A whole lot of despicable Democrats voted against remembering Charlie Kirk and denouncing political violence, a whole bunch of lefties are still lying about Kirk, Comey indicted, President Trump officially backs a complete Ukraine victory, a new American stealth fighter enters production, two murderous lefty scumbags die, and an infamous thirty-four year old Austin murder mystery is solved.
“The ‘Study’ You’re Citing About Right-Wing Violence Is Full Of Fake Data.”
After Charlie Kirk was assassinated last week, conservatives noted that most political violence comes from the left. The left bristles at this fact and has responded by dramatically padding the numbers to pretend the reverse is true.
Consider a Sept. 12 piece from The Economist claiming, “extremists on both left and right commit violence, although more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers.”
Right up front, the piece admits it used data “largely compiled by researchers whom sceptical (sic) conservatives would probably dismiss as biased.” The disclaimer is meant to inoculate The Economist’s audience to its sloppy reporting, as if challenges from conservatives will somehow prove The Economist’s accuracy.
Yes, readers should be beyond skeptical of the source in that piece, The Prosecution Project. Its website claims to “track[] and provid[e] analysis of felony criminal cases involving illegal political violence, terrorism, and extremism occurring in the United States since 1990.”
The founder and executive director of the Prosecution Project is Michael Loadenthal, although the links naming the website’s leadership were broken Friday, meaning no names were visible. Google had not yet scrubbed Loadenthal’s name from searches.
Loadenthal is an “openly anarchist Antifa-affiliated … researcher at the University of Cincinnati who, by his own admission, is a far-left violent extremist,” The Federalist reported in 2023.
So we have an Antifa-connected researcher with rabid bias against the right, held out as an expert on deciding who is extreme. It is like using a vegetarian to define which meat eaters are the most humane — none of them, says the vegetarian.
The Prosecution Project lists January 2024 charges against John Reardon of Massachusetts, who made antisemitic threats against synagogues and the Israeli Consulate. It notes, “Influenced by events in Gaza, he also said, ‘you do realize that by supporting genocide that means it’s ok for people to commit genocide against you.’” The Department of Justice never identified Reardon’s political affiliation, but The Prosecution Project’s own account seems to indicate he was a pro-Palestine fanatic, a cause typically associated with Democrats. Yet The Prosecution Project identifies Reardon’s crimes as “rightist” because they’re “identity-focused.”
The group also lists 2022 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act charges against Edmee Chavannes — even though “Chavannes was found not guilty.”
The Prosecution Project even includes the posting of racist stickers in its tracker, as if that’s comparable to terrorism or violence. One wonders if the group will treat Democrats’ desecration of Charlie Kirk memorials with the same seriousness.
Most crimes involving race or abortion businesses are blamed on the right in the data, with nothing to back up those claims. Yet these issues and others often cross over to the left. The Federalist has reported on the progressive anti-abortion movement, for example, and the left’s Marxist oppressor-versus-oppressed framework is manifestly racist.
Comb through the ridiculous data on The Prosecution Project’s website, and you will soon conclude it is worthless to everyone except leftist propagandists trying to downplay Charlie Kirk’s murder and flip the blame for violence in the U.S. to the right.
Similarly, a biased “study” by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute was debunked this week by Amber Duke at The Daily Caller.
Nowrasteh claims politically motivated violence is rare in the U.S., but that when it happens, “right-wing terrorists” are more often to blame than the left — that is, when you exclude the terrorists who killed 2,977 victims on Sept. 11, 2001, and exclude injuries, property damage, and people who were not killed. Thus, his criteria exclude the two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, for example. Additionally, Duke found that some of the crimes Nowrasteh blamed on the right were at best questionable and at worst downright wrong.
Duke pointed to another lopsided study by the Anti-Defamation League, which also claims the right is to blame for increased political violence. Ryan James Girdusky unpacked those magic numbers and noted glaring omissions. For example, the ADL left the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson out of its study.
Despite the evidence all pointing to Kirk’s killer being on the left wing of the ideological spectrum, the conspiracy theory about a right-wing shooter was pushed by a host of Democratic members of Congress, high-profile left-wing activists, liberal social media influencers, and more.
The most common evidence-free claim on the left has been that the shooter was a follower of far right influencer Nick Fuentes.
Lot’s more quotes from various lefty idiots asserting this connection without proof at the link.
As each new detail trickled out, and the killer’s transgender associations became clearer and clearer, the hysterical spin and assertions of blunt unreality mounted. Cynical pros began inserting outright lies into the mix, as partisan myrmidons took up their work and used it in desperate, craven attempts to either spin facts in ridiculous ways (“his parents are Republicans!”) or simply pretend the facts weren’t “facts” at all. All of it was done with the intent of trying to will into existence — through the spread of fear, uncertainty, and doubt — an alternate narrative whose intended moral calculus amounted to, in so many words, Charlie Kirk was killed by his own team, and this is actually your fault.
So, no, I’m not about to move on just yet.
I could understand a certain amount of denialism at first, because I understand human nature. For those on the left who treat politics like a substitute religion — an increasing number of people in our irreligious age — this moment has been akin to seeing several of the central tenets of your faith publicly refuted. The revelation of the identity of the alleged shooter and the reports about his beliefs were arguably the worst possible scenario for the sorts of loud Democratic types who are deeply invested in the idea of the MAGA right as America’s true fever-swamp of hatred and violence.
I can understand ignorance as well, because I depend on documenting it for a job — the Carnival of Fools would have to fold up its tent without it. In the days before the suspect was caught, it was natural that desperate progressives who get their news from left-wing authorities would use that span of time — when the killer was still at large — to conjure their own arcane interpretive theories in defiance of the known evidence. I feel inevitable disgust at these sad attempts at spin — I know who publicly celebrated the attack on Kirk, after all, and it wasn’t anyone on my side — but again, it was expected.
But I can’t understand any of this after Tyler Robinson was caught on Friday morning. At that point, mere ignorance and wish-casting turned into an active disinformation campaign, and it was particularly appalling to see from people whose civic responsibility it is to know better. To take one example, how about the repellent Eric Swalwell? On Friday afternoon, in an audaciously sleazy bit of “partial storytelling,” the California congressman tweeted: “It doesn’t matter that Kirk’s killer was a straight white male. Or that he was from a Republican family that voted for Donald Trump. Violence has NEVER been the answer.”
If he thought this was a cute joke, he’s a moral reprobate. If he thought it was an effective deceit, he’s also a moral reprobate. I think it is thus fair to conclude that he’s a moral reprobate. The jury’s still out on his fellow California Democratic congressman Dave Min, however, who may simply be stupid. Min said on Saturday: “Now that the Charlie Kirk assassin has been identified as MAGA, I’m sure Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all the insane GOP politicians who called for retribution against the ‘RADICAL LEFT’ will now shift their focus to stopping the toxic violence of the RADICAL RIGHT.” (As it turns out, Dave? No, we won’t!)
How about Harvard Law professor — and Joe Biden legal adviser — Laurence Tribe? Tribe announced on Twitter that the killer “seems to have been ultra-MAGA, exploding the GOP/MAGA attempt to pin the blame for this tragedy on liberals.” (How he got that idea is anybody’s guess.) Later, he deleted the tweet and posted a non-apology accusing the right of “making things up” by associating the killer with transgender or left-wing causes. I can only tell you that once upon a time he had a fine legal mind.
I certainly can’t say the same for Heather Cox Richardson, the world’s most-followed Substacker. Richardson is a Temu Tribe, an oracle of the complacently progressive academic establishment, and demonstrated it once again by going on a podcast on Friday to claim that the killer was a “right-winger” and all those outraged conservatives online were now retreating “in a real hurry.” (Lest you think that was an error born of speaking off the cuff, Richardson put it in writing as well.)
Now that the gaslighting has become impossible to sustain, the left has moved on to its last line of defense: “Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed whom.” It will be a long time before I forget the five days I have just spent being gaslighted both by political operators as well as people who remain transparently in denial. I expected better of them. I held them only to the standards that I hold myself. It was a mistake.
“Trump golf club gunman [Ryan Routh] found guilty after assassination attempt; tries to stab self in court.” The left is sending us an endless parade of violent lunatics and losers.
One of former President Joe Biden’s top aides – Jeff Zients, told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that an aide with his email credentials was green lighting some of the most controversial ‘autopen’ pardons, that Hunter Biden – who received an insane pardon himself – was involved in the pardon discussions, and that Joe Biden’s brain was pea soup.
According to Axios, Zients – one of the highest ranking officials from the Biden White House – confirmed that Joe Biden had difficulty remembering dates and names, and often required extra briefings to make decisions during the final years of his presidency.
Instead of having three meetings before making a decision, for example, Biden would want four.
Zients said Biden had long had trouble with names and dates, but acknowledged to investigators that the president’s memory of such facts got worse in the final years of his term.
Jill Biden, meanwhile, spoke with Zients about ‘managing Joe’ as Zients was readying himself to take on the role of Chief of Staff in early 2023 – urging him to adjust Biden’s schedule so he could get more rest and return to the White House residence earlier in the evening.
Longtime Biden aide and deputy CoS Annie Tomasini also spoke with Zients about limiting Biden’s schedule and shortening distances and stairs.
According to Fox News, Zients “admitted that President Biden’s speech stumbles increased as he aged,” adding “He also noted that the president’s difficulty remembering dates and names worsened over time, including during the administration.”
Also interesting – Zients told investigators that Hunter Biden was involved in discussions about presidential pardons towards the end of Biden’s term, which included the blanket pardons of several members of the Biden family issued during Joe’s final 24 hours in office. It had been previously reported by NBC News that Hunter was sitting in on White House meetings following the former president’s horrible performance during a June 2024 debate against Donald Trump.
And just like that millions of lefty sorts who piously sand “No one’s above the law!” for the ginned-up Trump indictments all automatically switched to “This is a dangerous precedent!” when it comes to indicting James Comey.
Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted on criminal charges related to allegations that he lied to Congress during testimony in 2020 about whether he authorized a leak of information.
Comey is facing one count of false statements and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a release from the Department of Justice.
“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
President Trump reacted gleefully to the indictment in a statement shared to Truth Social.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI.”
“Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Comey’s indictment in Virginia federal court comes just days before the statute of limitations for the perjury charge was set to run out. The charges come five years after Comey testified on September 30, 2020, before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information to the press related to the investigations of either possible collusion between Trump and Russia or Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized email system.
During the hearing, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) asked Comey whether he had authorized leaks related to either investigation. Comey reiterated what he said in 2017 congressional testimony, that he had not.
Cruz argued that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had said Comey authorized at least one such disclosure, related to the Clinton investigation. But the Justice Department inspector general found in 2018 that McCabe had “lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did.”
The charges also center in part on an October 2016 New York Times report, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.”
The Times article was in response to reporting in Slate that Trump had established a communications back channel with the Kremlin, involving servers at Trump Tower in Manhattan and Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions.
Hours after the Slate article was published, the Times report related the FBI’s conclusion that the back-channel claim was unfounded. The report also detailed that the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation of Russia’s malign activities in connection with the 2016 campaign were not linked to Trump and his campaign.
Special counsel John Durham probed the leaks to the Times in connection with the story as an unauthorized public disclosure (UPD) of classified information.
