismiss Seymour after a third-party investigator found “overwhelming” evidence stemming from an alleged affair Seymour had with a subordinate within the police department.

    The city will begin looking for an interim chief and, in the meantime, has appointed City Manager Zach Goodlander to oversee police department operations, while command-level oversight will be assigned to appropriate department leadership.

    Although the proceedings could have been held in closed session, Seymour—who has served as police chief since 2011—requested they be held publicly.

    Officials with the investigation said it showed Seymour “engaged in a prolonged pattern of deception, financial conflict of interest and direct insubordination.”

    Dwight unearthed more details.

    According to the investigator, sworn interrogatory responses from Seymour’s divorce case showed a prolonged sexual relationship with the subordinate. The investigator also said Seymour had a financial entanglement with the captain, including providing money for rent, plane tickets, and other expenses.

    Including a refrigerator.

  • Good. “UT-Austin Eliminating Additional Grievance Studies Programs. University to cut Mexican American, African, women’s and gender studies majors.”

    The University of Texas at Austin will liquidate several grievance studies programs that observers had previously thought it would keep.

    KUT reports that the university will eliminate majors in African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women’s and gender studies, and race, indigeneity and migration.

    The left-wing outlet received a leaked email outlining the changes.

    In the email, Danielle Pilar Clealand, the interim chair of the newly formed Social and Cultural Analysis Department said that “the Provost’s office rejected our proposal to keep our majors.”

    The provost is the chief academic officer at UT Austin. William Inboden currently serves in the position.

  • It’s not just UT! A&M is also killing courses.

    The Texas A&M University System has removed 350 course entries from core-curriculum eligibility, while the University of Texas at Austin provost’s office has proposed removing 113 “topic” courses from core-credit eligibility beginning in spring 2027, with most of the affected UT courses reportedly housed in the College of Liberal Arts.

    In an Aug. 13 announcement from The University of Texas at Austin, the school has announced that it will be deploying a new core curriculum that is designed to specifically give students “a common learning experience built on rigorous, broad and balanced classes.”

    The new curriculum comes after 22 faculty members, who made up a “Core Curriculum Task Force,” found that the school offered “more than 1,000 disconnected courses of inconsistent quality.”

    As a result of the Task Force’s work, the new curriculum at UT Austin is stated to give students a foundation of courses on “three foundational domains of knowledge: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM.”

    Additionally, UT Austin’s Core Curriculum Task Force’s Report found other suggestions to cut the catalog of more than 600 courses to prioritize courses that focus on Western civilization, U.S. History, “Great Questions of Human Life,” principles of American Politics, and others.

    The report also ties the core curriculum overhaul to concerns that “narrow,” specialized courses fail to provide students with a shared academic foundation. It recommends incentives, including tuition discounts and honors status, to encourage students to complete the newly required courses and reduce the likelihood of students transferring to other institutions.

    A curriculum overhaul is also set to take place within the Texas A&M University System as well, as S.B. 37 requires state-funded universities to review their course catalogs and make appropriate changes.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Dwight has a report up of his trip to the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association Symposium in Springfield Missouri, which I commend to your attention if that sort of thing appeals to you.
  • This:

  • “Anthropic Boasts They Will Kill Off Humanity Way Before OpenAI.”
  • “Travis Kelce Victimized By Criminal Ring That Forces People To Dress Like Idiots.”

  • Golden Retrievers are great dogs, but they make poor watch dogs.

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    DOJ: Report Illegal Aliens Or Lose Welfare Funding

    Wednesday, September 9th, 2026

    One of the most basic, fundamental differences between normal Americans and the left is that normies believe that welfare benefits should be strictly limited to American citizens. On the other hand, the radical, social justice-infected left seem to believe that taxpayer dollars are party to favors to be showered on everyone, especially the illegal aliens they took so much trouble to import in the name of ensuring a permanent Democratic electoral majority.

    But with Trump47, normal Americans are back in charge again, and illegal aliens are being deported just as the law requires. Now the DOJ is telling state welfare agencies that if they want to keep receiving welfare funding, they have to report illegal aliens on their rolls.

    A new legal opinion dictates that all state agencies, in order to receive most forms of federal welfare funding, must report their knowledge of illegal aliens on those programs.

    The opinion targets the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income programs, which are received by all states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories.

    The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program “is designed to help families with children experiencing low-income achieve economic security and stability,” while the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) “provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.”

    It seems that every week a news story reports on yet another welfare state program I didn’t already have a tag for. They seem to multiply like rabbits.

    “When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser. “Tax dollars intended to help vulnerable Americans should not perversely encourage illegal entry into the United States, but rather should reinforce our laws and our borders.”

    According to some reports, 59.4 percent of illegal immigrant households use one or more welfare programs in the United States. This is partially due to over half of all illegal immigrant households having at least one U.S.-born child, with about $1.43 billion—or 9.4 percent—of TANF funding going to U.S.-born children of illegal aliens in fiscal year 2022.

    The U.S. Department of Justice announced last Wednesday that its Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) withdrew a Clinton-era opinion that gave a more narrow interpretation of the legal requirements for TANF and SSI funding.

    The former interpretation required only state agencies facilitating the programs to report knowledge of illegal aliens to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while the new opinion broadens the requirement to all state agencies based on a 1996 congressional interpretation of the term “state.”

    “Our clarification does not impose new obligations on states,” said OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock. “It simply restores the original meaning of the statute Congress enacted and ensures that DHS receives the information it is legally entitled to. States that accept TANF funding must abide by federal law, and failure to comply may lead to serious consequences, including loss of program funding.”

    Texas has the second-highest population of illegal aliens in the United States, with about 14.3 percent of the nation’s overall illegal population.

    In 2023, Texas had 2.1 million illegal immigrants living within its borders, representing about 7 percent of the state’s total population and an increase of 450,000 since 2021.

    As stewards of taxpayer money, both DOJ and the state should continue to crack down on welfare state fraud and deport illegal aliens.

    It’s a win-win for both taxpayers and the rule of law.

    $1.3 Billion In Attempted Medicare Fraud

    Monday, September 7th, 2026

    Another day, another story of someone using the welfare state to massively defraud the federal government.

    An illegal alien from the country of Georgia allegedly spent five months running a Pennsylvania medical equipment company that filed $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims against Medicare and private insurers, then funneled the proceeds to a Russia-based criminal network.

    Five months for $1.3 billion…

    …in attempted fraud. Georgia Fraud Guy is quite the go-getter when it comes to ripping off the American taxpayer.

    Federal prosecutors say this is the largest health care fraud case the Justice Department (DOJ) has ever prosecuted.

    Erekle Gugava, 33, was indicted in Massachusetts on one count of conspiracy to launder money. The case arises from Operation Gold Rush.

    Operation Gold Rush specifically targeted Russian organized crime health care fraud rings.

    The criminal organization behind it was based in Russia and elsewhere.

    Maybe that’s how Vlad keeps funding his Big Ukraine Adventure.

    Gugava purportedly owned ND Medical Solutions LLC from February through July 2025. In those five months, the Pennsylvania durable medical equipment company allegedly submitted at least $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicare supplemental insurers, employer-sponsored health plans, and other insurers.

    Insurers paid out roughly $6.5 million on those claims before the scheme was uncovered.

    I’m going to guess that the unseemly haste displayed by Mr. Gugava was a contributing factor in his exposure. Going from zero to $1.3 billion in five months is going to raise lots of red flags.

    Gugava allegedly opened several bank accounts in ND Medical’s name and was the sole signatory. Prosecutors say reimbursement checks were deposited into those accounts before the funds were transferred overseas for the organization.

    Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald made clear that prosecutors are not limiting their focus to the architects of the fraud.

    “Fraud networks cannot function without people willing to launder and transmit their proceeds.”

    The indictment says stolen identities were used to back up some of the fraudulent claims. People in Massachusetts, elsewhere in New England, and across the country allegedly had their information used without their knowledge.

    Among them were elderly and disabled Americans who only learned their identities had been stolen after benefit statements arrived showing equipment they never received, prescriptions from doctors they had never seen, and a company name they did not recognize. Their personal information was used to help justify more than a billion dollars in fraudulent billings.

    Because the reimbursement checks came from Medicare and established private insurers, the money had a legitimate-looking starting point. That made it easier to move through the financial system and wire overseas without triggering immediate scrutiny.

    If it seems like a whole bunch of fraud is being uncovered just now, that’s because it is:

    “The indictment is part of a broader enforcement push under the Trump administration. DOJ created its National Fraud Enforcement Division in April, and the agency says its work directly supports President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance, which is targeting fraud, waste, and abuse in federal benefit programs.”

    I get the distinct impression that the Obama and Biden Administrations were less interested in pursuing fraud cases than ensuring Democrats got to wet their beaks in the ill-gotten gains.

    How much of our $40 trillion national debt can be attributed to welfare state fraud?

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    Paramount Moving To Austin?

    Sunday, August 23rd, 2026

    Paramount and Netflix continue to fight over control of Warner Brothers, with California’s state government continuing to oppose the Paramount bid, the sticking point reportedly being preserving liberal control of geriatric news network CNN. As a result, Paramount is threatening to move out of California over the state’s opposition to the merger and their generally business hostile environment. And one potential destination for Paramount’s new HQ is Austin.

    Austin could soon be home to more film and television productions as a major Hollywood studio eyes Texas for a potential move.

    Paramount is considering relocating some of its operations out of California as the company fights to close its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Austin has emerged as a possible destination.

    The potential move is far from a done deal. But according to the New York Post, Paramount CEO David Ellison and his partners are in discussions about establishing a movie and television studio at the Bluebonnet Business Center at 9219 Old Manor Road in East Austin.

    If Paramount follows through, the move could give Austin a new role as an operations base for one of the entertainment industry’s largest companies.

    Austin already has a long history with filmmaking, from the independent movies that helped put the city on Hollywood’s radar to a growing network of production facilities. And if Paramount ultimately chooses the reported East Austin site, it would be joining a particularly film-heavy stretch of Old Manor Road.

    Snip.

    The nearly $111 billion deal has received approval from the U.S. Department of Justice and other regulators, but California and 11 other states have sued to block the merger, arguing that it would reduce competition in the entertainment industry.

    And the Netflix bid wouldn’t? It would essentially mean the end of the movie theater business in America.

    Paramount has agreed to delay closing the deal while the antitrust case proceeds. The trial is scheduled to begin March 2, 2027. But beginning Oct. 1, Paramount is expected to owe Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders $7 million per day in so-called “ticking fees” until the deal closes. Paramount has estimated that the fees could total roughly $1.3 billion if the case stretches into the spring.

    According to Variety, Ellison has reportedly told senior executives that Paramount could begin the process of moving operations out of California on Oct. 1 if California Attorney General Rob Bonta does not agree to settlement negotiations by then.

    The New York Post reported that Austin is among the possible destinations, with Paramount reportedly exploring the Bluebonnet Business Center. Paramount has not formally announced a move to Austin, and the company’s California exit remains contingent on the outcome of the antitrust dispute.

    California Democrats seem to believe that private businesses should serve the needs of the Party, not the interests of shareholders. California’s high tax, high regulation environment has been sending businesses streaming toward the exits for decades, and now film-making, the industry that’s defined California’s image to the world for over a century, looks poised to exit “Hotel California” while they still have a chance to leave.

    While Swalwell Was Slipping Sausage To Chinese Spy, China Was Slipping Money To Him

    Tuesday, August 18th, 2026

    Remember all the way back in 2020 when we covered California Democrat Congressman Eric Swalwell banging a Chinese spy? Well, National Review brings us the breaking news that he admitted it to the FBI all the way back in 2015.

    That’s not what I want to talk about today.

    Instead I want to talk how the FBI knew that Swalwell was taking money from communist China.

    The FBI developed evidence that a Chinese woman with direct ties to that country’s intelligence service had potentially compromised a Democratic congressman from California with sex, foreign interns and illicit donations while she was being recruited to become a bureau informant a decade ago, according to bombshell memos that expose another threat to America’s political system from Beijing.

    The files chronicling the relationship between Rep. Eric Swalwell and the Chinese national Fang Fang – also known by her English name Christine Fang – were declassified by President Donald Trump and released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force as part of a broader effort to unmask foreign threats to U.S. political and election systems.

    They show the FBI opened a predicated investigation, which is a formal law enforcement inquiry backed by a factual basis or allegation that indicates a crime or national security threat already exists.

    Unlike unpredicated “assessments,” a predicated investigation allows agents to use advanced and intrusive methods like electronic surveillance or informants.

    The files provide significant new details about the long-rumored relationship between Fang and Swalwell, including that:

  • The FBI initially wanted to investigate the congressman for a bribery scheme in which he exchanged donations from Fang for her planting interns in his office, but eventually decided to narrow the case to seek criminal charges only against Fang for making illegal donations to the California Democrat through conduits.
  • Swalwell admitted to having sex with Fang, his staff placing Fang’s interns in Congress and not having a strong enough campaign finance system to detect the straw donations she allegedly passed through U.S.-citizen conduits.
  • The Justice Department declined to prosecute Fang despite strong evidence of the illicit donations after she fled the U.S. as the FBI began interviewing her associates and raided her home. The early steps in the investigation were overseen in part by controversial prosecutor Jack Smith, who would later pursue Donald Trump on criminal charges.
  • The FBI was recruiting Fang to be a confidential informant through an undercover agent, assigned her the code name Rusty Thumbs, planned to hire her through a cutout company and was still evaluating her suitability as a confidential human source when they discovered her alleged criminal behavior.
  • The FBI knew early on during the recruitment that Fang was tied to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), Beijing’s notorious intelligence service. The bureau also identified her parents as MSS agents, knew she was raising money for California Democrats and was willing to use sex as a means of getting ahead in the world of U.S. politics.
  • Fang Fang’s efforts to influence U.S. politicians were first reported by Axios in 2020. According to the outlet’s comprehensive investigation, U.S. officials believed Fang sought to ingratiate herself with local politicians in the San Francisco Bay Area using campaign fundraising, networking, her charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships. Swalwell was identified as among the most significant targets of Fang.
    Swalwell threatened to sue the FBI

    Swalwell’s office told Axios at the time that he fully cooperated with the FBI and has reiterated that claim for years. “Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years — to the FBI. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story,” Swalwell’s office said in a statement.

