This starts out as a warning that off-brand digital devices can be doing sketchy stuff behind your back and blossoms into a expose of a wide-ranging ecosystem of worldwide digital fraud.
Security experts have been sounding the alarm for years about the risks of using generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee, warning that they secretly rent the user’s Internet connection out to strangers. But a groundbreaking new analysis finds these devices also routinely spoof themselves as mobile phones clicking ads on AI-generated websites as part of a sprawling operation that seeks to defraud online merchants and advertising networks.
Pedro Falé is a threat researcher with the security firm Bitsight. Falé told KrebsOnSecurity he was able to peer inside a vast and complex ad fraud network by registering an expired domain name that was used to coordinate fake ad clicks across a particularly popular brand of these streaming devices known as H96.
Falé said the domain he scooped up was previously used for telemetry, periodically collecting full hardware information and the entire list of installed apps from tens of thousands of H96 streaming sticks plugged into television sets around the globe. But upon inspecting the traffic being funneled to the domain, he discovered nearly all of the TV boxes transmitting data claimed to be mobile phone models from a variety of manufacturers, including Samsung, Vivo, Huawei, and Xiaomi.
“We noticed something was wildly wrong,” Falé said. “Multiple devices reporting to this factory Android TV Box backdoor were ‘phones.’”
The researcher found all of the devices reported having the same two apps installed, and that those apps were made by a company called Zhejiang Fengwo IoT Technology Ltd, an entity founded in 2019 in mainland China which operates an ad-publishing portfolio under the name Fengwo Group. Further investigation into the Fengwo Group revealed it has registered multiple patents that match the inner workings of these apps.
A Chinese company involved with fraud? Imagine my shock.
“Bitsight TRACE identified several Hong Kong, Singapore, and single person ‘legal’ shell identities used to collect the monetization and traced the operation back to a mainland China company known as Zhejiang Fengwo IoT Technology Co., Ltd, which operates under the Fengwo Group,” Falé wrote in a report released today about their findings.
Falé said an analysis of the apps shows they help to coordinate an ad fraud network that uses these H96 devices as a captive traffic source to click on ads at AI-generated websites operated by the Fengwo Group.
I have heard the bots signing, each to each…
Bitsight discovered the websites contain machine-generated news articles and graphics across a range of categories, including finance, health, education, gaming, music and food blogs. But they also found none of those sites displayed ads unless the device visiting the page matched the spoofed mobile profile of these H96 devices.
The domain for the Fengwo Group — fwgcloud[.]com — claims the company is “redefining the boundaries of human-AI interaction,” and that it has created more than 120,000 “AI digital humans” available to rent for everything from emotional companionship to 24/7 customer service and creative design.
Falé said the Fengwo Group’s domain shared its SSL certificate data with other domains associated with the apps found on H96 devices, specifically the phone spoofing mechanism. He noted the domain also has an internal wiki platform that directly ties the Fengwo Group to a proprietary implementation of a Google-built visual programming language called Blockly, which was originally designed to help kids learn how to write software.
According to Bitsight, the Fengwo Group’s employees use Blockly to build the sham websites, allowing low-skilled operators to drag blocks of code together in their Blockly editor — without any need to understand what the underlying code blocks do or how they work.
That’s pretty weird. “I broke into CitiBank using a program I wrote in Logo!”
“An operator can drag blocks together in their Blockly editor, to define each fraud routine, given a task type,” reads Bitsight’s report. “Once the routine is saved, it gets exported as JavaScript and uploaded to the S3 buckets. An operator doesn’t need as much understanding of the underlying technicalities, as it is all set in place for ease of use.”
Bitsight even found one of the Fengwo Group app developers mentioning exactly these advantages, noting the developer remarked that “only a small number of highly-skilled developers are needed to build the template execution-unit images,” and that “developers who create execution units from those templates have significantly lower technical requirements, greatly reducing the company’s operating costs.”
Falé said if a user’s H96 streaming stick is selected for a specific fraud task, it will be pushed the appropriate Blockly module according to the task desired, which can include silently launching a web browser, visiting websites, browsing pages, managing tabs, and clicking on ads.
To ensure the TV boxes masquerading as mobile phones can reliably click on ads displayed via the AI-generated websites, the Fengwo group “fuses three vision and reasoning systems into a single interface,” allowing the bots to correctly identify an ad on the webpage and navigate the site much like a human would, the Bitsight report observed.
It gets weirder.
Bitsight found the H96 devices were either relaying residential proxy traffic or participating in ad fraud, but never both at the same time. In fact, they concluded that when these TV boxes detect an HDMI signal from an attached television — indicating the user intends to stream video content — the box is usually functioning as a residential proxy. When the TV is off, it switches back to waiting for ad fraud jobs.
Falé said he believes the TV boxes are set up this way because its ad fraud activities are far more resource intensive and could interfere with the device’s stated purpose — streaming video content over the Internet.
Despite repeated warnings from the FBI and security industry leaders about the security and privacy risks of using these streaming devices, major e-commerce providers like Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg and others continue to sell hundreds of different models and brands that bundle unofficial versions of Google’s Android operating system and are frequently marketed (via online influencers) as a way to access a broad array of streaming services and live broadcasts without a subscription.
In addition to enlisting the user’s TV box in ad fraud networks, these off-brand streaming devices almost universally come with residential proxy software pre-installed. This software rents the user’s Internet address out to anonymous paying customers, who run the gamut from aggressive content scraping firms to ticket scalpers and outright cybercriminals.
What’s more, because these generic (and generally dirt cheap) TV boxes are all horribly insecure by default and bereft of any kind of authentication, installing one on your home or office network only invites further mischief. In January, the proxy tracking service Synthient documented how multiple botnets had rapidly enslaved millions of TV boxes using a complex interplay of security vulnerabilities in both the residential proxy software and the streaming devices themselves.
Bitsight said it tracked approximately 38,000 TV boxes globally phoning home to the expired Fengwo Group domain, and based on that number the report estimates this ad fraud network brings in revenues of close to $50,000 a day (not counting substantial revenue from the residential proxy side of the business). However, Falé emphasized that these estimates are highly conservative and based on telemetry from just one of the Fengwo Group’s core (but older) domains.
As for the Fengwo Group’s claim to have 120,000 “digital humans” at their disposal, Bitsight’s report concludes it could be just a clever marketing scheme and/or a way to avoid drawing suspicion to the company’s operations.
“Historically, when dealing with proxy services or DDoS, we sometimes see these websites undertake inconspicuous facades, so as not to advertise their DDoS capability or botnet size,” Falé wrote in the report. “This could also be the case here.”
So remember: When you buy a cheap, crappy digital device from TEMU or Amazon, you might be setting up a cheap fraud bot for Communist China.
More Iran War spin cycle, Ukraine hits more oil refineries and Wildberries, more welfare state fraud, more Fauci follies, more Democrats behaving badly, and one anime lover does something really, really stupid.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
(Note: Somehow an unfinished version of this got published and one of Bluehost’s little timeouts temporarily prevented me from unpublishing it…)
I should have a link on Iran here, but as far as I can tell it’s the same cycle: 1. Iran attacks neighbors or a ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz, 2. U.S. pounds the snot out of them, 3. President Trump announces we’re close to a deal with Iran, 4. Iran announces usual lies (deal gives them complete control over the strait, U.S. promises to hand them a big pile of money, President Trump promises to pray to Mecca five times a day, etc.). Set spin cycle to repeat next week.
Why go to war with Iran now? When we have so many problems to solve — still — at home, and with the midterms looming?
If you just said “Because Israel” go and sit down. No, sit ALL THE WAY DOWN. And stay there, quietly, while the adults talk. You’ve been sold a fable by people who would love to split up that alliance in order to destroy both countries piecemeal. And yes, a lot of the people in this country you trust are in the pay of those people or alternately truly vulnerable to manipulation.
Yes, Israel is at war and has been at war. Not out of some desire of being a local hegemon — after all, they gave back a lot of territory in the early 2000s in the hope of buying peace for their people for all the good it did them — but because they would like to survive. And even then, they were soft-handed to the point of insanity until they got the wake up call of 10/7. Not responding to that wake up call would have been suicidal. Apparently they are not that. This makes them neither an evil scheming nation nor manipulators of US politics. Go sit all the way down, and think shame you allowed the likes of China and Russia and dissatisfied Arab elements (now their leadership is becoming marginally saner) to manipulate you.
However, our war with Iran has nothing to do with Israel except insofar as Israel has provided able support in it, taking down the “Hamas fighters” Iran would have sent against us when we moved against Iran.
And if you think that Trump just up one morning and decided to go to war with Iran because he’s just that crazy, you have the president completely wrong. He had a public persona that is a little unpredictable. This I think is intentional just as I think Reagan’s “the bombing will now begin” was “accidentally open mike.” If you believe that, I have some bridges to sell you. They might be underwater, but great property.
Trump’s philosophy of government is “Make money, not war.” And I don’t mean making money for himself, though setting the US as the leader of the economic world definitely will end up in his children and grandchildren being richer. And ours too, think on. What I mean is that he uses money the way other presidents used war. He makes it profitable to be on good terms with the US, rather than beating people into not hurting us. By and large, it works.
Until you come to something like Iran. An “Islamic Republic” established with heavy propping by the USSR and still used as a proxy by Russia (and China. And every bad actor who wanted to use them.)
None of which would be an immediate problem, necessitating war. The world is full of crazy little countries, armed to the teeth and with evil intentions towards everyone starting with their own people.
Except for three things: 1- Iran’s evil intent is real and proactive. They declared war on us (And yes, Israel, but remember Israel is “little Satan” to our “Big Satan.”) They’re not just squatting on their territory, murdering their own people and muttering “touch me and you’ll die.” They actively want to eliminate us. (And Israel, but honestly, mostly us.) They believe a final, massive war, will bring about their end times and paradise for the faithful. And they are, yes, sincerely religious. At least the leadership. 2-They either had a nuke, or were very close to having one, and as we have learned through their bombing every one and their cousins, they actually and for real had delivery means. To the US? who knows? And anyway, with a nuke and open borders, there are many means of delivery. 3- Pallets of cash given to them by Obama, which greatly accelerated the nuclear program. Which we supposedly have maybe thoroughly degraded. Maybe. Apparently the terrain and capacity of the Iranians…. it’s difficult to ascertain that, or to be sure they won’t be up to their games next week absent thorough regime change.
In other words, our war with Iran right now is very simple: Because the enemy gets a vote. And so do others who would love to be the enemy if we give them an opening and who are now at BEST “adversaries”.
Because if we give in to the “peace at all costs” people we’ll likely go back in a year or two. And if two who knows who’ll be in charge or what they’ll use “war time emergency” to do. Remember the covidiocy?
Now imagine that we have Kamala, or G-d forbid AOC in charge when Iran hits NYC or Chicago, or Denver, or any of our big cities. Or three or four of them.
Imagine millions dead, and the US suddenly on a war footing. Imagine what a “Democratic socialist” would do in an environment 10 times what the post 9/11 fervor was, when speaking out against war is political and perhaps physical suicide. Or, you know, you don’t have to imagine. Go and study the unvarnished presidencies of Woodrow Wilson or FDR and you’ll KNOW.
Beyond the fact that China is running out of time to make with aggression. Their demographics don’t support a long wait to go to war with us. They must do it soon. But to do it now would be suicide. To do it after Iran hits us with a nuke and we’re in disarray (particularly, if G-d forbid we have a Democrat in charge.) … golden opportunity. (And don’t tell me there’s no chance of a democrat in 2028. The right is riven by discord being sown by enemies domestic and foreign, and a lot of duckies on the right fall for it every single time.)
THAT is why we are at war with Iran now. And why Trump is doing it (he said he couldn’t risk a president he couldn’t be sure of facing this, remember?) right now, regardless of political price. Because undoing the damage that Obama wrought is essential if we are to thrive or even — just — to survive as a nation.
The DOJ Fraud Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Pennsylvania Attorney General today announced criminal charges against 19 defendants, including owners and employees of home care companies, for their alleged participation in various fraud schemes involving over four million dollars in claims to Medicare and Medicaid.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General also announced a plea agreement involving the final defendant in a previously-charged 21 defendant case involving over $1.7 million in claims.
Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and senior federal and state officials hold a press conference announcing a significant health care fraud takedown and a new Anti-Fraud Initiative in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Commie Jihadi wins. “Abdul El-Sayed Wins Michigan Democratic Senate Primary. With 99% of the votes counted, El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens 48.5% to 47.5% (14,893 votes).”
The Associated Press called the Michigan Democratic primary for socialist and anti-Israel candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
With 99% of the votes counted, El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens 48.5% to 47.5% (14,893 votes).
El-Sayed’s victory is a major defeat for the Democratic establishment.
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or endorsed by the socialists have won House primaries in Colorado and New York. Most Democrats brushed aside concerns that the socialists have started taking over the party despite those victories.
Will the Democrat party change its position now that El-Sayed won a statewide primary?
El-Sayed loves to hang out with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who thinks America deserved 9/11.
The socialist claimed he never said he wanted to defund the police, but CNN dug up a 2020 interview where he said, “I believe we do need to defund the police.” People even discovered El-Sayed deleting past social media posts with anti-police rhetoric.
He also holds the usual socialist ideas: High taxes, Medicare for All, abolish ICE, open borders, etc.
Of course, El-Sayed hates Israel and AIPAC. He admitted that he struggles “with the question of whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state.”
El-Sayed wouldn’t say anything about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death because many Muslims in the state are sad.
Given that this and many other clips of El-Sayed have gone viral since he won the primary earlier this week, it might be dawning on Piker that the Islamic vote in Dearborn isn’t going to be enough to carry a statewide election.
Today on X, he was furious again, but this time in his attempt to backpedal from one of his most infamous statements: that America ‘deserved’ 9/11.
this is unbelievably disingenuous, I'VE personally apologized for the words that i used BACK IN 2019. every candidate i've appeared alongside has done this. we all know this is a cynical way to justify associating the 1st muslim senate candidate with "islamic style terrorism" https://t.co/PqCAgXPJbw
Oh yes, because 2019 was so long ago, and saying that “America deserved 9/11” was so uncontroversial back in those dim, misty days of 2019. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Meta fined $567 million for harming the mental health of kids. And that was just in New Mexico…
“Huge Drone Strike on Petrochemical Plant and Ufa Oil Refinery: Huge Fire. [I]n Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, a massive fire is seen in the industrial zone of Nizhnekamskneftekhim after an explosion, probably due to a system overload after a series of UAV attacks on the industrial zone. ”
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Thursday advanced a resolution to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress.
The eight-to-five party line vote came in response to Fauci repeatedly invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a hearing last week to avoid Republicans’ questions regarding diary entries previously released by the committee. Those documents revealed the former head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave the lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of the coronavirus more credit in private than he did in public at the beginning of the pandemic.
Something is at war with us, us being regular citizens who want things to work and to be left alone. We’re slow to react because we think in terms of nations. Our enemies are mafias that wear governments like a cloak to defeat our eyes and fly our flags to disarm our minds. So I think the way to think about Anthony Fauci sitting there in front of this committee today is we are governed by mafias. He is a made man. I think he’s just clearly a made man. And that means we don’t have the ability to touch him.”
This could get spicy: “Paxton Investigates Financial Ties Behind Childhood Vaccine Recommendations. The attorney general is seeking information about how the nation’s largest pediatric group develops its vaccine guidance.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating how a pediatricians’ association determines its vaccine recommendations and whether financial incentives have influenced its guidance.
Founded in 1930, the American Academy of Pediatrics has helped shape childhood vaccination recommendations nationwide and has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its childhood vaccine schedule since 1995.
“If the American Academy of Pediatrics is giving medical guidance that is fueled by financial incentives, we will expose and put an end to this unlawful behavior,” Paxton said.
Earlier this year, Paxton launched investigations into multiple vaccine providers, examining whether they failed to disclose bonuses and other financial benefits tied to the number of vaccines administered.
He also accused pediatricians of denying care based on vaccination status and attaching physicians’ wages or employment to vaccine quotas.
Nearly three years after the October 7 massacre, the Israeli military and security forces continue to hunt down and eliminate the terrorists responsible. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) scored major operational success over the weekend, taking out several senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists involved in the attack.
The IDF, supported by the Shin Bet security agency, killed a commander of Hamas’s Nukhba terrorist force who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. A strike in central Gaza “eliminated the terrorist Abdallah Adnan Taha Abu al-Tayf, a Nukhba commander in Hamas’ military wing,” the IDF announced. “The terrorist infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7th Massacre. Throughout the war, he actively participated in combat against IDF troops.”
In a separate strike, the “IDF eliminated the terrorist Jalal Tsubeih, a commander in the Daraj Tuffah Battalion of Hamas’ military wing,” the military disclosed in the same statement.
An October 7 hostage taker and commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Central Gaza Brigade was also killed in a recent Israeli strike, the IDF revealed on Monday.
The slain terrorist, Mahmoud Fatair, kidnapped 19-year-old Rom Braslavski. Rom was tortured and sexually assaulted by PJI terrorists during his long captivity. According to the BBC in November 2025, he “was sexually assaulted during his two years in captivity in Gaza.”
TPPF: “Flock Cameras Are An Assault On Your Constitutional Freedoms.”
Texans have a special way of dealing with infringements on privacy and the freedoms we enjoy.
Unregistered drones surveying our properties out in the sticks? That’s what the 12-gauge home defense system is for. Red light cameras that often prioritize revenue and control over public safety? The Texas legislature passed a law to ban that. Waiting for a glacially slow U.S. Congress to pass a Digital Bill of Rights? Federalism makes clear we had to take matters into our own hands.
Clearly, Texans understand that privacy is a fundamental prerequisite to being free—and that’s on both sides of the aisle. Polling conducted by my organization, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, suggests 9 out of 10 Texans believe as much. So it comes as no surprise that ire over Flock and similar Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) is shared by activists and advocates on both sides of the aisle.
And it also means the Texas Legislature will almost certainly do something about it next session.
ALPRs are not a new concept. Like more than one surveillance program, it began as an effort to combat terrorism, providing a novel method that allowed law enforcement to forego visual inspection and the time-consuming process of obtaining warrants and registration information. American police departments began using rudimentary ALPRs in the 2000s, arguing they “enhance their enforcement and investigative capabilities…[and] expedite the tedious and time-consuming process of comparing vehicle license plates with vehicles of interest.”
Whether unsophisticated ALPRs in the early days were a worthwhile investment is up for debate.
Proponents of Flock will point to the long history of this technology’s existence as reason to not fret over the current political landscape, but I’m not interested in that red herring. The reality is that technological shifts from simple contrast algorithms to advanced AI, pixelated cameras to high resolution photos that can capture clear shots in all conditions, and wide-angle lenses that can capture four or more times the number of lanes and cars as older cameras, have given rise to the narrative of mass surveillance.
To put into plain English, a police force in New York once boasted of capturing the license plates of 10,000 vehicles in a day; whereas a 2020 California state auditor report revealed that Sacramento’s Police Department recorded 24 times that amount, with close to 250,000 photos captured daily.