The February 2020 closing memorandum for the probe, obtained by veteran journalist Catherine Herridge, found there were two major government sources for the story: James Baker, FBI general counsel and a close adviser to Comey, and FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki. Baker told investigators that he was “under the belief” that he was “ultimately instructed and authorized to [provide information to the Times] by then FBI Director James Comey.”
However, Baker did not claim that Comey gave him a direct order. “Baker indicated that FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki instructed him (Baker) to disclose the information to the NYT, and Baker understood Rybicki was conveying this instruction and authorization from Comey.”
A Dallas U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility was the target of a shooting Wednesday morning that left two detainees dead, one person injured, and the suspect committing suicide at the scene.
According to the Dallas Police Department, law enforcement responded to a call at a Dallas ICE facility after reports that someone had opened fire from an adjacent building.
Two detainees were pronounced dead, with another being rushed to the hospital in critical condition with a gunshot injury.
The suspected shooter, a white male armed with a rifle on a roof, died by suicide as agents approached, FOX4 Dallas reported.
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons spoke to CNN about the shooting as the event unfolded, saying that the scene is secure and the shooter is “down from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Bullets found had anti-ICE slogans written on them.
Why people who kept freaking out at Trump negotiating with Putin shouldn’t have. “Trump Says Ukraine Can Win Back All of Its Territory from Russia.”
President Donald Trump declared his belief Tuesday that Ukraine can win its war against Russia outright, an extraordinary shift in tone with significant ramifications for U.S. policy.
Trump shared his views on Truth Social after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
“I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option,” Trump said.
Trump’s position is a 180-degree shift from his longstanding view that Ukraine would have to cede territory to Russia as a condition for ending the war. Moscow holds roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory after invading its neighbor three-and-a-half years ago. Russian forces have slowly made gains along the eastern part of Ukraine in what has become a grueling war of attrition with hundreds of thousands of estimated casualties.
Trump argued Russia is a “paper tiger” and suggested Russian people were not aware of the damage Russian President Vladimir Putin has done to their nation. He also praised the “Great Spirit” of Ukraine and said Ukraine could “maybe even go further” than reclaiming its original territory. Trump’s comments are a stark contrast from his past statements that argued Russia was winning the war and likened Zelensky to a dictator.
Trump promised the U.S. would keep sending weapons to NATO for the alliance to use in the way it sees fit. His comments will likely prompt a furious response from Putin and Russian forces in Ukraine. It also remains to be seen how Trump’s restraint-oriented cabinet members and political allies react to his unexpected shift.
As previously observed, Trump’s negotiating strategy works on persuasion and tit-for-tat strategies. Zelensky, after some early stumbles, is finally fully onboard with Trump, while Putin hasn’t offered anything in return to Trump’s overtures. That means that Zelensky gets all the carrots, and Putin gets all the sticks. Golly, who could have seen that one coming except everyone who’s actually watched Trump operate for the last ten years who isn’t suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome?
Ukraine launched another big drone strike, this one on the Saratov oil refinery in Bryanskaya Ulitsa, Saratov Oblast, the third time they’ve hit it since August.
Secretary of War Pete Hesgeth has summoned 800 generals and admirals from around the world to Washington D.C. without telling them what for. They’re going to be pretty surprised when he announces that he’s brought all of them there to talk about Amway…
23-year-old Hunter Nadeau was arrested on scene for shooting multiple victims at the Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashau, New Hampshire, Saturday night. A 59-year-old named Robert DeCesare was killed in front of his family. At least two others were injured.
Tom Bartelson of Pepperell, Massachusetts, is the witness in the video above. He was at his nephew’s wedding in a private room of the club when the gunman entered the building dressed in all black. The shooter yelled, “The children are safe!” and “Free Palestine!” before killing DeCesare. He then moved into the club restaurant and opened fire again.
Funny no matter what the leftwing cause, the solution seems to be murdering American citizens.
A once-celebrated Boston social activist has pleaded guilty to defrauding donors — including Black Lives Matter — out of thousands of dollars that she used as a personal piggy bank.
Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, pleaded guilty Monday to 18 counts of fraud-related crimes that she committed with her late husband while operating their Violence in Boston (VIB) activists group, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.
The activist scammed money — including $3,000 from a BLM group — while claiming it was to help feed children and run protests like one in 2020 over the murder of George Floyd and police violence.
Cannon-Grant also conned her way into getting $100,000 in federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits — which she used to pay off her personal auto loan and car insurance policy.
But she has now confessed to transferring funds to personal bank accounts to pay for rent, shopping sprees, delivery meals, visits to a nail salon — and even a summer vacation to Maryland.
At least 187 code packages made available through the JavaScript repository NPM have been infected with a self-replicating worm that steals credentials from developers and publishes those secrets on GitHub, experts warn. The malware, which briefly infected multiple code packages from the security vendor CrowdStrike, steals and publishes even more credentials every time an infected package is installed.
You may remember Crowdstrike from such hits as “we helped Hillary Clinton illegally erase her secret email server.”
Speaking of technology running amok: “OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws.” That sounds like the sort6 of cruel fact that should throw a kink in all of these AI company’s getting trillion dollar valuations but somehow won’t.
In California, 13 year old boy killed by sex-abusing, illegal alien soccer coach. The family of boy is “suing Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles for failing to perform a background check on the coach.”
Turns out that when conservatives said they were being unfairly censored due to Biden Administration pressure, they were right all along. “YouTube Lifts Ban on Censored Creators, Admits Biden Admin Pressure Was ‘Unacceptable.'”
Google is making major changes to YouTube’s free speech policies following pressure from House Republicans and shifts among its top competitors.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), an attorney for Alphabet, Google and YouTube’s parent company, announced a series of changes to YouTube’s approach to free speech, including the return of banned creators to the platform and the implementation of a community notes system to replace third-party fact-checkers.
YouTube is rolling back its restrictive policies surrounding political speech, especially the Covid-19 pandemic and elections. The video platform said its reliance on public health authorities was well intentioned, but expressed regret at its impact on public debate on issues that were far from settled.
More broadly, YouTube admitted senior Biden administration officials conducted extensive outreach to YouTube to influence its approach to “misinformation” and Covid-19 content that did not violate YouTube’s policies.
“Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,” the letter reads.
While YouTube independently enforced its policies, Biden officials “continued to press the Company” to remove content that did not violate the platform’s policies. The letter calls out Biden and other administration officials for creating a “political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms” under the guise of “misinformation.”
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order later this week declaring that an emerging deal involving the video-sharing app TikTok meets American security needs and constitutes a qualified divestiture under U.S. law, according to people familiar with the matter.
Under the deal, American tech company Oracle will serve as the app’s security provider, which will independently monitor the source code of the app as well as study how a U.S.-controlled copy of the TikTok content recommendation algorithm operates and interacts with phone features and updates.
Oracle will be required to “retrain” a leased duplicate TikTok algorithm…
So it will not necessarily be a Chinese spyware app any more, but will still be malware for your brain…
Good news from the border! “Texas, Southwest Region See ‘Historically Low’ Southern Border Apprehensions in August.”
Texas’ border jurisdictions are scrambling to manage thousands of pending Operation Lone Star cases after key state partners abruptly pulled out, leaving local officials to coordinate housing and transportation for defendants.
Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith told Texas Scorecard the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), both of which helped provide housing for illegal crossers arrested under the border security initiative, are no longer handling those responsibilities.
The Del Rio Processing Center is reportedly shutting down, along with Val Verde County’s detention facility—the original epicenter of Operation Lone Star (OLS) prosecutions.
“We’re left holding the bag,” Smith said. “Counties are having to figure this out on their own without the infrastructure the state had in place.”
Smith said approximately half of all prosecutions tied to OLS in Kinney County have already been resolved, either through pleas or dismissals, but thousands of cases remain active.
According to numbers from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, more than 2,600 felony cases have already been resolved. Nearly 2,000 cases are still pending, in part due to lengthy appeals.
Meanwhile, the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office has more than 700 outstanding warrants for alleged smugglers and another 1,400 warrants that have not yet been executed because of limited capacity to house and transport defendants.
Kinney County has contracts with about 10 jails across Texas—including some as far away as the Panhandle—but the county jail cannot hold a person beyond 72 hours, as it is considered a temporary holding facility. That has forced sheriffs and prosecutors into a patchwork system for transferring detainees, with major bottlenecks since TDCJ and TDEM stopped coordinating.
The Dolph Briscoe Unit in Dilley and the Segovia Unit in Edinburg, which had filled major housing roles, are no longer available, worsening the shortage.
Plus border counties have been avoid arresting women because they don’t have room for them in separate facilities.
Amazon settles a lawsuit for tricking people into signing up for Prime and making it nearly impossibility to cancel to the tune of $2.5 billion.
So where did President Trump get the crazy idea that using Tylenol during pregnancy could result in autism? A Harvard study. “Using acetaminophen during pregnancy may increase children’s autism and ADHD risk.”
Austin Yogurt Shop Murders finally solved? retired Austin detective John Jones fingered serial killer and rapist Robert Eugene Brashers (who died in a standoff with police in 1999) as the culprit. Brashers is a serial killer and rapist who committed at least three murders between 1990 and 1998 in the states of South Carolina and Missouri. He died in January 1999 by suicide during a standoff with police. Evidently a new type of DNA testing finally matched up Brashers as the culprit.
More scenes from The Fall Of England: “Muslim who shouted ‘I’m going to kill you’ while stabbing man is given suspended sentence by British court; victim charged instead.”
UK’s Labour government thought they could get away with some cost-free virtue signaling by recognizing “a Palestinian state.” Surprise! “UK could face claim for $2,700,000,000,000 in reparations for recognizing Palestinian state.”
Gov. Greg Abbott today announced a $5.5 million grant from Texas for the construction of a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Harris County — one of multiple projects approved under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) program over the past year.
Abbott joined Eli Lilly and Company executives for a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Houston to announce its creation of a nearly one million-square foot active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing facility. The company estimated that it’ll produce around 600 new jobs and will invest more than $6.5 billion within the state.
The grant of $5.5 million towards Lilly’s new project was made possible through the JETI approval process, a property tax abatement program established through contentious legislation passed during the 88th regular legislative session.
House Bill (HB) 5, which was signed into law by Abbott in June 2023, replaced a 20-year-old initiative with a new economic incentive program. It created a pathway for school districts to grant companies a decade-long break in their property tax payments in exchange for relocation to their area. It limited the kinds of companies eligible to receive abatements and grants for projects in Texas, excluding renewable energy projects after negotiations proved its removal to be necessary for passage in the Legislature.
Let me reiterate my general opposition to government subsidies of business in almost all circumstances. Government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. However, an end to subsidizing money-losing “renewable energy” sources that made the Texas Interconnect Grid less reliable is a big plus.
One of the first projects approved under JETI this year, also in Harris County, was to assist Summit Next Gen in opening “a world-class sustainable aviation fuel manufacturing and refining facility along the Texas Gulf Coast,” in January 2025. It’s expected to produce over $1.6 billion in capital investment for Texas.
In February, Abbott made two JETI expansion project announcements: one for a new Braven Environmental facility in Texarkana, estimated to rake in more than $145 million in investment for the state, and the other for Vinton Steel’s “advanced manufacturing facility that recycles ferrous scrap into new steel products.” Vinton is expected to invest over $229 million in the state and create an additional 180 new jobs.