    I’m not sure I’ve seen “his own ass” misspelled as “information that might be classified” before.

    Swalwell’s interviews with FBI agents, made public as part of the tranche of documents related to the case made public by the White House, confirm the former congressman’s claims that he cooperated with the bureau’s investigation.

    Earlier this year, Swalwell threatened to sue the FBI and asked the bureau not to release the files associated with the investigation. Swalwell’s lawyers made his case in a cease and desist letter sent to FBI Director Kash Patel in March.

    Snip.

    The FBI probe targeting Swalwell and Fang was opened on March 17, 2014, and codenamed “Freshman Fifteen,” according to a now-declassified “Interim Authority” memorandum, which was reviewed by FBI headquarters and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.

    The FBI assessment, which later became a full-fledged investigation, centered on allegations that Swalwell awarded internships at his offices in exchange for campaign contributions. The FBI identified Fang “Christine” Fang, a Chinese national, as the alleged facilitator of this exchange and alleged she employed conduits to route illegal donations.

    “Investigation has revealed Fang ‘Christine’ Fang, a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States, is the facilitator of a scheme to trade access to Swalwell and internships in his congressional office in return for campaign contributions […]” the memo reads. The FBI specifically gathered evidence that Fang “used conduits to conceal herself as a prohibited Foreign National source,” for illegal campaign contributions “at least twice in 2013 and at least two more times in 2014.”

    The agents found that the 2013 conduits “trace to Fang herself,” making them an “illegal source of campaign contributions.”

    The objectives of the probe were ultimately to “obtain sufficient evidence to indict and arrest Swalwell and Fang for violations of campaign finance laws and quid pro quo exchanges,” the memo adds.

    The FBI also caught Fang directly soliciting donations and promising to reimburse the contributor from her own funds, the memos state.

    In March 2015, Fang contacted an individual who was also an FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS). She asked the CHS to attend a fundraising event for Swalwell and solicited a contribution.

    The FBI agents on the case authored a memo on March 9, 2015 requesting approval for the CHS to “make a bona fide campaign contribution” in order to further the probe. That request was apparently approved. In a “CHS reporting document” dated March 24, 2015, an FBI agent reported that “CHS provided Christine Fang with his credit card number for the $1,000 donation.”

    In 2014, Fang invited an individual with whom she had a financial relationship to a fundraiser for Swalwell, according to an FBI-302 from June 2015 memorializing an interview with the individual, whose name is redacted. The individual claimed Fang told him he “just needed to bring his checkbook and that FANG would reimburse him for his donation.” The individual told investigators that he declined.

    Snip.

    In the early stages of the probe, the FBI team sent regular updates to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section (PIN), which was then headed by the now-controversial prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith would later lead the Biden administration’s investigations and prosecutions of Trump. PIN oversees investigations and prosecutions that involve federal crimes like bribery of public officials and election crimes, including campaign finance crimes.

    All the pieces start to click into place now, don’t they?

    Eventually, however, after interviewing Swalwell on multiple occasions, the FBI determined that the investigation had found no violations of federal statutes by the congressman. As a result, the FBI eventually reclassified the probe on February 8, 2017, dropping Swalwell as a subject and focusing the investigation solely on Fang’s alleged violations of campaign finance laws.

    Of course they did.

    The FBI had hard evidence that the campaign of a Democrat congressman was receiving money from communist China via the Chinese spy he was playing hide the salami with, and instead of pursuing it, they chose to close the case and chase the bogus Russiagate allegations.

    And did we mention that Swalwell was on the Committee on Homeland Security, and the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection? Don’t you think China would love to receive confidential information on America’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities?

    Instead of, at the very least, being forced to resign for banging a Chinese spy and taking campaign money from China, Swalwell was allowed to continue receiving classified information in congress because he had a (D) after his name.

    People should be fired.

    LinkSwarm for July 3, 2026

    Friday, July 3rd, 2026

    Happy Independence Day Eve! We plan to celebrate America’s 250th Birthday tomorrow in the time-honored tradition: Blowing things up.

    More Democrat welfare state fraud, dispatches from the Democrat Civil War, another very bad week for Russian logistics (and aircraft, and any Russians trying to buy fuel), Eurocrats want lowly peons to die of heatstroke rather than use the air conditioning enjoyed by their betters…

    …a followup to the weird Plano ISD booster club story, plus Mexican Batman. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Finally: “DOJ Grand Jury Probes Neville Roy Singham’s Marxist NGO Empire.”

    Fox News’ Asra Nomani reports that on Monday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is examining whether Singham, NGOs he funded, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.

    Prosecutors have issued subpoenas seeking bank records and other financial documents, according to Nomani’s sources.

    Nomani’s team recently reported that Singham pumped $285 million through a Goldman Sachs donor-advised philanthropy fund and shell entities before it flowed into US nonprofits, while a broader review showed that $591 million flowed across five continents from 2017 through 2025.

    More color from the report:

    Of that money, Fox News Digital established a documented $278 million flowed directly from Singham into organizations that “sow discord” in the U.S., as House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith put it earlier this year at a hearing a dynamics called “foreign malign influence.”

    Singham, who resides in China, has a long track record of assisting far-left entities, such as Code Pink and the Party for Socialism and other socialist NGOs, that oppose U.S. interests and support U.S. adversaries.

    According to investigative reports (e.g., New York Times, 2023), Singham has worked closely with pro-CCP propaganda networks targeting the US.

    Any Democrat or NGO staffers who knowingly accepted communist Chinese money need to go to prison.

  • “RFK Jr. Says 1 Million Obamacare Enrollees Lacked Social Security Numbers. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said 1 million people were enrolled in Obamacare health plans without Social Security numbers, as the Trump administration pledged to intensify efforts to combat fraud in federal health care programs.” Was ObamaCare designed from the ground up to provide taxpayer-funded medical care for illegal aliens, or did Democrats just see the opportunity along the way?
  • Finally Redux: “Supreme Court: States Can Ban Trans Athletes From Girls’ Sports.”

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that states can block biological transgender males from competing in girls’ sports. In a 6-3 ruling, the court gave an iron-clad answer to the question.

    Writing for the majority in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (consolidated with Little v. Hecox), Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause requires schools to carve out an exception for transgender athletes who’ve undergone hormone therapy or never experienced male puberty. States can draw the line at biological sex, full stop – no judge-administered athlete-by-athlete fairness hearings required. The ruling reverses both the Fourth Circuit (which sided with West Virginia’s B.P.J.) and the Ninth Circuit (which sided with Idaho’s Lindsay Hecox), and lands squarely in the wake of last year’s Skrmetti decision, extending its “this is a sex classification, not a transgender classification” framework from medical care straight into the locker room.

    The transsexual madness gripping the left deserves its own chapter in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

  • “DOJ Sues States Over Alleged Failure To Turn Over Food Stamp Data. The Trump administration has sued four states, accusing them of withholding crucial data on food stamp applicants.” The only surprise is that California is not among them.

    Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania refused to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would let federal officials identify fraud, Trump administration lawyers said in lawsuits filed on June 26 against the states.

    Officials are asking judges to enter injunctions that would force state authorities to hand over the last five years of applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program known as SNAP.

    The USDA requested the SNAP data in 2025, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump that directed agencies to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, and many states complied with the request.

    Data from those states showed that states had enrolled some 186,000 people in SNAP despite those people being deceased, among the discrepancies that added up to $3 billion in wasteful spending, the department said in a report.

    We known Minnesota isn’t turning it over due to the massive fraud lining Democrat pockets, and the same is probably true in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Kentucky is pretty red, but Democrat Governor Andy Beshear must be doing his best to gear up the fraud there.

  • “The Democratic Civil War: the Organized Crime Democrats are Losing to the Bolsheviks.”

    The Democratic Party has two main factions right now, which can conveniently be described as the Organized Crime Democrats, who view the government as primarily a vehicle to distribute resources and power to friends, allies, and clients who can be counted on to return their largesse with reliable votes, and the Bolsheviks, who want to do all those things as well, but whose overriding goal is the destruction of the United States and Western Civilization and replace it with Third World communism.

    For decades, at least, the Organized Crime Democrats have dominated the party, but they have tolerated and even fostered the growth of the Bolsheviks with the mistaken belief that no group of clients can ever be more reliable than those who could not in a million years vote for the Republicans.

    Snip.

    The OCDs’ alliance with and fostering of the radical left has come back to bite them in the nether regions now. As their resources have become constrained, the Bolsheviks have become ever more powerful, and as is always the case, the revolutionaries despise their allies as much as their ideological opponents, and now feel ready to take them out.

    And, so far, their putsch is working, and the OCDs are rightfully frightened.

    I had previously reported on this civil war much earlier, but I used the terms “insane wing” and “corrupt wing.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • More chickens come home to roost: “Moscow Region Attacked by Missile! Big Blast.”
  • “Ukraine Destroys Two More Key Bridges: On the Mariupol-Donetsk Highway and the E58 Road.”
  • “Ukraine Destroys Three More Key Bridges: Road Bridge Falls on Railroad Track.”
  • “Russian Oil Refinery Hit By Reported Flamingo Missile: Slavyansk-na-Kubani Refinery.”
  • “Flamingo Missiles Hit Iskander Missile Launcher Factory in Volgograd.”
  • “Missile/Drone Strike on Major Electronics Factory in Penza: Makes Sensors for Su-34 and Su-57.”
  • “Ukrainian Drones Hit Multiple Fuel Trains and Tankers in Crimea!”
  • Here’s a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Russian full shortages. “4km Line for Fuel in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai Region: 28 Hour Wait!” That’s all the way out east near Mongolia.
  • “Ukraine Claims SEVEN Russian Aircraft Destroyed/Damaged At Saky Air Base in Crimea.” Including Su-30 fighters and Su-24 bombers.
  • “One, Possibly TWO Su-35 Fighters Shot Down!”
  • Missed this earlier: Russian covert unit exposed.

    A JOINT PROJECT BY the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the investigative website The Insider has uncovered the existence and inner workings of a previously unknown Russian intelligence and cover action unit. The unit’s formal name is Military Unit 75127, but it is known within Russia’s intelligence establishment as Center 795. The Russian government reportedly created the unit in December 2022—less than a year following the Kremlin’s full military invasion of Ukraine.

    Snip.

    Notably, unlike other special activities units in Russia’s intelligence arsenal, Center 795 does not appear to reside within the GRU. Instead, it appears to operate independently of military intelligence oversight and to report directly to General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff of and First Deputy Minister of Defense, or to one of his subordinate deputy defense ministers.

    According to the investigative reports, the existence of Center 795 was revealed when one of its officers, Denis Alimov, used Google to translate a message sent to him by a Serbian operative living in the United States. This allowed the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to use a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant and access the Google Translate transcripts. Alimov was eventually arrested in Bogotá, Colombia, on February 24, 2026, after arriving there on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, Turkey. He is currently awaiting extradition to New York.

  • “Minnesota Gov Walz Pardons Convicted Child-Molester, Blocking Deportation.”

    A Minnesota pardon board that includes Gov Tim Walz among its three members has issued a full pardon to a convicted Laotian child-molester, torpedoing Homeland Security’s effort to deport him. The 42-year-old convict, Tou Lue Vang, submitted a letter to the board saying he regretted what he did — and just like that, his criminal record is now clean as a whistle via unanimous decision.

    “Governor Tim Walz’s decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,” said DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis. “These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting. Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.”

    Find someone who loves you as much as Democrats love illegal alien child molesters…

  • “EU headquarters shuts off AC to save energy…but only on the lower floors where the peons work.”

    The European Commission’s headquarters was forced to shut down its air-conditioning system on Friday due to the heat wave.

    Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: ‘BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.’

    The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners, and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above.

  • Also mandating the lowly peons to die of heat stroke: “UK orders homeowners to remove AC units during heatwave due to concerns about climate change.”

    Britons have been ordered to remove air conditioning from their homes – despite the country baking in up to 40C heat this week – under a fresh Net Zero crackdown.

    Planning officials at councils have told residents to take down their cooling units over concerns about carbon dioxide emissions.

    They say AC, despite the heat, should serve only as a ‘last resort’.

    Know your place, peasant…

  • “SCOTUS Declines To Hear Challenge to Texas Election Security Law. The Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding Texas’ vote harvesting law remains in place.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court declined to disturb the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding a sweeping Texas election security law banning paid vote harvesting.

    Senate Bill 1, passed in 2021, aimed to extensively reform election security and eliminate paid vote harvesting with increased criminal penalties for offenses.

    Vote harvesting is the practice of collecting and returning completed ballots, which can be used as a cover for voter fraud and voter coercion. Paid harvesters are often intent on delivering results for a specific candidate or measure.

  • “The DOJ has launched an investigation into Sen. Ruben Gallego’s (D-AZ) campaign spending, according to Axios and The Washington Examiner.

    A source told Axios the DOJ started the investigation after a “whistleblower complaint” in Southern California.

    Gallego’s problems began after numerous women came forward accusing his bestie, former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), of sexual misconduct.

    In April, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) claimed, “There is a woman that allegedly is coming forward with attorneys, wants to go on-record about an incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time, and the event was sexual in nature, allegedly.

    Last week, I wrote about how Politico scrutinized Gallego’s financial records and discovered he used leadership PAC campaign cash to fund luxury outings with his family since he launched his Senate campaign in 2023.

    The Senate Ethics Committee dismissed an inquiry into those allegations against Gallego on Monday.