Proponents will quickly assert that these cameras only capture license plates, vehicle characteristics, distinguishing features (bumper stickers and license plate frames), and time and direction. But much like with brokers harvesting and selling your online data, it is not the individual data point has inherent value. It’s the fact that there is a stunning arsenal of these data-siphoning cameras across the nation, connecting all of those data points to generate a larger, far more invasive picture than a single snapshot in time. And this is precisely why there has been a well-documented cadre of police officers making use of this database to monitor their wives, exes, or random strangers.
As author and researcher Matthew Crawford puts it in reference to digital surveillance writ large, “The appeal, surely lies in not having to do things that we normally do for ourselves. The convenience may be worth the price; that’s for each of us to decide. But to do so with open eyes, one has to understand what the price is.”
If we are relying on an opaque, cherry-picked narrative of what personal information ALPRs can capture, how it is stored, the motive for retaining certain data, and whom it is ultimately sold or transferred to, we can’t possibly be informed enough to know the price of “enhanced safety.” Even worse, none of us even clicked “accept” to the terms of service while driving down I-35. So not only do we not know the price, we have no say in the matter.
“NY Socialist Can’t Pay Rent, Wants to Write State Budget.”
New York Socialist Brian Romero has not yet reached Albany, but he has already launched his first public spending initiative: covering his own rent.
Romero, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 34th Assembly District, launched a GoFundMe asking supporters to cover his rent and groceries while he waits to take office. The campaign sought $2,000 and collected more than $1,000 from 13 donors before disappearing Friday.
The timing was apparently a coincidence. Romero pulled the fundraiser shortly after the New York Post started asking questions.
Romero is not exactly facing a difficult general election. He won 66 percent of the Democratic primary vote, and Republicans did not bother fielding a candidate in a deep-blue Queens district. Once sworn in, he will collect a $142,000 annual salary plus a $203 daily allowance while the Assembly is in session.
But first, socialism needed a little crowdfunding.
“Now, defenders are embracing the prompt injection, too. ‘Context bombing’ tricks hacking agents into shutting down before they can do harm.'”
Prompt injections, the malicious commands attackers embed into content to entice large language models to follow them, have been attackers’ go-to tool for turning AI platforms against their users. A well-phrased command sneaked into an email or calendar invitation is often all it takes to cause the LLM to exfiltrate sensitive data or follow other harmful actions.
Now, defenders are embracing the prompt injection, too.
Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, cryptographic keys, and other secrets stored on Amazon Web Services was often all that was needed to shut down attacks from AI hacking agents. The prompts direct the attacking LLM to perform an action forbidden by its guardrails, the safety barriers AI developers erect to prevent it from taking harmful actions. The LLM responds by shutting down.
Examples are a prompt that orders the LLM to provide steps for developing inhalable Anthrax spores, or, in the case of LLMs from Chinese developers, make references to the iconic Tank Man from the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Once the LLM encounters these forbidden commands, it no longer follows its existing commands. The researchers have named the technique context bombing.
Man foolishly threatens Texas Governor Greg Abbott over: A.) Deporting illegal aliens, B.) Eliminating wasteful government programs, or C.) Access to anime.
A Houston man faces a criminal case in Travis County for, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, threatening the Governor’s Office over a law the man allegedly said prevented him from watching an anime.
Joseph Roy Ozment, 35, faces one third-degree felony count of terroristic threat against a public servant. KXAN has reached out to his court-appointed counsel for comment.
According to an affidavit written by a DPS special agent, Ozment allegedly called the Governor’s Office on the afternoon of July 25. DPS claims Ozment left the following voicemail (KXAN has redacted the profanity in the transcript provided by DPS):
“I don’t know which one of you sons of b—-es passed this motherf—ing bill to get this damn s— blocking my motherf—ing anime, but you whole a– motherf—ers need to unpass this s—. Y’all are f—ing ridiculous with your b—- a–es. My Google account says I’m f—ing over the age of 18, and your dumba– is passing these dumba– laws. I’m a f—ing stab every godd— one of you b—-es. Unlock my f—ing anime.”
The call was made from a cell phone that DPS claimed was registered to Ozment.
The affidavit does not say which anime Ozment tried to watch or how he attempted to watch it.
Most major anime streaming websites, such as Crunchyroll, HIDIVE and Yomi, remain available to access for Texans. KXAN double-checked this Thursday.
While the state legislature has not banned anime, two laws come to mind that could have impeded the caller’s access.
The first is a 2023 state law requiring adult websites to verify the age of any visitor before allowing access to content. In response, several pornographic streaming websites simply blocked all access from devices in Texas.
Another law is Texas’ app store age verification law. It requires a similar age verification process for smartphone users who want to download software from an app store such as Google Play. There’s currently ongoing litigation over the law’s constitutionality, but the law is in effect until that concludes.
In the voicemail, the caller said their Google account says they’re older than 18 years old. That would cover the app store requirements. It wouldn’t apply to pornographic websites, which are required to have users upload their photo ID.
One stands amazed at the stupidity of a man who thinks threatening the Governor will somehow restore his ability to spank his monkey to tentacle porn.
Given the difficulties of illustrating this item with anything remotely tasteful, I’m going with an, ah, “story adjacent image.”
Cambridge academic Jason Arday, accused of plagiarism, has the a record of serial lying that would make Jon Lovitz’s Patholical Liar blush.
Running a single marathon is a great achievement. Running 30 marathons is a spectacular feat. Running 30 marathons in 35 days is something only a world-class athlete could achieve. But running 30 marathons in 35 days, and running the final nine of those marathons with a broken leg – that’s an impossible feat that would require superhuman powers. But that is exactly what Jason Arday has claimed to achieve. But that’s not all, Jason Arday’s incredible feats aren’t just limited to running nearly 240 miles on a fractured leg without medical intervention, he also claimed to have run 600 miles in six days on a treadmill (without any evidence), played both football and snooker at a professional level (a boast that was apparently taken out of context), raised over £5.5 million for charity (but can’t name a single donor), managed to go 15 years with a barely a wink of sleep, and even appeared on the famous television documentary series Seven Up! – which originally premiered a whole 21 years before he was even born. This is the story of Cambridge University’s youngest-ever black professor, who was appointed as Professor of the Sociology of Education in 2023.
Snip.
We are meant to believe that a boy who was completely non-verbal due to autism and global developmental delay until age 11 and who was unable to read or write until 18, then went on to earn a PhD by the age of 29. This means that in just 11 years Jason managed to learn basic literacy and catch up on all those years of missed schooling, complete an undergraduate degree (which typically takes 3 years), complete two separate Master’s degrees (typically taking 1-2 years each), complete a PGCE teacher training qualification (taking 1 year) and then write a 100,000-word PhD dissertation (taking typically 3-4 years). In just over a decade, Jason had not only learnt to read and write, but condensed 12 years of higher education into a near record-breaking period of time that would prove his hyper-accelerated cognitive processing abilities were second to none. And he did it all whilst working multiple jobs and without sleeping
How did multiple UK institutions not detect Arday’s outrageous lies? Simple: Jason Arday is black.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has released its survey of the written policies of 493 colleges and universities and evaluated their compliance with First Amendment standards, which included 21 Texas institutions of higher learning.
Of the 379 four-year public institutions and 114 private institutions, FIRE gave each campus a red, yellow, or green light rating based on how their written regulations on student expression restrict free speech.
Red light institutions have at least one policy that both “clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech or bars public access to its speech-related policies by requiring a university login and password for access.” Nearly a quarter of the private schools evaluated received a red light rating, compared to roughly 10 percent of public universities.
Overall, red light ratings made up 13.2 percent of schools surveyed, down approximately 1.5 percent from last year. Since FIRE’s first report 20 years ago, red light ratings have dropped by 55 percentage points from 68.6 percent in 2006.
Rice University and the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas both received a red light rating for one of their harassment policies.
Snip.
The Texas colleges and universities that received a yellow light rating are:
Iran lashes out again and gets pounded even harder for its troubles, Fauci’s diary validates just about everything conservatives have been saying about him for the last six years, DSA is open about wanting to destroy the Constitution, Ukraine blows up more refineries and Wildberry logistic warehouses, Spain faces invasion, all sorts of AI skullduggery, and Neuromancer finally makes it to the screen.
Following Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) missile attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Jordan, President Donald Trump is now signaling readiness for full-scale military action that could shatter the cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges and accelerate an end to the conflict, opening the door for a full-on revolution for the Persian nation.
“We’re going to beat the f****** s*** out of them […] We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating,” Trump said on Wednesday.
If the Iranian regime collapsed under external pressure and internal strain, the power vacuum could empower ordinary Iranians, who have long protested theocratic rule, to seize control of their country’s future. Hardcore Islamists brought the nation into a theocracy in February of 1979.
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a maritime coalition to protect shipping and energy supplies in the Red Sea as Yemen’s Houthi rebels threaten a vital route for the kingdom’s oil exports and global trade.
Riyadh on Thursday hosted a meeting of 43 countries and the EU to discuss plans to form a multinational maritime defensive coalition.
After the meeting, 14 countries affirmed their commitment to the coalition, including Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan and several other Arab and African countries, according to the kingdom’s defence ministry.
The United Arab Emirates and Oman were notably absent, but the ministry said the door remains open for countries that want to join the coalition.
The alliance is “aimed at enhancing maritime security, protecting freedom of navigation, securing international trade routes and energy supply routes, and protecting shared maritime interests in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden”, the 14 countries said in a joint statement.
The statement added the coalition would be led by Saudi Arabia and headquartered in Riyadh, with the participating countries agreeing to share intelligence and engage in joint maritime operations and exercises.
I exclusively uncovered the identities of prominent U.S. journalists flown to China by a CCP-linked influence operation seeking “favorable coverage” and “positive messages” about Beijing. 🧵
The names include:
– Ezra Klein, New York Times columnist
– Matthew Yglesias, Vox co-founder
– Ronald Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst
– Bradford Plumer, New York Times reporter
– Marjorie Miller, former Associated Press vice president
Also identified:
– Steve Clemons, former The Hill editor-at-large
– David Rohde, MS NOW senior national security reporter
– Jonathan Alter, NBC News and MSNBC political analyst
– David Sweeney, former NPR managing editor
– Daniel Gross, former Yahoo Finance columnist
Also on the roster:
– Marilyn Geewax, former NPR senior editor
– Kathleen Deveny, former Newsweek editor
– Tom Omestad, former U.S. News & World Report correspondent
– Steve Chapman, former Chicago Tribune columnist
– Bruce Stokes, former National Journal correspondent
The list continues:
– Craig Gilbert, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief
– Tony Semerad, Salt Lake Tribune reporter
– Shikha Dalmia, former The Week columnist
– Jonathan Broder, former Newsweek senior writer
Also identified:
– Cristi Kempf, former Chicago Tribune associate managing editor
– Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor
– Julian Pecquet, former Foreign Affairs reporter
Trip organizer CUSEF was founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a former senior official in the CCP’s United Front system, the influence apparatus Beijing uses to cultivate foreign elites and shape institutions outside China.
According to [Sen. Rand] Paul, “During his time as NIAID Director, and particularly during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci took meticulous notes about his work. He made note of conversations, decisions, and his thoughts about actions taken by politicians and other officials.” This past weekend, Paul released a gargantuan 1,141 pages of Fauci’s notes. Very little in these pages enhances Fauci’s already deeply tarnished reputation.
Most notably, on January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote:
It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread. Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.
America and the world spent most of the next two years in an increasingly furious debate over whether the virus emerged from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, perhaps from a pangolin; or from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the separate institution of the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control (which was also doing research on coronaviruses found in bats); or somewhere else. Fauci apparently knew — notice he didn’t write “believe” or “theorize” — he could rule out the wet-market theory but never felt obligated to share that conclusion with the rest of us. Instead, he repeatedly dismissed and downplayed the lab-leak theory.
More at the link.
“Revealed: Five Months After Fauci Got Vaccinated, He Suffered a Pulmonary Infarction, an Adverse Effect Associated With the Vaccine.’ He Kept This a Secret.”
The alternate celebrity and villain of the COVID-19 policy response repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse answering even mundane questions, such as the color of the hearing room’s carpet, following publication of over 1,100 pages of diary-like notes that have raised even more questions about the veracity of his COVID-era public statements.
Committee Republicans repeatedly argued Fauci could not opt out of answering questions due to President Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardon, the validity of which has been questioned because it was signed by autopen amid Biden’s cognitive decline. Legal analysts explained Wednesday how Fauci could still be prosecuted.
Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford, who pointedly disagreed with colleagues on the Fifth Amendment issue, waited until the hearing’s end to recall that Congress went through a near-identical exercise in President Obama’s second term.
It held former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt for giving an opening statement at a House hearing in 2013 on her alleged discrimination against conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, then invoking her rights under the Fifth Amendment to decline giving testimony or answering questions that may expose one to criminal prosecution.
Fauci did the same Wednesday.
Lankford asked committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whether the Lerner vote determined the Fauci outcome. Paul, who has called for Fauci’s prosecution for years, said lawmakers have a week to study the issue before voting on a contempt resolution.
The question that courts may have to answer is whether Biden’s pardon preempts Fauci’s right against self-incrimination, since he can’t be prosecuted “as long as he answers truthfully” and the statute of limitations forecloses some claims anyway, Paul said.
George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf floated two other ways Fauci could testify without risk to himself: a two-thirds committee vote or a simple House majority to immunize him, or doing media interviews in which he’s not under oath, since “it is not a crime to lie to the public.”
More blow-by-blow Fauci testimony details at the link. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Congressional committee issues subpoenas to organizations tied to China-linked Dem megadonor. The latest subpoenas raise the question of whether U.S. tax law — which grants tax exemptions and shields charitable donor identities — can be used to route foreign money into domestic political activity. At the heart of it, questions abound whether the far-left outfits have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., has issued subpoenas to three tax-exempt organizations tied to socialist megadonor Neville Roy Singham, an American multimillionaire living in Shanghai with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The subpoenas have been served, a spokesperson for Smith’s office told Just the News, on BreakThrough News, Tricontinental and The People’s Forum, all three of which are funded, at least in part, by Singham. The subpoenas come after nearly a year of the Committee’s attempts to get answers from the three non-profit organizations regarding foreign influence in U.S. nonprofits.
“For months, the Ways and Means Committee has been investigating how the Chinese Communist Party has been taking advantage of our country’s laws through its tax-exempt sector to sow chaos and division here in the United States,” Smith said in a statement. “Public reporting has traced hundreds of millions of dollars from Neville Roy Singham – a tech mogul living in Shanghai – that was funneled through a web of shell companies and donor-advised funds that concealed the true source of the money before it reached these organizations.”
The subpoenas request documents showing whether the organizations have received or transmitted funds connected to foreign nationals or foreign entities, contracts between those nationals or entities, documents and communications between employees and Singham or foreign nationals about the organization.
“Three non-profits connected to Mr. Singham – BreakThrough News, Tricontinental, and The People’s Forum – have stonewalled the Ways and Means Committee’s investigation. That ends now,” Smith said in his statement. “These subpoenas will compel the production of the documents they have withheld for months and will help expose how America’s tax laws and charitable sector may have been exploited to advance the CCP’s influence operations inside the United States. The American people deserve to know whether the CCP has exploited America’s tax-exempt sector to advance its agenda. These subpoenas will allow the Ways and Means Committee to identify the networks that exploit our tax laws, and further expose the urgent need for legislation to close those loopholes for good.”
The Democratic Socialists of America wants you to know exactly what it wants, and Megan Romer, the group’s national co-chair, laid it out on national television without once reaching for a hedge word over the most radical ideas on the party platform.
The platform itself reads like a fever dream a committee wrote line by line. A 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay and benefits, a federal jobs guarantee, canceling all student debt, and free college from pre-K through graduate school anchor the economic wish list, alongside healthcare that is universal, free, and includes gender-affirming care as a guaranteed right.
The platform calls for more publicly owned social housing, universal rent control, and a guaranteed lawyer for every tenant. On policing, the platform wants demilitarized police departments, defunded police unions, and money pulled out of police budgets entirely, all of which the DSA frames as a first step toward abolishing prisons and policing outright.
On foreign policy, the platform demands the defunding of the Department of War, the closure of overseas military bases, and an end to all foreign wars, and it pairs that with support for International Criminal Court prosecutions of what it deems American war criminals. As for Israel, the DSA calls for an end to all U.S. military and economic aid, prosecution of American and Israeli leaders over what many consider a genocide in Gaza, and recognition of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The DSA is just as blunt about reimagining how the government works. The platform seeks statehood for Washington, D.C., self-determination for U.S. territories, and the abolition of both the Electoral College and the Senate, alongside an expanded House and a presidency and Supreme Court that answer to Congress instead of operating independently. The DSA wants to swap the two-party system for proportional representation and ranked-choice voting and pay for all of it through full public financing of every election.
And, to top it all off, the platform calls for slavery reparations.
Fox News host Shannon Bream ran through the DSA’s platform position by position, true or false, no room to dodge. Romer never flinched. She confirmed that the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform calls for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court, eliminating ICE, ending borders while granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, defunding the Pentagon, abolishing prisons as a long-term goal, and placing most large corporations under government or public ownership. At every step, she answered without hesitation, affirming that each position accurately reflected the DSA’s platform.
If we can’t stop the DSA at the ballot box, then stopping them at the ammo box becomes inevitable…
Michigan journalist Charlie LeDuff, who formerly worked at The New York Times and The Detroit News, decided to visit this 88-year-old woman to ask why she’s made nearly 15,000 donations to Democrats in the last 5 years:
You’ll note that resident Elizabeth Waffle is living in a trailer because her house burned down.
LeDuff: ‘Did you make 15,000 donations in 5 years? $150,000?’
Waffle: ‘A hundred and fifty? Hell no. I don’t have that kind of money.’
Her house burned down two years ago and she’s been living in a camper since.
She wasn’t even sure if she had enough money to pay the guy who was coming to mow the fields of weeds around the camper!
DOJ needs to audit ActBlue with proctological intensity.
After the Trump administration indicated that there were at least 35,000 noncitizen registered voters in New Jersey, the Democratic governor there tried to do damage control by admitting to at least 6,600 registered noncitizen voters. Soon after her admission, however, she refused point-blank to hand over that data to the Trump administration.
In fact, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who has wasted a great deal of time and money trying to protect illegal alien criminals through her dangerous and disgusting sanctuary policies, actually referred to the noncitizen voters as “citizens” of her state. Either she is under the deluded impression we are still operating under the Articles of Confederation, or she thinks she gets to be a petty dictator because she has rigged elections enough to ensure her party never gets out of power.
Last Tuesday, a reporter asked Sherrill during a press conference, “The Trump administration is seeking, I believe by today, the list of noncitizens who are registered to vote and the approximately 400 that did vote, to what extent will your administration comply with the Trump administration’s request in that regard?”
Sherrill self-righteously but inarticulately sneered to a round of applause, “As I have said, I am not in the habit of turning over private, identifying administration—information of the citizens of New Jersey.” Again, it is completely outrageous that this is how she refers to noncitizens, particularly since many of them are illegal aliens.
Snip.