Brazos Midland Processing LLC, also known as Brazos Midstream, was announced as an approved recipient in late August for a “300 million cubic feet per day natural gas processing plant” in Martin County, expected to create $185 million in capital investment.
At Tuesday’s announcement of the new Lilly project, Abbott reiterated that “Texas is the best state in America for doing business.”
And speaking of unreliable renewable energy subsidies: “$2.2 billion solar plant in California scheduled to be turned off after years of wasted money.” That would be Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert, the one that used mirrors to concentrate light onto a single tower, and which fried lots of birds every year. I’m surprised that it was still running, given how markedly unsuccessful it’s been at generating affordable energy years ago. But I may be confusing it with the similar (and similarly failed) Crescent Dunes project. That’s the one that suffered the molten salt leaks… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Dwight also brought news of the deaths of two murderous leftwing scumbags: Would-be Gerald R. Ford assassin Sara Jane Moore, and JoAnne Chesimard, aka “Assata Shakur”, of the Black Liberation Army, who murdered New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. The latter died in Havana. Rot in hell, commie.
California attorney hit with $10,000 fine for brief filled with fake ChatGPT quotes. “The Los Angeles-area attorney fined last week, Amir Mostafavi, told the court that he did not read text generated by the AI model before submitting the appeal in July 2023, months after OpenAI marketed ChatGPT as capable of passing the bar exam.” The real fine should be no client ever willing to trust his lazy ass again..
This is pretty damn funny:
The White House has placed a photo of an auto-pen signature instead of a portrait of former President Biden on the “Presidential Walk of Fame” pic.twitter.com/4HRU7g8Vr8
“The radical Lower East Side shop that lured drug addicts to its storefront by offering free clothing, food and Narcan suddenly shut down Tuesday — sparking internal warfare and finger pointing.”
Without warning, Bluestockings Cooperative announced that it would permanently shut down after more than 26 years, stating that “daily operations are unfortunately no longer sustainable on multiple fronts.”
“This was our absolute last resort. On top of our crew’s ongoing struggle against the organized abandonment of New York City and the constant crises, the remaining worker-owner and staff are at the limits of what they can manage in terms of health, disability, and finances,” a statement posted to Instagram reads.
The Suffolk Street shop blamed the closure on its failure as a worker-owned cooperative to “come to consensus around the guiding principles and practices Bluestockings should embody” — adding that an inability to align on political and business operations directly led to the setbacks the business faced over the last two years.
“Of course, $12,000 a month in rent, thousands in utilities, and racist, classist violence from ‘neighbors’ certainly didn’t make our work any easier,” the statement continued.
Bluestockings came under intense outrage from its posh Lower East Side neighborhood, which transformed into a “zombie apocalypse” of strung-out junkies shooting up in broad daylight who were drawn to the bookstore’s free and indiscriminate services.
The self-described “radically inclusive” shop was a state-recognized Opiate Overdose Prevention Program and offered “harm reduction services” like Narcan, drug-testing strips and a used needle-drop off bin — which neighbors alleged enabled the junkies.
In recent years, Bluestockings plunged into around $100,000 in debt to its publishers and book distributors, according to reports.
Social justice is incompatible with both profit and basic human decency. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
President Trump (and parents) rack up Supreme Court wins, more Iran nuke damage assessments, a whole lot of Democrats want to die on the hill of taxpayer subsidies for mutilating your children, and some fast cars. Plus a weird assortment of violent lunatics.
The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Trump administration a win by limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s agenda.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump v. Casa, siding with the Trump administration’s challenge to the scope of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The Court did not, however, weigh-in on the legality of the birthright-citizenship order itself.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, finding that universal injunctions exceed the authority Congress has given to federal courts. Barrett was joined by the Court’s five other conservative justices.
The High Court ruled that lower courts cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its policies against nonparties to the specific case they’re ruling on. For the time being, the justices have partially halted the nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order. They halted the injunctions in areas where their authority is too broad and prevent the executive branch from developing public guidance related to Trump’s executive order.
They punted on birthright citizenship, but a win is a win, and hopefully lower courts will now stop trying to reimport convicted and deported illegal alien felons.
Suchomimus has clear satellite images of the damage Operation Midnight Hammer did to the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear complexes.
UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief: ‘Night and Day’ Difference Between Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Before and After US Strikes. ‘It is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,’ says IAEA’s Rafael Grossi.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the Islamic Republic’s program “significantly,” the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization said Tuesday.
“I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”
Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.
“Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”
After a week’s worth of pounding from the Israel Defense Forces, the Iranian regime was disoriented and defenseless, helplessly exposed to Israeli and American air superiority, like a turtle flipped on its shell and baking underneath the pitiless desert sun. Now was the time to finish the job, not two weeks from now, after (what was left of) the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command structure had time to regroup.
So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.
I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.
If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered. Iran’s nuclear program has either been destroyed permanently or set back decades. The mullahs are very upset, as one imagines murderous religious fanatics tend to be, but also seemingly powerless to do much more than cause a temporary economic ruction by laying mines across the Strait of Hormuz. (Note: In a late-breaking development after this piece had gone to press, Trump announced last night that he had in fact brokered a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.)
This is an unalloyed victory for the forces of sanity and civilization. To those who point to the inevitability of unforeseen “blowback,” I will remind you that Iran and its proxies have been engaging in low-level conflict with America for well over a decade now — who do you think was funding and training the people killing our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years? — and now it is free to try its hand at more of the same, if it wishes, this time without a looming nuclear threat to back it up. America has come out ahead on this in concrete, measurable, and hugely valuable geostrategic ways.
Most importantly of all, none of this would have happened if Kamala Harris were president. Think about that for a moment; think about the road not taken. One can only speculate about hypotheticals, but . . . c’mon now. Look into your heart, you know it to be true. Imagine a President Harris, sitting uneasily atop a Democratic coalition barely held together at the seams: Would she have encouraged Netanyahu in his initial campaign against Iranian military and nuclear assets? Would she have provided the final air support and ordnance necessary to get the job done? With people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, and Zohran Mamdani calling the shots among large segments of her base?
To ask the question out loud is to answer it: no. For that reason alone, it is no exaggeration to say that the shape of the world perceptibly turned for the better on the outcome of last November’s election. You can draw a straight line between Donald Trump’s winning the 2024 race and Iran’s nuclear weapons program now being best described as a series of variably sized craters. If you supported Donald Trump and voted for him in 2024, you should feel proud of it today: Saturday is the most obvious evidence yet of why your vote mattered.
It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.
Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.
Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.
Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.
So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.
For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.
A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.
As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.
A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.
How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?
Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary.
So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.
But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.
The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?
It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.
Russia? Its former Obama-Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.
It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.
Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?
No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50 percent of Chinese-purchased oil passes.
For President Xi, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.
The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.
So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.
We recently learned of a previously concealed tranche of documents likely to shed new light on the past decade of American political controversies. This potentially earth-shaking information is known as “Prohibited Access.”
It was only recently discovered that the FBI’s information system, called Sentinel, had a level of access previously unknown to anyone outside the Bureau and known only to a select few inside. In essence, this was a concealed cache used to hide documents the FBI wanted hidden from discovery.
There is one part of the Sentinel system that is devoted to classified and confidential information, termed “Restricted Access.”
It turns out there is a higher, more secretive level called “Prohibited Access.” To any outside observer or investigator, it would appear that there was no record of Prohibited Access information, even though the existence of Restricted Access documents would be shown.
Accordingly, when prosecutors like John Durham or investigators such as Congressman James Comer were investigating various potential misdeeds, they would not have learned of the existence of documents relevant to their investigation that were kept in Prohibited Access.
Although it remains unclear, there is reasonable suspicion that even FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not aware of this document cache. Alternatively, Horowitz may have known about it but also may have agreed to keep its existence secret, a dismaying possibility for one charged with enlightening Congress and the public.
Logic tells us that, broadly, there could be only two related purposes for this concealed tranche because it prevents those investigating the FBI or its favored parties from even knowing about the existence of the documents; such suggests concealment of information inculpatory to the senior levels of the FBI and/or its favored politicians, as well as exculpatory information about the targets of its biased investigations.
If, by way of a wild hypothetical example, James Comey and Andrew McCabe broke laws to make an innocent Donald Trump appear guilty of “Russian Collusion,” they would not wish a trail of their ugly misconduct to see the light of day, nor reveal proof of Trump’s innocence.
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel should shine a lot of disinfecting sunlight here.
Winning: “Supreme Court Allows States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood.”
The Supreme Court is allowing South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, a win for pro-lifers that will likely clear the way for red states across the country to stop taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines Thursday to permit South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Court, siding with the state against a private challenge brought by the abortion provider and a patient.
The plaintiffs in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that Medicaid patients should be free to sue in order to choose their own health-care providers, while the state claimed they lacked the right to sue.
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
The 1965 Medicaid Act grants patients the ability to choose a willing and qualified provider. Medina dealt with whether patients have the right to sue to go to their preferred provider and whether Planned Parenthood qualified as a provider. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state and argued the case was about healthcare access, not abortion.
South Carolina stopped allowing Planned Parenthood to participate in its Medicaid program in 2018 because of state law barring the public funding of abortion. The move was immediately blocked in court in response to a challenge brought by Julie Edwards, a South Carolina woman who claimed she preferred Planned Parenthood for gynecological care and needed Medicaid coverage.
“States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the South Carolina Department of Health in the case.
Abortion is not “woman’s health care” and should not be treated as such.
SB 12 includes a prohibition on schools assisting in the “social transitioning” of students and also restricts the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity,” while providing that it does not “limit a student’s ability to engage in speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment … that does not result in material disruption to school activities.”
In a press release Monday, the ACLU of Texas, along with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), called SB 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.”
“This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for ACLU Texas, stated in the press release.
“Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them.”
Another Supreme Court win: “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Maryland Parents in Challenge to Mandatory LGBTQ Curriculum.” Which part of “Get your groomer hands off children” was unclear?
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement recently carried out a multi-state operation targeting eleven Iranian nationals in the U.S. illegally as the threat of Iranian terror cells attacking the U.S. intensifies.
Over the last 48 hours, federal agents arrested the eleven Iranians and a U.S. citizen who harbored an illegal immigrant from Iran, a Department of Homeland Security official told NR.
“Under Secretary Noem, DHS has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out—and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
ICE agents arrested former Iranian army sniper Ribvar Karimi in Alabama on June 22. Karimi possessed an Iran army identification card upon his arrest and is currently being held in ICE custody. He entered the U.S. in October 2024 under a K-1 marriage visa but never updated his immigration status.
In Houston, ICE agents arrested Behzad Sepehrian Bahary Nejad, an illegal alien who was armed with a loaded pistol at the time of his arrest. Nejad was previously arrested in August 2017 for assaulting a family member and had a final order of removal prior to his latest arrest. Also in Houston, ICE arrested Hamid Reza Bayat, who a judge had ordered removed from the U.S. 20 years ago. Bayat was convicted twice on drug charges and again for driving with a suspended license.
In Tempe, Arizona, where they nabbed Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian convicted of threatening a law enforcement officer and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, and U.S. citizen Linet Vartaniann for threatening law enforcement and harboring Eidvand. The pair were arrested after ICE obtained a search warrant and they now face federal charges.