  • “AG Paxton Joins Legal Challenge to California Plastics Act. A coalition of 17 states says the law would raise prices and burden interstate commerce.”

    Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging California’s Plastics Act, arguing it imposes burdensome regulations on companies doing business with California and will increase the cost of everyday American products.

    The lawsuit, which Paxton joined alongside the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and 16 additional attorneys general, calls the California law a “blatant and unprecedented attempt to impose its own policy preferences on the entire nation” and argues that it infringes on the sovereignty of other states.

    Implemented May 1, “the Plastics Act” places new requirements on goods containing plastic shipped into and out of California, affecting both producers and consumers nationwide.

    The act forces companies that sell products in the state to reduce single‑use plastic packaging, make it recyclable or compostable, and help pay for recycling and cleanup. It does this through strict reduction and recycling targets by 2032 and an extended producer responsibility program that shifts costs from taxpayers to packaging producers.

    Paxton’s office expressed alarm that the regulations and fees will drive up prices for everyday goods and discriminate against out-of-state businesses.

    “I am challenging California’s Plastics Act to protect businesses from unnecessary regulations and Texans from higher costs on the products they use every day,” said Paxton. “Texas has always been a place where businesses can thrive, and I will ensure it remains that way. I will not allow California lawmakers to harm Texas businesses.”

    The lawsuit further challenges California’s decision to place the private organization Circular Action Alliance in charge of implementing the law.

    According to the complaint, the CAA would collect roughly $500 million annually from businesses while operating with little public oversight or transparency.

    So a left-wing, radical environmental NGO gets to benefit directly by running left-wing, radical environmental program. What are the odds?

  • “Texas Supreme Court Rules ‘Detransitioner’ May Proceed in Suing Her Gender Modification Providers. SCOTX stated that the two-year statute of limitations clock began when Soren Aldaco’s surgery occurred, not when it was recommended.”

    The Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX) determined on Friday that a woman who regretted her gender modification surgery did not file her claims too late to take her providers to court, in a case centered on the state’s statute of limitations in medical malpractice cases.

    Soren Aldaco of Tarrant County sued her healthcare providers and counselors for fraud and negligence over their roles in obtaining gender modification procedures for her, including a double mastectomy at age 19 — a procedure she later came to regret.

    After the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth rejected Aldaco’s appeal in November 2024 on the basis that her medical claim had expired, affirming the Tarrant County district court’s prior summary judgement, SCOTX accepted her petition for review and scheduled the case for oral arguments on February 11, 2026.

    A SCOTX opinion was then issued by Justice James P. Sullivan four months later on Friday morning, reversing the finding that her claims had expired on the basis that the clock began ticking once the injury occurred, not when her therapist recommended her for the procedure.

    Aldaco’s therapist, Barbara Rose Wood of the Three Oaks Counseling Group, wrote her a letter of recommendation for a double mastectomy after the Crane Clinic advised her that she would need one in order to move forward with the procedure.

    Those who inflicted radical surgery on teenagers in the name of social justice deserve to lose every dime they own.

  • Now we know what’s driving that push for a Permian Basin high voltage line: WInd and solar power interests.

    In response to lawmakers’ request for a pause on extra-high-voltage transmission lines, transmission service providers admitted reliance on wind and solar power, along with government intervention, is driving Permian Basin energy issues. This aligns with a third-party report that the lines are primarily built to support wind and solar, while local reliable generation alternatives were never fully examined.

    Providers argued that public utility commissioners do not have the power to grant lawmakers’ request to pause the project. The next day, state senators announced they would hold a hearing on the proposed lines in late July.

    This centers on ERCOT’s 765-kilovolt Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP), a key part of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan (PBRP). STEP proposes three transmission lines spanning over 1,200 miles to move power from East Texas into the natural-gas-rich Permian Basin, with routes crossing North Texas, Central Texas, and South Texas.

    The three lines are split into five interconnected segments for Phase 1. Phase 2 would build 765-kV lines from Northeast-East Texas southward through Central and South Texas. This eastern portion would tie into the lines leading into the Permian Basin.

    On June 24, in a joint filing, Transmission Service Providers (TSPs) Oncor, Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Service Corporation, AEP Texas, and City of San Antonio-owned CPS Energy admitted that the risk to sustained electrical supply in West Texas is “greatest during low-wind, no-solar conditions, when the Permian Basin relies heavily on imports” from the lower voltage 345-kV network.

    The TSPs’ filing was in response to a June 15 brief by more than 40 state lawmakers asking PUCT to pause the project. They filed it in support of pro-landowner American Stewards of Liberty’s motion to defer deciding the need for the first four segments.

    The lawmakers cited Dr. Brent Bennett, who wrote the May 2026 study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Bennett warned that the “main effect of the 765-kV lines is to integrate more wind and solar into the ERCOT grid,” and that helping ERCOT “manage [such] a future system … to meet growing industrial demand” is the “primary rationale” for the lines.

    This comes roughly five years after the 2021 winter blackouts. Two failures that energy specialist Jason Isaac said contributed to the problem are overreliance on “unreliable” wind and solar and market-distorting subsidies for wind and solar.

    Bennett wrote that more transmission “does not ensure that enough new reliable generation will be built to meet demand and could even discourage such generation if the transmission provides wind and solar favorable market access.”

    Bennett and ASL believe that building new dispatchable power generation, such as natural gas, in the Permian Basin was not fully examined as an alternative. The TSPs wrote they “do not dispute” that more such generation would benefit the Permian Basin.

  • “Former Tomball ISD Tax Assessor Charged with Wire Fraud
. Kristi Williams is accused of stealing $1 million and disguising the theft by altering information in the tax office’s collection software system.”

    When local taxpayers used cash, a tax office employee would put the cash in an envelope and record the payment as part of a “batch” of payments in the office’s tax collection software, Spindlemedia.

    After reaching between $15,000 to $20,000, an employee would close that batch of payments in the software. At this point, Williams was responsible for depositing the cash from the envelopes into the district’s bank accounts.

    Williams’ indictment alleges that she stole $996,174 in cash and disguised the theft by reversing payments recorded in certain batches, recorded those payments in new batches, and kept the new batches open for long periods in the Spindlemedia software.

  • “The company formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems is ending its $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against MyPillow and its CEO, Mike Lindell. The voting machine company, which was sold last year to a former GOP election official and is now called Liberty Vote, agreed to dismiss the long-running lawsuit in a federal court filing this week.”
  • “Pete Buttigieg says his children were temporarily taken by CPS after he was accused of ‘unspeakable violent crimes.'” Falsely calling CPS on anyone is wrong and evil. However, gay men have been convicted of raping their adopted children before, so the charge is not beyond the realm of possibility.
  • Crazy Transtifa mass shooting thwarted.

    Las Vegas cops busted a transgender gunman who allegedly planned a casino massacre using a huge cache of weapons.

    Allison Howlett, 36, who was born a man but lives as a woman, was arrested Saturday on charges of making terroristic threats, assault with a deadly weapon, auto theft, gun theft and other offenses.

    The wild story unfolded shortly after 9:30 a.m. Saturday when Howlett’s former spouse, who is female, called police to report Howlett had stolen her car and the vehicle held numerous firearms, Henderson Police Chief Reggie Rader said.

    You know how the MSM always report “arsenals” that seem like fairly puny gun collections? That isn’t the case this time.

    The officers were shocked to see that Howlett had been sitting on a handgun and had an MP5 submachine gun sitting on the back seat.

    When cops searched Howlett’s car, they recovered 22 other guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

    Cops who searched the suspect’s home in Henderson found 30 more firearms, including automatic rifles, plus ammo, grenade launcher attachments and silencers.

    Officers said Howlett made several threats going back years, a including a 2024 call where Howlett threatened a mass shooting.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Here’s a weird follow-up to a weird story. “Plano ISD Sued Over Arrests of High School Booster Club Mothers.”

    Mothers from a Jasper High School choir booster club filed a lawsuit claiming Plano Independent School District (ISD) participated in civil conspiracy and had them falsely arrested.

    The lawsuit, which names Laura Cervantes and the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club as the plaintiffs, describes the series of events that led to the filing.

    Cervantes was elected as president of the booster club in 2019, and in June 2022 the club was filed as an incorporated nonprofit organization. The club utilized a Prosperity Bank account, and three directors, Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria King, assumed oversight.

    Cervantes’ lawsuit states, “Neither Plano ISD, nor any of its employees, were members, officers, or employees of the organization” at that time.

    The directors reportedly sought funding from Plano ISD for repairs in the theater, but allege that the district then flipped the script, asking the booster club to instead fund improvements. When they responded that repairs were not in the description of the club’s functions, Plano ISD claimed that the booster club was no longer acting in compliance with district guidelines and staged a coup, according to Cervantes.

    The district disavowed the club and elected new leadership, despite the club operating as a legally separate entity from the district. The lawsuit claims that during that time, “Defendants continued to divert the Booster Club’s mail, kept it, opened it, and used its contents (namely bank statements).”

    The lawsuit also claims that the newly elected booster club directors, along with the school’s fine arts director, subsequently went to Prosperity Bank in order to replace the original club directors as authorized signers on the account.

    The lawsuit states, “These Defendants’ conduct likely constituted the crime of forgery under [the Texas Penal Code], because they intentionally presented documents intended to defraud the bank and harm the Booster Club by taking over its funds.”

    Eventually, the bank notified the three moms that it would be closing the account, and they proceeded to take the check and deposit that money into another bank account at Vantage Bank in the name of the booster club. The check bounced.

    In August 2024, a Plano Police Department detective executed a probable cause affidavit — which Cervantes claims was “based entirely off the knowingly false statements of each Defendant” — and obtained warrants for the arrests of Cervantes, Lingenfelter, and King “for the felony offense of theft over $2,500 but less than $30,000.”

    They were booked into the Collin County Jail with their bonds set at $25,000 each.

    A Collin County grand jury declined to indict the women “for any crime for want of probable cause, and the prosecution was terminated in Cervantes’s favor.”

    Plano ISD released a statement about the legal drama, arguing that school-affiliated organizations, including booster clubs, “must follow established guidelines for financial accountability, annual audits and open communication with district leaders.”

    The statement did not address the termination of the prosecution, or the district-led formation of the new booster club, but maintained, “Plano ISD did not file any suit against the former booster club- these proceedings were strictly between the current booster organization and the previously disbanded group.”

    The statement by Plano ISD also detailed that they gave the $4,437.39 recovered from the old booster club’s account to the new club.

    On May 27, the federal lawsuit was filed with Cervantes at the helm. Allegations cover 11 items, from false arrest and unreasonable seizure of property to violations of the rights to free association, free speech, petition.

    The lawsuit alleges, “Plano Independent School District and its employees conspir[ed] with private citizens to assume control over a private non-profit organization, take control of its property and monies, and eventually, have the directors of that organization falsely arrested and publicly humiliated – all because the officers of a high school choir booster club would not bend the knee to an out-of-control public school district.”

    It seems inexplicable that Plano ISD threw three booster club members in jail in order to steal their $4,437.39…

  • MS-NOW, AKA The Failing Network Formerly Known As MSNBC, has decided to fill its weekend slots with podcast reruns.
  • Do you have a permit to worship while Jewish, comrade?
  • Nuclear power is heating up again (literally). “Three Reactors Achieved Criticality Before July 4th.”
  • “Peppa Pig backlash as US company Hasbro requires child actors to sign voices over to AI.”
  • Reminder, yet again, that when you “buy” digital goods with DRM like movies, you don’t actually “own” them.
  • Mel Brooks turned 100. Happy birthday to the man who brought us Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles.

  • Supergirl pitch meeting.
  • Saul Goodman celebrates 250 years of American constitutional rights.
  • “Sleep Tricks That Sound Wrong But Work Instantly.” I’m definitely nottrying that lettuce water thing…
  • Hoovie takes over the Car Wizard’s shop.
  • BeardMeatsFood tackles a medieval banquet challenge…for two. Himself.
  • New York business that makes columns and decorative architectural elements shutting down after 110 years.
  • Not The Bee: “‘Mexican Batman’ Keeps Gift-Wrapping Bad Guys And Leaving Them For The Cops.”
  • “Democrats Furious Trump Would Make Haitians Leave Most Racist Country On Earth.”
  • “Terrorist Torn Between Going On Violent Jihad Or Getting Elected As Democratic Senator.”
  • “American Missionaries Dispatched To Europe To Spread The Good News About Air Conditioning.”
  • “Rape Gang Busted In The UK For Illegal Air Conditioner Use.
  • “Heat Wave So Intense The French Are Considering Wearing Deodorant.”
  • A dog and her squirrel:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For June 26, 2026

    Friday, June 26th, 2026

    More Medicare scammers captured, Trump wins multiple border security cases at the Supreme Court, the Supremes also drive a stake through a vampire, Ukraine hits a whole lot of bridges in occupied Crimea, dirty commies win Dem primaries in New York, and Tom Scott looks at some furry workers.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “FBI arrests second fugitive on Most Wanted Fraudsters list, accused of $1.2B Medicare fraud scheme.”

    Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel announced that another suspect on the T White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud’s new Most Wanted Fraudsters list has been apprehended.

    Patel posted on X Saturday that Herbert Leon Kimble, 60, was arrested in the Philippines thanks to the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) task force led by Vice President JD Vance and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    “In just over two weeks, this is the second Most Wanted Fraudster arrested on the FBI’s list led by Vice President Vance and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” wrote the director. “Herbert Leon Kimbel was apprehended in the Philippines and is now back in the United States, on the run since 2024 after he allegedly orchestrated a $1.2 billion healthcare fraud conspiracy that targeted the Medicare system – particularly elderly victims – from 2014-2019.”

    Kimble of Chicago, Illinois, is accused of targeting Medicare in a “large-scale healthcare fraud conspiracy” via “the improper marketing and distribution of durable medical equipment (DME), particularly orthopedic braces.”