Why might Sherrill be so determined to ensure there is not a thorough cleaning out of the voter rolls in her state? In 2025, she did apparently win the gubernatorial race against Republican Jack Ciattarelli by about 453,000, so that is a fairly sizable margin. But back in 2020, when there were allegations of fraud, then-Gov. Phil Murphy beat Ciattarelli by only about 84,200 votes. The preliminary findings, meaning the likely lowball initial results, from the Department of Justice this year as to how many illegal aliens are registered to vote in New Jersey were 35,152.
Suddenly, when you compare these numbers, New Jersey Democrats don’t seem to have quite such a firm grip on power in their state, do they?
“A California-Funded Homeless Shelter Gave Us Meth Pipes.” Of course it did.
As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has repeatedly supported “harm reduction” policies, which enable drug use in the name of making it “safer.” He created the state’s Harm Reduction Initiative, which funded “syringe services programs” for “people who inject and smoke fentanyl and/or methamphetamines.” His Department of Public Health has endorsed distributing syringes, glass pipes, and “[c]ontainers for mixing injectable drugs” to drug users. Newsom argued earlier this year that harm-reduction tactics “increase the likelihood of people entering substance use treatment.”
But do California’s harm-reduction programs encourage addicts to enter treatment? We visited the Skid Row Care Campus, a homeless-services site in Los Angeles County, to witness “harm reduction” in action. We discovered that, instead of directing addicts to get clean, the taxpayer-funded program doles out free paraphernalia, enabling addicts to get high—no questions asked.
We arrived at Skid Row in the morning. The campus, bounded by pastel-colored buildings and a metal gate, looked like an apocalyptic wasteland. Homeless people and addicts were splayed across the common areas, with some smoking what seemed to be hard drugs with impunity.
We stepped onto the courtyard connected to the street. No one stopped us, asked for identification, or searched us for weapons or drugs. This is apparently by design, judging by the Skid Row Action Plan and its implementation outline, which, singly or together, inspired the creation of the campus, denounced the “racist and classist war on drugs,” and called on local officials to create hubs “free from monitoring by law enforcement” and staffed by people with histories of “substance use and sex work.”
We entered campus and found a walk-up counter, where an attendant sat before shelves of drug paraphernalia. Users come to this counter to get free needles and crack pipes, with which they can inject or smoke hard drugs.
“What can I get you?” he asked. “We have oil burners, we have spray shooters, we have socks, we have petroleum jelly.”
Across several visits, we obtained drug-testing strips, syringes, and crack pipes.
“Russia admits defeat in the south, cannot keep the highway open.” Reporting from Ukraine is exaggerating a tad, but Russia is having serious problems with drones taking out logistics trucks on the Zaporizhia logistics route.
The Democrats have their 2028 presidential primary schedule almost finalized, featuring a trio of new states in the first six, and the early sense is that Republicans will stick with the familiar lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. It might seem early to be thinking about the 2028 presidential primaries, but if you’re one of the candidates, you must prioritize, and as Yogi Berra said, “It gets late early out there.”
As noted at the tail end of yesterday’s edition of this newsletter, over in the Washington Post, I examined the Democratic National Committee’s proposed, and likely to be final, schedule for the Democratic 2028 presidential primaries:
South Carolina, January 22, 2028
Nevada, February 1, 2028
New Hampshire, February 8, 2028
New Mexico, February 15, 2028
Michigan, February 22, 2028
Virginia, February 29, 2028
One week after that, March 7, will likely be Super Tuesday, the earliest date that the other states can schedule their primaries or caucuses. States that are likely to hold their primaries that day include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Vermont.
That’s a promising early schedule if you’re a candidate on the establishment side among the Democrats, and a rougher one if you’re a socialist or affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. Based upon Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s past performances, South Carolina and Virginia are rough territory, Nevada and New Hampshire are friendly territory, and it’s a little hard to say about New Mexico and Michigan.
Snip.
When I say a socialist or DSA-affiliated candidate, I am mostly thinking of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; she is, at least on paper, the early frontrunner in New Hampshire, and Axios ranks her as the candidate who is second-most-likely to win the nomination, behind Harris.
Some racial essentialists argue that it is absurd to contend that heavily white New Hampshire is likely to be supportive of the Puerto Rican AOC. First, a University of New Hampshire survey conducted this month not only found her with a one-point lead over Pete Buttigieg, but 64 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the state said they felt favorable about her, with just 9 percent saying they felt unfavorable about her; only Buttigieg and Sanders had comparable numbers. (At 84 years old, Sanders is not running in 2028; if AOC runs, Sanders is widely expected to endorse her.)
Also note, “Primary exit polling this year suggests that DSA candidates run best among young, college-educated and higher-income demographics.” In 2020 (the last time Democrats had a competitive presidential primary in New Hampshire), 54 percent of their primary voters had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Forty percent of Democratic primary voters reported a salary of $100,000 per year or more, and 72 percent made $50,000 per year or more.
“Thousands of Military-Age Men From Morocco Invade Spain’s Ceuta Territory.” Ceuta is an exclave on the north African coast
Thousands of military-age men from Morocco invaded Spain today by crossing the border into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.
Spain has deployed its military as these men arrive by sea and breach the border fence.
Snip.
Spain’s government said Thursday evening it would send the Armed Forces to help the Civil Guard “to maintain security in the city of Ceuta.” It also announced that Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would join Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and visit Ceuta Friday.
“The situation is absolute chaos,” Rachid Sbihi, head of the association that represents Spain’s Civil Guard officers in Ceuta, who police the border told The Associated Press. “It’s not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing,” he said, adding that the border had “totally collapsed.”
However, Spain’s interior ministry won’t declare a national emergency.
This follows hot on the heels of Spain’s far-left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declaring an illegal alien amnesty.
The Spanish government and its partners openly state that the reason for legalising more than half a million migrants is to "defeat the far right." This is literally weaponised demography. They took the most conspiratorial interpretation of the "Great Replacement" that is not…
I probably should have noted that Andy Burham is now Prime Minister of the UK. The guy wasn’t even an MP until June 18 (though he had been before), when he won a by-election triggered by the existing MP resigning specifically so Burham could run for PM. Here’s The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters on the guy.
Remember: Your private conversations with AI agents aren’t. “Claude Chats Popped Up in Google Search Results.”
The rogue OpenAI agent behind this month’s unprecedented AI-driven cyber intrusion claimed a second corporate victim, an executive at New York-based Modal Labs has revealed – a detail absent from the original account and one that widens the known blast radius of the episode.
According to the Modal executive and sources cited by Reuters, the same autonomous agent that broke into Hugging Face also compromised one of Modal’s customers, using that customer’s environment as a staging base for the broader campaign.
Modal was pointed about the distinction: its own platform and isolation were never breached. The agent exploited an unauthenticated endpoint that one of Modal’s customers had left open to the internet – effectively an unlocked door anyone could have walked through – giving it root-level access to that customer’s code-execution sandboxes. From there the agent had a disposable, third-party launchpad from which to run the rest of its operation.
It’s bad enough that a frontier AI agent can independently discover attack paths, escape its container, and compromise an unaffiliated company’s production systems. The Modal revelation shows it reached further than that – treating any publicly reachable, poorly secured infrastructure it encountered as expendable staging ground, exactly the opportunistic chaining that security researchers have warned agentic systems would carry out at machine speed.
Most of what led up to the Modal disclosure has already been picked over, but the shape of it is worth a recap. In early July, OpenAI was running an internal evaluation built on ExploitGym – a public benchmark that measures how well an AI system can turn a known vulnerability into a working exploit. The models under test, GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased prototype, were deliberately run with their cyber-safety refusals reduced and the classifiers that normally block high-risk activity switched off, because the point was to measure maximum offensive capability.
The agent found and exploited a previously unknown flaw in the one package-registry proxy it was allowed to reach, escalated privileges, moved through OpenAI’s research environment, and got to a machine with open internet access. Once online, it reasoned that Hugging Face likely hosted the answer key to the very benchmark it was being tested on, and went to steal it rather than solve the problems itself. Between roughly July 11 and 13 it ran thousands of automated actions against the platform – gaining code execution through two separate flaws in its dataset-processing pipeline, harvesting credentials, and moving laterally across internal clusters. Forensic work later recovered on the order of 17,600 distinct attacker actions.
Hugging Face caught and contained the intrusion through its own AI-assisted monitoring, and says the only thing the agent actually made off with was a limited set of the benchmark’s challenge solutions – no public models, datasets, or user-facing services tampered with. To reconstruct the timeline, its team had to fall back on an open-weight model, because the commercial frontier models refused to analyze the real attack data.
So a rouge AI agent found it’s way out of its sandbox, launched a privilege escalation attack, accessed the Internet, and picked out a target it assumed it could steal answers from rather than do the work itself? Did Gen Z program its work ethic?
The State of Texas and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached a settlement, reversing the endangered species listing for the dunes sagebrush lizard while a new evaluation is conducted.
The dunes sagebrush lizard inhabits portions of West Texas, including the oil-rich Permian Basin.
The Biden administration listed the species as endangered in May 2024, citing threats from oil and gas development and climate change.
Texas sued in September 2024, arguing the listing relied on an indirect habitat model rather than population data, used a 1998 well-pad-density study that predates horizontal drilling, and ignored ongoing state conservation efforts.
The state also argued the listing impeded oil production and interfered with efforts to plug abandoned oil wells.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said when announcing the lawsuit.
A Dallas Express investigation has uncovered evidence suggesting that some Muslim and Mexican immigrant drivers at DFW Airport may be operating as part of an organized network using multiple electronic devices, fraudulent driver accounts and GPS manipulation to control rideshare traffic.
A veteran Uber driver said DFW’s airport queue displayed a wait of zero to 15 minutes, but he received no rides for more than 45 minutes. He said regular Uber requests resumed after he left the airport’s geofenced queue.
DX documented drivers using multiple phones and tablets, vehicles with partially obscured plates, and one man denying that he had a work permit, green card or H-1B visa.
Federal prosecutors have charged rideshare schemes involving fraudulent or rented accounts, GPS spoofing, bots and hacked phones that allowed drivers to enter airport queues while physically elsewhere. A separate November 25, 2025 DFW-area driver post alleged that phones were left inside a stationary vehicle to preserve queue positions.
DX has not established that any specific driver filmed at DFW committed fraud. The investigation is examining whether coordinated drivers are manipulating the airport queue and diverting rides from other drivers.
The Final Boss of Crazy Cat Ladies: “Florida mail carrier accused of stealing 80 cats along her mail route and collecting them in her house. 80 cats were rescued from the home of Gail Giustino, 77, where there was a foot of poop.”
Life imitates Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In Canada, “a missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months….Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name ‘fus__ro_dah’ (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username ‘fus_ro_dah’ (one underscore after ‘fus’). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.”
Victor Davis Hanson on Iran. He thinks Trump will skedaddle, leave the gulf states and Israeli in charge of keeping watch on the rubble, and set up a government in exile and give it access to Iran’s sequestered funds. Honestly, I should have thought of the government in exile bit for my Iran roundup earlier this month.
Dhillon Law Group has filed a federal lawsuit against Midland County Judge Terry Johnson on behalf of a citizen journalist who says he was retaliated against after posting records critical of Johnson.
The suit alleges that Johnson responded the next day by posting Christino Rodriquez’ full name, Social Security number, date of birth, and driver’s license number to Facebook.
In districts with a Teacher Incentive Allotment, educators receive additional funds from the state toward increasing those teachers’ salaries. Funding is provided to the district for teachers who achieve a recognized, exemplary, and master designation. At least 90 percent of the funding is required to be used for teacher compensation on the campus where the designated individual works.
In order to comply with Texas law, the State Board for Educator Certification is requiring the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to remove “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training materials. Lawmakers have been concerned that materials produced by national board, which offers the National Board Certification, include politicized content.
SBEC members voted last week for the national board to “make updates to materials to come into compliance with Texas state law” and “provide evidence of compliance to [Texas Education Agency] staff by November 2, 2026.”
Few things get people’s attention quite so fast as cutting off money.
With nearly constant news about AI-based security threats (both within and without), it’s notable that several tech giants have banded together to address the problem.
Nvidia and a host of tech giants on Monday launched a new artificial intelligence safety initiative focused on open models, as the fallout from a cyberattack committed by rogue OpenAI models continues.
Last week, it emerged that the target of the attack, startup Hugging Face, was unable to use leading U.S. frontier models to defend itself, with guardrails not distinguishing between aggressor and defender. Instead, it turned to a self-hosted, open-weight Chinese model, which was not bound by those same restrictions.
I’ve got to say, when I read “Hugging Face,” I don’t think of an emoji, I think of this:
I don’t think I want to collaborate with a company that wants to shove a chestburster egg down my throat.
In the wake of U.S. lawmakers increasingly weighing how to curb growing adoption of Chinese AI models, the most advanced of which are open weight, tech giants have launched an initiative aimed at building and sharing open AI tools.
Open models can be downloaded, modified and self-hosted, in contrast to closed models — including frontier systems built by Anthropic and OpenAI — which can only be accessed through specific infrastructure.
“The Open Secure AI Alliance will work to remediate and disclose vulnerabilities using open technologies,” Nvidia said in a statement. “The recent Hugging Face security incident delivered a clear reminder: cyber defenders need open, frontier agentic systems for self-defense.”
Alongside Nvidia, other members of the alliance include Microsoft, SpaceX, Palantir, and dozens of other tech companies from the U.S. and Europe.
So, that’s three leading tech companies…and Microsoft, which is probably responsible for more security holes than all the rest combined.
News articles don’t seem to give the full membership list, so in a bit of irony, I asked Google’s AI.
Adobe
Cadence
Capital One
Cisco
Cloudera
CloudFlare
Cognition
Crowdstrike
Databricks
Dell Technologies
DoorDash
Elastic
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Hugging Face
IBM
LangChain
The Linux Foundation
Microsoft
NAVER
NetApp
Nous Research
OpenClaw
Palantir Technologies
Palo Alto Networks
Red Hat (which is an IBM subsidiary)
Reflection AI
Salesforce
SAP
SK Telecom
ServiceNow
Siemens
Snowflake
SpaceXAI (xAI)
Synopsys
Thinking Machines Lab
TrendAI
A pretty extensive list of (mostly) American tech giants (NAVER and SK Telecom are South Korean companies, and SAP and Siemens are German). Hell, I’ve even worked for three companies on that list.
Notable omissions? OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, all of whom used closed rather than open AI models. Plus Apple, which made the conscious decision not to be a player in the AI space.
That’s an awful lot of collective brainpower to address the problem, but I wonder if the very size will make it unwieldy.
More sharing of open AI tools are probably in order.
I’m not in the, “OMG, we have to shovel a zillion dollars into AI because China!” camp. The “China is an AI giant” crowd seems to have a lot of the same crowd that always overhype China, but their tech offerings always seem to have feet of clay. My working assumption is that AI will prove similar.
AI may be untrustworthy to base core internal systems on, but it’s a champion at looking for security vulnerabilities. Companies used to worry about “script kiddies” getting access to their systems, but AI attack tools are script kiddies on steroids. They can spin up distributed resources to try every known attack and look for new ones. As I’ve noted before:
Internet applications gain usefulness from widespread adoption and the number of other components they tie into and support. You know what creates new vulnerabilities? A larger user base and the number of other components they tie into and support, which creates more attack surfaces for malicious actors to exploit.
The flaw isn’t the fault of Random Guy in Nebraska, the fault is the company adopting software that they can’t possibly test for all the use-cases they’re going to use it for. Surprise! Just about every high tech company in the world is in the same boat. Pretty much everyone uses a wide panoply of open source tools for their Internet applications, and no one can test all the permutations of how each component might be put to use.
You can’t eliminate the risk, you can only minimize and mitigate it. You can use containerization strategies (Docker, Kubernetes, Container D, etc.) to minimize attack surfaces and limit contagion. You can run all your code through security scanning tools on your CI/CD platform of choice. You can do constant testing and keep rolling backups of everything to limit risk and speed recovery…
But there still a good chance that the platform you’re using today is different than the platform you’ll be using ten years from now, and you’ll have to go through the same learning lessons discovering new vulnerabilities for the new platform all over again.
AI gives malicious actors the capability to test all potential vulnerabilities in all components virtually simultaneously, and researchers have discovered a wide variety of ways to “jailbreak” AIs to carry out such attacks, no matter what guardrails have been put in place to prevent malicious use. Theoretically, IT should do preemptive pentesting (probably with their own AI tools) to find such vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, but they were already overworked before a lot of dim executive types decided they could get by with lower headcount thanks to all this magic AI they kept hearing about.
Hopefully this grand alliance can provide quicker answers to The AI Menace, but it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better…
Democrats get called on their Medicaid fraud and steal firefighter pensions, the awful atrocities Hamas committed against Israeli civilians, more details of the plot against America, another Democrat spying for the Chinese, a look at Finland’s deep civil defense infrastructure, and Uncle Rick discovers that Ivy League grads working for the New York Times are ignorant dumbasses.
ice President J.D. Vance certainly has been busy as America’s “Fraud Czar.”
Medicaid fraud in California is rampant, and as my colleague Mary Chastain noted in March, Vance’s anti-fraud task force suspended 70 hospice and home health care businesses in Los Angeles.
The move came shortly after investigations by CBS News and Nick Shirley revealed a fraud scheme in California involving hospices.
Vance’s task has then suspended over 400 more.
Now the Vice President has announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California and is threatening to suspend federal funding to all states if they don’t aggressively prosecute fraud in their Medicaid programs.
“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously, but also you have people who have been prescribed medications that they don’t even need. They’ve had drugs put into their bodies that they don’t need because fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration of medications,” Vance said at the White House.
The move is similar to the one the administration took in February suspending Medicaid payments to Minnesota.
Vance said that the administration is also notifying all 50 states that it could freeze funding to their Medicaid Fraud Control Units “if they do not aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud.” The units, which exist in each state, investigate and prosecute Medicaid provider fraud. “We are going to turn off the money that goes to these anti-fraud units,” he said, if they fail to do their job.
This is a good start, but people need to go to prison.
Washington just became the first state in U.S. history to terminate a public employee pension plan.
The plan belongs to retired police officers and firefighters. LEOFF Plan 1 was 160% funded as of June 2024 per the state’s own actuarial valuation. It had not required a single contribution in 25 years. By 2029 it was projected to reach 200% funded with a $4.3 billion surplus.
The legislature terminated the plan, swept $3.9 billion, and is using $880 million of it to refill a rainy day fund it already drained to cover a deficit it created.
Days ago, retired first responders including former Congressman Dave Reichert sued the state to stop it. The bill passed the House 55-39 and was advanced out of Appropriations without a public hearing. Every yes vote was a Democrat. The governor signed it in April.
“Missouri Supreme Court Upholds New Congressional Map.” “The Missouri Supreme Court once again upheld the state’s new Congressional map, which would break-up the Kansas City Democratic seat and give Republicans a 7-1 advantage.”
They’ve got themselves into a position — which began with Barack Obama’s hollowing out of the party over a decade ago — in which they can’t afford to lose the next couple of elections, even as their position erodes.