Likewise, ICE arrested two Iranian nationals living together in Colorado Springs, Mahmoud Shafiei and Mehrdad Mehdipour. Shafiei was ordered removed decades ago and has criminal convictions related to drug crimes, and arrests for assault and child abuse. Border patrol encountered Mehdipour in June 2023 and processed him for expedited removal. Both are now in ICE custody as they undergo removal proceedings.
Another Iranian national ICE nabbed is Mehran Makari Saheli, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sahei was previously convicted for being a felon in possession of the firearm and was illegally staying in the U.S. after a judge ordered him removed in 2022.
ICE agents arrested several other Iranian nationals in numerous other states and localities, almost all of whom had criminal convictions for various offenses and are now in federal custody.
How many Democrat district judges had decisions half-written forbidding deportations when the Supreme Court decision came down?
Moderate Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans — concerned about the prospect of a Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are plotting ways to keep the Democratic Socialist out of Gracie Mansion.
Shocked by the 33-year-old state assemblyman’s upset win in the Democratic mayoral primary last night against a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, these Cuomo backers, reluctant Cuomo backers, independents, and Republicans say the only way to beat Mr. Mamdani is to all back one candidate.
“The horse they’re going to back is Eric Adams,” a grocery store magnate and former Republican candidate for New York City mayor, Jon Catsimatidis, tells The New York Sun. “He is backed by the White House, by Washington, and he’ll make sure crime is cleaned up.”
When asked what that means for the Republican nominee for mayor, Curtis Sliwa, whom Mr. Catsimatidis employed at his radio station, the billionaire replied, “He’ll clean up the crime.”
Mr. Catsimatidis ended the call. He didn’t respond to a text asking if he is personally planning to back Mr. Adams. He said to tune into his radio show this evening.
Mr. Catsimatidis told the press earlier this month that he may sell his grocery store empire or move his business out of the city if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor.
Always with the trannies: “Zohran Mamdani Wants To Spend $65 Million on Medical Gender Treatments for Minors and Adults.”
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has quietly proposed channeling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay for medical gender-transition treatments for residents of all ages – including for minors. This city spending would counteract the sustained assault on these medical interventions – coming from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans – which threatens treatment programs even within blue cities and states.
The controversial method of providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes gender-transition surgeries — such as breast removal — to minors in particular is now at the apex of the culture wars. It has also become a flashpoint in Democrats’ battle to redefine themselves in the wake of their brutal losses in the November election.
Authorities in Austin, Texas, have arrested Brian Johnson, known online as the social media influencer “Liver King,” according to jail records.
He faces one charge of terroristic threat, a Class B misdemeanor.
Snip.
The so-called Liver King rose to viral fame with social media posts depicting a barbarian-like “ancestral lifestyle,” including the consumption of raw animal organs, as depicted in the recent Netflix documentary “Untold: The Liver King.”
His persona and the story behind the physique fell apart in December 2022, however, when he admitted in a YouTube video to using steroids.
Speaking of crazy, violent lunatics: “51-year-old Adam Christopher Sheafe has now confessed to crucifying and killing Pastor William Schonemann in Phoenix in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2025.”
“U.S. Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Muslim-Centric EPIC City, No Charges Filed.” As I’ve mentioned before, while investigation was certainly warranted, right now EPIC City looks more like a failed speculative real estate venture than an actual Muslim city in the offing, especially now that the developers have sworn up and down that they won’t discriminate against buyers based on religion. Awful nice of them to agree to obey the law…
This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees,” reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP – which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm “to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees.”
According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged “repeated” efforts to collect those fees.
“Morrissey cancels Stockholm show, saying he and band are ‘travel-weary beyond belief’, citing “’bsolutely zero music industry support’ for full Scandinavia tour.”
“No label will release our music, no radio will play our music … and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”
Last year, he said he had bought back the rights back to the album, as well as his 2014 record ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. He later told Medium that “there are two albums” that he has completed but is unable to release, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’.
“The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title. We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”
He added: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell. The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels do not want to become involved with this Gotcha! Journalism.”
Evidently Morrissey figured out that unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration to the UK was a bad idea way back in 2019. Obviously The Guardian must punish him for his #wrongthink.
I’m not a Morrissey fan, and a significant percentage of my impression of him is everyone from MST3K to Mojo Nixon making fun of him. I can certainly see a musician cancelling a show due to exhaustion, and Morrissey is no spring chicken. But as for “zero music industry support,” dude, it’s 2025. Major labels don’t support anyone unless they can own your entire output, or at least get their sticky fingers into every possible revenue stream. Just pay to have your own CDs pressed and sell them at your (evidently successful) shows.
This week brought not one, but gully washers to the Austin area, so now I’m fighting a war against a zillion millipedes climbing the walls to invade every nook and crevice of my home, so I’ve been spraying a lot of pesticide around windows. A Supreme Court win for Trump, lots of budget wrangles, a look at the burgeoning Democrat Party civil war, antifa finally gets investigated, and more Harvard-bashing from the Babylon Bee.
The Supreme Court on Friday sided with the Trump administration – allowing them to revoke temporary legal status granted to over 500,000 immigrants by the Biden administration.
In a 7-2 vote, the court granted an emergency application filed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that ends the Biden program which granted 532,000 people from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua permission to temporarily live and work in the United States.
This Part 1 report will focus on the George Soros-funded NEO Philanthropy which is funding and orchestrating a massive, nationwide illegal immigration scheme through NEO’s the Four Freedoms Fund.
In the 2024 election, NEO Philanthropy’s Four Freedom Fund sought to raise $5 million to help illegal immigrants stay in the country in the event of a victory by Donald Trump.
A Capital Research report shows NEO Philanthropy and its advocacy sibling received $21 million from the Soros Network to support “advocacy on Latinx rights and empowerment,” change policy in North Carolina, register voters and fund get-out-the-vote efforts among “historically disenfranchised voters” (read: likely Democrats), and boost the Movement for Black Lives.
The Four Freedoms Fund is a donor collaborative of NEO Philanthropy. The Fund primarily focuses on pushing left-of-center immigration policies, including “legalization of undocumented immigrants” through a path to citizenship and comprehensive immigration reform legislation. The Fund is critical of what it calls “anti-immigrant ordinances” created by conservative legislators, including deportations by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).
NEO Philanthropy (formerly Public Interest Projects) is a New York-based nonprofit that serves as a fiscal clearinghouse for left-of-center causes. The group serves as a vehicle for left-of-center foundations to pool resources, hosts donor-advised funds, and sponsors various advocacy projects.
The organization is the fiscal sponsor of left-of-center entities, including the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, a voter mobilization group. Disbursing grant money remains one of NEO’s primary functions; NEO Philanthropy gave close to 60 percent of its total expenditures as grants.
Inside Philanthropy described NEO as “an intermediary that doesn’t have its own resources for grantmaking.” The group receives funding from major left-of-center donors institutions including the Atlantic Philanthropies, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Gill Foundation, the Pew Trusts and the Carnegie Corporation, among others. The organization and similar left-of-center groups that engage in “nonpartisan” voter registration have received criticism for appearing to favor the registration of voters exceptionally likely to vote for Democrat candidates.
According to a 2016 report, an Obama administration appointee managed a fund that George Soros used to bankroll election-related activities likely increasing the number of “voters of color” and “improving odds” of electing preferred candidates.
Karen Narasaki, a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, managed the Soros-backed NEO-linked Shelby Response Fund. Narasaki worked as a corporate attorney at Russia Collusion hoax conspirator Perkins Coie in Seattle.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed Congressional Republicans on Tuesday over their lack of action on cutting the government waste and abuse identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Back in March, Congress passed the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, which maintained funding for USAID at the FY 2024 level, effectively extending existing funding for the purportedly “rogue agency” through September 30, 2025.
The “Big Beautiful Bill,” which narrowly passed in the House of Representatives last week, reportedly includes $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including the largest-ever welfare reform.
But because it is a reconciliation bill, Senate rules limit the cuts to “mandatory” spending only, such as Medicaid and Food Stamps, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller explained on X. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory, so they are not addressed in the Big Beautiful Bill.
Many conservatives have expressed disappointment that Republicans have failed to codify any meaningful cuts in wasteful discretionary spending, as identified by DOGE, in separate bills. Meanwhile, the director of the National Economic Council promised last week that “way more spending cuts” are coming later this year.
In a post on X, DeSantis put the heat on Republicans to do just that, pointing out that DOGE Chief Elon Musk “took massive incoming,” which included “attacks on his companies” and “personal smears” while leading the DOGE effort. “He became public enemy #1 of legacy media around the world,” DeSantis wrote. “To see Republicans in Congress cast aside any meaningful spending reductions (and, in fact, fully fund things like USAID) is demoralizing and represents a betrayal of the voters who elected them,” the governor added.
“House Republicans plan to tee up its first Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut bill next week targeting foreign aid, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) revealed on Wednesday.” Call me thick, but I just don’t see how Republicans can beat a Democratic filibuster without reconciliation, and I don’t think they can use that for this bill.
Hispanic moderates increasingly resemble white moderates politically. They are voting their ideology and political views not their group identity. This is further illustrated by examining Hispanic moderates’ more specific political views.
1. Hispanic moderates think the Democrats have moved too far left. In a 2024 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint, three in five Hispanic moderates agreed the Democratic Party had moved too far left on economic issues and about the same felt they’d moved too far left on “cultural and social issues.”
2. Hispanic moderates are hawkish on illegal immigration. In the same survey, more of these voters thought “America needs to close its borders to outsiders and reduce all levels of immigration” than believed “people around the world have the right to claim asylum and America should welcome more immigrants into the country.” Most Hispanic moderates endorsed a combination of border security and more legal immigration.
Also in that survey, net support (support minus oppose) among Hispanic moderates for a proposal to “use existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border” was 59 points (63 percent to 4 percent). Similarly, Hispanic moderates supported by 36 points restricting “the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.” And they backed deputizing “the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States” by 34 points.
3. Hispanic moderates are tough on crime and supportive of law enforcement. Hispanic moderates supported by 53 points a proposal to “increase funding for police and strengthen criminal penalties for assaulting cops.” These voters even supported by 17 points a draconian proposal to “change federal law so that drug traffickers can receive the death penalty.”
4. Hispanic moderates are opposed to Democrats’ stance on transgender issues. In a 2023 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot, voters were offered the following three choices:
States should protect all transgender youth by providing access to puberty blockers and transition surgeries if desired, and allowing them to participate fully in all activities and sports as the gender of their choice;
States should protect the rights of transgender adults to live as they want but implement stronger regulations on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors; or
States should ban all gender transition treatments for minors and stop discussion of gender ideology in all public schools.
The first position here, emphasizing availability of medical treatments for trans-identifying children (euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming” care) and sports participation dictated by gender self-identification, is unquestionably the default position of the Democratic Party. Indeed, to dissent in any way from this position in Democratic circles is still enough to earn one the sobriquet of “hateful bigot”—or worse. Yet less than a fifth of Hispanic moderates (19 percent) endorse this position. Nearly twice as many of these voters endorse the strictest position: that medical treatments for transgender children should simply be banned, as should discussion of gender ideology in public schools. And 45 percent favor the second position, advocating stronger regulation on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors. Together, the latter two positions make it four-to-one among Hispanic moderates against the Democratic position.