    According to the FBI, from 2014 to 2019, he operated a scheme in which victims — often elderly — would be unnecessarily prescribed orthopedic braces for pain relief by telemedicine providers via call centers in the Philippines.

    Evidently it’s Medicare fraudsters with connection to the Philippines week here at BattleSwarm.

    DME suppliers affiliated with Kimble would then bill Medicare for reimbursement, resulting in over $1.2 billion in Medicare charges.

    On April 4, 2019, in the District of South Carolina U.S. District Court, he pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, to make a false claim to a department of the United States, to commit mail fraud, to commit wire fraud, to commit healthcare fraud and to offer kickbacks and bribes in connection with the scheme.

    He subsequently failed to appear for his sentencing hearing on August 27, 2024, resulting in the issuance of a federal arrest warrant that same day, charging him with failure to appear.

    The FBI offered a reward of up to $150,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

    Kimble is the second individual on the most wanted list that has been apprehended.

    Last week, Said Abdullahi Ereg, 47, was also arrested after he surrendered to authorities in connection with an alleged $4 million scheme involving the Federal Child Nutrition Program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Ereg ran a grocery and deli in Minneapolis sponsored by Feeding Our Future. He was initially issued a federal arrest warrant in January 2024 and was indicted in June 2024 by a federal grand jury for conspiracy involving wire fraud and money laundering.

    The FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list can be found here.

  • Two wins for Trump on immigration enforcement at the Supreme Court.

    The Supreme Court this morning, in a pair of 6–3 opinions written by Justice Samuel Alito, gave the Trump administration’s border policies two more big wins. Both pared back humanitarian bases for admitting people into the country. Mullin v. Doe allowed the administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations granted by the Biden administration — specifically for Haitians and Syrians, but the decision’s logic, which bars judicial review of revocations, would seem to compel the same outcome for Venezuelans. Mullin v. Al Otro Lado allowed immigration officials to prevent people from reaching the border to present asylum claims, because the law allows those claims to be presented by an alien who “arrives in the United States.”

    Along with Tuesday’s decision in Blanche v. Lau, which strengthened the government’s power to exclude criminal aliens prior to their convictions, this was a clean sweep for immigration hard-liners. That may take some of the sting out of the Court’s pending decision in Trump v. Barbara, which could come as soon as Monday and is expected to be a loss for Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.

    In the backdrop of Mullin v. Doe are the divergent attitudes of the Biden and Trump administrations toward TPS, but the actual ground of battle, as our editorials have emphasized, is the language of the TPS statute and whether courts should take the written law seriously.

    The TPS statute, enacted in 1990, allows the president to designate particular countries as unsafe because of war, natural disasters, epidemics, or other temporary crises and therefore give their nationals temporary protection to stay within this country. Before the statute’s enactment, presidents would sometimes grant such protection as a discretionary matter but with no statutory authorization and, in effect, no rules. In that sense, TPS is like the 1977 tariff statute at issue in Learning Resources: It was designed to provide rules of the road for the executive to follow in responding to emergencies. Prior to 1990, the judiciary had treated these executive decisions as exercises of discretion that courts could not review.

    Of course, nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. For some countries, TPS has been continually in force now for decades, making a mockery of the “temporary” designation. Somalia has had a TPS designation for 35 years, and Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador have been so designated for more than 25 years. Haiti received a TPS designation because of an earthquake 16 years ago.

    The statute is written to reflect broad executive discretion. The secretary of homeland security “may” grant TPS to nationals of a particular country based on a series of statutory criteria but is under no obligation to do so. Several of the criteria explicitly reference conditions “temporarily” existing in the foreign country. By contrast, the statute requires TPS to be terminated if the secretary finds that the home country “no longer continues to meet the conditions for designation.” The law thus contemplates ongoing review — the secretary is mandated to conduct a new review at least once every 18 months — and DHS violates the law if it extends TPS when the conditions justifying it no longer exist.

    That may be particularly important when a foreign tyranny is suddenly toppled and replaced by a new government, as has happened recently in both Syria and Venezuela. Syria’s designation was applied in 2012 because of the civil war that sought to topple the Assad regime, which ended with Assad’s departure in late 2024. Once TPS is revoked, the affected foreign nationals are given 60 days before they must either leave the United States or secure some other legal basis to stay. The 60-day provision was designed by Congress to accommodate the reliance interests of foreigners here temporarily, who have been given work permits but who knew from the outset that shelter on American shores was explicitly temporary.

    The Biden administration tried to lock in its successor on these inherently fluid, temporary foreign policy assessments by granting TPS extensions, in some cases just days before Joe Biden left office. For example, Alejandro Mayorkas, the impeached-but-not-tried secretary of homeland security, extended TPS for Venezuela on January 17, 2025. By contrast, the Trump administration has terminated every TPS it has reviewed, 13 of them so far. Trump has been quite open about this as a deliberate policy.

    Can courts review TPS designations? Congress didn’t think so. We know that because Congress said so in terms that could hardly be more explicit: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary of homeland security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.” The TPS litigation that has been ongoing since the outset of the second Trump term has dragged on this long because multiple lower court judges (including the Ninth Circuit) decided to judicially review what Congress said explicitly they may not judicially review. As Alito noted, judicial orders stopped Trump from ending TPS for Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Burma, and Ethiopia and also prevented Trump from ending TPS for Haiti during his first term, in 2018.

    Alito began with whether the law written by Congress means what it says, and his opinion is almost comical in attempting to take seriously the ridiculous contention that it doesn’t. “This text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,” he noted, and he explained why the word “determination” means decisions that the secretary is empowered and in some cases required to make.

  • “Supreme Court Drives a Stake Through Hawaii’s ‘Vampire Rule.'”

    IAt stake was a Hawaiian statute, Act 52, that inverted the usual presumption that governs public access to generally accessible private property, but only where firearms are concerned. Prior to the passage of Act 52, Hawaiians who were able to obtain carry permits (which, before Bruen, was effectively impossible) were allowed to enter any generally accessible private space while carrying a firearm — unless the property owner explicitly signaled otherwise. After Act 52, Hawaiians with carry permits were allowed to enter any generally accessible private space while carrying a firearm only if the property had signaled that it was acceptable. (Gothic lore holds that vampires must be explicitly invited to enter one’s home before they may cross the threshold. Hence: “vampire rule.”)

    As the Court correctly noted, this change — which was made directly after Bruen, and which shifted only the rules governing firearms, and no others besides — was explicitly designed to impede “the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise the right Bruen recognized as they go about their daily lives.” That being so, it fell.

    Writing for the majority, Justice Alito recorded that:

    At common law, opening up private property to the general public implies a “license to all persons to enter,” meaning that “no person is a trespasser by merely entering therein” unless the property owner has given “due notice” that such a person is banned.

    “Hawaii’s shift from the common-law rule,” Alito concluded, “unquestionably imposes a new and significant burden on the exercise of the right recognized in Bruen.”n a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court has struck down Hawaii’s “vampire rule” as a violation of the Second and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This was the right result, and, once again, it is a disgrace that the decision was not unanimous.

    During briefs and at oral argument, Hawaii offered up three main defenses of its law. The first defense was that it has historically had much stricter firearms laws than much of the rest of the United States. Alito dealt with that one quickly:

    As the plurality explained in McDonald, the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States. 561 U. S., at 784–785. It cannot give way to “the spirit of Aloha” in Hawaii, contra, State v. Wilson, 154 Haw. 8, 27, 543 P. 3d 440, 459 (2024), any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald).

    Aloha, “spirit of Aloha.”

    No, Hawaii, you can’t argue that “Historically, Hawaii has ignored the constitution” as an excuse to ignore it further…

  • “Eight Antifa Members Who Attacked Texas ICE Facility Sentenced to Collective 450 Years in Prison.”

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the sentencing eight “North Texas Antifa Cell” operatives to a total of 450 years in prison on Tuesday for their various roles in the July 4, 2025 attack on the Prairieland U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center in Alvarado.

    “Testimony and other evidence at trial established that the defendants were members of a North Texas Antifa Cell, part of a larger militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to an ideology that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law,” a June 23 DOJ press release said.

    On July 4 of last year, the Antifa members dressed in dark clothing with head and face coverings, forming a “black bloc” in order to conceal their identities and make them indistinguishable from each other. Evidence revealed they had 11 firearms, body armor, and 11 “military-grade first aid kits with tourniquets and other items to treat gunshot wounds to the scene of the attack.”

    They began shooting fireworks and vandalizing vehicles and a guard shack at the property. Alvarado police officers responded to a 9-1-1 call about the attack. Ringleader Benjamin Song was heard on a bodycam recording yelling, “Get to the rifles!” — after which the group opened fire on the officer, hitting him in the neck.

    Many of the Antifa members were arrested near the scene, but Song escaped and was not arrested until July 15.

    The DOJ said this is the “first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa following President Donald J. Trump’s executive order designating the group as a Domestic Terrorist Organization in September 2025.”

    In March, nine of the Antifa members were convicted for “their roles in rioting, using weapons and explosives, providing material support to terrorists, obstruction, and the attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer.”

    Of the nine, eight were sentenced on Tuesday, including Song, who received the harshest sentence of 100 years in prison for the attempted murder of the officer. Evidence from the trial showed that Song acquired and distributed firearms to the co-defendants and “recruited members at gun ranges and combat sessions he conducted, as well as from various ideologically aligned groups.”

    Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years; Cameron Arnold, Savanna Batten, Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris, and Elizabeth Soto to 50 years each; and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada to 30 years.

    Ines Soto was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1, along with seven co-defendants who all pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists: Seth Sikes, Nathan Baumann, Joy Gibson, Susan Kent, Rebecca Morgan, Lynette Sharp, and John Thomas.

    Seven others who pleaded guilty to providing support to the terrorists will be sentenced on July 1.

  • I didn’t have time to include The Tulsi Gabbard/Fauci story in last week’s LinkSwarm.
    1. Fauci, as NIAID director, directed millions in U.S. taxpayer funds (via Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance and other entities) for gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan.
    2. Fauci had close relationships with intelligence-community leaders and provided hand-picked NIAID-funded scientists as advisors, which was used to promote a natural-origin narrative and downplay the lab-leak theory. Fauci played a direct role, even meeting with the CIA to assist in a coverup.
    3. Fauci LIED to Congress in 2024 when asked about his involvement in these schemes (there is a long trail of evidence proving this).

      The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released declassified documents to support her claims, which can be found here.

  • “Kerch Oil Depot Hit By Drones: Close to the Kerch Bridge.”
  • “Storm Shadow Strike on Semiconductor Plant in Voronezh: Four Hits.”
  • “Voronezh Update: Major Damage to Semiconductor Plant in New Video & Satellite Imagery.”
  • “Moscow Oil Refinery: Satellite Imagery Shows Extensive Damage.”
  • “Key Bridge in Vasylivka Destroyed in Big Ukrainian Air Strike.”
  • “Ukraine Destroys Key Railway Bridge in Crimea! ”
  • “Satellite Imagery Shows Severe Damage to Crimean Bridges.”
  • “Ukrainian Drones Hit the Poltavskaya Oil Depot.” This was in Krasnodar Krai.
  • “Ukraine Destroys Multiple Russian Ferries at Port Kavkaz.” This was near the Kerch Strait.
  • “Ukraine Hits TWO Russian Support Ships and a Ferry in Zatoka Shipyard Near Kerch.”
  • Ukraine also hit 38 different targets in Crimea; radars, electrical substations, oil storage, etc.
  • “Zelenskyy says drone signal repeaters in Belarus have been switched off.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that signal repeaters on the territory of Belarus that had been helping Russian drones strike Ukraine ceased operating on 22 June….

    “Based on the available information reported to me by the Commander-in-Chief [of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi] and intelligence services, the relevant signal repeaters stopped operating on the territory of Belarus on 22 June. I don’t know yet whether they have been dismantled, to be honest. But we are working on this, and I am keeping a very close eye on the situation and receiving daily reports. It is a fact that the signal repeaters are not operating today.”

    On 19 June, Zelenskyy issued an ultimatum to self-proclaimed Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, giving him a week to dismantle the signal repeaters used to adjust Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian cities, or Ukraine would do it itself.

  • Old and busted: Russia puts heavy air defense around Putin’s vacation palace. The new hotness: Russia torn down the palace. Puzzling.
  • “Why Every High School Student Is Learning to Shoot a Gun – in Latvia.” Every country bordering Russia should legalize private ownership of firearms and do the same. (Hat tip: KR Training.)
  • A huge earthquake rocked Venezuela this week, with death toll unknown but expected to be high.
  • Despite Abigail Spanberger’s best efforts, the Second Amendment still applies to Virginia.

    Things went from bad to worse for Democrats on Thursday afternoon after a judge in Virginia issued a preliminary injunction on the “assault firearms” and high-capacity magazine ban that was set to go into effect in the Commonwealth on July 1. The judge from Lancaster County, located in the Northern Neck of Virginia, ruled that the Virginia State Police (VSP) cannot enforce the bans through December 31, 2026 or until a final order is issued.

    The lawsuit was brought against the superintendent of the VSP by the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) and Gun Owners of America (GOA), who took well-deserved victory laps on social media.

    There’s also another law case winding its way through the courts. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Mamdani-Backed Socialists Sweep New York House Primaries.”

    New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement proved influential in three key congressional primary races on Tuesday, as his favored progressive candidates prevailed over opponents more closely aligned with the Democratic establishment.

    New York State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez and Harlem community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, both of whom were also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won races in New York’s seventh and 13th congressional districts, respectively. Meanwhile, former city comptroller Brad Lander, a progressive former DSA member, pulled off an impressive upset over incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in NY-10. Lander is a Jewish progressive who left the DSA in 2023 after it held a pro-Palestinian rally just one day after Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.

    Lander and Goldman, who is also a Jewish Democrat, both made their stances on the Israel-Hamas war a key part of their respective campaigns. Lander, who sits to the left of Goldman politically, had criticized his opponent for failing to take a tougher stance on Israel.