Due to an “accidental error” in the 2020 census, blue states got more seats in the House — and more electoral votes — than they were entitled to. When that “error” is fixed, the situation will be worse for them. Then there’s the flood of refugees from blue states to red, further expanding their Congressional majorities. (But beware of the refugees who continue to vote blue. Where’s my “welcome wagon” proposal?)
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is choking off the flood of taxpayer money that has kept leftist organizations and institutions afloat, buying votes with taxpayer dollars. And the federal workforce has shrunk 10% with more “draconian cuts” on the way.
It’s a bit like Winfield Scott’s “Anaconda Plan” to choke off the Confederacy — which worked once it was actually employed. (And Trump is doing something similar with Iran, choking it off gradually rather than going for a swift coup de main, which is disappointing some people but which will work at a much-reduced cost in lives. But that’s another essay.)
This is why the Democrats, and the left, but I repeat myself, are unhappy. They feel it happening.
Click through to hear the lamentations of their women.
Right after the ceasefire expired: “FP-2 Drones Swarm Russian Positions: Multiple Hits on Multiple Targets–Ammo Dumps, Training Centre.”
Finland officially became NATO’s newest member on April 4, 2023, becoming the 31st member of the alliance, about one month after neighboring Sweden joined.
One of the so-called “justifications” for Vladimir Putin’s utterly unjustifiable full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was that he didn’t want NATO expanding to his borders. Not counting Kaliningrad, that stretch of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, at the start of 2022, Russia had 446 miles of shared border with NATO members Norway, Estonia, and Latvia.
Finland shares 883 miles of border with Russia, so now that Finland is in NATO, Russia has 1,279 miles of shared border with NATO members, almost three times as much as before the invasion. It is a beautiful thing to see military territorial aggression backfire so thoroughly.
Considering Finland’s long and tense history with Russia, some might have expected the country to end up in the NATO alliance sooner. Once a territory of Sweden, then of Russia, Finland declared its independence in 1917. In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which relegated Finland to a Soviet sphere of influence. By November, Finland and the Soviets were fighting the three-month Winter War; this was when Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä, nicknamed the “White Death,” believed to have killed more than 500 enemy soldiers during the conflict, the highest number of sniper kills in any major war, and considered one of the deadliest snipers in history. (I suspect he is the only Finn to be featured in a video of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, taking on the Red Baron.) Finland resisted bravely against overwhelming Russian forces, but at the war’s end it was forced to cede about 9 percent of its territory. In June 1941, Finland and the Soviet Union returned to conflict in the Continuation War, with Finland a cobelligerent of Nazi Germany.
Finland argued that it was fighting a parallel but separate “continuation war” against the Soviet Union and had no formal treaty of alliance with Germany. While the U.S. ended diplomatic relations for a period, it never declared war against Finland.
When World War II ended, Finland retained its independence, but Soviet troops remained at its doorstep. In 1948, the Finnish government announced the “Treaty of Friendship,” declaring that Finland was committed to staying out of international conflicts between the great powers and limiting Finnish defense cooperation with third parties. “Finlandization” became a term to describe a state of technical independence and sovereignty, but heavy influence by the Kremlin.
The Finns’ preferred public stance of neutrality remained after the Cold War ended, and if not for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland might have remained a “NATO partner,” but not a member. In January 2022, public opinion polling found 30 percent of Finns supported Finland applying for NATO membership. Forty-three percent of respondents opposed applying for membership, and 27 percent were unsure of their position. About one month later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, and by April, 68 percent of Finns supported applying for NATO membership.
You may have noticed that the Russian “special military operation” that was supposed to last four days has now lasted more than four years, the Russian military couldn’t spare any tanks for the Victory Day parades in Red Square this year, and a new estimate calculates that about 352,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war against Ukraine through the end of 2025. That is about six times the American in-theater deaths in the Vietnam War. Throw in the wounded and missing, and the Russian military has lost an estimated 1.4 million men.
The terrorists shot their eyes, their faces and their breasts, and even targeted their most intimate parts, to destroy their beauty and rob their loved ones of a final goodbye.
Women were stripped, bound, stabbed, shot and burned. They were executed both during and after rape amid an orgy of violence in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.
Heads were decapitated. Pelvic bones shattered. Even after death, sexual assault continued.
…
At Kibbutz Be’eri, nails, sharp objects, and pieces of metal and plastic were similarly embedded in a woman whose body was discovered naked and bound. On another victim, grenades were used.
…
Those taken hostage were assaulted in front of loved ones and young relatives forced to commit sex acts on each other, an intentional, premeditated strategy of kinocide to destroy family units even after release from captivity.
…
There was a recurring pattern of rape and gang rape; sexual torture; mutilation; targeted shooting to the face, head and genital area; forced nudity; binding and restraint; genital burning; objects inserted into intimate areas; post-mortem sexual humiliation; and execution during or after sexual assault.
Indeed, when Hamas led other terror groups into Israel they carried Arabic-to-Hebrew phrase lists commanding victims to ‘take off your pants’, ‘lie down’, and ‘spread your legs’.
This is the group the ideological core of the Democratic Party will do almost anything to back.
🧵🚨 MAJOR BREAKING: International actors are involved in the State Department led color revolution 🚨🚨
This is not speculation; it’s straight from a recorded call.
Ex-USAID employees describe how, before January 20, they moved internal groups off government systems and into encrypted Signal chats, then quickly linked with foreign partners and NGOs after the inauguration. This attempt at creating a color revolution isn’t new news; this part was already reported in NOTUS earlier this year.
But what’s not reported is the international aspect. One participant explicitly frames it as “a global anti-authoritarian movement,” connecting U.S. officials with “colleagues from around the world who have dealt with this directly.”
They reference coordination with Johns Hopkins, “international democracy and conflict mitigation spaces,” and efforts to mobilize across borders against what they perceive as domestic authoritarianism.
🧵🚨 MAJOR BREAKING: Inside The New Pluralists: how billionaires weaponized the Biden Administration, targeted Charlie Kirk, and are quietly financing America’s color revolution 🚨🚨
In 2017, a quiet meeting brought representatives of Soros, Koch, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations together for one purpose: to rethink how philanthropy influences politics.
Out of that meeting came the “New Pluralists,” a coalition that would go on to shape the Biden White House’s United We Stand summit, fund censorship-adjacent projects, and eventually intersect with investigations into Turning Point USA … and the color revolution that’s brewing in the United States now.
“Legal group exposes heavy use of Minnesota’s ‘vouching’ system to override voting ID rules. The records, which were obtained through a public records request, showed that Minnesota’s Election Day Registration process allows registered voters or certain residential facility employees to verify another voter’s residency in place of standard identification or proof-of-address documents.” “According to the data released by AFL, almost 18,900 Election Day registrations in 2024 involved the use of vouching. Of those, 13,441 were updates to existing voter registrations, while 5,457 involved new voter registrations.”
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
One of Britain’s ‘first gay dads’ and his husband have both been charged with rape, sexual assault and modern slavery trafficking for sexual exploitation.
Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, 57, also the UK’s first openly gay football club owner, and his husband Scott Hutchison, 32, will appear at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court today …
Drewitt-Barlow and his ex-husband Tony made headlines in 1999 when they became one of the first gay couples in the UK to have children through a surrogate mother.
An Essex Police statement said today: ‘Detectives have secured charges against two men in connection with an investigation into human trafficking for sexual exploitation, rape and other sexual offences.
‘Officers from the Serious Crime Directorate at Essex Police carried co-ordinated searches at premises in Danbury, Maldon, and Braintree on Wednesday and arrested two men. Since then we have been liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service.
‘We can now confirm that 57 year-old Barrie Drewitt-Barlow and 32 year-old Scott Drewitt-Barlow, both of Danbury, have both been charged with multiple offences including rape, sexual assault, and modern slavery trafficking for sexual exploitation.
Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman has reiterated that he is done with the insanity gripping his party. In a series of raw appearances on Bill Maher’s show and a new Washington Post op-ed, Fetterman is torching the reflexive anti-Trump obsession, the normalization of radical left ideas once dismissed as smears, and the sloppy 24-hour news cycle that turns opinions into “news.”
Fetterman made clear he refuses to play along with the extremes. “My colleagues and people that are running, whether for the Senate where the House, they are literally running on f*ck Trump,” he said.
“I mean, that’s literally—they have campaign commercials with that. It’s absurd,” he noted, adding “And we are getting to that point and I refuse to engage in that extreme, those terms. And we have to find a better way forward.”
Fetterman repeated the sentiments in an op-ed in The Washington Post, titled “I Haven’t Changed. Here’s What Has,” writing “My party cannot simply be the opposite of whatever President Donald Trump says.”
He stresses, “Working across the aisle is the only way forward” and calls “pointless pile-ons and attacks” unproductive. Fetterman highlights once-mainstream Democratic positions on border security, support for Israel, and avoiding government shutdowns that have now become “toxic” to the party’s fringe base.
He declares, “Someone who comes here illegally and commits a violent crime should be deported. Full stop.”
This week’s Democrat acting as a spy for the communist Chinese is the mayor of Arcadia.
A California mayor admitted to acting as an illegal foreign agent of China, resigning from her position in a shocking federal plea deal unsealed on Monday.
Democrat Eileen Wang agreed with prosecutors that she worked with the People’s Republic of China to boost propaganda with a fake news website on US soil between 2020 and 2022. She was elected to the city council in Arcadia — a city in the San Gabriel Valley within LA County — in November 2022.
Wang, 58, worked with her then-fiancé, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, on a website called “U.S. News Center,” which claimed to be a news source for Chinese Americans, according to court documents.
But in reality, the pair were carrying out Beijing’s orders through the site.
Wang and Sun “executed directives” from the Chinese government, posting propaganda designed to boost China, all while reporting back to their masters with screenshots showing how many people viewed the stories, according to the plea agreement.
“Harris County Treasurer Arrested for Second DWI in Office, After Burglary Charge Dismissed. Carla Wyatt was arrested in Galveston County last weekend.”
Harris County Treasurer Carla Wyatt has been arrested for a third time since taking office in 2023, while county commissioners consider abolishing the treasurer’s office altogether.
Galveston County law enforcement arrested Wyatt on Saturday for allegedly driving while intoxicated (DWI) and she was being held on a $3,000 bond with an addendum hold.
Wyatt was arrested for DWI in Harris County in December 2023 after testing indicated she had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, which is nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
Court records indicate Wyatt did not comply with the terms of her bond conditions on at least two occasions, including one in which she failed a blood alcohol blow test in March 2024. She reportedly completed a pretrial diversion program, however, and her DWI charge was dismissed in August of that year.
In December 2025, Wyatt was arrested again in Harris County and charged with breaking into a vehicle with intent to commit theft, but a grand jury declined to indict her and the charge was dropped last month.
Wyatt’s attorney Christopher Downey has argued that Wyatt struggles with medical issues, including alleged cerebrovascular disease, which affects the flow of blood to the brain.
So the excuse for her lawbreaking is literally “Her brain don’t work right.”
An Orange County Democrat’s struggling campaign is fighting back after ex-staffers accused the candidate of turning a discussion about her fake boobs into an all-hands meeting.
Janet Keo Conklin, a real estate agent and La Palma council member who is seeking to become Orange County’s next assessor, has denied allegations that she forced staff to feel her breasts while claiming she had no feeling in her nipples.
On Friday, LAist reported that Conklin — who is also accused of misusing campaign money on personal expenses — allegedly told two staffers that “she has no feeling in her nipples” and placed their hands on her chest to “give it a squeeze.”
I wonder if adding a “nipples” tag would help or hurt my page ranks…
A problem not just in Texas, but nationally: “Finals Week for Texas Schools, Universities Delayed by Hack of Education Service Canvas. Some students’ screens showed a message from the hacking group ShinyHunters.”
A cyberattack on Canvas, a system used by schools and universities throughout the nation, disrupted finals week for thousands of students in Texas, though it is now back online.
According to Baylor University, on Thursday, May 7, several universities reported that access to the Canvas system was blocked by a ransom notice. Canvas, which is owned by the company Instructure, is utilized by 41 percent of higher education institutions in the U.S. According to Instructure, Canvas has over 30 million active users.
Canvas is a cloud-based management system that houses grade books, submissions, teaching materials, and classroom communications.
The data breach was traced to “Free for Teacher” accounts within the Canvas system. The free parts of the site, which were particularly susceptible to a data breach, are now disabled according to Instructure. As of Saturday, Canvas is available for most users, but parts of the cloud system remain under maintenance.
Consider this yet another reason to implement rolling offsite backup for all mission critical data.
Tyler Brown, the man who allegedly opened fire on passing cars on a Boston highway on Monday, was previously convicted of the attempted murder of a police officer and released after serving just five years in prison.
Brown, 46, is accused of firing 50 to 60 rounds at random passersby on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, hitting dozens of cars. Two people were hit and remain in critical condition in a nearby hospital. Video of the incident taken by an eyewitness shows Brown running back and forth in the traffic lanes, firing at random.
A State Police trooper and Marine veteran caught in the traffic jam that resulted from the incident shot Brown, who is now in custody at a Boston-area ICU.
Troopers found witnesses hiding under their cars, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said during a press conference Monday.
Brown is from Boston and has been under the supervision of either the Massachusetts Probation Department or Department of Parole, Ryan said.
In May 2020, Brown opened fire on a pair of police officers who were responding to a 911 call, firing 13 rounds, one of which was fired at “close range.” The two cops returned fire, but no one was hit.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called the nuclear phaseout a “serious strategic mistake” that left Germany short of firm power that turned the Energiewende into the most expensive energy transition on the planet. This is an early marker for a developing worldwide retreat from policies that sidelined nuclear power and demonized coal, oil, and natural gas.
Germany stubbornly closed its last three functioning nuclear reactors in April 2023 right in the middle of a crippling energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine. As pragmatists predicted, German citizens now suffer under punishingly high electricity prices and remain heavily dependent on imported energy.
The green dream was sold as a route to “cheap” renewables, yet the reality for German households and factories has been record‑high electricity prices, complex subsidies for favored businesses and individuals who conform to the climate narrative, and a grid that struggles on windless days or under gray skies.
Japan made a remarkably similar error but is finally correcting course. After the Fukushima disaster, the government panicked and shut down all 54 of its nuclear reactors. Today, Japan is slowly restarting those idle units.
The pattern is plain to see. Countries abandon dependable power sources under political pressure, then spend years rebuilding what they had demonized and dismantled.
Jim Geraghty has a pretty cool look inside Finland’s civil defense infrastructure.
Perhaps no other city in the world has done more to prepare for being bombed than Helsinki. What started as a response to hard lessons from the bombing of Finland’s cities in World War II by the Soviets accelerated through the era of nuclear fears of the Cold War, and continues to this day and demonstrates a particularly Finnish approach to how you protect your citizens from aerial bombardment. Join me for a walk through one of the largest and most complex underground structures in the world.
Helsinki, Finland — In the downtown of this capital city, just off Hakaniemi Market Square, the entrance to Arena Center Hakaniemi could easily be mistaken for an elevator and stairway to an underground parking garage. In fact, the underground complex does include a parking garage — alongside a gym, several youth soccer courts, and a whole lot else.
But the stairs go deep — eight flights, and each landing of each flight is made of metal grates, creating the unnerving sense that you can see all the way down, beneath your shoes.
But there’s a purpose to this flooring, even if it’s no friend to any user unnerved by looking down from a great height. If some sort of terrible explosion occurred at the entrance to the stairs, some of the concussive force from the blast would pass through the flooring of the stairway landings, hopefully keeping the stairway intact.
Arena Center Hakaniemi is part of a vast network of underground civil defense shelters.
Snip.
After [World War II], the Finns decided that if bombs ever fell on their cities again, everyone in the country would have access to an underground shelter.
The result is more than 50,000 civil defense shelters across the country, with space for 4.8 million people, which is almost sufficient for the population of 5.5 million people. The shelters underneath Helsinki collectively have room for 940,000 people; the city has about 700,000 residents.
As Atlas Obscura puts it, “No Finnish government official would ever mention Russia as the reason for such defensive preparations, but they don’t have to.”)
While many of these bunkers were built during the Cold War, the construction of mandatory shelters in new buildings is still a standard requirement in Finland. Residences or workplaces, or any building above 1,200 square meters that is permanently occupied, must have a shelter, as must any industrial building more than 1,500 square meters. The construction cost is not subsidized and must be covered by the owner of the building.
Once you get to the bottom of Arena Center Hakaniemi, you are greeted by two large doors. Our guide, Civil Defense Planning Officer Jukka-Pekka Schroderus, explains that the first massive and thick steel door is to protect anyone inside the shelter from any explosive blast wave; the second is to protect those inside from chemicals, potential biological weapons or toxins, gases, or radiation.
Snip.
The underground shelters are built with ventilation, autonomous water supply, and air filtration systems. The shelters do not have stored food; Finns are expected to have a “go bag” with proof of identity (although it’s not required to enter the shelter), food, personal medication, and hygienic supplies for up to three days. Finnish civil defense authorities also recommend sleeping bags, flashlights and batteries, and iodine tablets. Alcohol is not permitted, which is probably wise but disappointing. In any circumstance where I would need to hastily evacuate to a vast underground shelter, I could probably use a drink.
It’s hard to imagine Finns not drinking.
Here’s what makes the Helsinki shelters particularly surreal: They’re used all the time for other non-emergency activities. As mentioned above, Arena Center Hakaniemi has gyms and indoor soccer fields, as well as a kids’ bounce house and a snack bar. Other underground shelters have pools. The Finnish authorities hope that they will have 72 hours to prepare the shelters for emergency protective use — draining the pools, removing extraneous equipment, etc.
Schroderus explained that it was important that civilians use the shelters for non-emergency purposes on a regular basis for several reasons. First, regular use exposes maintenance issues — leaks in the ceiling, lights that have burned out, etc. Second, in case of an emergency, Finns will already be familiar with the nearby underground complexes.
Off topic from civil defense, but of interest to those following anti-drone technology:
Later in the day, my group of American journalists visited the Finnish technology firm Sensofusion, which manufactures anti-drone weapons — jammers, as well as smaller, faster drones that deploy in small groups and intercept and down incoming drones. Sensofusion’s CEO and founder, Tuomas Rasila, told us his company wanted to develop the best anti-drone defense systems but had no interest in building weapons to kill human beings.
One of Sensofusion’s ideas in the works is a “Tactical Drone Factory,” which the company touts as a “fully self-contained drone manufacturing facility built inside a standard shipping container. Equipped with industrial 3D printers, an electronics assembly station, and a complete parts inventory, a single Drone Factory can produce approximately 50 interceptor drones per day. The factory can be operated by a small team and deployed anywhere in the world.”
Read the whole thing.
WTF? “School district kicks out Christian student ministry because founder opposes tax increase.”
Student ministries that provide “released-time” Bible instruction during public school hours and opponents of tax increases have separately clashed with school districts over their constitutional rights to equal treatment with secular groups and free speech, respectively.
The Rev. Gady Youmans endured a double whammy when Georgia’s Vidalia City Schools retaliated against his Sweet Onion Christian Learning Center for Youmans’ Facebook posts criticizing the school board’s proposal to raise property taxes in light of its top-heavy administrative structure, a new lawsuit alleges.