5. Hispanic moderates want cheap, reliable energy not a renewables revolution. Cost and reliability is what Hispanic moderates really care about when it comes to energy. Given four choices of their energy policy priorities in a 2024 YouGov climate issues survey for AEI’s Center for Technology, Science and Energy, 49 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them. Another 25 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Together that’s 74 percent of Hispanic moderates prioritizing the cost or reliability of energy. In contrast, just 21 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important. (Another 4 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security).
Unsurprisingly given this pattern, it turns out that Hispanic moderates just don’t care very much about the climate change issue. In the survey, voters were asked to assess their priorities for the government to address in the coming year. Among 18 options, climate change ranked 14th, beating out only global trade, drug addiction, racial issues, and the problems of poor people.
In terms of general energy strategy, when presented with a choice among three options—a rapid green energy transition, an “all of the above” energy policy, and emphasizing fossil fuels—Hispanic moderates strongly prefer an “all of the above” approach to energy policy including oil, gas, renewables, and nuclear. Only a fifth support a rapid transition to renewables—actually less than support flat-out stopping the renewables push. Hispanic moderates’ preference for an “all of the above” energy strategy is reinforced by their answers to a binary question asking if they preferred using a mix of energy sources versus phasing out fossil fuels. The overwhelming judgement: 71 to 29 percent against eliminating fossil fuels.
So Democratic Party policy falls into two categories for moderate Hispanics: The ones that are low priority, and the ones they actively hate.
The Democratic Party is indeed in trouble, and once Jeffrey Blehar gets past the requisite NRO anti-Trump sneers, he correctly fingers the social justice culprits.
The Democratic Party is being pulled apart by horses: On one hand, the party is increasingly held in contempt by once reliable voter demographics (Hispanics, African Americans, working-class men) as out-of-touch elitists taking orders from the Ivy League and the progressive ultra-left. On the other hand — and just as relevantly — the party is crippled from within by that same hard-left faction, which has held the ideological whip-hand over Democrats’ social agenda for a decade now.
These people are the problem. The inflexibly ratcheting social demands of the progressive activist/academic elite are the reason Democrats are in enormous trouble and will be even after Trump is forgotten. And these people are both practically and (more importantly for Democratic politics) morally entrenched within the party at all levels except the top strategic layer. They will not concede power easily, if at all. A civil war thus brews in the Democratic Party’s intellectual/activist wing against its reform-minded moderates. (Grab your popcorn.)
I’m not sure that the entire cadre of “reform-minded moderates” with any appreciable role within the party itself could fill a high school basketball arena. Within the ranks of the DNC itself, I doubt they could fill a Denny’s. But the corrupt wing of the party has indeed come to the realization that the policies of the insane wing are so unpopular that the corrupt wing is in danger of longer being able to rake off its usual graft, hence the crisis. Too bad for them that they’ve essentially ceded the Party’s entire ideological apparatus to the insane wing, and the predominately over-60 corrupt wing has no viable way to change course or purge their own institutions.
Another obvious example beckons: The hilarious plight of David Hogg, the whippet-faced punk set to be voted out of his newly acquired vice chairmanship at the Democratic National Committee next month for being a mutinous weasel, is emblematic of how the Democratic Party is currently consuming itself in internecine war. Hogg, recall, was essentially given the gig by a bunch of older, clueless Democratic Party grandees who voted for him in the hopes he would help bring disaffected young progressives back into the fold. Instead Hogg understands himself to be working not for the Democratic Party, but rather for the progressive movement — hence his announcement that he would use his position and powers to support primary challengers to insufficiently woke Democratic incumbents.
The future looks even more grim for the Democrats for structural reasons. The 2030 census is expected to subtract a swath of House seats (and thus electoral votes) from California and New York, in favor of red states like Florida and Texas. While this bodes ill for remaining Republican incumbents in those states (who can expect to be brutally redistricted away by 2032), it bodes in many ways even worse for the remaining Democrats, who will be left fighting over the division of a shrinking pie.
Understand: A significant number of those currently angry with the Democrats are angry at them for their failure to resist Donald Trump volubly enough, not for being too far to the left. These are the people Democrats absolutely must carry reliably as part of any victorious national coalition, given their preponderance within the party electorate. They will make demands accordingly. If anything, expect the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in its biggest states to lean even more progressive in years ahead as the moderates lose internal battles for position.
There are no Democrat moderates, only Zuul. Assuming Zuul is a 400-pound, purple-haired tranny screaming about Gaza…
After five years of letting Antifa run wild in the Pacific northwest, the FBI is finally investigating.
The FBI has indicated it will investigate the attack on a Christian group and the cops who came to intervene after a Memorial Day weekend melee in Seattle.
After the attack and outrageous response by Seattle’s Mayor Bruce Harrell, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino issued this statement: “We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert. Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”
I claimed in this must-read background story, Seattle Attack Offers More Proof That Antifa Thugs Are Just Democrat Anti-Christian Shock Troops, exactly what the title says, and that these anti-Christian attacks are nothing new. Further, after watching these groups for years, I can attest that the Seattle and Portland Antifa groups intermingle and help each other out, as Andy Ngo points out above.
Hopefully the current investigation will also target their finding sources and start bringing RICO charges against the entire terrorist network. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“[Texas] House Passes Immigration Enforcement Bill Mandating Local ICE Cooperation. Lawmakers approved legislation requiring counties with jails to enter into immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government.”
President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders designed to fast-track the development and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors on Friday culminating a dramatic policy shift aimed at revitalizing the U.S. nuclear energy sector.
Flanked in the Oval Office by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump declared nuclear power “a hot industry” and praised it as “very safe and environmental.”
Burgum called it “a huge day for the nuclear industry,” and added, “Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of over regulation of an industry.”
These orders aim to strip away what the administration describes as decades of regulatory overreach that have stifled innovation and stagnated the industry. “America’s greatness has always come from innovation,” Burgum said. “We led post-World War Two in all things nuclear. But then we’ve been stagnated. We’ve choked it with over regulation.”
The first of Trump’s executive orders directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to accelerate research and development, speed up reactor testing at national labs, and initiate a two-year pilot program for reactor construction.
A second order clears regulatory hurdles for the DOE and the Department of Defense (DOD) to build reactors on federal land — efforts that will bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) entirely by using the agencies’ own regulatory authority.
The Trump administration has intensified the U.S.-China trade war by suspending exports of critical American technologies to China, including jet engine parts, semiconductor design software, specialized chemicals, and industrial machinery. The move follows Beijing’s recent decision to restrict shipments of rare earth minerals to U.S. firms. In a further escalation, Washington also announced plans to begin revoking visas for Chinese students in sensitive research fields.
Snip.
Adding to the trade tensions, sources familiar with the matter told The New York Times overnight that the U.S. Commerce Department had suspended certain export licenses allowing U.S. companies to supply engine parts and technology to China’s state-owned aircraft manufacturer, Comac (Commercial Aircraft Corp of China).
Comac has stockpiled engines and parts in anticipation of potential trade restrictions. Still, over time, the move could significantly undermine China’s aviation. The company’s C919 passenger jet—its flagship jet to challenge rival Boeing and Airbus—relies heavily on GE Aerospace–Safran’s LEAP engines.
Keep in mind that certain semiconductor parts had already been embargoed under Biden. A complete embargo of semiconductor parts is going to screw China’s semiconductor industry, as some of those parts simply can’t be sourced locally, to say nothing of losing access to trained maintenance techs, software upgrades, etc.
Ukraine claimed credit for two explosions in Vladivostok, which is on Russia’s Pacific coast and is a whopping 6,800km from Ukraine.
Saudi Arab wants you to know that he stands with Israel because Palestinians suck:
An Arab man from Saudi Arabia in a message to Palestinians:
"Who are you trying to fool? You have no land and no case. This land belongs to Israel for the people of Israel. You Palestinians are evil in any country you set foot on!"
California starts backing away from letting boys compete in girls events. Timidly and halfheartedly, to be sure, but something vaguely resembling progress. Gavin Newsom’s secret 2028 presidential race polling must show that tranny pandering is killing him in any general matchup…
A bill to make Daylight Savings Time permanent has passed both the Texas house and senate and heads to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk to be signed, but can’t take effect until federal law changes to accommodate it.
MSNBC’s new prime time lineup, which debuted on May 5th, failed to connect with viewers in its first three weeks as the network saw its audience decline to near record lows – especially in the key 25-54 age demographic.
Overall for May, MSNBC dropped 41% in the primetime demo and 34% in the total day demo compared to May of 2024. In total viewers, the network was down 33% across total day and 24% in prime time. MSNBC’s total day demo viewership sank to 49,000 average viewers and 73,000 in prime time – its second worst ever showing for a month behind January of 2025.
Fox News was the only of the big three networks to see year-over-year gains for May, up 21% in total viewers and 22% in total day demo viewers compared to 2024. In prime time, Fox gained 23% in total viewers and was up 32% in the demo.
CNN was down 24% in total day viewers and 27% in the daytime demo, while in prime time the network dropped 18% in total viewers and 21% in the demo. CNN’s prime time average came in at only 426,000 total viewers, compared to Fox News’s 2.5 million viewers and MSNBC’s average of 877,000 viewers.
Why would you even bother to advertise on MSNBC? 79,000 is less people than fill a big college football stadium on a Saturday…
Speaking of CNN, the red-pilling of Jake Tapper continues apace. His son is a gamer and high school football player who wants to be a policeman, so naturally lefty sorts immediately assumed he was a racist.
And despite his book tour, Tapper’s ratings are down as well. Why, it’s like viewers believe Tapper will continue to lie to protect Democrats in the future…
100% of studio headed by woman who won’t hire white people laid off.
The city of Austin wants to spend $5.8 million on art about hybrid plant women for an airport expansion.
The Austin City Council is set to vote again on art for the airport expansion. After postponing the vote because of outrage for using out of town artist. Well they're back at it. 🧵 1/5 Item 1 the biggest chunk: Saya Woolfalk not to exceed $5.8 million is out of NYC pic.twitter.com/SiApWQVc4P
In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, devised a way to turn ordinary wood into a material stronger than steel. It seemed like yet another headline-grabbing discovery that wouldn’t make it out of the lab.
“All these people came to him,” said Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood, “He’s like, OK, this is amazing, but I’m a university professor. I don’t know quite what to do about it.”
Rather than give up, Hu spent the next few years refining the technology, reducing the time it took to make the material from more than a week to a few hours. Soon, it was ready to commercialize, and he licensed the technology to InventWood.
Now, the startup’s first batches of Superwood will be produced starting this summer.
“Right now, coming out of this first-of-a-kind commercial plant — so it’s a smaller plant — we’re focused on skin applications,” Lau said. “Eventually we want to get to the bones of the building. Ninety percent of the carbon impact from buildings is concrete and steel in the construction of the building.”
To build the factory, InventWood has raised $15 million in the first close of a Series A round. The round was led by the Grantham Foundation with participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders Vision, and Muus Climate Partners, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.
InventWood’s Superwood product starts with regular timber, which is mostly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The goal is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood. “The cellulose nanocrystal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber,” Lau said.
The company treats it with “food industry” chemicals to modify the molecular structure of the wood, he said, and then compresses the result to increase the hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules.
“We might densify the material by 4x and you might think, ‘Oh, it’ll be four times strong, because it has four times the fiber.’ But it’s actually more like 10 times stronger because of all these extra bonds that get created,” Lau said.