    Avila Chevalier prevailed over incumbent Representative Adriano Espaillat despite her status as the most controversial of the three Mamdani-backed progressives. While Espaillat is the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus “who has over the years built a political machine of his own in upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx,” according to Politico, Avila Chevalier is a first-time candidate who was well known in Harlem for her pro-Palestinian activism but whose unearthed social media posts made her a political liability for the DSA. Those posts included messages blasting Democratic politicians, including one 2021 post in which she wrote “f*** Kamala Harris,” and others against an array of topics from the police to Israel and private property.

    Mamdani, for his part, said he wasn’t aware of her past comments when he endorsed her, but he did not pull his endorsement nonetheless.

    The mayor also endorsed Valdez in her bid to assume the seat left open by retiring Representative Nydia Velázquez. The outgoing Democratic congresswoman had endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso as her replacement. Mamdani and the DSA’s decision to endorse a different candidate led to a falling out with Velázquez, who had been an early supporter of Mamdani’s mayoral run.

  • China’s oil reserves aren’t.

    In late May Chinese leaders travelled to the Zhoushan National Oil Reserve and discovered the nation’s strategic oil reserves weren’t there. For over a year, the disruption of oil supplies from Venezuela and Iran had left Chinese oil reserves reduced. Despite that, government documents indicated that China still had 1.2 billion tons of oil reserves. That’s equivalent to 8,756,117,022 barrels.

    China’s strategic oil reserve, to the surprise of the government officials who went to verify the reserves in May, was instead composed of water, sludge, various debris and overflow from nearby sewer lines.

    Because the Americans dominated global energy supplies, the Chinese oil reserve served as a major cushion to any disruptions to Chinese oil imports from the Persian Gulf, especially Iran whose main customer was China. Under America’s global energy stranglehold, Chinese crude oil stockpiles have reached the verge of collapse at the slightest exposure.

    The current Chinese vulnerability stems from the American disruption of Venezuelan oil exports to China and more recently a similar situation with Iranian oil exports to China.

    China’s strategic oil reserve was insurance against disruptions in Venezuelan and Iranian imports. With its oil reserves revealed as a sham, China finds itself in a desperate situation. What happened to Chinese oil? It was soon discovered that corrupt government officials and oil reserve personnel had sold the oil and pocketed the proceeds. The local buyers were often operators of small, locally owned refineries that turned the oil into commercial products that were sold throughout China. Most of these oil criminals then fled, often leaving China for sanctuary states that would welcome any affluent Chinese and their new wealth. The only winners were a few conniving Chinese and the Americans, who continued to dominate the global energy system.

    (Hat tip: Bayou Renaissance Man.)

  • “John Bolton Pleads Guilty to Mishandling Classified Information, Faces Five-Year Prison Sentence.” He should have stayed as UN Ambassador, where he was useful scaring other nations, and everyone would have been happier.
  • “For every hour employees think they save using AI, they spend an hour ‘botsitting.'”
  • American memory company Micron blows away earning guidance.
  • Bungie went woke and now they’re going broke.
  • Why Spirit Airlines failed. “Perhaps the Biden DOJ should have allowed the JetBlue merger.” Yay think?
  • Meme for the week:

    (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt.)

  • Important tip: If you’re a Bexar County judge and you’re given an official YouTube channel to livestream your court proceedings, don’t use it for your book club.
  • “Woman who emptied Knicks trashcan on street — then stole it — is fired from JPMorgan Chase, was DEI exec.” Shocked face engaged. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • How Adam Savage sorts his connector cables.
  • The Lock-Picking Lawyer: “I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow Master Lock has now tarnished its name even more with a brand new line of padlocks.” Evidently the Elite line isn’t.
  • Tom Scott looks at…ferrets?
  • Critical Drinker liked The Furious.
  • The Pitch Meeting for Disclosure Day.
  • Jeremy Clarkson: “The observant among you will notice that I’m not dead yet.”
  • Dwight offers up a look at some early Smith & Wesson history.
  • “New Yorkers Excited To See How Never-Before-Tried Government Called ‘Socialism’ Turns Out.”
  • “Al-Qaeda Wins New York Primary.”
  • “New ‘Communist Catan’ Expansion Set Just Makes Players All Wait Their Turn For Grain.”
  • Soccer finally accomplishes something.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    LinkSwarm For June 5, 2026

    Friday, June 5th, 2026

    Conflicting economic signals, more Democrat fraud uncovered, more criminal illegal aliens deported, Ukraine sinks more Russian ships and ignites more Russian oil refineries, more Winning, more media companies still try to cling to woke (but Victoria’s Secret wises up), and videos that will break your brain. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    Personally, it’s been an eventful week. I opened an IRA to move money into from a 401K so I can move some of it to my checking, but it always takes longer than they promise. And my dog managed to catch a skunk, who seemed to spray directly into his mouth from the way he was frothing. So I bought some carpet stuff to get the second-hand Eue de Skunk out of my carpets. (From the description of other people whose dogs have been skunked, I don’t think he got much of a dose except in his mouth and on his head, so I suspect I haven’t had it as bad as some people.)

  • “US job market notches third straight month of solid growth.”

    The closely watched employment report from the Labor Department on Friday ‌painted an upbeat picture of the jobs market. The economy added 93,000 more jobs in March and April than previously estimated and the unemployment rate held at 4.3% for a third consecutive month.

  • But: “Tech job cuts surge, hitting a nearly two-year high. Big Tech in May announced the most job cuts in almost two years — more than 38,000 in total, according to new data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The tech sector has announced 123,653 cuts in 2026, a 65% increase over the same period last year.” So the economy is doing great! Except for the part of it that could hire me…
  • “Trump admin overhauls with strict new rules about who gets the money.”

    Russ Vought at OMB has just overhauled $1 TRILLION in federal grants by adding: Strict E-Verify requirements, English-language rules, and political appointee oversight to ensure taxpayer dollars go to American citizens first.

    Vought’s new proposal replaces automatic payouts with “pay for performance” standards. Grants can now be terminated for waste, fraud, underperformance, or pushing anti-American priorities like DEI, gender ideology, or Green New Scam programs.

    No more blank checks and fraud complaints go STRAIGHT to inspectors general and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro within 10 days.

    Sounds like a great start, but the fact that the federal government is handing out $1 trillion in grants seems like a problem in and of itself…

  • “EPA boss made criminal referrals alleging Democrats ‘self-dealing’ in lucrative green energy grants. Lee Zeldin alleges that eight nonprofit ‘cutouts’ were used to route billions to former Obama-Biden cronies.”

    Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin says he has made several criminal referrals after uncovering a major political enrichment scandal that routed billions in Biden-era green energy grants to Democrat cronies. “It’s about self-dealing,” Zeldin tells Just the News.

    Zeldin said he has canceled or stopped about $29 billion in EPA grants – including one for $2 billion to a nonprofit tied to longtime Georgia Democrat election activist and failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams – after unmasking a series of pass-through groups used to route taxpayer monies to the politically connected.

    “As you look through all of these pass-through entities, you’re seeing so many connections to former Obama and Biden administration officials and Democratic donors, people who were former Cabinet members, other high-ranking administration officials,” he said during a wide-ranging interview Monday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
    Zeldin: “Blatant waste and abuse.”

    Zeldin said he has referred several of the transactions to the EPA inspector general, the agency’s chief watchdog, and the Justice Department for possible prosecution or further investigation. “Those referrals have been made,” he said.

    Zeldin said some of the allegations have their roots in legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, when Congress and the White House were all in Democrat hands. “They included all of this funding in this so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And then they would work with these different agencies of the Biden administration to get it out to their unqualified friends. The whole thing just feels criminal,” he said. “[…] This is clearly something that falls into the category of blatant waste and abuse.”

    Zeldin has repeatedly singled out the Biden administration’s $2 billion grant to Power Forward Communities, a nonprofit tied to the former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abrams. The funds were awarded in 2024 to finance “residential decarbonization,” which was an effort to replace gas furnaces and other appliances with electric ones.

    Abrams reportedly “played a pivotal role” in establishing the group, according to Fox News.

    The award came under scrutiny after it was revealed Power Forward Communities had reported only $100 the year before the award. The Trump administration’s EPA announced in February 2025 it was taking measures to get the money back as part of an overall effort to claw back funding rushed out the door in the final days of the Biden administration.

    There doesn’t seem to be a single federal agency the Democrat Party didn’t treat as a giant bag of graft.

  • “SCOTUS Allows Alabama Congressional Map Likely to Net GOP House Seat. Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, is now widely viewed as a likely Republican pickup.”

    The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 on Tuesday night that Alabama may use a congressional map drawn in 2023 for this year’s elections, reversing a lower federal court’s decision that the plan unlawfully diluted the voting power of black residents.

    This ruling reduces the number of majority-black congressional districts in the state from two to one and is widely expected to give Republicans one additional House seat in the upcoming midterm elections.

    The Democrat-filed Petteway v. Galveston County is the gift that keeps giving…

  • “Superseding Indictment Alleges SPLC Funded ‘Ku Klux Klan garments’ and ‘Cross-Burning Events.’ Asserts wide-ranging wire and bank fraud ‘to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid’ to extremist group members SPLC supposedly was fighting.”

    From the Introduction to the Superseding Indictment:

    The Southern Poverty Law Center’s (“SPLC”) stated mission included the dismantling of white supremacy and confronting hate across the country. However, unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Alliance. The SPLC’s paid informants (“field sources”) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website. The SPLC also had a field source who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia. That field source made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. In order to covertly pay its field sources, the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities. The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the field sources. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.

    The Superseding Indictment summarizes the structure of SPLC’s alleged fraudulent operation:

    10. Starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent extremist organizations or who had infiltrated such organizations at the SPLC’s direction. These individuals were referred to by some high-level employees within the SPLC as the “field sources” or the “Fs.” Upon entering into an agreement with an F, the SPLC assigned each F a unique number. The SPLC assigned these numbers in chronological order. The SPLC then paid the Fs with donor money.

    11. Between in or about 2010 through in or about 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled approximately $4.1 million dollars in tax-exempt donor funds to a series of fictitious accounts described hereinafter. The general purpose of these fictious accounts was to pay Fs who were either leading or affiliated with multiple violent extremist organizations. Fs used the money donors gave to the SPLC to, among other things:

    a. Attend extremist group rallies across the country;
    b. Host extremist group rallies throughout the country;
    c. Grow existing chapters of extremist groups;
    d. Create new chapters of extremist groups;
    e. Recruit new individuals into extremist groups;
    f. Make donations to extremist group leaders;
    g. Purchase materials for cross burnings;
    h. Purchase materials to make Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods;
    1. Create racist paraphernalia that extremist groups sold at rallies;
    J. Publish extremist literature used in the recruiting of more members; and
    k. Pay everyday living expenses, which allowed the Fs to focus on their extremistgroups rather than seeking other employment.

    12. Certain SPLC employees knew that Fs used donors’ money to actively recruit new members and grow their violent extremist organizations.

    There allegedly were fictitious entities set up to conceal what SPLC was doing:

    15. To secretly funnel donors’ money to the Fs, employees at the SPLC, including a person who would become the SPLC’s Chief Financial Officer (“Employee-I”) and the person who would become Director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project (“Employee-2”) among others, opened and/or modified a series of bank accounts at Bank-I and Bank-2 in the name of various fictitious entities, including the following:

    a. Center Investigative Agency (“CIA”);
    b. Fox Photography;
    c. North West Technologies (“North West Tech”);
    d. Tech Writers Group (“Tech Writers”);
    e. Rare Books Warehouse (“Rare Books”);
    f. Imagery Ink;
    g. J&J Electronics;
    h. Kelly ‘s Marine; and
    1. Turner Personnel

    16. These fictitious entities were never incorporated, had no bonafide employees, and conducted no legitimate business.

    More at the link. But it certainly sounds like they were breaking a whole host of laws, including deceptive trade practices, and possibly tax fraud.

  • I should have a link in here about all the latest Graham Platner revelations, but I just can’t keep up. Last week brought news that he had an account on the “predator friendly” app Kik, but this week an ex-girlfriend revealed he was a scumbag, but the New York Times deliberately omitted accusations that he physically abused women? Can someone point me to a handy tracking page for the latest Platner scandal revelations?
  • “St. Petersburg Hit Hard By Drones: At Least FOUR Strikes on Oil Export Terminal.”
  • Followup to the above: “Satellite Imagery of Russian Corvette Hit in St. Petersburg: Significant Damage Caused.”
  • “Huge Drone Strike on Saratov Oil Refinery: Burning Heavily.”
  • “Another Russian Oil Refinery Hit: Ilsky Refinery Burns After Drone Strike!”
  • “Multiple Drone Strikes on ST-68 Radars, Pantsir SAM System and Big Logistics Hub.” There have been a lot of reports about how Ukrainian attacks are wrecking logistics well back of the front lines, and I should probably do a separate post on that when I have the time.
  • “Another Russian Ship Hit: Project 10410 Svetlyak-class Patrol Boat Near Kerch Bridge.”
  • “Project 1454 Rescue Tug Hit and Pantsir Destroyed (Nice Ammo Cookoff) in Crimea.”
  • “Mala Tokmachka. Here, Ukrainians completely broke Russian forces who have now spent a historically long time trying to capture a tiny village.” “These repetitive assaults have been producing mounting casualties for more than four years now.” “The battle for the tiny Mala Tokmachka has turned into the longest battle in history, even exceeding the Siege of the major town of Leningrad in the Second World War, which lasted eight hundred and seventy-two days and was an important turning point and a win for the Soviets.”
  • “Latest ICE roundup nabs pedophiles, violent criminals. Under the Trump administration, DHS has sought to implement the president’s mass deportation agenda to remove as many as 22 million illegal aliens from the U.S.”