Superintendent Sandy Reid explicitly told Youmans that she and the board were ending Vidalia High School’s 11-year relationship with Sweet Onion because of his posts on the “tax issue,” but when Youmans protested, Reid also vaguely referred to parents who pulled their children from his program because of how it was taught, according to the suit.
History Matters has a video up covering why Germany didn’t stop in 1939 after having annexed so much land.
Hasan Piker attacks Shoe0nHead for daring to criticize Hasan Piker. He does not come out well in the exchange.
Artificial intelligence platforms may be just as susceptible to social engineering as human beings, but they are proving remarkably good at finding security vulnerabilities in human-made computer code. That reality is on full display this month with some of the more widely-used software makers — including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Oracle — fixing near record volumes of security bugs, and/or quickening the tempo of their patch releases.
As it does on the second Tuesday of every month, Microsoft today released software updates to address at least 118 security vulnerabilities in its various Windows operating systems and other products. Remarkably, this is the first Patch Tuesday in nearly two years that Microsoft is not shipping any fixes to deal with emergency zero-day flaws that are already being exploited. Nor have any of the flaws fixed today been previously disclosed (potentially giving attackers a heads up in how to exploit the weakness).
Sixteen of the vulnerabilities earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” label, meaning malware or miscreants could abuse these bugs to seize remote control over a vulnerable Windows device with little or no help from the user.
Snip.
May’s Patch Tuesday is a welcome respite from April, which saw Microsoft fix a near-record 167 security flaws. Microsoft was among a few dozen tech giants given access to a “Project Glasswing,” a much-hyped AI capability developed by Anthropic that appears quite effective at unearthing security vulnerabilities in code.
Apple, another early participant in Project Glasswing, typically fixes an average of 20 vulnerabilities each time it ships a security update for iOS devices, said Chris Goettl, vice president of product management at Ivanti. On May 11, Apple shipped updates to address at least 52 vulnerabilities and backported the changes all the way to iPhone 6s and iOS 15.
Last month, Mozilla released Firefox 150, which resolved a whopping 271 vulnerabilities that were reportedly discovered during the Glasswing evaluation.
“Since Firefox 150.0.0 released, they have been on a more aggressive weekly cadence for security updates including the release of Firefox 150.0.3 on May Patch Tuesday resolving between three to five CVEs in each release,” Goettl said.
Rick Beato delves deeper into the New York Times ridiculous Top 30 Living Songwriters list and discovers ignorant, pretentious, social justice-infected Ivy League grads who have no idea what they’re talking about. “Here’s four Ivy League educated people. You’ve got two from Yale, one from Princeton, and Mr. Harvard there, that are the most pretentious, cork sniffing, smug people that are all music critics with no background in music. Exactly what you would expect from a New York Times music critic.”
Iran is beyond broke, more Trump assassination repercussions, FBI finally raids some fraudsters, racial carve-out congressional districts are unconstitutional, Russia loses more ships and planes, Cornyn amnesty pander unearthed, an oil theft ring busted, DEI earns some college pink slips, and a brand spanking new Microsoft Zero Day exploit.
The Wall Street Journal offers a deep dive into the state of Iran’s wartime economy. And it turns out that the mullahs are, effectively, broke:
Government revenue has dried up just as the needs of its population are rising.
The war has thrown around one million people out of work directly and another million indirectly, according to early estimates cited by Gholamhossein Mohammadi, an official at Iran’s Labor and Social-Affairs ministry. That is a significant portion of the roughly 25 million people who are normally employed in Iran.
The cost of living has soared, with the annual inflation rate reaching 67 percent in the month through mid-April from the same period a year earlier, according to Iran’s central bank. The subsidized price of red meat, which was mostly imported through sea routes, has gone up to the equivalent of around $3.60 a pound, beyond the reach of most in a country where the minimum wage is around $130 a month.
“Living is not affordable anymore,” said Mahdi Ghodsi of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. “Iran is at its weakest point.”
Businesses across the country — from manufacturers to retailers — are closing, residents said. The lack of steel and other raw materials is hampering production in various industries. Electronic goods, which are mostly imported, are in short supply and expensive.
A 67 percent inflation rate? The worst we’ve experienced in recent memory was 9.1 percent in June 2022.
Snip.
“Iran’s rial weakened on Wednesday, with the dollar trading at around 1.8 million rials, according to market trackers. The rate reflects continued pressure on the local currency amid economic strains.” Back at the start of January, this newsletter informed you, “When Ruhollah Khomeini swept to power in 1979, one US dollar traded for 70 rials. Today, that same dollar commands a staggering 1,130,000 rials, more than 16,000-fold its price in 1979. In the last year alone, the rial has lost 50 percent of its value.” The Iran rial was the weakest currency in the world . . . back when one dollar could buy you 1.3 million rials.
Plus the specter of hunger riots.
Our ridiculous media referred to the attempted Trump assassination as a “security incident” or “loud noise.”
The security establishment has promised and made better security arrangements after the two prior attempts on Trump’s life in 2024 in Butler, Pa., and West Palm Beach, Fla., the assassination of Charlie Kirk at an open-air Utah college campus in 2025, or the wounding of congressman practicing baseball at a suburban Washington field all the way back 2017.
Those events – along with the BLM riots in summer 2020, the Antifa attacks on immigration agents, the execution of the United Health Care CEO and the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh near his personal home – have something more in common than just the exploitation of current security postures.
They all, according to publicly released evidence, involved perpetrators influenced by a vast left-wing machinery that bombards social media, community protests and even establishment television with an unrelenting message of hatred and intolerance that can dehumanize the targets of violence and motivate armed actors to action, experts said.
That machinery ranges from nonprofits like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which actually paid racist actors in the name of fighting extremism, to the organizers of the No Kings protests who unleashed hundreds of thousands of old and young protesters onto the streets on the false notion that America has somehow become a monarchy under Trump.
In between, elitists and teachers have infused the nation with claims that America’s history is racist and unrighteous and that young Americans are predestined to fates determined as oppressors or the oppressed based on their skin color. And well-funded nonprofits consorting with America’s enemies in China and Cuba are openly fomenting a color revolution in hopes of securing a Marxist future on U.S. soil.
Allen appears to have been influenced by some of that ideology, as well as Democrats’ incessant but unfounded claims that Trump was involved in the late Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.
The manifesto police said Allen wrote suggested he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” and that he subscribed to the Marxist paradigm of critical race theory that divides people into oppressors and the oppressed.
Who funded American Nazis and the KKK? You did, through USAID.
The NGO funding machine is getting harder to ignore.
USAID funneled $27 million through the Tides Center, with some of it going directly into the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Finally: “FBI and DHS Raid Dozens of Minnesota Fraudsters, Including ‘Quality Learing Center.'”
Federal officers are conducting raids of suspected fraudsters in Minneapolis on Tuesday, including the most infamous Somali-linked false front, the “Quality Learing Center.”
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are targeting more than 20 locations in their latest operation against the massive Minnesota fraud network, according to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who said that he spoke with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI’s parent agency. The size and scope of the Minnesota fraud scandal, which is heavily linked to the Somali community there, but also implicates multiple Democrat politicians, including Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, continues to astound patriotic Americans.
Melugin posted on X April 28, “Sources tell FOX the locations are largely Somali linked businesses, including the infamous ‘Quality Learning Center’. I’m told these are court approved search warrants being served and they are tied to fraud, not immigration enforcement. Fox is told 22 search warrants were executed in Minnesota this morning.”
He also shared a statement from a DOJ spokesperson: “Today the FBI with federal, state and local law enforcement is involved in court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing fraud investigation.”
While investigating apparent false fronts for taxpayer-funded daycares in Minnesota, journalist Nick Shirley found one that had even misspelled “learning” in its own name on its sign, calling the place a “Quality Learing Center.” Tikki Brown, the commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families, then asserted that the childcare facility in question closed down the previous week, explaining why Shirley didn’t see any children there. But on Dec. 29, the same location was “packed with kids.” Apparently, some fraudster panicked and summoned children to provide a veneer of legitimacy. It’s The Truman Show in real life.
A new pair of reports is shedding fresh light on how teachers unions across the country have quietly poured more than $1 billion into political causes over the past decade, with a top education watchdog warning the spending reflects a growing focus on activism rather than classroom priorities.
According to research from Defending Education, national teachers unions alone have directed roughly $669 million toward left-wing political groups, advocacy organizations and campaigns since 2015. When state and local affiliates are included, that figure balloons to more than $1 billion in total political spending.
The reports track spending from the two largest unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), as well as their state-level affiliates, using federal filings and campaign finance records.
The Supreme Court just handed down one of the most consequential redistricting decisions in a generation — and Democrats are not going to like it one bit.
In a 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the majority held that Louisiana’s congressional map — redrawn to include a second majority-black district — constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Fifteenth Amendment. The Court stopped short of striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act entirely, but it dramatically narrowed the ways in which states may use race when drawing congressional maps.
For Republicans eyeing the House in 2026, this is the kind of ruling that changes the math.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you which justices dissented.
The ruling’s immediate implications are huge. As we’ve previously reported, Republicans could potentially pick up anywhere from 12 to 19 new House seats across the South, as states seize the opportunity to redraw maps that were previously constrained by Section 2 requirements.
Democrats in South face wipeout if Supreme Court guts Voting Rights Act — NYT pic.twitter.com/goHof93AS3
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been funded by big name businesses and philanthropists including George Soros, JPMorgan, ex-Apple CEO Tim Cook and George Clooney.
The group — indicted Tuesday for allegedly funneling millions to the hate groups it says it is ideologically against — also holds over $786 million in assets, yet still solicits donations.
In fact, it took in $106 million in donated cash 2024, according to its latest available financial disclosures, yet still ran “urgent” appeals for “emergency” cash.
Over the years, donations have been made by big name donors, many of whom pledged to the organization after clashes at a 2017 by “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Virginia, which resulted in the death of one protester.
“Ukraine Hits Shadow Fleet Tanker Marquise with Marine Drones.” “The vessel was hit about 210 kilometers southeast of Tuapse, Russia” in the Black Sea.”
“After Al-Qaeda in Mali (JNIM) [Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin] & FLA [Azawad Liberation Front] took the city yesterday, the Russian Africa Corps & Malian soldiers fled to a military base outside town where they got surrounded…The Russians negotiated an exit from the [base] and fled. But the agreement didn’t include the Marian soldiers who were left behind. So, Russia once again abandoning its supposed allies as soon as the going gets tough.” Mali rebels also shot down a Russian helicopter.
Speaking of Mali: “Defense minister killed in united al-Qaeda and ISIS jihad attack, country on verge of collapse.”
Mali was on the brink of collapse last year as al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) unleashed attacks on the country. Then came a report that Jihad Watch covered yesterday about renewed attacks that injured 16 people, as efforts to create an Islamic state in Mali escalated. The new siege rapidly spiraled into much worse, with JNIM, ISIS and Northern rebels coordinating attacks. Mali’s defense minister was killed.
I’m guessing the ISIS here is the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
Mali’s military government, which Gen. Assimi Goïta leads, broke ties with France in 2021-2022 and hired the Russian Wagner Group (known as the Africa Corps) to fight the rebels.
Technically, Wagner Group and Africa Corps are different Russian mercenary groups, though I’m sure a lot of soldiers for the former ended up in the latter.
The siege also served as “a major blow to Russia as the mercenaries had no intelligence about the attacks and were unable to protect major cities.”
Mali now faces an existential threat, which Kurdistan24 News characterized as “a profound failure for Mali’s Russian-backed military junta, signalling severe regional instability.”
Governments in the Sahel have never been the most stable, but the Russian-backed coups there have made things measurably worse.
A resurfaced 2020 campaign ad shows U.S. Sen. John Cornyn promoting his support for the “legalization of Dreamers”—a message that has since been removed from his YouTube channel.
In the Spanish-language ad, a narrator proclaims that, while Cornyn supports secure borders, he “firmly supports legalization of Dreamers.”
The video, which was previously available on his official YouTube channel, was quickly removed after circulation on social media.
Created by executive action under President Barack Obama in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program allows certain individuals brought to the United States illegally as children, known as “Dreamers,” to remain in the country and shields them from deportation.
The program was challenged by President Donald Trump and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who argued it was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end the program in a 5–4 ruling.
The messaging aligns with comments Cornyn made on the Senate floor in 2020 regarding recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program following that Supreme Court ruling.
“DACA recipients must have a permanent legislative solution. They deserve nothing less,” Cornyn said at the time. “We need to take action and pass legislation that will unequivocally allow these young men and women to stay in the only home, in the only country, they’ve known.”
Cornyn also described the uncertainty surrounding their status as “terrifying” and said many recipients have built careers and families in the United States.
“These young people deserve better,” he added.
The senator further noted he had been working with advocacy groups and stakeholders—including the Texas Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, LULAC, and Catholic bishops—to find a long-term solution.
Cornyn has long been known as a squish on amnesty, but no Republican should be seeking the approval of the hard-left LULAC.
David Morens, 78, worked under Fauci while he served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The DOJ charged Morens with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
Morens, along with two unnamed co-conspirators, “concealed, removed, destroyed and caused the concealment, and removal of federal records to evade FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and FRA [Federal Records Act],” according to the indictment.
During his time at NIH, which ran from 2006 to 2022, Morens used his personal email account to conduct government business, specifically discussing the origins of Covid-19 with Manhattan-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak. Morens deleted said emails after sending them.
He also spoke with NIH’s FOIA liaison, asking for tips on how to evade FOIA requests.
Sure acts like he’s guilty, doesn’t he?
“Despite state law, we’re secretly keeping DEI.” College: “All right, then, enjoy this pink slip.”
Fourteen defendants from Texas and New Mexico were federally indicted for large-scale oil theft in the Permian Basin.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas announced on April 22 that the 14 conspirators were indicted for the alleged transport and theft of crude oil across the Texas-New Mexico border.
The criminal activity allegedly took place in the Permian Basin, which is responsible for nearly 40 percent of all oil production in the U.S.
Snip.
The Texas defendants are Randell Wayne Reid, age 41, of Electra; his father, James Darrell Reid, 65, also of Electra; and Christopher Frederick Harris, 22, of Seminole. Randell Reid and James Reid are both owners of Reidco Enterprises, a Texas-based company.
The defendants allegedly conspired to steal crude oil from the Permian Basin, “some of which was then stored on land that one of the conspirators leased from the United States government,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Stolen crude oil was then sold to the other conspirators well below the market value set by West Texas Intermediate (WTI) pricing. WTI is used as a benchmark to set crude oil prices in the region.
The indictment of Randell and James Reid restates these claims, adding that the men conspired to trade oil across the state borders.
Spirit Airlines to cease operations tomorrow, thanks in part to Elizabeth Warren blocking a merger with JetBlue.
The zero-day flaw combines a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition and path confusion in Windows Defender’s signature update system, according to an advisory from the Retail & Hospitality-Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC). If exploited successfully, a local user can access the Security Account Manager (SAM) database, obtain password hashes, and eventually gain administrator rights using the pass-the-hash technique, which would give the attacker full system control.
Local user rather than remote, so that mitigates the potential attacker pool. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Louis Rossmann, call your office. “Conroe residents say city is stonewalling their requests for information on Flock Safety cameras.”
People in Conroe are asking city officials for answers about how Flock cameras are being used and where the collected information ends up.
Residents say they feel like they are not getting straight answers.
Residents are working to learn how these cameras operate and, on Thursday, spoke to ABC13 about their demands for city officials to be more transparent, as they feel their questions are being ignored.
“Everybody in the community wants to feel safe. Everyone agrees this could help with kidnappings and hit-and-runs. To me, I just haven’t seen the data that proves that,” said concerned citizen, James Fletes.
Officials have said in the past that Flock cameras read license plates and alert police if the plates are linked to any crimes.
This technology has been used in the greater Houston area for years. In Conroe, some people say they are worried about the number of cameras and the lack of information about them.
Fletes says this concern led him to file a public records request with the city of Conroe. He asked questions such as how many cameras there are, how they work, where the data goes, and who can access it.
He says the city told him it would cost $1,200 to release the information, so he and others in the community joined forces to cover the cost.
“This is no longer just my request. It’s the people of Conroe’s request. They funded it, and we’re tired of being stonewalled,” said Fletes.
The original request was sent in March. Now, it’s almost May, and he says no information has been released yet.
“They were quick to take the money and very slow to provide the documents,” said Fletes.
There seems to be a whole lot suspicious about the ways cities have surreptitiously rolled out AI-enabled cameras and hoped people wouldn’t notice. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
A pilot is returned (at the cost of a few airframes), more high-ranking IRGC and Hezbollah scumbags dirtnapped, a ballistic warhead plant blows up real good, and a Soleimani offspring gets skanky.
Both F-15 pilots have now been safely rescued from Iran:
FROM PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
WE GOT HIM! My fellow Americans, over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History, for one of our incredible Crew Member Officers, who also happens to be a highly respected Colonel, and who I am thrilled to let you know is now SAFE and SOUND! This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone because his Commander in Chief, Secretary of War, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and fellow Warfighters were monitoring his location 24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue. At my direction, the U.S. Military sent dozens of aircraft, armed with the most lethal weapons in the World, to retrieve him. He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine. This miraculous Search and Rescue Operation comes in addition to a successful rescue of another brave Pilot, yesterday, which we did not confirm, because we did not want to jeopardize our second rescue operation. This is the first time in military memory that two U.S. Pilots have been rescued, separately, deep in Enemy Territory. WE WILL NEVER LEAVE AN AMERICAN WARFIGHTER BEHIND! The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies. This is a moment that ALL Americans, Republican, Democrat, and everyone else, should be proud of and united around. We truly have the best, most professional, and lethal Military in the History of the World. GOD BLESS AMERICA, GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS, AND HAPPY EASTER TO ALL!
Evidently extracting the pilot was a considerable operation:
“Two C-130 Hercules & Little Bird Destroyed.” Evidently they got stuck in the sand and had to be destroyed by American forces after the crew were rescued. Plus reports of a running gun battle where American forces had to stomp more Iranian hostiles.
Ed Driscoll at Instapundit put up several tweets at foreigners not understanding that America cares a whole lot more about the lives of pilots than replaceable hardware.
Checking in on “Le Dying Empire” meme:
The US lost one 40 year old fighter jet over the course of 12,000 combat sorties then immediately rescued the pilot in hostile territory – while simultaneously sending astronauts to the moon. https://t.co/5XAulhMCWGpic.twitter.com/0Oti3WLAE5
You once were the feared boogie man of the Middle East. Instead, you get the complete shit kicked out of you for 5 weeks straight, your entire navy sunk, your supreme leader killed, and you FINALLY shoot down 1 plane
You once were the feared boogie man of the Middle East. Instead, you get the complete shit kicked out of you for 5 weeks straight, your entire navy sunk, your supreme leader killed, and you FINALLY shoot down 1 plane
This is finally your moment. You can parade the pilot on TV and use him as negotiating leverage
But instead, Air Force Pararescue puts boots on the ground on your home turf, we basically build a whole patrol base including a Forward Air Refueling Point, kill hundreds of your dudes, something goes wrong with one of the C-130s at the FARP on our way out, we’re not even cortisol spiked so we simply just fly in another plane and blow up the old one instead of even bothering to do any maintenance just because of how much money we have that we can simply buy a new plane
Good grief. I haven’t seen a beatdown this bad since Will Stancil got molested by Grok. This is honestly embarrassing for the IRGC at this point. That was LITERALLY your home territory where you know all the terrain and have home field advantage, we have never done real boots on the ground operations in Iran before, and you still lost.