The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better.
Some grains of salt are probably in order here, as this sounds just a little too good to be true, and there are always concerns about material longevity. But materials science is constantly advancing, so maybe this actually will pan out.
“Elon Musk Leaves Job Of Making Government More Efficient For Much Easier Job Of Sending Humans To Mars.”
More Biden jobs number fakery, more green graft exposed, everyone knew about Slow Joe, the DNC butchers David Hogg, Gun Jesus weighs in on Sig Saur, and Shoeless Joe gets a shot at redemption.
The Biden administration’s phony jobs boom just went up in smoke. For months, it paraded numbers around like everything was fine, telling Americans the economy was roaring back, that job creation was on fire, and that “Bidenomics” was working. But the truth, long suspected by anyone trying to pay the bills, is now confirmed by the government’s own data: those jobs never existed.
According to new figures released this week, the 399,000 jobs the Biden team claimed were created between July and September of last year have completely vanished. Not only did the economy not add those jobs, but it also lost 1,000 private-sector jobs during that period.
“This more accurate dataset was just released by the BLS for the third quarter of last year,” EJ Antoni, a research fellow and the Richard Aster Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, explains over at Townhall. “In stark contrast to the monthly job reports showing an increase of 399,000 jobs during the third quarter, these new numbers show a decline of 1,000 private-sector jobs.”
Nearly 400,000 phantom jobs were quietly wiped off the books. And this isn’t just a one-time discrepancy. Month after month during Joe Biden’s term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published inflated job estimates, only to revise them downward later, long after the headlines had already done their PR damage for the White House.
Antoni breaks it down further: “Under Biden, these revisions were abnormal in magnitude and direction, being revised down with unusual frequency.” No kidding. In fact, the BLS’s more comprehensive annual benchmark, released earlier this year, revised down Biden’s job numbers from March 2023 to March 2024 by a jaw-dropping 598,000 jobs.
That’s not just bad math; that’s deception on a national scale.
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GRF), passed as part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” in 2022, has proved to be a cornucopia of graft for Biden’s Democratic Party favorites and green non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The GRF rushed $20 billion in grants out the door in the waning days of the Biden administration to just six organizations. As The Free Press reports, the EPA employees charged with vetting the NGOs who were to receive that $20 billion raised numerous objections to the grants. Despite their concerns, the money was doled out.
We’re just now finding out how corrupt the process of throwing $20 billion to the Democratic Party’s friends actually was.
I’ve written extensively about former Georgia candidate for governor Stacey Abrams’ ties to one NGO that received $2 billion from the GRF despite having only $100 in the bank when they applied for the grant. The $20 billion fund became a one-stop shop for climate graft as hundreds of smaller non-profits joined coalitions of grifters to get millions of dollars despite many having no experience handling that kind of money.
The Free Press obtained documents that include the reviews of the applications for grants from the organizations requesting money from the GRF. Some of them are eye-openers.
One of the reasons for the grant review is for the grantee to justify expenses, including the salaries of top executives. The federal employee who reviewed the application for Power Forward Communities, the Stacey Abrams-linked NGO that was selected to receive $2 billion, questioned the salaries and estimated expenses in the grant application.
“For such an important section, it was pithy, though not always in a good way. Many of the costs were just presented, but little or no explanation as to why they are reasonable. I would have preferred they omitted the travel discussion and explained why they need to pay the CEO $800,000, growing to $948,000 in year 7. And chief operation officer $455,000 per year.”
Anyone who has ever completed an application for a government grant knows that this is a slipshod job that wouldn’t pass muster with any number of federal agencies. But Biden’s EPA just handed $2 billion taxpayer dollars to these incompetent bozos.
Another nonprofit, Appalachian Community Capital, applied for $1 billion from the fund, even though it had never managed anywhere near that much money. In 2023, the latest year for which it has filed tax forms, it spent less than $4.5 million. Two reviewers noted this lack of experience in their comments, saying “The amount of money managed under previous agreements was much less than what is being proposed under this grant opportunity.”
A reviewer also noted that Appalachian Community Capital planned to use $215 million to finance 600 zero-emission vehicles and $105 million to finance 700 charging stations. “This is $358,333 per EV vehicle,” the reviewer wrote, adding that $150,000 per charging station “seems too high.”
Appalachian Community Capital was ultimately granted $500 million from the EPA.
The reviewers were from several different agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Treasury, and the EPA. A panel of judges based their recommendations for grant approval on the written application and a 40-minute interview.
Not surprisingly, the criteria for receiving the funds included “equity and environmental justice” and “labor and equitable workforce.” They could have been groups of serial killers and still gotten a grant if they were woke enough.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has vowed to recover the $20 billion after a secretly recorded video made by Project Veritas showed a former EPA employee likening the deployment of the funds to “throwing gold bars” off the Titanic. He added that the goal was to “get the money out as fast as possible” before the Trump administration took over.
Meanwhile, the litigation over the $20 billion continues. Late last month, Politico obtained government emails in which an EPA lawyer noted the Trump administration could be on the hook for billions of dollars in damages if the court finds that the EPA has no legal grounds to recoup the grant money or block it from being disbursed to the nonprofits.
“We gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence,” Biden said of Ukraine, “and we were prepared to respond more aggressively if Putin moved again.”
Hogwash.
It was only in late February of last year — just about two years to the day from the outset of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine — that the Biden administration reluctantly dropped its objection to providing Kyiv with long-range ordnance for use in Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). Biden wouldn’t authorize the use of that ordnance against Russian targets outside the Ukrainian theater for another nine months. Indeed, the former president didn’t consent to providing Ukraine with ATACMS at all until September 2023, even though Ukraine had requested access to those platforms from the start of Russia’s campaign of conquest.
That story — one defined by the Biden administration’s persistent self-doubt and halting, qualified, often insufficient support for Ukraine’s cause, only to be abruptly reversed after the damage had already been done — repeated throughout the war. The same sequence of events describes the administration’s withholding and eventual reluctant provision of High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), heavy artillery, tanks, fixed-wing aircraft, cluster munitions, antipersonnel mines, and so on.
The administration’s first thought was always about how the Russians would respond to America’s furnishment of weapons platforms and ordnance that Moscow was already using on Ukraine’s battlefields. The Biden administration’s concern wasn’t irrational, but the president and his subordinates refused to revisit their assumptions. Moscow would draw a red line, Washington would observe that red line, and when that red line was crossed without broader incident, the White House would move on to obsess over the next illusory red line. Biden declined to revise this doctrine even when it became obvious that Russia’s table-pounding objections to America’s support for Ukraine would amount to just that.
Biden failed to deter Russia’s war. Indeed, it responded to months of provocative indications that Putin was ready to attack by rewarding the Russian despot with bilateral summitry. And when Putin’s forces poured over the Ukrainian border anyway, the former president didn’t just fail to hand over “everything they needed to provide for their independence.” Rather, the administration provided Ukraine with just enough to prevent it from being wholly subsumed into the Russian Federation — and that only after losing an unnecessarily public argument with itself.
In fact, we can safely conclude that the Biden administration never trusted the Ukrainians to provide for their own defense. Instead, the president signaled to the Kremlin that the U.S. would not respond to a “minor incursion” into Ukrainian territory, and his instinct in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion was to establish a Ukrainian government in exile. “The fight is here,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in his famous rejection of Biden’s pusillanimity. “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Mass delusion gripped the entire Democratic Party, and they talked themselves into believing they could carry a senile president over the reelection finish line, Weekend at Bernie’s–style, if everyone just tried hard enough to gaslight the public. And as far as we can tell, at no point did any of them pause to contemplate the potential consequences for the country.
There’s something grimly satisfying about the bitter recriminations laid out in the concluding pages of Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, as the Democrats grapple with the fact that their own leaders misled them about the reality of the 2024 presidential race every step of the way.
Three weeks after Election Day, top Kamala Harris campaign staffers appeared on Pod Save America and contended their internal polling always showed the vice president trailing. “It was hard for Democratic voters to tell what was real,” Allen and Parnes write. “They had been led to believe that Joe Biden was in fighting shape. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe he was locked in a dead-heat race with Trump. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe that [Kamala] Harris was in a position to win. But she wasn’t. And now they were being led to believe she never had a chance. That wasn’t really true, either.”
And in the preceding 287 pages, we keep getting anecdotes indicating things had gone terribly, glaringly, obviously wrong in the Democrats’ world, but no one wanted to admit it and confront the problems.
After his disastrous debate performance, President Biden attempted to reassure a group of unnerved Democratic governors by telling them he would no longer plan to appear at events past 8 in the evening. Allen and Parnes say one governor later quipped, “Somebody better tell the Chinese when they can attack us, because I don’t want them to wake him up.”
If the president can’t physically or mentally function well in the evening hours, why is he still president? How would he handle a sustained emergency like the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he’d need to make tough decisions after long days?
Allen and Parnes describe Biden aides calling up doubtful Democratic donors before his withdrawal and threatening them, “You want her? Look at her polling. No one wants her. Forget it.” One donor tells the authors, “They were aggressively saying that we would wind up with the vice president and that would be a mistake.” The argument that Harris is a self-evident disaster was characterized by Biden staffers as their “ace in the hole.”
If nominating Harris was such an obvious catastrophe . . . why was she vice president? At any moment, the 82-year-old Biden could keel over or have an aneurysm, and she would be the nominee anyway. For that matter, didn’t anybody on the president’s staff foresee any potential downside to trashing the veep?
If, as Allen and Parnes report, in the weeks leading up to the debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was so nervous that he couldn’t sleep at night and his aides had to remind him to eat, wasn’t that a glaring sign that this guy wasn’t ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The duties of the vice-presidency include tasks even more intimidating than debating JD Vance.
No one in any position of leadership in the Democratic Party in 2024 should have been there. None of them were up to the task before them.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering prescription drug prices, instituting a “most favored nation’s policy” that would push drug companies to charge Americans the same price other nations pay.
Trump signed a similar measure during his first term to institute price controls for fifty drugs paid for with Medicare Part B, but a court blocked its implementation, ruling that the administration had skipped key administrative steps in trying to institute the proposal.
Monday’s executive order is broader in scope, focusing on all prescriptions drugs where the price disparities between the U.S. and foreign nations are the widest. But according to the White House, this executive order is not focused on a particular class of pharmaceutical drugs.
The order — which is likely to run into legal challenges as well — is in keeping with the administration’s broader trade war strategy, which relies on a suite of policy tools to address what officials say is an uneven global economic playing field.
“What’s been happening is we’ve been subsidizing other countries throughout the world,” Trump said on Monday morning before signing the executive action. “Our country is the highest drug prices anywhere in the world, by sometimes a factor of five, six, seven, eight times.”
I have no idea what the ramifications of this may be, but it will be fun to watch Democrats try to explain why driving down Big Pharma prices is bad…
She’s now in the “find out” phase: “Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this week on charges of obstruction and and concealing a person of arrest, for which she faces up to six years in prison if convicted.’
Another week, another Trump win in court. “Federal Judge Rules IRS May Share Illegal Alien Data With DHS.”
The order by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich came amid a lawsuit by Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, an immigrant-rights aid group, against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“At its core, this case presents a narrow legal issue: Does the Memorandum of Understanding between the IRS and DHS violate the Internal Revenue Code? It does not,” Friedrich wrote in his order.