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday unveiled the latest alien criminals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, which included pedophiles and persons convicted of violent crimes.

    Snip.

    • Topping the list was Carlos Sanchez-Benitez of El Salvador, who was convicted for second-degree vehicular manslaughter.
    • Lauro Javier Miron-Tapia of Mexico was convicted for lewd acts with a minor child under 14 years old.
    • Daniel Alexis Casasola-Rivera of Mexico was convicted for a lewd act with a child under 14 years old.
    • Nun Hawi Tuam of Myanmar was convicted for aggravated sexual battery.
    • Franklin William Orellana-Maya of Honduras was convicted for sexual assault.
    • Yermy Hernandez-Castro of Honduras was convicted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
    • Geovanny Gonzalez-Gonzalez of Nicaragua was convicted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, battery by strangulation.
    • Ivan Jayasi of Mexico was convicted for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.
    • Mario Zendejas-Gomez of Mexico was convicted for fourth-degree assault, obstructing law enforcement, and no contact order violation.
    • Miguel Sosa of Cuba was convicted for cocaine trafficking.
    • Oriol Mora-Arroyo of Mexico was convicted for attempted trafficking of a schedule II-controlled substance and carrying a concealed gun.
    • Juan Flores-Archaga of Honduras was convicted for third-degree burglary: illegal entry with intent to commit a crime.
    • Jhonathan Perla-Bonilla of Honduras was convicted for strongarm robbery and burglary of occupied conveyance.
    • Alexei Marti-Martinez of Cuba was convicted for grand theft.
    • Pedro Wladimir Contreras-Perez of Ecuador was convicted for larceny and licensing violation.
    • All of the UK seems furious over the death of Henry Nowak from stab wounds in police custody after his attacker accused his victim of being racist. “Police handcuffed Nowak, who had been stabbed by Sikh immigrant Vickrum Digwa, believing the Sikh man’s claim that Nowak had made a racist remark. Nowak told police he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe, but officers simply left him on the ground as he lost consciousness and died.” So just like George Floyd, except Nowak was a real victim rather than a career criminal high on fentanyl.
    • “House panel says it uncovered new funding links between Biden admin and anti-Netanyahu, left-wing groups.

      The House Judiciary Committee said that it has uncovered new funding links between the Biden administration and left-wing groups that oppose the Israeli government, as well as groups with ties to terrorist organizations

      A May 29 committee memorandum, which JNS obtained exclusively and which was addressed to committee members from the Republican-led committee staff, addresses “new information about the Biden-Harris administration helping to fund protests against the Netanyahu government.”

      It alleges that U.S.-based organizations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Tides Network, “provided over $5 million to groups that funded radical anti-Israel protests in the U.S. and Israel, and supported multiple terrorist-linked NGOs.”

      Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the committee, told JNS that the funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department and other federal agencies raised questions about the misuse of federal dollars.

      “You’re taking taxpayer money, you’re supposed to be doing good work,” the congressman said. “Why in the heck is it going to groups that are pro-Hamas?”

      “Our government is sending American tax dollars to NGOs that are undermining our ally—our best ally—the State of Israel,” he told JNS. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

      The memo provides new details, after the committee released the initial findings of its investigation in 2025.

      It describes a web of financial connections, in which the Biden administration “provided grant funds to groups that contributed directly and indirectly to the judicial reform protests that sought to undermine the Israeli government.”

      “Documents suggest that the Jewish Communal Fund, and its grantees, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and PEF Israel Endowment Funds, may have violated their tax-exempt status by funding groups engaged in radical anti-government campaigns in Israel,” the memo says.

      “Another U.S. government grantee, Abraham Initiatives, similarly led anti-government protests in Israel and, according to a 2023 audit, the organization failed to comply with anti-terrorism procedures in a USAID-funded program,” per the memo.

      Between 2016 and 2022, the Tides Network received $30 million from USAID, while Abraham Initiatives received about $2.05 million in government funds between 2018 and 2021.

      Some of the money that the Biden administration provided to these groups was intended for projects unrelated to Israel.

      In the case of Tides, the $30 million went to “a civil development program in regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific.”

      The report argues that money intended for one project freed these organizations to fund activism in Israel to oppose the judicial reform efforts of the Netanyahu government.

      “Money is fungible,” Jordan told JNS. “It’s tough to track exactly, but it looks like some of this money was also then being run through one or two NGOs, winding up on college campuses to promote all the crazy antisemitic, anti-Israel stuff on campuses.”

      “Even worse yet, it looks like some of it maybe even funded organizations that had links to terrorism,” he said.

      In one example, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) “received millions of dollars in grants from the Biden-Harris Administration’s USAID, State Department and Department of Defense,” the committee memo says.

      RPA then donated $557,000 to its “affiliate and partner,” the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), per the memo.

      RBF, in turn, has “donated $190,000 to Defense for Children International Palestine, an Israel-designated terrorist organization with ties to the U.S.-designated terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” according to the memo.

      RBF has also made donations to Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the main organizers of anti-Israel demonstrations in the United States, and to Alliance for Global Justice, a U.S.-based non-profit that the committee alleges has provided funding to the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

      The Biden administration designated Samidoun as a front for the PFLP in 2024.

      (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    • NYC’s Commie-in-Chief floats his plan to seize private property and redistribute it to favored cronies.

      New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his administration’s new housing initiative on Tuesday to considerable fanfare. The plan, titled “Block by Block,” aims to build 200,000 new affordable housing units and preserve or stabilize another 200,000 over the next decade.

      The administration’s website describes “Block by Block” as “a sweeping blueprint to tackle New York City’s deepening housing crisis with the urgency and scale the moment demands. Spanning the full breadth of housing policy, from new construction to tenant protections to public housing, homeownership and worker protections, the plan lays out a comprehensive strategy to make New York City more affordable for working people.”

      The reality is that this plan would significantly expand the power and protections afforded to renters, fulfilling a promise Mamdani made repeatedly on the campaign trail.

      It would also impose steep penalties on landlords who allow their buildings to fall into disrepair and, in some cases, even transfer ownership of neglected properties.

      The mayor smiled broadly as he announced his administration’s astounding plan to seize and redistribute properties owned by neglectful landlords — a proposal taken right out of the Marxist playbook.

      “Through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City,” the mayor said, to much applause. “When necessary we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers.”

      He continued, “And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards – stewards that include community land trusts, nonprofits or even the tenants themselves.”

      If you’re wondering how low the administration might actually set the bar for “neglect,” and what new regulations and/or coercive tax measures it may impose on current property owners to achieve its goals, you’re not alone.

      And how much of this “neglected” property belongs to his political enemies?

    • “House Democrats Overwhelmingly Vote Against Resolution Honoring Law Enforcement Officers.” Of course they did.

      173 House Democrats vote against resolution honoring police amid rising attacks

      House Democrats split over a resolution backing law enforcement as assaults on officers surged last year.

      Just 29 House Democrats on Wednesday voted for a GOP-authored measure paying tribute to the “extraordinary sacrifice” law enforcement officers make and criticizing the defund the police movement for jeopardizing public safety.

      Meanwhile, 173 Democrats voted with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., against the resolution, while every GOP lawmaker present supported it.

    • This is your criminal justice system on Democrats: “Virginia: Illegal alien charged with rape released back into public then sexually assaulted another woman.”

      7News confirmed that a man accused of sexually assaulting a woman in the stairwell of an Arlington parking garage is in the country illegally.

      U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told 7News Reporter Nick Minock that Cristobal Liobardo Vasquez-Sanchez is from El Salvador and had prior charges for rape, sexual assault, property damage, drug possession, and larceny.

      Sounds like a good candidate for deportation back to El Salvador’s notoriously fun gang prison.

    • Speaking of tattooed Democrat lunatics, “Dem congressional candidate charged with terrorist threats after pulling gun on government officials.” “Kirill Basin, 40, allegedly threatened two Maui County workers during the terrifying incident at around 9:30 a.m. on Friday before fleeing the building in Wailuku, Civil Beat reported. The longshot candidate for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District was arrested at his home around 12:30 p.m. on a terrorist threatening in the first degree charge.”
    • Talafreakco.exe: “I’ve never seen a politician memorize his lines like James Talarico and it’s creepy as heck.”

      This guy thinks God is non-binary and loves abortion and transing the kids in the name of Jesus, but this right here is the creepy cherry on top of the leftwing cake:

      There’s being a robot, and then there’s … this. Do you think Talarico plugs himself into his charging unit at night, or does someone do it for him?

      And the cherry on top is you know that he’s absolutely lying about those random “I’m not a Democrat” voters coming up to him…

    • Disgraced Ex-California Dem Rep. Eric Swalwell is so sleazy that he’s even involved in secondhand sleaze: “Rep. Jimmy Gomez’s mystery makeout IDed as Eric Swalwell’s chief of staff.”

      The mystery woman Rep. Jimmy Gomez admitted to making “mistakes” with is his best buddy Eric Swalwell’s former chief of staff, The Post can reveal.

      The married California Democrat had an 11-month-old child at home when he was caught in a moment of passion with Swalwell’s minxy congressional aide Yardena Wolf three years ago.

      Gomez, the founder of the Dads Caucus in Congress, confessed Tuesday in a statement that he cheated on his wife after The Post’s reporting on the encounter with Wolf, which kicked off a House Ethics Committee investigation, yielding fresh tips on his conduct.

      Wolf, at the time 29, and Gomez, then 48, were spotted having an intimate moment against a car outside a party at Swalwell’s home north of the Capitol in the summer of 2023 — about two years into her tenure as Swalwell’s top staffer.

      There’s also this: “[Wolf] co-founded an AI fundraising company with Swalwell in 2024.” That’s evidently Findraiser.AI. “Findraiser uses AI to search your donor database so you don’t have to.” Creating a tag for it now so I’ll have it ready when the inevitable scandal hits… (Hat tip: Dwight, in comments.)

    • A rebuke for the media types who accuse Republican voters of mindlessly doing Trump’s bidding: “Zach Lahn, who went viral for confronting Obama in 2009, beat Trump’s pick for Iowa governor.”

      Lahn took down multiple established GOP politicians, including Randy Feenstra, who had the coveted Trump endorsement. Lahn had an endorsement from TPUSA and MAHA Action, but was not expected to win. He also won the coveted … Steak ‘n Shake endorsement?

      Lahn strongly promoted the message of “Iowa First,” with a focus on agricultural pesticides, health, and Chinese influence. He also rejected outside funding (the internet is noting in particular that he rejected funding from AIPAC).

      I wouldn’t necessarily count AIPAC backing as pro or con, save for the fact that they’ve backed some real squishy moderate Republicans lately (Dan Crenshaw and Tony Gonzales come to mind).

    • This is bad news: A confirmed case of New World Screwworm in south Texas.

      U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says a single confirmed case of New World screwworm is contained, as state and federal officials move quickly to quarantine the area.

      During a Thursday press call, Rollins reported that the single screwworm case was confirmed in a three-week-old beef calf on Wednesday in La Pryor, south of Uvalde. The U.S. Department of Agriculture immediately created a unified incident command team with the Texas Animal Health Commission and deployed the USDA Animal and Plant Health and Inspection Service to the area.

      A 20-kilometer control zone was established around the detection site, and an expedited, targeted release of 4 million sterile New World screwworm flies a week is planned for the immediate area.

      Texas State Veterinarian Dr. Lewis Dinges told the press that his staff have reported that the infested calf is improving and they have not found any other infested animals on the premises. There has also been no recent movement of animals onto or off the premises.

      Dinges encouraged Texans to monitor their animals as often as possible and keep a close eye on any open wounds.

      A quarantine has been issued on all warm-blooded animals within the control zone.

      “Animals will still be able to move,” said Dinges. “We just need to make sure that they are moving safely and not moving the screwworm with it.”

      It’s a nasty, nasty critter, and extreme measures are justified in keeping it from spreading.

    • Turbulant times down south: “Bolivia’s defense minister resigns as anti-government protests intensify.”
    • Samsung is moving it’s U.S. Headquarters from New Jersey to Plano, Texas. “The relocation lands just eight months after Samsung hosted a grand opening at its new Englewood Cliffs campus on September 22, 2025.”

      The departure triggered immediate criticism of New Jersey’s tax and regulatory environment. Michele Siekerka, president and CEO of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, called the announcement “not surprising, but it is no less sad.” Siekerka pointed to New Jersey’s 11.5% corporate tax rate — the highest in the nation, confirmed by the Tax Foundation’s 2026 state comparison — and noted that the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in New Jersey has declined from 22 in 2018 to 15 in 2025.

      “These are the results of decades of anti-business policies in the state,” Siekerka said. “These are not accidents, nor are they coincidences.”

      Assemblyman John Azzariti, a Republican representing the 39th District, was more pointed: “Texas didn’t win Samsung by accident. They won because they have spent years creating an environment where businesses want to invest, grow and create jobs. Meanwhile, New Jersey continues to raise costs, add regulations and send the message that employers are little more than a revenue source for government.”

      Azzariti cited a pattern: in addition to Samsung, Mercedes-Benz USA, Honeywell, Hertz, and Sealed Air have all departed the state.

    • Speaking of relocating to Texas: “ExxonMobil Receives Shareholder Approval for Texas Move

. The approval comes after Attorney General Paxton filed a lawsuit against a shareholder advisory firm that attempted to discourage the move.”
    • “Murder charge dropped for Arkansas sheriff nominee who killed teen daughter’s rapist.” No jury in the world…well, at least outside California and London. “The case against Aaron Spencer was dismissed by a judge on Thursday afternoon after law enforcement lost a dash camera memory card that may have captured the fatal October 2024 shooting of 67-year-old Michael Fosler.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
    • “Bipartisan Group Introduces Bill to Protect Private Citizens’ 4th Amendment Email Privacy.”

      Two Republicans and two Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives are co-sponsoring proposed legislation designed to protect the Fourth Amendment’s bar of warrantless government searches and seizures of private citizens’ email content.