“Iranian state-affiliated media report that Mohammad Ali Fathali-Zadeh, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of the Fatehin unit, was killed on Wednesday.”
“IDF Eliminates Senior Commander of Hezbollah’s 1800 Terror Unit in Beirut Strike… Israeli fighter jets “conducted a strike in Beirut and eliminated Hamza Ibrahim Rakin, Deputy Commander of Unit 1800, along with the unit’s Operations Officer.”
“Israel strikes ballistic warhead plant, ‘heart’ of Iran’s military complex in air strikes on Tehran.” It blew up real good.
Caveat: Real explosions are interspersed with AI videos of the tunnels underneath.
“Iran’s highest bridge linking Tehran to Karaj is struck in a joint US-Israeli strike.”
Tousi is reporting inter-regime strife between different elements over controlling the government.
A financially motivated data theft and extortion group is attempting to inject itself into the Iran war, unleashing a worm that spreads through poorly secured cloud services and wipes data on infected systems that use Iran’s time zone or have Farsi set as the default language.
Experts say the wiper campaign against Iran materialized this past weekend and came from a relatively new cybercrime group known as TeamPCP. In December 2025, the group began compromising corporate cloud environments using a self-propagating worm that went after exposed Docker APIs, Kubernetes clusters, Redis servers, and the React2Shell vulnerability. TeamPCP then attempted to move laterally through victim networks, siphoning authentication credentials and extorting victims over Telegram.
Also from Ed Driscoll, the niece of Qasem Soleimani living like a slutty American girl here while supporting the mullah regime:
I was considering this from the American perspective, but from the Arabic, Iranian, and Muslim perspective this is a huge propaganda coup for the American government. These photos completely discredit Iran, at a moment when Iranian soldiers are deserting and demoralized. https://t.co/oGsNeTh97opic.twitter.com/3zRcJ1eIMB
Iranian is still lobbing missiles at its neighbors. “Iranian forces struck Bahrain’s BAPCO oil refinery this morning, setting the facility’s tank farm ablaze.”
Prophecy for two days from now: “U.S. President Donald J. Trump in a post Easter Sunday directed at Iran via TruthSocial: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
As always, these are just the stories I was able to gather I thought important enough to include. If you think I missed anything important, feel free to share it in the comments below.
Jobs are down, more Minnesota fraud uncovered, a bunch of military action outside the Persian Gulf, an Austin jihad shooter, Noem gets the Old Yeller treatment, Bill Clinton remains Bill Clinton, and Microsoft, amazingly, manages to get even worse.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Also consider this your “Iran Strikes: Day 7” update with a smattering of news as well. There are reports that Kurdish forces have entered Iran from Iraq, but I’m not seeing sufficient evidence for that yet.
Interesting chart showing Iran has likely “blown its wad” on missiles and drones, as day by day fewer and fewer are being launched.
Update Numbers as of Mar. 6, 12.00 AM The numbers are rounded and compiled from various media reports, with a margin of error of ±10% 15% **Corrected previous Post there was a Mistake https://t.co/eDlVfc3nzApic.twitter.com/UiHAU0yNHe
The Supreme Court upheld the standard for reviewing asylum cases, keeping it in the hands of immigration agencies.
Yes, even the leftist justices agreed. 9-0.
“We granted certiorari to determine whether the Court of Appeals applied the appropriate standard of review under the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act],” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “We conclude that the statute requires application of the substantial evidence standard to the agency’s conclusion that a given set of undisputed facts does not constitute persecution.”
Top officials in Minnesota were made aware of fraud concerns surrounding government assistance programs as early as 2019 but failed to take action as billions of dollars were stolen and warnings piled up.
Former Minnesota state officials testified to the House Oversight Committee that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were first informed that the state’s social services programs had been compromised by widespread fraud in 2019 and 2020, according to a new report from the committee.
“Testimony obtained by the Committee reveals that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of widespread fraud in social service programs, lied about their knowledge of the fraud, and retaliated against employees who dared to raise concerns. Instead of protecting vulnerable Americans, they handed over billions in taxpayer dollars to fraudsters and threw their own state employees under the bus,” said House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.).
Several different entities and state-level programs are implicated in Minnesota’s fraud scandal. The most prominent program is Feeding Our Future, which fraudsters targeted during the Covid era to steal $300 million from the Minnesota Department of Education that had been designated to provide food to poor children. Feeding Our Future is now dissolved and dozens of defendants have been convicted in connection with the scheme since 2022.
According to the committee report, Minnesota Department of Education officials first received allegations of fraud against Feeding Our Future from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019. The USDA alleged Feeding Our Future was created with forged signatures and misled sponsored food distribution sites about certain federal requirements. Minnesota officials dismissed the allegations at the time. By April 2020, Walz and Ellison’s offices were briefed about the Minnesota Department of Education’s concerns regarding Feeding Our Future, Assistant Commissioner Daron Korte testified to the committee. State officials contacted the USDA about Feeding Our Future in late 2020, but the agency’s inspector general did not act, a failure that emboldened the scammers at Feeding Our Future.
The Oversight Committee report asserts that Minnesota officials could have suspended payments to Feeding Our Future but chose not to because of potential litigation and racism accusations. Minnesota officials blamed the USDA and Feeding Our Future for perpetuating the large-scale fraud. In March 2021, the Minnesota Department of Education stopped payments to Feeding Our Future, but resumed payments voluntarily the following month after a court hearing on the matter. A court order was never issued requiring the payments, contradicting Walz’s 2022 assertion to the contrary. The lack of a court order was confirmed during the course of the Oversight Committee’s investigation.
In early 2019, Walz’s administration became aware of fraud tied to two programs administered by Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, former agency commissioner Tony Lourey testified. Another former commissioner, Jodi Harpstead, testified that Walz’s administration believed fraud connected to a child care program run out of the Department of Human Services had already been resolved. But the Oversight Committee report references two auditor reports showing otherwise, both of which were issued in 2019. The Department of Human Services lacked fraud mitigation mechanisms and felt pressure to get money out the door to justify state appropriations, the committee found. Despite credible allegations of fraud, the agency failed to act on the warnings and unilaterally stop making payments to the social services programs in question.
The Oversight Committee’s report is based on testimony from nine top current and former state officials, documents and communications, and briefings with federal and state officials. The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office recently speculated that the interwoven fraud schemes totaled nearly $9 billion in misallocated funds. Of the fraud defendants, 85 percent of them come from Minnesota’s Somali-American immigrant community. Social services programs that provide food, child care, housing, and special education have all come under scrutiny as federal investigators unravel the fraud scheme.
I know it’s been easy to overlook in all the other military news this week, but Afghanistan and Pakistan have been going at it as well, though only at a border skirmish level rather than a full-scale conflict. Since the Pakistani ISI helped create the Taliban, this is what’s known as “blowback.”
Rene Campos, a registered sex offender, is seeking elected office in California – launching a campaign for Fresno City Council amid fierce backlash and renewed questions about whether someone with his record should hold public office.
Campos was arrested in 2018 following a cyber tip to the Central California Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He was found in possession of child sex abuse material, according to court records. In 2021 he entered a no-contest plea to a single misdemeanor charge of possessing and controlling child pornography/child sex abuse material (likely under California Penal Code § 311.11). He served only one month in prison and a two year probation period.
Campos describes himself as a gay man who is running for office on the platform of “reduced crime and rehabilitation.”
Possession of child pornography is typically treated as a felony, even in a woke haven like California. How the Fresno candidate was able to make a deal for a misdemeanor charge and spend only one month in prison is a mystery, but this does help to confirm ongoing suspicions that California’s legal system is falling into steep decline.
California is notoriously soft on child sex abusers. Recently, a Sacramento parole board released Daniel Allen Funston, who was convicted in 1999 of sixteen counts of kidnapping and child molestation after a horrific crime spree in Sacramento County, during which he kidnapped, raped, and beat eight children ages 3 to 7.
Funston was originally sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 20 years, but was set free at age 64 due to a California elderly inmate program (maybe he’ll run for office, too).
Data from 2022 shows that the Golden State released over 7000 child sex offenders after less than one year of incarceration. Interestingly, “digital blocks” were added to the Megan’s Law website that prevent more recent analysis.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger is demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement provide warrants before violent illegal criminals are turned over to federal authorities, following the stabbing of a Virginia woman by an illegal immigrant with a long and violent criminal history.
Abdul Jalloh was charged with second-degree murder after Stephanie Minter was brutally stabbed in the neck at a Virginia bus stop. Jalloh had previously been charged more than 40 times, including for egregious crimes such as aggravated assault, malicious wounding, and rape. Prosecutors dropped 20 of the 43 charges against Jalloh. The Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office said the charges were dropped because Jalloh often chose victims who did not have permanent addresses, making the proceedings more difficult.
The Department of Homeland Security said Jalloh is an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone. He entered the United States in 2012.
“ICE previously lodged a detainer against Jalloh in 2020, and he was granted a final order of removal by a judge who found he could be removed to any country other than Sierra Leone,” DHS said in a statement. “This case illustrated the importance of third country removals to get criminal illegal aliens out of the U.S.”
Spanberger insists that in order for Virginia to work with federal authorities, ICE must provide a signed judicial warrant, regardless of the alien’s criminal history. DHS requested cooperation with Virginia and Spanberger to deport Jalloh following his alleged involvement in the fatal stabbing.
“We are calling on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Virginia’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murderer and violent career criminal from their jail without notifying ICE,” Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “This illegal alien’s murder of an innocent, beautiful American woman came less than 24 hours before Governor Spanberger’s demonization of ICE law enforcement. This heinous criminal is a perfect example of why we need cooperation from sanctuary jurisdictions and the importance of third country removals for the safety of the American people.”
What the Trump administration has done on the DEI front represents the beginning of a general reorientation of our politics away from wokeness. One need only survey what prominent leaders of the Left are saying about the political price the Democratic Party has paid on that score. What they are saying indicates a large political change, even if the Dems prove incapable of unmooring themselves from woke politics for the near future.
The first sign of this reorientation is a general shift in the popular mindset: the spell of woke politics has broken. This matters because it was always the way in which woke politics commanded assent in the citizens’ hearts and minds that was crucial. That assent has been questioned or denied now in a broad way, with the backing of public authority (Supreme Court decisions, executive orders, agency directives), and with widespread public support. Wokeness’s public hectoring, punitiveness, and censoriousness, and the extremism of many of its positions on the issues, is unpopular at the level of 70–30 or 80–20 opinion poll divides.
We ought to be confident, therefore, that the broken spell of wokeness augurs a permanent shift in our public life. What that means precisely, however, depends very much on how we understand wokeness and what is done going forward to ensure that woke excess does not return. Now, if, as many say, wokeness was the product of cultural Marxism (Christopher Rufo and a host of followers) or postmodernism (Jordan Peterson and another host of followers), then all that needs to be done is to combat bad ideas. On these interpretations, our universities in particular, and other cultural institutions where the influence of such ideas holds sway, need our attention. Certainly, cultural Marxism and postmodernism represent bad ideas, and the world would be a better place without their influence.
But if what wokeness represents above all is the explosive power of the civil rights revolution and the influence of an aggressive leftist interpretation of anti-discrimination politics, as another band of interpreters claims (I among them), then the task ahead is much bigger and much more difficult.
Trump’s anti-DEI measures, on this view, would represent only the first step in a broader campaign of civil rights reform. One could look long and hard without seeing much in the way of evidence for any such thing so far. Are these current efforts against DEI an illusion, a brief moment of political opportunism that will recede as public hatred of wokeness recedes—only to return in a few years when the next wave of anti-discriminatory passion rises up?
I don’t think that worry is justified. The anti-DEI campaign to date will have enduring consequences because even if it is not yet clear that what is at stake in DEI is civil rights politics, the current reorientation can only have the effect of raising our awareness of the role of anti-discrimination in our public life. This has begun on the all-important moral plane of civil rights politics. Precisely by breaking the spell of its puritanical commands, our anti-woke moment is reworking something essential to civil rights politics. Because public morality is the crucial filter of the human mind, a shift at this level will change what we see, what we think, and what we think we can say. Anti-woke sentiment, backed by changes in the law, is providing a moment of political, cultural, and mental freedom that will necessarily lead, after many decades during which this was not possible, to a general reappraisal of the moral power and the meaning of the civil rights revolution.
Sources have identified the alleged gunman as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne to Nexstar’s KXAN and The Associated Press…
Diagne is originally from Senegal, according to multiple people briefed on the investigation. One of the people told the AP that Diagne came to the U.S. in 2006 and was a naturalized U.S. citizen…
Austin mass killer captured on video wearing ‘Property of Allah’ hoodie during rampage.
“Dallas Democrats Decide To Let DA Creuzot Go. With no Republican in the race, Democrat primary winner Amber Givens will become Dallas County’s next district attorney.” Creuzot was yet another Soros-backed DA, so maybe Dallas Democrats are ever so slowly moving back to sanity.
I’m just going to embed this Asmongold clip of Bill Clinton’s Jeffrey Epstein deposition without comment.
President Trump announced Thursday that Senator Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) will replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary.
The announcement comes after Noem struggled to stand up to a public grilling by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who pressed the former South Dakota governor on Tuesday about a $220 million ad campaign contract that was subcontracted to one of her longtime allies. Trump was furious at Noem for insisting during the hearing that he had personally approved the contract and began floating Mullin’s name as a potential replacement, National Review first reported early Thursday.
Mullin will replace Noem effective March 31. It’s unclear whether Trump plans to nominate Mullin to serve in the position permanently or whether he will serve in an acting capacity, sparing him the necessity of Senate confirmation.
“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”
Already under significant scrutiny due to bipartisan criticism of her handling of Trump’s deportation agenda, Noem ran into further trouble this week during a series of hearings in which multiple lawmakers, most notably Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, asked her to explain why the agency had awarded a $220 million contract to a firm that was founded just days before, without ever opening up the bid to a competitive process. Kennedy also pointed out that part of that ad campaign was subcontracted to a strategy firm owned by Ben Yoho, the husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
A $220 million no-bid ad contract isn’t just wasteful, it’s actively criminal.
More defeats for the gambling lobby: “Two House Chairs Defeated by Challengers. State Reps. Cecil Bell and Stan Kitzman were ousted by Kristen Plaisance and Dennis Geesaman respectively.”
Plaisance ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, securing Texas’ elections, and defending state sovereignty.
Bell’s campaign and allied groups—including the Las Vegas Sands–backed casino lobby and Texans for Lawsuit Reform—reportedly spent more than $1 million attempting to defend the incumbent.
Bell, who chairs the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, had been censured by the Montgomery County Republican Party last year.
Incumbent State Rep. Stan Kitzman of Brookshire has been defeated by Dennis “Goose” Geesaman for the GOP nomination for House District 85. Kitzman served as chair of one of the House’s subcommittees on appropriations.
Geesaman, a pilot and Air Force Academy graduate, retired as a Lt. Colonel. He served five terms on the Flatonia City Council and later served as mayor.
While Texans for Lawsuit Reform and casino-funded PACs backed Kitzman’s reelection campaign, Geesaman ran on a platform of ending magnets for illegal immigration, DOGE-ing Texas, and supporting parental rights.
Kitzman also recently came under investigation for his paid work for a local governmental entity while serving in the Legislature.
Kitzman also voted to impeach Paxton, so I think we’re well rid of both of them.
The war against tranny madness continues. “Paxton Opinion Targets Therapists Behind Child ‘Psychological Transitioning.’ Psychiatric providers who help facilitate prohibited treatments may be barred from receiving public funds and could risk losing their licenses.”
Samsung Electronics America Inc. is one of five companies that have been accused by Attorney General Ken Paxton of collecting and monetizing consumers’ viewing data on smart TVs.
Following the agreement, Samsung will now make changes to not only halt the collection of viewing data without consent, but also update their TVs to include disclosures and consent screens.
Heard from some state agency people that this was coming: “Texas Dismantles DEI-Oriented HUB Network. The comptroller’s office has ended race- and sex-based preferences in state contracting.” Good.
“Former Warren Campaign Worker Says the U.S. Must Be ‘Abolished’ to Atone for Death of Ayatollah Khamenei…Calla Walsh, the communist activist who campaigned for Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Bernie Sanders, and others, said the only way to exact “justice” is the complete deconstruction of the U.S. and Israel.” What percentage of the ideological core of the Democrat Party are actively communist?
One thing that reportedly helped kill Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Brothers: GOP congressmen visiting Netflix headquarters and discovering tampons in the men’s room.
Microsoft seems to be going from bad to worse: “Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser… for your own convenience, embeds Edge into AI assistant, ignores questions about opt-in.”
Microsoft is rolling out a Copilot update to Windows Insiders that embeds web browsing directly into the assistant, opening links in a side panel rather than launching your default browser.
The plan is that users of the Copilot app in Windows will show content in the assistant’s window “so you don’t lose context.”
Copilot will also (with permission) have access to the context of tabs opened in that conversation, so the assistant can look across them when responding to user prompts. Opened tabs will be saved with the conversation so that they can be returned to, and, if a user chooses to enable it, passwords and form data can be synchronized.
Enabling password and form data synchronization might give some users pause for thought, particularly after the Windows Recall fiasco, but users worried about Redmond slurping data should probably consider an alternative to Windows anyway.
At first glance, it looks like embedding Edge into Copilot via the WebView2 control is an attempt to steer the user away from their default browser. Convenient, yes. Good for competition, possibly not. We asked Microsoft whether this would be an opt-in experience and which browser was being used, but, other than acknowledging receipt of our questions, the company did not respond.
It looks like this is going to be limited to corporate users for now, but launching web links without user control strikes me as a huge attack vector for malicious code. (Previously.)
New Zealand “Lesbian Navy Captain Faces Court Martial After $100M Ship Ran Aground, Caught Fire, Sank.” Since that happened all the way back in 2024, they’re certainly not rushing to justice…
Apple has some new computers out, so here’s M5 Pro vs. M5 Max benchmarks. My trailing edge consumer ass is still on an Intel-based MacBook Pro…
“Japanese companies are paying older workers to sit by a window and do nothing—while Western CEOs demand super-AI productivity just to keep your job.” Seems like there should be a happy medium between those two extremes…
Another would-be Trump assassin dirtnapped, Mexico burns, more leftwing fraud uncovered, disturbing news of taxpayer-funded child mutilation here and horrific rape overlooked in the UK, and some financial heavyweights are shedding their irrational social justice policies. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
I went out and early voted today, and voting was very heavy. (I was planning on going Thursday, but that the day the guy dropped off my new (used) dryer.) Because of redistricting, no voter registration cards were sent out, so just vote using one of several forms of official ID. (Gee, what an easy system! Just think how easy things could be if congressional Republicans made that their top priority!)