“(Note: Friedrich, a Trump appointee, is a woman, so that would be her order.)” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Trump ends sanctions on Syria. We’ll see if the new government can respond to carrots and put their jihadi past behind them. They probably won’t, but nothing else has worked in Syria (except backing the Kurds), so the risk is pretty low.
Illegal aliens admitted across the border in April 2024: 68,000. In 2025: Four.
More good news: “ICE Arrests 422 in Houston Sweep, Including Murder and Arson Suspects.”
The felonious, anti-democratic Democratic National Committee has decided to purge the odious, gun-grabbing fetus David Hogg from his vice-chairmanship, and National Review‘s Jeffrey Blehar is here to chortle.
The Parkland shooting survivor bootstrapped his way from anti-gun youth activist to recent election as one of the vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee — and all this despite having forearms that look like they were carved out of balsa wood. But instead of being the easily controlled patsy the DNC’s grandees and voters expected, Hogg promptly began using the DNC’s fundraising lists and prestige to raise money for his own outside super PAC — one designed to take down “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democratic incumbents. Keep in mind that most Democratic incumbents sleep (and sometimes at the wheel) in a perpetual cold sweat about being primaried by the next wave of “Squad”-like radical lefties; now their own vice-chairman is promising to help unseat them. (The calls to get them out of the House are coming from inside the house.)
Snip.
The DNC has instead approved a resolution challenging the validity of Hogg’s election on pretextual grounds and is set to nullify the race later this month and bounce the little chiseler out of office altogether. He got too greedy with his power too fast. As both farmers and politicos will tell you: Pigs get fed, but hogs and Hoggs alike get slaughtered.
As much as I enjoy making jokes about the Democratic Party nullifying its own democratic internal processes because democracy elected the wrong person, I speak as an adult when I say Hogg had it coming, and then some. His pitch to “firewall” himself away from races where he is fundraising for enemy insurgents was the sort of farcical fantasy-world pitch that could only come from a spectacularly self-centered youth, one who believes his personal project is more important than the corporate enterprise he has joined. As another current vice-chair says in the piece, “it is not the DNC’s job to create a firewall for one officer — it is the officer’s responsibility to create a firewall.”
And the way the Democratic National Committee is doing it is so splendidly pathetic that I can barely believe my good fortune. Remember: The DNC voted for Hogg as vice-chair a mere three months ago. Upon what grounds do they propose to undo that vote? (“Behaving like a traitorous weasel” was apparently insufficient under current DNC bylaws.) Upon grounds of wokeness, as it turns out.
It’s always nice to have a splendid reminder of the sort of work the NRO crew used to be able to do before their terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome made so much of it unreadable.
House Republicans took major step on Wednesday afternoon towards codifying President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect children from transgender procedures during a marathon markup session for the “one, big, beautiful bill” working its way through Congress.
After a 26-hour budget hearing, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a provision from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) that would block federal dollars funding transgender procedures. This means that Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, and Children’s Health Insurance Program money will no longer be allowed to fund procedures like removing the breasts of girls who identify as boys or putting children on cross-sex hormones, if the provision makes it through the rest of the reconciliation process.
Crenshaw receives a lot of criticism from conservatives, some of it justified, but he’s done well here.
Chris Rufo unearths documented evidence that Harvard, as a policy, systemically and illegally discriminated against white men in hiring. This is no longer a “cutting off aid” concern, this is a “people need to good to jail for violating people’s civil rights” matter.
More protections for lawful gun owners. ‘Texas senators have approved a measure strengthening the state’s protections for justified use of force or deadly force in self-defense situations. Senate Bill 1730, filed by State Sen. Bob Hall (R–Edgewood), passed 26-3-2 on Monday. The measure would prevent a claimant from recovering civil damages for personal injury or death if a grand jury has declined to pursue, thrown out, or acquitted the defendant of criminal charges. In addition, if the claimant is found to be prohibited from seeking civil action, the proposal would require them to pay court costs and the defendant’s attorney fees.”
“Texas House Approves Bill Expanding State Medical Cannabis Program. The bill expands the medical conditions that allow access to the Texas’ medical cannabis program.”
The Texas Compassionate Use Act, enacted in 2015, allows physicians to prescribe low-dose THC for patients with specific medical conditions such as incurable neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
With HB 46, TCUP will be expanded to new qualifying medical conditions, including glaucoma, traumatic brain injuries, Crohn’s disease, or any terminal illness or condition where a patient is receiving hospice or palliative care. The bill will also allow for “medication” that is “aerosolized” or “vaporized,” and the TCUP program will be expanded to include veterans “who would benefit from medical use to address a medical condition.”
The legislation also expands access by increasing the number of dispensing licenses, authorizing satellite locations across all public health regions.
[Rep. Ken] King adopted a perfecting amendment that would “grandfather” in existing satellite TCUP locations, revise the THC content limits to exceed the “one percent by weight” provision, and establish timelines for approving medical inhalation devices.
Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) also had his amendment adopted, which will require physicians prescribing low-THC cannabis to report prescription data to the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.
The states that have experimented with uncontrolled complete legalization of marijuana seemed to have suffered a lot of harmful effects, from sketchy potheads in broken RVs trashing formerly respectable neighborhoods to state and national forests trashed by illegal grow operations, maybe because a lot are also one-party Democratic soft-on-crime blue states and deep blue cities. Oklahoma, which isn’t, has suffered from Chinese mob control of the marijuana trade. Whatever it’s flaws, Texas extremely slow medical marijuana legalization program seems to have at least avoided those problems.
Patrick McGee has a new book out, Apple in China, that’s getting a lot of attention. “The two numbers that really stick out at me are that the number of people they have trained in China since 2008 is 28 million.” I think there’s a real story there, but i also think those numbers are grossly inflated. Apple wasn’t the only company shifting contract manufacturing to China, and that 28 million only makes sense if you count every employee at every company in China that had any role in producing any part for Apple, which is (to put it mildly) an extremely tendentious claim.
“In a historic, sweeping decision, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday removed Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other deceased players from Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list…Manfred ruled that MLB’s punishment of banned individuals ends upon their deaths.” (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
The fake Kamala bubble evaporates, another would-be Trump assassin is arrested, more Chinese spies on the staff of high profile Democrats, more NYC corruption raids, Ukrainian drones heat things up around Moscow, Intel and Stellantis layoff thousands each, another Harris County Democrat double-dips, a bit about Idaho, and some really stupid sailor shenanigans.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Evidently jailing Trump right before an election was a kangaroo too far even for this kangaroo court, so Trump’s sentencing has been pushed to after the election. “Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday that Trump’s sentencing will take place on November 26, three weeks after election day, ensuring that Trump will not be sentenced in any of his criminal cases leading up to the election.”
In the friendliest possible format — a joint interview with VP nominee and emotional-support midwesterner Tim Walz, conducted by Dana Bash with the delicacy of an ornithologist gently hand-feeding hatchling chicks — Harris has revealed that her gaseously mindless word-cloud of a campaign is in fact an accurate reflection of her own personal vacuousness.
To be sure, Harris did not memorably self-destruct tonight. Whatever her failings, they are not those of Joe Biden, who couldn’t even articulate his words without slurring by the end. Her inarticulateness tonight was of the sort already known to be a Harris trademark, the endless jumble of nonsensical, comically vapid stock language. When she could fall back on a memorized list of talking points, she presented somewhat normally; the second she was required to respond directly to a question, then she began to spin out otiose nonsense like a pasta chef catering a Sicilian banquet. You could practically see the gears turning inside her head as she cast her eyes downward, stared laser-beams into the floor, and groped for cliches. She was more muted tonight than usual — her aides clearly ordered her never to display mirth under any circumstances, for fear the Kamala Kackle might emerge — and as a result, while she simulated sobriety for the most part, her body language was pronouncedly downbeat.
And all throughout she offered no answers to any policy questions whatsoever, nor any explanation for her various changes of position between 2020 and now. In theory, Bash asked most of the “right questions”; in practice, the way she solicitously asked them — sometimes even helpfully offering in advance a multiple-choice list of acceptable answers for Harris to choose from — turned them into cream puffs that Harris immediately used to serve up word salad.
Bash’s most pointed moment was when she pushed Harris about why she changed her position on a national fracking ban between 2020 and the present campaign. Harris’s answer was little more than, “Well, because I changed my mind when I became Joe Biden’s VP.” In the real world, anyone familiar with politics well understood that her “position” changed because Joe Biden — the presidential nominee — demanded it, and no other reason. Which of course is why it’s impossible to believe her when she says this is now her sincerely held view, as opposed to something to later be discarded once she can set her own priorities.
Eric Weinstein told Chris Williamson on the “Modern Wisdom” podcast that Donald Trump’s presidency has disrupted the old “rules-based international order,” which many view as an attempt to control global stability and wondered if the Republican nominee will “be allowed” to reenter the White House if elected in 2024. Weinstein argued that Trump’s unorthodox approach challenged the status quo, exposing flaws in the system and revealing that the impact of populist leaders on democracy and international agreements is more complex and significant than previously understood.
CHRIS WILLIAMSON: When we spoke at the start of the year, I said it was way too close to November to switch anybody out. Turns out that I was wrong.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Beginner’s luck.
CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You said what are the odds that Joe Biden has a debilitating event between now and November including death, so he runs a one in 20 chance of dying in any given year or above that. I don’t think you know whether he’s even going to make it to November debilitating event could have been a debilitating public event
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I purposefully left it vague. I didn’t say the other part of it, which I now feel comfortable saying, which is…
CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What do you mean by that?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I think there’s a remarkable story, and we’re in a funny game, which is: are we allowed to say what that story is? Because to say it, to analyze it, to name it, is to bring it into view. I think we don’t understand why the censorship is behaving the way it is. We don’t understand why it’s in the shadows or why our news is acting in a bizarre fashion. So let’s just set the stage, given that that was in February.
There is something that I think Mike Benz has just referred to as the rules-based international order. It’s an interlocking series of agreements, tacit understandings, explicit understandings, and clandestine understandings about how the most important structures keep the world free of war and keep markets open. There has been a system in place, whether understood explicitly or behind the scenes or implicitly, that says the purpose of the two American parties is to prune the field of populist candidates so that whatever two candidates exist in a faceoff are both acceptable to that world order.
From the point of view of, say, the State Department, the intelligence community, the defense department, and major corporations involved in international issues—from arms trade to, oh, I don’t know, food—they have a series of agreements that are fragile and could be overturned if a president entered the Oval Office who didn’t agree with them. And if the mood of the country was, “Why do we pay taxes into these structures? Why are we hamstrung? Why aren’t we a free people?” So what the two parties would do is run primaries with populist candidates and pre-commit the populist candidates to support the candidates who won the primaries. As long as that took place and you had two candidates that were both acceptable to the international order—that is, they aren’t going to rethink NAFTA or NATO or what have you—we called that democracy. And so democracy was the illusion of choice, what’s called magician’s choice, where the choice is not actually, you know, “pick a card, any card,” but somehow the magician makes sure that the card that you pick is the one that he knows.
In that situation, you have magician’s choice in the primaries, and then you’d have the duopoly field: two candidates, either of which was acceptable, and you could actually afford to hold an election. That way, the international order wasn’t put at risk every four years because you can’t have alliances that are subject to the whim of the people in plebiscites.