      “The Fourth Amendment is clear: the government must get a warrant before searching an individual’s private property, including written communications. As today’s world has grown increasingly digital, that principle should apply just as strongly to an email inbox as it does to a desk drawer or file cabinet,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said in a jointly issued June 2 statement.

      “That’s exactly why I’m proud to cosponsor the Email Privacy Act — to ensure our freedoms carry into the digital world and that all communications are protected as the Founders intended. Congress must pass this commonsense legislation, so Americans’ rights are fully respected in the 21st century,” Davidson added.

      Under current statutes, law enforcement authorities such as the Department of Justice (DOJ) are able to acquire email content that is at least 180 days old, thanks to the now-outdated storage capacity limits in force when Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in 1986 and in subsequent amendments….

      Joining the Ohio Republican in the House in co-sponsoring the Email Privacy Act are Rep. Suzan Delbene (D-Wash.), Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

      Usually when the Evil Party and the Stupid Party get together to pass a bill, it’s both Evil and Stupid, but this sound like the rare case where they’re working on something that’s actually needed.

    • Heh:

      (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    • More true than not:

      (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt.)

    • Shocker: Victoria’s Secret dumps fat models and suddenly they’re successful again.
    • “Things From Another World — the cult-favorite comic and collectibles chain owned by Dark Horse Comics — is shutting down all of its stores after 46 years in business.” Unmentioned in the article is that Dark Horse was bought by Swedish gaming company Embracer Group in 2022, and they’re busy Borging Dark Horse with a bunch of other media companies for an anticipated spinoff called “Fellowship Entertainment” with a bunch of Lord of the Rings licensed companies.
    • Winning: “NPR closes Climate Desk, fires climate reporters.”
    • Fellow SF writer Ted Chiang observes that “No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious.”

      Should we seriously consider the possibility that Claude, or any large language model, might be conscious? And if it has feelings, is it capable of receiving moral instruction?

      No. Absolutely not. Generative AI is harmful enough when we understand it as a conventional technology, but if we confuse fluency at generating text with consciousness or moral agency, we’re at risk of assigning responsibility to entirely the wrong parties whenever anyone uses a chatbot.

      Ted (who is a very smart cookie) then goes into great detail why they’re not conscious.

    • Rick Beato on the Fender disaster. “If you were to go to any music store, Guitar Center, and pull a Fender Strat off the shelf and go play it at a gig, well, I wouldn’t recommend it, because the chances of it playing well are extremely low. That’s why there are so many other companies like Sire, PRS, Charvel, tons of companies that make Strat style guitars that are far better than normal Fenders that you buy at your local Guitar Center.”
    • Daily Dose of Internet: “Videos that Broke My Brain.”
    • Critical Drinker really liked The Backrooms.
    • Amazon cancelled a new Stargate TV series because the showrunner refused to turn it into woke garbage.
    • “Meet DC’s new Transgender Wonder Woman!” No, I don’t think I will…
    • “Newsom Designates California Sanctuary State For Fraud.”
    • “Nation Shocked As Candidate With Nazi Tattoo Turns Out To Be Total Scumbag.”
    • “Attack Ad Against Republican Convinces Man To Vote For Republican.”
    • Boom! “Pride Parade Forced To Change Direction After Route Takes It Within 200 Yards Of School.”
    • “California Announces They Have Finished Counting The Votes, Ronald Reagan Has Won The 1966 Governor’s Race.”
    • “Disney Attempts To Win Star Wars Fans Back With New Jar Jar Binks Trilogy.”
    • “John Bolton Pleads Guilty, Sentenced To 5-Year Imprisonment At SeaWorld.”
    • Enjoy some Dusty In Here content:

      (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Bonus dog content: Grooming four ambulatory potatoes Teddy Roosevelt Terriers.
    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





      LinkSwarm for May 22, 2026

      Friday, May 22nd, 2026

      More of the Democrat election fraud that doesn’t exist, more Democrat welfare state fraud, a commie scumbag gets indicted, Ukraine returns to hammering Russia’s oil infrastructure, a very busy week for Kash Patel, the BBC wants us to sympathize with Muslims who enable child rape, and the best bagels in America are found in…Dallas?

      It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    • “Left’s election fraud denials crumble as DOJ exposes two-decade-long California cheating scheme. FBI Director Kash Patel says prior administrations looked the other way on election cheating but ‘those days are over.'”

      Despite evidence to the contrary, liberal voting activists have spent years minimizing cheating concerns and portraying those who want to investigate such problems as “election deniers.”

      But the FBI and the departments of Justice and Homeland Security are now systematically exposing electoral fraud – from non-citizen voting to ballot-box-stuffing schemes that are turning the table in epic fashion.

      The latest strike came Monday when a longtime voting activist in California reached a deal with federal prosecutors to admit to illegally paying homeless people to sign election petitions and paying people to register to vote. The two-decade scheme allegedly leveraged the Democrat-run state’s lax mail-in voting system, which sends ballot forms to everyone whether they ask for them or not.

      The felony charge and plea deal announced Monday against Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina Del Ray, Calif., not only signals an investigation into others, it likely will provide legal fodder to the Justice Department’s efforts to force California to turn over its voter registration database to look for other abuses.

      That case, and others like it against blue states, are working their way through the federal courts in a major initiative led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.

      Prosecutors said Armstrong spent two decades collecting ballot registration forms, including in California’s high-profile voter initiatives. On occasion, Brown targeted homeless people on Skid Row in Los Angeles, offering them money to fill out forms, and even sometimes letting them use her own address to put on the forms.

      The plea deal mentioned Armstrong was paid by “coordinators” to gather signatures for ballots, and she used some of that money to enlist people to register to vote and sign petitions.

      “Because her coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, Armstrong endeavored to ensure the people who signed her petitions were registered voters,” the DOJ said in announcing the plea deal.

      “Armstrong regularly paid and offered to pay individuals cash, usually in amounts between $2 and $3, to induce them to sign her petitions,” DOJ said, adding in January she “knowingly and willfully paid another person to register to vote. She paid the person for the purpose of causing that person to register to vote in federal elections.”

      Democrats have hundreds of ways to cheat in elections, and one by one the Trump Administration is shutting them down and prosecuting the perps.

    • A vast improvement: “Trump administration had full year of zero border releases.”

      While campaigning in 2024, President Donald Trump pledged to fix the nation’s broken immigration system, a system exacerbated by the rogue incompetence of the Biden administration. Now, after 18 months into his second term, Trump has maintained his excellence in border security and upheld his campaign promise regarding illegal immigration, as the Trump administration has achieved a year of zero releases at the U.S.-Mexico border.

      Whereas the Biden administration wantonly permitted, if not outright encouraged, border security agencies to release illegal immigrants into the United States, Trump has ensured such ineptitudes would not happen under his watch. After innocent victims such as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, and many others were murdered by violent illegal immigrants, the Trump administration utilized every possible avenue to ensure that such atrocities would not recur. The first barrier to accomplishing this was limiting border releases.

      It is a remarkable success that shows the country’s border security issues stem from failed leadership and a failed president. Biden’s atrocious border policies made the country more dangerous. Trump’s policies made the country safe again. It’s a success that should not go unrecognized.

      Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin touted the historic feat in a press release.

      “Twelve straight months of ZERO releases at the border. Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, we are delivering the most secure border in American history,” Mullin said. “The days of catch and release are over. We are enforcing the nation’s laws and sending illegal aliens back to their home countries.”

    • Another day, another indictment for Minnesota welfare state fraud. Kash Patel:

      Today – 15 individuals have been indicted for over $90 million in an alleged massive healthcare fraud scheme in Minnesota, after a sweeping FBI investigation with @TheJusticeDept
      and our Interagency Partners.

      These charges involve the two LARGEST Medicaid fraud cases ever charged in this district and first-of-their kind charges involving 7 additional Medicaid programs.

      As alleged, the defendants defrauded Minnesota public healthcare resources for tens of millions, targeting programs such as Housing Stabilization Services, Child Care, Medicaid programs, Individualized Home Supports (IHS), and more.

      In one case, defendants even developed a scheme worth over $40 million to target the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) – an autism healthcare program – paying kickbacks to parents who fraudulently used autism centers to diagnose children with autism regardless of medical necessity, and billing for services not actually provided. This not only defrauded taxpayers, but robbed valuable resources from families truly in need.

      President Trump gave this law enforcement team a mandate to investigate and systematically dismantle this exact kind of public fraud in America – which grossly abuses and mismanages money from hardworking American taxpayers – and that’s exactly what we’re doing. Today’s indictment in a massive moment in this effort.

      (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    • “The Democratic Model: Corruption as a Feature, Not a Flaw.”

      Gavin Newsom is, in many ways, the most corrupt governor in America.

      By that, I don’t mean that he spends his time and effort skimming off the top to put money in his own pockets. I have no evidence that he does, although an awful lot of money flows to and through the fingers of his wife. His personal wealth is not staggering by California standards—estimated at a few tens of millions of dollars—and he has it through his relationship with the Getty Oil family. Sort of a nepo-baby once removed.

      His corruption is more in the style of Putin—using power to make others rich and indebted to him, and he has pillaged the coffers of the City of San Francisco and the State of California in order to do so. The ultimate goal is ultimate power, and his path to that power has been to leverage the power he has gained at each step up the ladder to enrich a group of allies who will, in turn, fund his rise further.

      In 2023 Newsom was given a bill to sign that would have required private insurers to cover hearing aids for children. Many other states require insurers to cover them.

      According to NY Post, Newsom vetoed the bill and decided instead to have the state provide the hearing aids. The result was $23 million spent on hearing aids for 300 people. About $76,000 a person. About 20,000 children in CA still need hearing aids.

      Well done Gavin.

      The scale of Newsom’s corruption is almost beyond comprehension. California, if it were its own country, would have the fourth-largest economy in the world. Its economy is about twice the size of Russia’s, and its state budget is about 50% larger than Russia’s, despite having no war to fund against Ukraine or anybody else besides the taxpayers of California.

      That gives a lot of room for corrupt spending, especially when nobody is looking to uncover it.

      The other day, I took a look at Newsom’s Baby 2 Baby free diaper program, which is an obvious scam, paying highly inflated prices for cheap Mexican diapers to an NGO run by friends of his wife, who all make nice salaries.

      Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    • Suck it, commie scumbag: “Former Cuban President Raul Castro indicted in US court.”

      The United States has indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro, a senior Trump administration official confirmed. A federal grand jury in Florida indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro along with five other defendants, according to court filings made public Wednesday.

      The charges mark a major escalation in a long-running US legal case tied to the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft, an incident that killed four people and has remained a flashpoint in US-Cuba relations for decades.

      Castro, 94, served as Cuba’s defense minister at the time of the shootdown before becoming president in 2008, following the illness of his brother Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro died in 2016.

      Remember that the commie rulers have a secret corporation (GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.) that allows them to rob Cubans blind. “How is it possible for a military company to control 40% of the national economy, accumulate $14.5 billion in bank deposits, not publish financial statements, avoid paying taxes in foreign currency, and not be accountable to the National Assembly?”

    • Hope you enjoyed your Victory Day parade, Vlad. “Moscow Attacked By Drones: Oil Depot, Microchip Factory & Airport All Hit.” The chip factory is Angstrem, which was reportedly running some very ancient process technology indeed. But I bet a bunch of what they could produce was used by the Russian military.
    • “Big Drone Strike on Kstovo Oil Refinery: Fourth Biggest in Russia.” This is in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, east of Moscow.
    • “Big Strike on Syzran Oil Refinery by Drones: Fourth Hit in a Week.”
    • “Huge Fire at Moscow as Factory/Warehouse Burns!” Possibly a drone strike, possibly something else.
    • “Ukraine Liberates Stepnohirsk in Zaporizhzhia.”
    • “Multiple Tanks & MT-LB Destroyed. A Russian mechanized assault was defeated near Chervonyi Lyman, Donetsk Oblast.”
    • “Buyan-Class Corvette Reported SUNK At Kaspiysk Naval Base, Caspian Sea.”
    • “Drones Completely Destroy FSB Base on Arabat Spit: 100 KIA/WIA.” That’s the thin strip of land immediately to the east of Crimea.
    • Yo, dawg, we hear you like drones, so we put attack rockets on your drones, and hit a Russian Black Sea Fleet base with them.
    • “Former Texas Lottery Director Gary Grief Re-Indicted After Travis County DA Dismissed Initial Charges. Also indicted is the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission.”

      Gary Grief, the former executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission, has been re-indicted in connection with a rigged jackpot following the dismissal of a prior indictment.

      A summons was issued one day after Texas Scorecard originally reported that an initial indictment against Grief had been quietly dismissed by the Travis County District Attorney’s office.

      The reissued indictment, a carbon copy of the first, and the new summons come amid ongoing scrutiny of the handling of the high-profile case.

      Travis County District Attorney José Garza told Texas Scorecard Thursday he could not currently comment on the matter, but that his office would release more information on the case soon.

      Before the latest indictment came to light, Gov. Greg Abbott called the initial dismissal “incomprehensible.”

      Snip.

      Court records posted to X by Dylan McKim with KXAN-AUSTIN indicate that not only was Grief summoned, but the Texas Lottery Commission itself is named. A separate indictment identifies Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd alongside Grief as “managerial agents” acting on behalf of the agency.

      Notably, Ryan Mindell, Grief’s right-hand man at the Texas Lottery Commission in 2023 and his short-lived successor, is not currently summoned in connection with the case. Mindell quit the commission after lawmakers called for his removal during the 2025 legislative session.

      The original indictment against Grief was secured in April 2026 on a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving more than $300,000, stemming from a rigged $95 million jackpot.

      The charge came after a year-long investigation by the Texas Rangers into Grief’s controversial authorization of third-party companies that resold lottery tickets on behalf of customers, effectively enabling the online sale of Texas lottery tickets without legislative approval.