An armed man was shot and killed by the Secret Service in the early hours of the morning after unlawfully entering the secure perimeter at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was holding a shotgun and a fuel can as he tried to enter Trump’s Palm Beach residence near the north side around 1.30am on Sunday, the Secret Service said.
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in Washington, DC, last night attending the Governors’ Dinner.
Two Secret Service agents and one deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office ordered him to drop his weapons.
Things got pretty spicy in Mexico. “Mexico Kills a Drug Kingpin, and the Cartels Set the Country Ablaze.”
The good news is the cartel kingpin, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, a.k.a. “El Mencho,” is no longer with us. From the New York Times:
Mexican security forces on Sunday captured Mr. Oseguera in Tapalpa, a town of about 20,000, in the western coastal state of Jalisco, where his cartel was founded and based, the government said in a statement. Mr. Oseguera was injured in the operation and died while in transport to Mexico City for medical attention, according to the government. At least nine other cartel members were killed.
Reuters reports the raid was a result of combining U.S. intelligence-gathering with Mexican law enforcement:
The U.S. official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not offer further details on any information that the U.S.-military-led task force may have offered Mexican authorities. The official stressed the raid itself was a Mexican military operation.
A former U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity without referring specifically to the task force, said the U.S. compiled a detailed target package for El Mencho and provided it to the Mexican government for its operation.
This detailed dossier included information provided by U.S. law enforcement and U.S. intelligence, the former official said.
The former official added El Mencho was very high, if not at the top, of a list of U.S. targets in Mexico.
Virginia Democrats are advancing two bills to extend deadlines for receiving and counting mail-in absentee ballots several days after Election Day.
Delegate Adele McClure and State Senator Barbara Favola, who represent Arlington, have introduced companion bills, HB 82 and SB 58, which will extend the deadline for counting absentee ballots in Virginia from noon to 5 p.m. on the third day after Election Day, reported ARL Now.
These bills are being presented as the White House seeks to curb voter fraud in Democrat-run states, particularly in regard to mail-in voting, which President Donald Trump claims is prone to widespread fraud.
Trump has vowed to sign an executive order to eliminate mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, allowing absentee ballots only for the seriously ill and military personnel overseas to restore election integrity.
“Mail-in ballots are corrupt. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots,” Trump said on social media.
McClure and Favola said that their legislation to allow mail-in ballots to be counted well after the election will address delays caused by the U.S. Postal Service.
In June, a Pennsylvania woman appeared in federal court in connection with a $1 million-plus home care fraud scheme. Hemal Patel was charged with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute. The 59-year-old Bucks County resident, according to the U.S Attorney’s Office for Pennsylvania’s Eastern District, pocketed payments for referring patients to home care agencies. Patel and others schemed to fraudulently bill Medicaid for ghost home care services.
The scam targeted Pennsylvania’s Community HealthChoices, which uses Medicaid funds to pay for home- and community-based personal assistance services for individuals with disabilities to help keep them out of nursing homes, according to court filings. Patel was one of hundreds of people charged in the Department of Justice’s National Health Care Fraud Takedown, the largest sweep of its kind covering some $14.6 billion in intended Medicaid losses.
Payouts to personal assistance services have ballooned nationally. Between 2018 and 2024, Medicaid cash in the category grew by 144 percent, from $9.6 billion to almost $23.5 billion. But payments have absolutely exploded in Pennsylvania — by more than 10,000 percent over the period, according to an analysis of new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The massive data dump, reviewed by public spending tracker Open the Books, shows Medicaid-funded payments to Pennsylvania’s personal assistance services shot up from $5.6 million in 2018 to $583 million in 2024.
More homeless industrial complex fraud: “S.F. Homeless Nonprofit CEO Charged with Nine Felonies for Allegedly Misappropriating over $1M in Public Funds.”
The former CEO of a San Francisco-based homelessness nonprofit was charged Monday with nine felony counts after allegedly misappropriating more than $1.2 million in public funds.
Gwendolyn Westbrook, 71, is the former CEO of the United Council of Human Services. Charges against Westbrook include misappropriation of public funds, grand theft, and filing four years of false tax returns.
According to prosecutors, Westbrook misappropriated the $1.2 million through unauthorized payments to herself, improper cash withdrawals, and fraudulent reimbursements from 2019 to 2023. Prosecutors also claim Westbrook directly stole $91,000 from the United Council of Human Services.
Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “FBI Raids Los Angeles School District Headquarters, Home of Superintendent.”
Federal agents executed search warrants Wednesday at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the home of Superintendent Albert Carvalho, significantly escalating the Trump administration’s fight against the nation’s second-largest school district.
The FBI conducted the raids on the 24th floor of LAUSD’s headquarters and Carvalho’s home in LA’s San Pedro neighborhood, a vibrant waterfront area, according to Fox 11. The nature of the investigation is currently unclear. LAUSD and Carvalho have yet to address the situation.
FBI agents could be seen going in and out of Carvalho’s home carrying items in boxes. Carvalho has been LAUSD superintendent since 2022 and was re-appointed to the role this past September. The affidavit for the search warrants are currently under seal, so it is unknown if Carvalho is personally a target of the investigation.
Last week, the Trump administration moved to intervene in a civil rights lawsuit against LAUSD for alleged racial discrimination tied to a program that prioritized funding for schools with lower amounts of white students. The lawsuit was brought by the 1776 Foundation, a conservative group active in K-12 education policy and school board races.
The district has also clashed with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement efforts in the area.
The defining issue of our country, powerfully visualized in 20 seconds:
“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens not illegal aliens."
Our inquiry panel has heard extensive and deeply distressing testimony from a survivor detailing prolonged and extreme abuse, exploitation, and trafficking beginning in childhood and continuing over a number of years across multiple locations in the United Kingdom.
The panel wishes to place on record that we regard this testimony with the utmost seriousness. The survivor has provided detailed, consistent, and specific evidence over an extended period of engagement with our inquiry. She will remain anonymous and she is safe. She has made it abundantly clear that she wants the country to know her story. This is her decision, and her decision alone. Elements of her account have been independently corroborated through presented documentation and vast evidence.
The panel is also aware of additional material and supporting information that strengthens the credibility of the survivor’s account and warrants urgent and comprehensive investigation by the relevant statutory authorities.
Given the gravity of the allegations, we have thought long and hard about whether to release the following information. We believe, as does she, that the public deserves to know the truth about the rape gangs.
The survivor’s violent gang rape and abuse began at the age of 12, she was raped multiple times per day over many years. The rapes were filmed and were used as blackmail. The survivor has stated that multiple police officers were active perpetrators – money was exchanged openly and this destroyed her ability and willingness to seek help. Police vehicles were used to traffic her and some of the abuse events were called “cop nights.”
The extreme pain she suffered included filmed torture in places called ‘red rooms’.
The torture included waterboarding and strangulation by rope. Distressingly, she was raped by a dog, filmed, and forced to rewatch the footage as the men placed bets.
The co-ordination of this specific type of abuse was predominantly perpetrated by Pakistani-heritage men.
Also this:
Our rape gang inquiry is only just starting to scratch the surface – there is so very much evil among us.
Do not kid yourselves. This is happening, now. Today. All over Britain. It is an organised criminal network of rape and slavery.
China’s fishing fleets are clearing the sea out. “The People’s Republic of China (PRC), having drained as much as she can from nearby seas, has decided to strip-mine life from the most remote corners of our shared oceans.”
So scared of your own population and your inability to keep them fed and employed ashore—today—that you will knowingly strip mine life from the world’s oceans, regardless of its impact on everyone—tomorrow.
Once an ecosystem is ripped out from its foundation, there is no guarantee it can recover. They don’t care. That will be someone else’s problem. No one will do anything, as they either lack the will, or they have been bought off.
How remote and how far down the food chain is the PRC willing to go? The wholesale harvest of krill in the Antartic is as difficult to imagine as it is to see, and as such is hard to get people’s attention. It is a foundation species. If you harvest it below a certain level, the entire ecosystem will collapse.
What they are doing in South American, though?
Here’s your video.
The red are Chinese fishing boats crossing to the other side of the Pacific, rushing right up to Peru’s EEZ, before switching off their AIS and entering Peru’s territorial waters. They are doing the same off the Galapagos and Argentina.
Sounds like China is the actual existential threat to global life greens liked to claim global warming was. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
How many fingers, Winston? “Canadian tribunal fines man $750,000 for believing there are only two genders.”
“Deep penetration: Ukrainians spearhead Russian defenses in Huliaipole.”
The Ukrainian offensive near Huliaipole has developed a second axis, retaking still more territory from the Russian invaders.
This is a glorious story: Ukrainian covert cyber units set up a sting to secretly restore Starlink access to Russian units…as long as they “submit detailed information, including personal data, terminal identifiers, and geolocation coordinates.” Results: 2420 Russian control points droned and bombed.
I suppose I need to cover the weirdness of the 31st Texas congressional district race. “Congressman John Carter Faces Valentina Gomez, ‘ShamWow Guy’ in Crowded GOP Primary.” Carter was formerly my congressman until the 2020 redistricting.
Congressman John Carter (R-TX-31) is facing nine Republican challengers in the 2026 primary election for his seat, which he has held for 23 years.
Some of the contenders in the Republican primary have entered the race with unique backgrounds — including Offer Vince Shlomi, also known as the “Shamwow Guy” infomercial pitchman from the early 2000s, and social media sensation Valentina Gomez Noriega, formerly a candidate for Missouri secretary of state and best known for her unfiltered, brash tone in short videos posted online.
Other candidates in the crowded running include U.S. Army veterans William Abel, Steve Dowell, and Elvis Lossa; physician David Berry; Ed Ewald; entrepreneur and millionaire Abhiram Garapati; and businessman Raymond Hamden.
Shlomi has garnered nationwide attention after announcing his bid for CD 31, due to his familiar infomercial branding and signature voice. His campaign motto is “make America grow some balls again,” matching similar branding as seen from Gomez.
Carter is Texas’ third longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, having been the first member elected to the seat following the district’s creation through redistricting after the 2000 census. Carter cites the September 11 terrorist attacks as an event that encouraged him to run for Congress in 2002, thus leaving his prior role as district judge for the 277th District Court in Williamson County.
Carter currently serves as a member of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations while also serving on both the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee and the Defense Subcommittee.
He’s been endorsed for re-election by both President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott.
The top three fundraisers per the end-of-year campaign fiscal reports in the Republican primary were Carter, Gomez, and Garapati. Carter came in with $114,252 raised and reported $462,022 in cash on hand (COH). Gomez followed the incumbent with $56,175 in receipts and $22,196 in COH, while Garapti touted raising $30,000 with $39,000 in COH.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has admitted he had two affairs with Russian women while married to his now-ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, and issued a groveling apology for his links with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Gates, 70, told staffers at his foundation on Tuesday that he flew on a private plane with the disgraced financier and spent time with him in the US and abroad, but didn’t participate in any crime, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates said in the town hall meeting. “To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him.”
He lied about one thing. How do we know he’s not lying about all of it?
Speaking of Epstein: “World Economic Forum boss quits after review of Epstein links.”
The president and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Borge Brende, has resigned after a review into his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The forum ordered an independent review into Brende over his ties to the disgraced financier following the release of Epstein files by the US Department of Justice.
Brende has acknowledged he dined with Epstein three times between 2018 and 2019 and communicated with him by email and text, but said he was “completely unaware” of his past criminal activity.
“Illinois official got more than $300K from trucking industry while his agency gave illegal licenses…Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who is reportedly considering a run for Chicago mayor, is facing scrutiny over his role in improperly issuing CDL licenses after a series of high profile big rig crashes across the country.”
There were also fireworks after Middleton accused Roy of undermining a bill that would have imposed a national ban on transgender surgery for minors.
“Chip Roy had an amendment that would have allowed it to continue,” said Middleton. “It would have rewarded the transgender lobby; it would have rewarded Gavin Newsom and allowed these private transgender surgeries to continue in those blue states.”
Roy pushed back, saying the legislation was dead anyway but that his proposed amendment was to facilitate passage.
Days after the firm announced that they were scrapping DEI requirements for new board members, and six years after the death of George Floyd that ushered in institutionalized virtue-signaling, the bank’s head of DEI is leaving.
Megan Hogan, who’s been at the firm 12 years, is taking her shtick to Morgan Stanley according to Business Insider, which Hogan confirmed via email, telling the outlet that Morgan Stanley had extended “an amazing opportunity” to her in talent development.
She will report to Morgan’s head of talent development, Susan Reid, the firm’s global head of talent, and will begin in April.
The move comes after Goldman’s hard pivot away from DEI following Donald Trump’s second term – retooling its diversity program, known as One Million Black Women (oh god), a multibillion-dollar commitment to invest in black businesswomen and nonprofit leaders.
The bank also ended its requirement that companies it takes public have diverse boards, and stopped highlighting specific DEI targets in annual reports.
Hogan is being replaced by Lauren Uranker, another managing director who has been with the firm for 14 years who will become the new sole head of talent, development, engagement and management, according to the report.
But it’s not all good news.
Her mandate will be to concentrate on the transition to AI-supported work, team growth, and finding ways to keep top talent from fleeing.
Meet Karl Jacobson, the now-former police chief of New Haven, Connecticut. For virtually his entire career in police administration, he’s been a dedicated crusader against the pesky Second Amendment we mere mortals dare to exercise.
For years, this guy was a face of “gun violence” prevention, cozying up to anti-gun groups like Connecticut Against Gun Violence. He preached about treating gun ownership like a public health crisis, all while pushing programs to disarm the little people under the guise of safety. Because guns are icky and he has his.
But lo and behold, safety crusader Karl has been slapped with first-degree larceny charges for (allegedly) swiping almost a hundred grand in police department funds. Some of the money was for earmarked for…wait for it…youth programs for “at risk” kids. Thanks, Karl.
As with many of these big theft cases, there’s usually sex, drugs, or gambling behind the embezzlement. In this case, our fearless police chief was funding a gambling habit, racking up literally millions in wagers. Now the gun control crusader has been arrested, has resigned in disgrace and is facing prison.
Netflix isn’t getting Warner Brothers, as the Paramount Skydance offer was deemed superior. This is probably good news from both political and artistic standpoints, and may give movie theaters chances to survive longer.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that his office has reached a settlement with investment giant Vanguard, resolving part of Texas’ multistate lawsuit accusing major asset managers of manipulating the coal market through environmental investment strategies.
The agreement marks the first settlement in the case Paxton filed in 2024 against BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, in which he alleged the firms conspired to suppress coal production in pursuit of environmental goals—actions he argued drove up electricity costs for consumers.
Under the deal, Vanguard will pay $29.5 million to the participating states and adopt new restrictions on how it uses its shareholder influence. Paxton’s office said Vanguard agreed not to pressure companies to adopt environmental, social, or governance (ESG) policies that could reduce profitability, and pledged not to direct corporate strategy or threaten to divest holdings to force policy changes.
A win for investors and energy sanity.
Here’s a case like Breaking Bad if Walter White were a Texas Tech supply chain professor dealing fentanyl. “Daniel Taylor, age 50, has been charged with federal crimes and is no longer employed by the university.”
Rural Texas residents claim that a Muslim city is being built in their backyard and accuse local officials of being very secretive about the deal.
Kaufman, Texas, residents didn’t think much of it when Kaufman Solar LLC bought a massive parcel of land in 2022. However, now that a mysterious buyer from the Middle East is looking to purchase an estimated 2,000 acres of land right next door to the planned solar farm to establish a sustainable city, they are worried about the impact.
Snip.
The Kaufman County Commissioner Court meeting Jan. 20 confirms that a buyer, through a Dallas, Texas, law firm, is seeking to purchase the land, contingent on the county approving three new municipal water districts for a potential sustainable city. The lawyer verified that the potential developer is SEE Holding, a UAE-based, privately held global holding group headquartered in Dubai, apparently focused on sustainability and spearheading a net-zero emissions future.
Republican Rep. Lance Gooden also told the Daily Caller that the buyer is based in Dubai, which he says raises serious concerns that need to be addressed before any approval for the city is potentially granted.
Right now the “Islamic City” aspect is all hearsay, but it does look, at the very least, a little funny…
Given the Epstein-based charges against Prince Andrew, Mark Felton examines his service in the Falklands campaign to determine if he actually came under fire and served honorably. The answer to both seems to be yes.
Good: Richard Hammond drives a 3,000 horsepower electric hypercar. Bad: It’s made in China. Ball’s in your court, Elon…
Everyone favors Voter ID except Democrats trying to cling to power, America’s big stick gets bigger, Trump’s tariffs hit a setback at the Supreme Court, another insane tranny shooter, Ukraine recaptures more land from Russia, another Pulitzer Prize winning leftist pedo, more Paxton lawsuits, and a new party rises on the right in the UK.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
On the personal front, I may need to buy a new dryer. We’ll see what the repairman says Monday…
Are voter ID requirements considered a controversial idea in the eyes of US citizens? If you watch the establishment media or follow leaders in the Democratic Party then you might think bills like the SAVE Act are the end of freedom as we know it. However, outside the echo chambers of DNC propaganda, the vast majority of Americans have no problem whatsoever with people proving their US citizenship before they vote in local and federal elections.
The widespread support for voter ID is undeniable. Surveys from the past year including those from Pew and Gallup show that, regardless of party or ethnicity, Americans citizens want elections to be protected from manipulation through mass illegal immigration.
A Pew Research Center survey from August 2025 found that 83% of Americans favor requiring all voters to show government-issued photo ID to vote. This includes:
95% of Republicans
71% of Democrats
Only 16% of people oppose it.
A Gallup poll from 2024 shows 84% support for requiring photo ID to vote, with 98% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 67% of Democrats in approval.
A recent CNN segment featuring number cruncher Harry Enten confirms that the backing for the SAVE Act is also dominant regardless of ethnicity: 85% of white voter, 82% of Latino voters and 76% of black voters all want voter ID. It’s difficult to find many issues which the American public universally supports at this level.
Democrat leaders, however, don’t care that the majority of their own base wants voter ID laws. Party officials and the left-wing media have engaged in a shameless propaganda campaign designed to frighten the public into opposing the SAVE Act, despite their previous platforms defending majority rule.
That’s because they view voter integrity laws as an existential threat to their power. If they can’t cheat, they can’t win…
The big stick gets bigger. “Ford Carrier Group Enters Mediterranean To Join Biggest US Build-Up Since 2003 Iraq War.”
Open source monitors as well as US and Middle East media have confirmed that the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, has entered the Mediterranean Sea, having sailed passed the Strait of Gibraltar on Friday.
This is the second carrier strike group expected to soon operate directly in the CENTCOM area of responsibility, amid the massive military build-up and pressure campaign against Iran. It was sent from the Caribbean earlier this month, extending its planned deployment.
The USS Mahan Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which is accompanying the USS Gerald R. Ford, is also now crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, maritime tracking analysis shows.
The aircraft carrier will likely take several more days to reach the Middle East and be poised to operate against Iran – so it looks to be in place by start of next week.