Under that structure, everything was going fine until 2016, when the first candidate ever to not hold any position in the military nor any position in government in the history of the Republic, Donald Trump, broke through the primary structure. Then there was a full court press: “Okay, we only have one candidate that’s acceptable to the international order. Donald Trump will be under constant pressure—he’s a loser, he’s a wild man, he’s an idiot, and he’s under control of the Russians.” And then he was going to be, you know, a 20-to-1 underdog, and then he wins. There was no precedent for this. They learned their lesson: you cannot afford to have candidates who are not acceptable to the international order and continue to have these alliances. This is an unsolved problem.
A Missouri man is facing federal charges following a series of alleged violent threats made via social media against former President Donald Trump, Republicans at large, and law enforcement officers, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Western District of Missouri on Aug. 30.
Justin Lee White, 36, is accused of using interstate communication to spread a slew of online threats to injure Trump, Republicans, and law enforcement in violation of federal law, culminating in a multi-agency investigation led by the FBI, according to the complaint.
Speaking of Trump assassination attempts, DHS personnel assigned to the protective detail for Trump’s Butler rally were given rigorous training. And by “rigorous training” I mean “they sat through a two hour webinar.”
Remember that “Harris Surge” in polls? Yet again, it was a case of oversampling.
As we’ve been highlighting since 2016, polls are not to be trusted thanks to various ‘tricks of the trade’ – most commonly, oversampling.
Last month we noted how the founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls.
“Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
Now, the Washington Times reports that some pollsters are even sounding the alarm over Vice President Kamala Harris’ so-called ‘surge’ in the polls – which Harris pulled ahead in after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee on July 21.
Since the switch, Harris is leading Trump nationally by nearly 2 percentage points and is either leading or tied with him in all seven battleground states. However, Republican analysts argue that these polling numbers may not accurately reflect voter sentiment due to biased polling methodology…
Critics point out that many polls have been sampling a disproportionately smaller share of Republican voters compared to exit poll data from the 2020 presidential election. The result, they say, is a misleading “phantom advantage” for Ms. Harris. According to them, this skewed sampling could be a strategic move to boost enthusiasm and fundraising for Ms. Harris’ campaign.
Trump campaign strategist Jim McLaughlin echoed this sentiment, stating, “They undersample Republicans” intentionally “to tamp down support and donations for Trump.” He added that the polls are part of a larger effort to create a narrative that favors Harris.
Trump has openly criticized the poll results. “It’s fake news,” Trump declared during a rally in Michigan. “They can make those polls sing.”
“Billionaire Mark Cuban Asked His Followers If They’d Prefer Their Kids Be Like Trump or Harris.” Turns out they preferred Trump by more than 2-1. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Another week, another high profile Democrat’s aide turns out to be a Chinese spy.
Linda Sun, a former aide to New York governor Kathy Hochul, acted at the direction of Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party officials while serving in state government, federal prosecutors alleged in an indictment Tuesday.
In a statement, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York said that Sun was arrested Tuesday morning with her husband, Christopher Hu. They were expected to be arraigned later in the day.
Sun is a former deputy chief of staff to Kathy Hochul and has served in numerous roles throughout New York State government since her first post under the administration of former governor Andrew Cuomo in 2012. Before that, she served as Representative Grace Meng’s chief of staff, when the Queens Democrat served in the New York State assembly.
“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as deputy chief of staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.
The federal government is alleging that Sun was an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and that her husband engaged in money-laundering while they benefited from millions of dollars in bribes from Chinese officials.
The indictment details a shocking pattern of collaboration with China’s consulate general in New York, with Sun at one point in 2020 letting a Chinese diplomat listen in on a private conference call for New York officials regarding the state government’s response to the Covid pandemic.
Chinese-government and CCP officials directed her to block Taiwanese officials from engaging with officials from New York. Beijing views the current government of Taiwan as a traitorous separatist movement and wants to annex the country.
According to court documents, Taiwan’s de facto consulate in New York City invited an unnamed politician, a description that matches the profile of then-governor Andrew Cuomo, to attend a banquet honoring then-Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen during her stopover in the city in 2019. Sun forwarded information about the invite to a Chinese official, telling that individual, “I sent you an email / Just an FYI / I already blocked it.” She then declined the invitation without consulting other New York executive chamber officials.
When Sun later asked a colleague to check if the politician was registered for the banquet, that staff member said that it was not on the schedule. Sun replied: “Perfect!”
She also manipulated messaging from the New York governor’s office, while consulting Chinese diplomats, the indictment stated.
Federal agents on Wednesday zeroed in on the highest ranks of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, searching a home and seizing the phones of the New York City police commissioner, the first deputy mayor, the schools chancellor and others, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The police commissioner. They seized the police commissioner’s phones. Wow.
Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.
…
Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.
…
In addition to the police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, several other department officials, including Mr. Caban’s chief of staff and two Queens precinct commanders, also had their phones taken by federal agents, two of the people said.
Says Dwight: “It sounds like the whole Adams administration is so packed with corruption, they can’t even keep the lid screwed on.”
Behind the statistics: “August: 635K Foreign-Born Workers Gained Jobs as 1.3 Million Americans Lost Jobs.”
Germany’s conservative, populist, pro-border security Alternative for Germany won big in this week’s elections. Of course, the media, in unison, denounces anyone who objects to the mass importation of unassimilated Muslims into any European country as “far right.” And in Germany, this means they invariable compare Alternative for Germany to a certain mustachioed National Socialist.
President Trump endorses marijuana decriminalization vote. “Florida’s Amendment 3, titled Recreational Marijuana, would allow adults who are at least 21 years of age have up to 3 ounces of marijuana (a ‘small amount’?) and up to 5 grams of marijuana concentrate. At present, the state only allows medical patients with qualifying conditions to legally buy and possess cannabis.” Marijuana prohibition hasn’t worked. Full-bore marijuana legalization seems to have brought a whole host of problems, especially in blue states. Florida will provide another statewide laboratory of democracy to calibrate an approach.
Lowes may be getting out of the culture wars, but Home Depot is still in, having “partnered with LGBTQ mafia organization Human Rights Campaign on a school program that taught radical gender theory to elementary school kids.”
That budget deficit might also cause the Labour government to pull out of the F-35 procurement program. “Despite previous plans to acquire 138 F-35s, only 48 have been ordered.”
The head of Harris County’s Public Health Department, who was fired last week, has also been working for a California county since last January. Questions are swirling about her work in Texas, including her role in awarding a contract for sending mental health workers instead of police on some 911 calls.
Sources also say there is a pending criminal investigation into the county’s health department and related contracts.
County officials announced last Friday that Executive Director of Harris County Public Health Barbie Robinson had been dismissed, just days after the Houston Chronicle reported on communications surrounding a $6 million contract awarded to DEMA, a California-based company, to run the county’s Holistic Assistance Response Teams (HART).
The Texan has learned that in January 2024, Robinson also contracted with Yuba County, California to provide services for a three-year period. Robinson’s work for Yuba County’s public health department provides her with nearly $200,000 in compensation for hundreds of hours of work, all while managing Harris County’s public health department.
Sources familiar with the matter say that Robinson claimed to have obtained approval from former County Administrator David Berry and the County Attorney’s Office to engage in the additional work, but that current County Administrator Diana Ramirez was unable to confirm Robinson’s claims.
Other sources indicate that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) has been investigating Robinson and nearly a dozen other individuals with the county, HART, and DEMA for several months.
This week, the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office dismissed murder charges against two Houston men involved in the self-defense incident at a party near the Baylor University campus, finally determining it was a justifiable homicide. While that was good news to Calvin Nichols Jr., it hardly makes up for the 635 days the man spent locked up in jail while the DA’s office slowly dragged its feet over the case.
According to police reports, on the night in question Nichols and his cousin, Jaytron Damon Scott, were invited to a party attended by a number of Baylor students, including football players. According to partygoers, Joseph Craig Thomas Jr. showed up uninvited and began threatening others with a gun, including a female student who asked him to move his car.
He later stuck a gun under the chin of a Baylor football player. And when Scott and Nichols were leaving the party, Thomas began to pistol whip Nichols.
That’s when Scott, acting in defense of his cousin, fired his pistol at Thomas, striking him multiple times and killing him. Murder charges were then filed against Scott and Nichols, a fact that Scott’s attorney, Bryan Cantrell, found unbelievable.
“I don’t know how this case got indicted,” Cantrell told KWTX.com. “This was the clearest self-defense case I have ever seen. And I think the problem is a lot of attorneys and, certainly the people of the community, don’t understand the law of self-defense.”
You would hope that the end of Abel Reyna’s term as McLennan County DA put a stop to this sort of thing, but evidently not.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing to implement the Biden-Harris administration’s Sustains Act which aims to regulate who will own environmental services.
According to private property rights advocates, American Stewards of Liberty (ASL), examples of environmental services include “the air we breathe, photosynthesis, pollination, and even the health benefits of open space.”
Specifically, the new law allows private funds to be used for conservation efforts on private land. The USDA will oversee the program, and the Secretary, preparing its implementation, will also decide who owns the environmental service.
Although the public may still provide the USDA with comments about the plan until September 16, 2024, ASL refers to the new law as “critical for proponents of the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda to achieve.”
The private property rights advocates see the program as a means to “provide the path to transfer America’s real assets from private citizens to federal and international interests.”
Screw both the Biden Administration and the UN.
The latest Stolen Valor Democrat is Maryland governor Wes Moore, who didn’t earn the Bronze Star he claimed he did.
Speaking of Idaho, how Micron defied the odds to become one of the biggest DRAM manufacturers in the world.
Intel just cancelled their 20A (2nm) node and will be fabbing their Arrow Lake processor at TSMC. “Intel projects it will save half a billion dollars by skipping the 20A node. The announcement comes as Intel embarks on a vast restructuring in the wake of troubling financial results last quarter. The company continues to lay off 15,000 workers, among the largest workforce reductions in its 56-year history.” It’s supposedly going full speed ahead with its 18A node, theoretically due in 2025. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Intel and Japan are teaming up to work on EUV. Hard to see them making much progress given how large a lead ASML has…
Rael Enteen, Vice President of the Washington Commanders football team (AKA The Artist Formerly known As The Washington Redskins) has been fired.
He told…that, “over 50% of our roster is white religious, and God says, ‘F— the gays.’ Their interpretation. I don’t buy any of that. Another big chunk is low-income African Americans that comes from a community that is inherently very homophobic.”
…Enteen also said some players are “dumb as hell” and said some who were smart don’t stay that way after getting hit in the head too many times. He also said those who “get their heads knocked around a few times” are more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Enteen also said, “I don’t think the commissioner of the NFL hates gay people, hates black people. Jerry Jones, who really runs the NFL, I think he hates gay people, black people.”
And James O’Keefe claims another scalp…
Legal Insurrection’s William A. Jacobson just got dis-invited from speaking on antisemitism at a synagogue in Tampa. “How could any Jew look around at the current geopolitical landscape and conclude that it’s safe to ignore all the various threats to their existence — not just Hamas terrorists in Gaza, but also the various murderous entities backed by the Islamic radical regime in Iran, to say nothing of Democratic primary voters in Dearborn, Michigan — because Trump is the real danger? What kind of cocoon are these people living in?”