      During the 2023 legislative session, Grief misled members of the Senate about resellers operating openly in Texas. The practice was ultimately outlawed during the 2025 legislative session after revelations that couriers facilitated bulk purchases, leading to a $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot win in April 2023 that was reportedly rigged by an international gambling syndicate.

      Yeah, that lottery win was suspicious as hell.

    • “Massie Ousted by Trump-Backed Challenger in Kentucky Primary.”

      Farmer and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein prevailed over Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) in a closely watched primary race on Tuesday evening, bringing to an end the most expensive U.S. House primary on record.

      Massie, who has represented Kentucky’s fourth district since 2012, is one of several lawmakers to lose a seat this cycle thanks to a retribution campaign Trump has undertaken against legislators who have dared to cross him.

      The bad blood between Massie and Trump dates back to the president’s first term. As early as 2020, Trump called the Kentucky Republican a “third-rate grandstander” after Massie voted against the president’s Covid-19 relief package.

      While Trump and Massie seemed to make amends, with Trump endorsing Massie for reelection in 2022, the president’s second term has seen the pair butt heads repeatedly over a slew of issues, from the Iran war to tariffs.

      Trump on Monday blasted Massie as an “obstructionist and a fool.”

      Massie, who also controversially opposed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” worked with Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California to advance a bill in Congress to compel the Trump administration to release government files on deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

      Massie’s opposition to U.S. aid to Israel and his vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism made him a target of not only the president but the Republican Jewish Coalition and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as well. Both groups have spent more than $4 million on anti-Massie ads.

      You can stray from the party on an issue or two and still survive, but when you make a habit of working with Democrats against stated Republican priorities time after time, expect a reckoning.

    • Republicans have one thing going for them in the midterms: Fat stacks of cash.

      The Republican National Committee ended the month of April with more cash on hand than at any other point in the group’s history, as closely contested midterm elections draw near and the fate of Republicans’s majority in the House and Senate hang in the balance.

      The RNC raised $18.6 million in April, bringing its total cash on hand to $123.8 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

      “Republicans have the candidates, resources, and momentum needed to win the midterms, but we cannot let up now,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement. “Democrats will spend whatever it takes to try to stop President Trump’s America First agenda, which is why the RNC is already investing aggressively in our ground game and election integrity operation, including deploying 34 State Directors and Election Integrity Directors across 17 key battleground states to drive turnout and secure victories this November.”

    • Democrats lie to everyone, including themselves: “Harris Campaign Didn’t Go Negative Enough on Trump, DNC Autopsy Concludes.”

      A newly-released Democratic National Committee report looking back at how the party lost the 2024 election concludes that then-Vice President Kamala Harris lost, in part, because she failed to focus sufficient negative attention on President Trump.

      “The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,” reads the autopsy, written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, who was asked by the DNC to investigate why the party failed to wing big in 2024.

      Rivera goes on to suggest that Democrats failed to remind Americans why they disliked Trump in his first term.

      “The idea Trump’s negatives were ‘baked in’ is a major failure of analysis and reality, given how his favorability has cratered less than a year into this term,” he adds.

      Rivera’s finding that Harris wasn’t sufficiently negative is curious given that Harris and her surrogates incessantly depicted Trump as a threat to democracy who revealed his true colors on January 6.

      Harris attacked Trump repeatedly during the campaign, calling her opponent “increasingly unhinged and unstable” and telling CNN that she believed he was a fascist who wanted “unchecked power.”

      Party officials interviewed hundreds of Democrats in all 50 states to create the report. Democrats had asked DNC Chairman Ken Martin for months to publicly release the findings, but Martin chose to do so only after being “presented with CNN’s reporting about much of its contents,” according to the outlet, which first obtained the nearly 200-page report.

      The report is littered with notes drafted by DNC editors pointing out that many of Rivera’s claims are unsubstantiated and/or contradict publicly available reporting.

      Yay think? It wasn’t the fact that, oh, Harris was a cringingly bad candidate, that Biden was an ambulatory corpse whose headless administration was a disaster for ordinary Americans thanks to inflation and letting a flood of illegal aliens enter the country, or that actual voters hate transsexual madness and social justice lunacy? But no, telling the truth would offend the Party’s toxic cadres of intersectional grievance mongers. They’d rather lie to themselves and continue to lose rather than being dragged on BlueSky.

    • Supreme Court rules that trucking companies can be held liable for unsafe drivers. Result: Foreign drivers are suddenly off the road.

      This trucker is in Eden, Ohio, and just parked at a truck stop where he got a bite to eat at an Indian restaurant.

      (Sikh Indians now own 20% of all trucking businesses in North America.)

      He says foreign truckers are being hit HARD after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that logistics companies can be held liable for hiring unsafe drivers.

      None of ‘em can get loads out of Ohio today. And I was talking to the Iman guy while I was in there at the Punjabi place getting something to eat, and he said that the reason they they can’t get freight out of Ohio today is because the freight workers won’t work with them anymore.

      Apparently, what has happened, is yesterday they had the Supreme Court ruling that brokers could be held liable for accidents with carriers with red flags. Apparently, the trickle trickle-down effect happened like THAT.

      A leftist might look at this and say it’s racist. An “inequitable” number of carriers with foreign drivers are being excluded??

      Well, as it turns out, these truckers just so happen to be the ones that are the least safe.

      I was looking up a few of these DoT numbers for these guys, and they do have pretty substantial track record of unsafe behavior – accidents, high out-of-service rates, things like that.

      Many foreigners, even illegals, have been able to game the system, getting CDLs issued by Democrat-led states like New York and California even though they are not qualified. CDL schools run by migrants have participated in this fraud for years.

      Meanwhile, the number of deaths involving 18 wheelers on U.S. roads has risen 50% in just the last 15 years. Thanks to SCOTUS, that might reverse very quickly in the near future.

      As a bonus, Americans will have a chance to get back into a trucking industry that’s excluded them in favor of cheap, unsafe, illegal labor!!

    • And more wins over scamming foreigners: “FBI shuts down Indian call center for defrauding Americans.”

      The FBI announced on Wednesday that they were shutting down a scam call center in India which has defrauded hundreds of elderly Americans out of millions of dollars.

      Snip.

      Former CEO Adam Young, 42, of Miami, FL, and former CSO Harrison Gevirtz, 33, of Las Vegas, NV, admitted to operating a business that provided telecommunications-related services, including telephone numbers, call routing services, call tracking, and call forwarding services, to customers they knew were engaged in tech-support fraud schemes. Young and Gevirtz each pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony, in violation of federal law. They are scheduled to be sentenced on June 16, 2026. The sentences imposed will be determined by a federal district judge after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors …

      Indian citizens Sahil Narang, Chirag Sachdeva, Abrar Anjum and Manish Kumar, were convicted of charges related to telemarketing fraud schemes based in the Republic of India that targeted and defrauded Americans of millions of dollars, many of them vulnerable to fraud schemes due to age or infirmity. The investigation also contributed to the conviction of another individual, Jagmeet Singh Virk, in the U.S. District Court for the Norther [sic] District of California. The investigation further revealed that call centers based in India utilized Young and Gervitz’s business to route their ‘tech fraud’ scheme calls and, in some instances, advised those fraudsters on methods intended to reduce complaints and prevent account terminations.

      Now if they could just shut down every Indian company pretending to be an American company (a plague among temporary and contract work firms), that would greatly improve the situation for American job seekers.

    • “Tulsi Gabbard is stepping down from her role as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to support her husband, Abraham, as he battles an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
    • “Texas Children’s Hospital Agrees to Create Detransition Clinic, Pay $10 Million in ‘Historic’ Settlement. The agreement stems from a years-long investigation into alleged Medicaid fraud tied to sex-change procedures on minors.”

      A years-long controversy surrounding gender mutilation procedures at Texas Children’s Hospital have culminated in a sweeping settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that will force the hospital to pay $10 million, fire five doctors, halt “gender-transition” procedures, and create the nation’s first “Detransition Clinic.”

      According to Paxton’s office, the settlement resolves allegations that Texas Children’s improperly billed Texas Medicaid for sex-change interventions using false diagnosis codes despite longstanding state policy prohibiting Medicaid coverage for such procedures.

      Under the agreement, Texas Children’s will establish a multidisciplinary clinic intended to provide care to patients who previously underwent “gender-transition” procedures. The hospital will fully fund the clinic for at least five years, with services provided free of charge to patients.

      The settlement also requires Texas Children’s to terminate and permanently revoke privileges for five physicians accused of performing the procedures. The hospital further agreed not to provide “gender-transition” services moving forward and to adopt new ethics and compliance measures.

      We asked the sick leftwing freaks not to mutilate children in the name of their perverse social justice religion, and they just couldn’t help themselves.

    • Case in point: All but eight Democrats vote against bill to let parents know if teachers are trying to trans their kids.
    • [sigh]: “Federal Judge Again Blocks Texas Law Allowing Arrest and Deportation of Illegal Immigrants.”

      Just one day before a controversial Texas law on illegal immigration was set to take effect, a federal judge granted a new injunction saying most of the law would not pass constitutional muster before the U.S. Supreme Court.

      U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra, who blocked implementation of Texas Senate Bill (SB) 4 in 2024, opined that the law “threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice.”

      Approved by lawmakers in 2023, SB 4, filed by Texas Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), established a criminal offense for illegal entry into the state from a foreign nation, and provided a mechanism for judges to order offenders to return to their nation of origin.

      Implementation was delayed until the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a pending lawsuit last month on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue, clearing the way for the law to take effect on May 15.

      Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a new challenge on behalf of two unnamed individuals who said they could be arrested and subject to SB 4’s provisions.

      Ezra’s injunction applies to four provisions of SB 4: criminal penalties for re-entry without authorization; authorizing magistrates to order deportation; criminalization of failure to comply with a Texas magistrate’s deportation order; and SB 4’s requirement that magistrates continue a prosecution even when a person has a pending immigration case under federal law.

      In his opinion released last week, Ezra noted that while federal authorities can elicit help with immigration enforcement actions from state and local law enforcement, SB 4 would clash with precedent set in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Arizona v. United States.

    • “British authorities finally give Pakistani rape gang nearly 300 years of combined jail time for crimes committed 23+ years ago.”

      The offences mainly took place in Dewsbury and Batley, north Kirklees, and involved three girls.

      One was just 12 years old when the offences started in 1995. They ended in 2003.

      The trials began in 2023 and the perps were convicted and sentenced in 2024 through late 2025. The reason we are only learning their sentences now is because there was a court-ordered ban on reporting (they can do this in England)

      Reporting restrictions had been put in place to ‘safeguard the fairness and integrity of the court process.’

      Translation: They were to ensure the safety of Labour poll numbers from outraged Britons…

    • BBC tries to make Afghan man selling his own daughters for child rape a sympathetic victim.
    • “California ‘problem solving’: Create a useless bureaucracy that voters can’t touch.

      California is the land of expensive, useless bureaucracies, which Democrats allow to do nothing but impose more regulations on Californians.

      In 2023, California created a fast-food council to micromanage fast-food restaurants from wages to working conditions. The council, the first of its kind in the United States, exists to justify California’s fast-food minimum wage hike, which jumped to $20 an hour, and the council has the ability to increase over the coming years. By now, you know how this went: Fast-food restaurants shut down, cut jobs, cut worker hours, raised prices, or did some combination of those things.

      More notably, though, the council that is required to meet at least twice a year does not really exist. The last subcommittee meeting for the council took place in February 2025. It has now been over a year since the council has done anything, and even then, it could not be bothered to gather all nine members. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) plucked the council’s chairman for a different state appointment after that last subcommittee meeting, and it hasn’t gathered since.

      Despite this, the council was still allocated $1.1 million from the state budget.

    • Ian McCollum talks about the wild, woolly days of shipping guns out of the post-communist eastern bloc.
    • Louis Rossmann: 1,600 forks. That’s a lot of pie…
    • Fender won a lawsuit (by default) in Germany, and now it’s suing every guitar maker in the world that makes guitars that look even remotely like Stratocasters. “The decision to enforce the EU-based ruling on US builders marks a huge development in the case, and the outcome of such legal battles could very well reshape the guitar industry as we know it.” I rather suspect this strategy isn’t going to work out well for them…
    • “Schlitz beer production ends after 175 years.” And now an interlude via MST3K:

    • Long Beach, New Jersey has to impose a curfew due to “unruly teens.”

    • Google is about to ruin the Internet. “Google is changing its search engine to focus on AI recommendations and NOT links to websites, according to its Google I/O presentation. And it’s a wrap. That’s it for the free and open internet. Niche publications and independent voices will likely get completely shut out of organic search as the internet becomes pay-to-win.” Another reason to stick to DuckDuckGo.
    • The world’s best bagel is now evidently found in Dallas, Texas, at Starship Bagel. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
    • “4s on Tinder are no longer layups for 6’3 millionaires.”
    • Crazy money is pouring into hypercars.
    • Speaking of crazy money, here are some highlights from the David Aronovitz Auction of important science fiction, fantasy and horror first editions.
    • And speaking of science fiction first editions, I’m going to be sending a new book catalog out next week. Drop me a line if you want a copy.
    • Critical Drinker reviews Pragmata, mostly enjoys it. If the terminally online left hadn’t freaked out about this game, I doubt I ever would have heard about it…
    • Once again, the Babylon Bee is doing straight up reporting from LA: “New Polls Show Dead Heat Between ‘Make Everything Worse’ Candidate And ‘Fix Everything’ Candidate.”
    • “Zillow Adds New Feature For California Homes Showing Whether They Are Currently On Fire.”
    • “London Mayor Confused By Protesters Not Chanting ‘Death To Jews.'”
    • “Man Just 17 Home Depot Trips Away From Purchasing Correct Light Bulbs.”
    • “Hi-ho Silver, away!”

      (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





      Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!