According to Bloomberg and other outlets, the US has now amassed the biggest force in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There is administration talk of “limited strikes” – but clearly Washington is getting ready for all escalation scenarios.
The Supreme Court (6-3 in a majority opinion written by CJ Roberts) has ruled that Trump’s tariffs exceeded his authority.
We decide whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the President to impose tariffs.
***
The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it. IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate . . . importation” falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power. We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.
Trump says he has alternative means to impose tariffs. “Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs remain in place… Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.”
In the past 12 months (January 2025 to January 2026) there are fewer foreign-born workers employed and more native-born workers in jobs. The time period roughly corresponds to the first year of Pres. Trump’s second term.
The murder-suicide at a Rhode Island hockey rink on Monday is just the latest in a recent string of murders allegedly carried out by self-identifying transgender perpetrators or by those seemingly inspired by transgender ideology.
Robert Dorgan — who police say shot and killed his ex-wife and one of their sons during a high school hockey game this week — had previously insisted he believed he was actually a transgender woman despite being a man. A local TV station said that “An unnamed woman, who identified herself as Dorgan’s daughter, has since come forward, telling WCVB that her father ‘has mental health issues.'”
“He shot my family and he’s dead now,” she reportedly said. Dorgan, who killed himself after the murders on Monday, had also expressed pro-Nazi sentiments, and according to The New York Post, was adorned with “vile neo-Nazi tattoos.”
He is only the most recent example of high-profile attacks linked to transgender perpetrators or transgender ideology, including mass shootings at Christian schools, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Progress: “Major Manhattan Hospital, Massachusetts Health Care System End ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors.”
Setback: “Judge Orders California Hospital to Resume Gender Transition Procedures for Minors.” Democrats seem to love mutilating children too much to give it up.
“Kansas’ governor vetoed a bill that banned men from the women’s room. The legislature overrode her.” “Even in an uber-red state, Democrat governors are still going to toe the party line.”
Scott Pinkser thinks Trump’s deal with India spells doom for the Russian economy, because they won’t allow those shadow fleet tankers to continue on to China. Quoting Peter Zeihan:
If the Russians have lost their single largest source of income, that will manifest on the battlefield. The Chinese may be supplying the Russians with all the gear that they can pay for, but the key thing there is: pay for.
And if the Russians can’t [pay], then a drone war where the Russians can’t get enough drones is one where the Russians start losing territory.
Price of cucumbers double in Russia. I’m mildly fascinated by those per-country yearly cucumber consumption numbers. 12 kilograms about 26 pounds a year, which doesn’t seem high if you’re including pickles, as that’s only one small jar of pickles every other week. But China’s 55 kilograms a year works out to two pounds a year per person. That’s a lot of damn cucumbers…
Democracy dies in protecting sex offenders that check the right boxes:
Wow I missed that Wesley Lowrey, the ex-WaPo reporter who won a Pulitzer and wrote a famous editorial urging journos to forgo objectivity in lieu of ‘moral clarity,’ was chased out of his journalism professorship for multiple sexual assault allegations.
Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Dallas officials, accusing them of defying a voter‑approved mandate to boost police funding under Proposition U.
Proposition U, approved by Dallas voters in November 2024, amended the city charter to require at least 50 percent of “excess” annual revenue be directed to public safety. The charter language earmarks those dollars first for the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System, then for increasing officer pay and growing the force to at least 4,000 sworn officers.
Paxton’s lawsuit, filed in a Dallas County district court, targets the City of Dallas, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, and Chief Financial Officer Jack Ireland Jr. for allegedly underfunding public safety in violation of the charter.
The attorney general argues that city officials “acted beyond their legal authority” by using an improper calculation of excess revenue that drastically reduced the amount legally owed to police priorities.
For the 2025–26 fiscal year, the city’s own projections reportedly show about $220 million in excess revenue above the prior year. But Ireland told the Dallas City Council that excess revenue totaled only $61 million—roughly a quarter of that amount—after excluding large categories of city income from the calculation.
Paxton’s filing notes that the city did not cite any state or federal law restricting the use of the excluded revenue, which would be required to legally omit those funds from the Proposition U formula.
Because of this narrower calculation, the proposed city budget allocates far less money to police pensions, officer pay, and hiring than voters required, Paxton says. The lawsuit contends that Dallas’ current hiring plan leaves the department hundreds of officers short of the 4,000‑officer minimum mandated in the charter amendment.
Paxton’s lawsuit also points to another provision of Proposition U that city officials allegedly ignored altogether. The charter requires Dallas to hire an independent third‑party firm each year to conduct a police compensation survey comparing Dallas officer pay and benefits to those of other major North Texas departments.
According to information obtained by the state, no such survey was conducted, despite the charter’s mandatory language. That failure, Paxton argues, makes it impossible for city leadership to honestly claim they are meeting the voter‑approved requirement to make Dallas police pay competitive in the region.
Blue city functionaries hate funding the police because the hard left can’t get any of their sticky fingers into that pile of money…
Two former Harris County Tax Office employees and two local business owners are facing first-degree felony charges in connection with what authorities say was a coordinated vehicle registration fraud operation.
Court filings allege the group worked together to process registrations and title transfers that bypassed required state safeguards, collecting bribes in exchange for pushing transactions through the system.
Adriana De La Rosa, 43, owner of Bella’s Multiservices in South Houston, has been arrested. Oswaldo “Oz” Perez, 51, who is affiliated with the same business, remains wanted.
Former tax office employees Sarah Ambria Anderson, 31, and Renisha Touche Wilkins, 35, were also charged. Both were dismissed from their positions in April 2024.
Investigators allege the activity centered on the Scarsdale branch of the Harris County Tax Office, where nearly 200 questionable transactions were processed. According to reporting from KPRC 2, the employees allegedly accepted cash and gifts in exchange for overriding verification requirements tied to insurance coverage, emissions inspections, and residency. Some vehicles were allegedly coded as tax-exempt, allowing customers to avoid paying required fees.
Authorities further allege that Anderson charged approximately $300 per transaction and transported paperwork in a personal binder to avoid detection.
The case reportedly began after employees in another Texas county noticed Bella’s Multiservices promoting vehicle registration stickers on TikTok and Facebook. Social media posts advertised expedited service and claimed inspections were not necessary. That tip prompted an internal review, which eventually led to a criminal investigation.
This is not known as “keeping a low profile.” One wonders if they might also be charged as accessories for Grand Theft Auto.
The first priority is to control who comes to our country, and more importantly, who stays in our country. Restore Britain will not just stop mass immigration; we will reverse it.
Every single illegal migrant will be securely detained, and then deported. The message will be unrelenting: If you are in this country without permission, you will be removed. For the foreseeable future, far more people must leave Britain than arrive.
If a foreign national is unable to speak English, lives in social housing, claims benefits, refuses to work, fails to integrate, commits crime, or even actively hates our way of life and wishes to do us harm, then they must leave, or be made to leave…
Restore Britain will make our communities safe again for women and children. That I promise you. If that means millions go, then millions go.
We’re constantly told that the economy needs vast swaths of low-skilled migrants. We know that’s simply not true. What we need is to get millions of healthy Brits back into work – a radical overhaul of how welfare is delivered. Protecting those in genuine need, but not funding healthy shirkers to live off the back of hard working men and women. If you can work, you must work. It really is that simple.
There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for Restore Britain, given their willingness to tackle the illegal alien invasion head on. The irony is the reform leader Nigel Farage looks poised to go from a fringe figure on the right to being ,i>outflanked on the right without ever being elected Prime Minister…
The face of evil: “This Karen called CPS on students’ parents because they chartered a TPUSA chapter at school…A liberal woman in Maryland, Nancy Krause, is facing mass calls to be charged after she weaponized CPS against Calvert County high school students for starting a TPUSA chapter at their school.”
I hope they sure her for every penny she has, and then some.
Stephen Colbert and James Talarico are lying about Trump blocking an interview. CBS merely told Colbert there were equal time considerations for such an interview, and that he might have to interview other Texasw Democratic senate candidates like Jasmine Crockett.
After text messages obtained by news media appeared to corroborate prior reports alleging that U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23) engaged in a relationship with his now-deceased regional director, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles — which would violate U.S. House rules — her husband has now come forward in a tell-all interview affirming the claims.
Gonzales, however, continues to deny the allegations and now says he is being “blackmailed” following a settlement request from the husband’s attorney.
Santos-Aviles died months after her husband discovered the affair and confronted Gonzales in what authorities ruled a suicide by self-immolation.
The story has set off a bombshell of controversy, with the most recent evidence being released at the beginning of early voting for the March primary election, where Gonzales faces three challengers in the GOP primary.
Santos-Aviles served as Gonzales’ regional director based in Uvalde, overseeing constituent affairs across 11 of the congressional district’s 23 counties near Texas’ southern border.
Emergency responders found her in the backyard of her home on the night of September 13. A gasoline can was nearby where she laid severely burned. She was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead the next day.
News of the affair was first reported by Current Revolt, which was met with silence by Gonzales until an interview with the Texas Tribune wherein he claimed the reports were not true.
Fast forward, and the San Antonio Express News obtained text messages between Santos-Aviles and another former staffer that purportedly show her writing,“I had an affair with our boss.”
This prompted Gonzales’ main opponent in the GOP primary, Brandon Herrera, to call for his resignation, saying an affair would have violated House rules.
“Tony Gonzales must resign. He not only broke House ethics rules by having an adulterous affair with a member of his congressional staff and by using taxpayer money to fund the affair, but he also broke trust with the public by insisting that the initial reporting of the affair was false,” Herrera wrote in a press statement.
Speaking of Texas politicians behaving badly, here’s a story that doesn’t cover anyone in glory.
After personal details about U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt were posted online by a senior John Cornyn advisor, the Houston Republican has filed a police report documenting what some are describing as a possible crime under federal or state law.
Cornyn advisor Matt Mackowiak posted images of documents late last week that purportedly listed Hunt’s address, Texas driver’s license number, and the last four digits of his Social Security number. What Mackowiak seems to have designed as a last-minute attack on Hunt has turned a spotlight on Cornyn’s struggle to remain relevant with Texas voters ahead of the March 3 Primary Election.
Mackowiak, who runs Save Austin Now and was head of the Travis County GOP, is someone I know casually. We followed each other on Twitter before my suspension there, and we’ve bumped into each other at various events. As a political consultant/head of Potomac Strategies Group, Mackowiak has worked for some pretty squishy, swampy Republicans.
Cornyn is being challenged by Attorney General Ken Paxton and Hunt for the GOP nomination. Most public polling has consistently shown Paxton leading the field, followed by Cornyn and Hunt. Recent polls have shown Hunt closing that gap. The “doxxing” of Hunt by a senior Cornyn advisor has led some to suggest that perhaps the incumbent’s polling is even worse.
“The only reason you direct fire at someone behind you in the polls is you thinking their momentum will overtake you,” explained a political consultant not working the race. “Whether Cornyn is worried or not, Mackowiak’s actions make their campaign look desperate.”
Yeah, that was pretty stupid of Mackowiak. His post was evidently designed to ding Hunt over some provisional ballot he wasn’t entitled to file in 2016, and frankly my care meter isn’t even twitching. A three-term incumbent attacking a third place candidate does indeed reek of desperation. That said, in my (admittedly limited) understanding of federal laws on personally identifiable information is that none of that stuff quite qualifies as actual PID, so the Hunt campaign is probably going to see that criminal complaint dismissed.
In one of his more unanticipated endorsements, Trump threw his support behind Republican candidate Alex Mealer in her bid for Congressional District (CD) 9, against state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park) and seven other GOP primary candidates.
The district, currently held by U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-TX-9), was heavily impacted by the GOP-favored redistricting map that passed the Texas Legislature during the summer of 2025 — legislation initiated at the White House’s request and voted for by Cain in the Texas House. CD 9 is one of the five congressional districts expected to flip from blue to red in 2026, with a majority of the current CD 9 folded into the new boundaries of the Democratic stronghold of CD 18, where Green is now running instead.
Trump stated in his endorsement of Mealer, “A West Point Graduate, and Combat Decorated Army Bomb Squad Officer, Alex knows the Wisdom and Courage required to Defend our Country, Support our Military/Veterans, and Ensure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”
Cain was supported by Trump for re-election to the Texas House in a mass endorsement issued by the president for House Republicans who voted to pass education savings accounts legislation. The endorsement did not include any members’ pursuit of an alternative office.
According to a recent survey, Mealer leads the Republican primary for CD 9 with 34 percent of the vote, followed by Cain at 26 percent. When the poll was taken there were 10 candidates in the race, but one, Dwayne Stovall, ended his campaign on Tuesday and endorsed Dan Mims.
Among the other endorsements announced by Trump via Truth Social posts on Monday night was for Jon Bonck in his bid for CD 38, left open by U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt’s (R-TX-38) run for U.S. Senate against incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican primary.
Bonck is up against nine other Republican candidates, including businesswoman Shelly deZevallos, businessman Larry Rubin, and Tomball Independent School District President Michael Pratt. The district’s partisan makeup did not alter after redistricting, remaining at R-65%, per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index (TPI).
“Jon Bonck is an incredible Candidate,” Trump said in his endorsement.
“He is supported by many MAGA Patriots, including Senator Ted Cruz [(R-TX)], Congressmen ‘Doc’ Ronny Jackson [(R-TX-13)], Brandon Gill [(R-TX-26)], Jim Jordan [(R-OH-4)], and Tim Burchett [(R-TN-2)], among others.”
“A successful Business Executive, Jon knows the America First Policies required to Create GREAT Jobs, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A., Unleash American Energy DOMINANCE, and Champion our Nation’s Golden Age,” Trump added.
Trump also endorsed Carlos De La Cruz, brother of Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz (R-TX-15), in his bid for CD 35. The district is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX-35), but went from a TPI rating of D-70% to R-55% due to redistricting — drawing in a number of Republican candidates eyeing the new GOP-favored seat.
“A Brave, 20 Year Air Force Veteran, and now, as a successful Businessman, Carlos has a Proven Record of Success — He is a WINNER!” Trump posted.
“In Congress, Carlos will work tirelessly to Grow the Economy, Promote our Amazing Farmers and Ranchers, Cut Taxes and Regulations,” he continued, with similar language used in his several other endorsements that night.
He also endorsed in the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX-8), throwing his support behind attorney Jessica Hart Steinmann, who served as the director for the Office of Victims of Crime in the U.S. Department of Justice during Trump’s first presidential term.
Steinmann, now with an edge up, is running in a field with five other Republican candidates, including U.S. Army veteran Nick Tran, Deddrick Wilmer, Jay Fondren, and Stephen Long. Businessman Brett Jensen suspended his campaign following Trump’s endorsement.
Trump said of Steinmann, “As a former appointee in my First Term, and now, as a Highly Respected Attorney, Jessica continues to prove that she has the Wisdom and Courage necessary to uphold our Constitution, and ensure LAW AND ORDER.”
Good news: “The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that the VA will no longer report veterans to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) solely because they have been assigned a fiduciary to assist them with their finances. Further, the VA is working with the FBI to remove all the names of veterans who have been unjustly reported to NICS under this guise.
Former Democratic Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson died. Oddly enough, President Trump had good things to say about him.
Well, I didn’t know Jackson, so I’ll always consider him a race-hustling poverty pimp who ran a shakedown operation. He’s probably among the five people most responsible for strained race relations in modern America, behind Obama, George Soros, Al Sharpton and Ibram X. Kendi.
Less frequently recalled is the distress Jackson’s rise caused within the American Jewish community during the 1980s. For many identifiable Jews, and especially for Orthodox Jews, his candidacy was not merely another political development but a moment of rupture. His reference to Jews as “Hymie” and to New York City as “Hymietown” was not dismissed as a careless aside. It was recognized as an anti-Jewish slur, and it left a lasting mark, even becoming the subject of an Eddie Murphy Saturday Night Live skit that captured the moment with uncomfortable precision, as comedy often can.
The episode revealed how quickly old language could reemerge, even from figures celebrated as moral leaders within liberal politics. Jackson’s campaigns compelled Jewish institutions to confront questions about alliance, dignity, and communal security that they had long preferred to manage discreetly. They did more than provoke private discomfort; they produced public argument. On the pages of Jewish newspapers, the debate unfolded in real time, week by week, as each issue went to print, and it was not confined to the usual institutional voices. Orthodox writers, in particular, entered the conversation with a directness that many establishment Jewish leaders found unwelcome but that the moment required.
Three figures responded with unusual clarity. Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, writing in The Jewish Week; Dr. Marvin Schick, writing in The Jewish World; and Rabbi Meir Kahane, writing both in The Jewish Press and in the periodical Kahane: The Magazine of the Authentic Jewish Idea all confronted the Jackson candidacy directly. Each treated Jackson’s candidacy not as an isolated controversy but as a diagnostic moment, asking what it revealed about Black-Jewish relations, the credibility of coalition politics, and the judgment of Jewish leadership itself. They disagreed about almost everything, but they shared one conclusion: The assumptions that had governed Jewish political alliance since the 1960s were beginning to fray.
The desire of western liberal elites to import unassimilated Muslims into the country would pretty much break those assumptions apart.
Dallas officials aren’t the only ones Paxton sued this week: “Texas Sues Temu for Deceptive Marketing and CCP‑Linked Data Harvesting.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton is escalating his campaign against China‑linked tech companies, filing a new lawsuit targeting one of the most downloaded shopping apps in the United States, Temu.
Paxton’s suit names PDD Holdings, Inc. and WhaleCo Inc., the companies behind Temu, alleging they deceptively market the platform as a simple discount marketplace while secretly using it as a vehicle for aggressive data harvesting.
Though PDD moved its principal executive offices from Shanghai to Dublin, Ireland, it still maintains significant operations in China, and Temu has rapidly grown to more than 80 million active users in the United States as of late 2023.
According to the lawsuit, the Temu app is not just a shopping tool—it runs “dangerous software functions” that are “completely inappropriate” for a normal e‑commerce platform.
Paxton characterizes Temu as a digital “trojan horse” capable of bypassing security protocols and creating backdoor access into a user’s private data, all while presenting itself as a harmless way to buy “affordable great products.”
The attorney general alleges that when Texans use Temu, they are unknowingly exposing themselves to a serious digital security threat.
The Temu security threat has been known for a while. Security-aware shoppers will have to forgo such great products as this:
Kurt Schlichter has a word of warning to dog-hating Muslims thinking of moving to the west:
2/16/26 – On Dogs And Those Who Hate Them
Some of us have lived in Muslim countries and understand how they treat dogs, @jaketapper. During one of my deployments, we had to inform the locals, in no uncertain terms, that no, they would not conduct their annual dog cull. In other… https://t.co/eVWowrKwkH
“This is not open to debate. We’re going to keep our dogs as we always have. If you come to our civilization, you’re going to respect our pets, or there’s going to be trouble. John Wick is the moderate position on this issue.”
A fungus among us: “Dangerous superbug spreads in US hospitals…Candida auris infections reported in more than half of US states as healthcare facilities struggle with containment.”
“Western Digital is completely sold out of hard drive production capacity through 2026 due to massive demand from—” (You know exactly what’s coming next, don’t you?) “—AI data centers.”
