One of those Texas stories that keep bubbling along, and which I have trouble mapping out the dimensions of, is the high voltage line to the Permian Basin story. Texas Scorecard has been out front reporting on the controversy, and my reaction to the headlines has generally been a muted “that’s odd” before clicking on to something else. To summarize, certain state entities want to build extremely high voltage lines from other parts of the state to the oil and gas rich Permian Basin. Transmission line politics being fairly far from my areas of interest and expertise, I haven’t been covering the story beyond the occasional LinkSwarm piece.
When last we checked, an administrative law judges panel went “yeah, you don’t want to do that.” “The judges concluded the utilities [Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation] did not establish that the projects are necessary and failed to comply with notice requirements designed to give affected landowners a chance to participate before the application was filed.”
And here’s were the story flips from “odd” to “sinister.” The Texas Public Utility Commissioners looked at the that decision, and promptly went “Fuck you, we’re doing it anyway.”
Texas’ Public Utility Commissioners voted to move forward on the first of three controversial extra-high-voltage transmission lines. They did this despite calls from landowners and lawmakers to pause the project until after the 2027 legislative session.
The day before, Commission Chairman Thomas Gleeson filed a memo on a segment of the first line. He disagreed with administrative law judges’ finding that electricity delivery company Oncor “failed to notify more than 1,600 impacted landowners of a public meeting.” These are meetings where a transmission service provider presents information about the proposed project and collects feedback from impacted landowners.
“Understanding that folks are not happy with the process,” he said, “I think, on the law, the ALJ was wrong here.”
This is in regards to Oncor’s proposed Dinosaur to Drill Hole 765-kilovolt transmission line. This line would span approximately 390 miles from near Glen Rose to near the Culberson–Reeves county line.
How many 765-kilovolt transmission lines currently exist in Texas? Zero.
It is composed of two segments—the Dinosaur to Longshore and Longshore to Drill Hole lines. Gleeson’s memo addressed the administrative law judges’ Proposal for Decision in the Dinosaur to Longshore line.
Dinosaur to Drill Hole is part of the 765-kV Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP) Permian, a key part of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan (PBRP). STEP Permian proposes three transmission lines spanning more than 1,200 miles to move electricity from East Texas to the natural gas-rich Permian Basin. A pro-landowner group likened the project “to hauling water to the sea.”
Landowner complaints of not being “meaningfully included” in the process have helped elevate this project to the attention of state officials. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and members of the state House and Senate called for PUCT to deny all pending 765-kV projects until the legislature can reform the approval process in 2027.
American Stewards of Liberty (ASL) and a more than 30-member coalition that includes the Texas Public Policy Foundation requested that PUCT abate all five segments.
In April 2025, the PUC adopted the 765-kV STEP Plan to address projected load growth in the Permian Basin through 2038, approving approximately $5 billion in local
transmission upgrades designed to meet oil and gas demand. Three new 765-kV transmission lines from Central Texas to the Permian Basin region were also approved, with an
estimated cost of $9 billion. The local upgrades will meet more immediate needs due to rising oil and gas demand and existing transmission constraints. The extra capacity from the 765-kV lines will primarily serve projected data center load growth in West Texas and transport excess wind and solar generation from the region to other parts of the ERCOT grid.
And there it is, the real reason for the proposed line: To let Oncor and other big energy utilities sell the power generated by their expensive investments in solar and wind energy to data centers over cheap, reliable new natural gas plants in the same region the data centers are going to be located in.
If Oncor wants to do that, let them pay for their own damn power lines.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, this year’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, called on state authorities to pause further action on the plan.
“The Legislature must be afforded the time to review the Plan and its potential impacts so it can then enact additional legislation to provide whatever additional guidance it deems fit,” Paxton wrote.
Snip.
Paxton filed an amicus curiae brief with the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) “in support of abating any decision in furtherance of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan.”
“The Commission has created a Plan that appears to exceed the original intent of H.B. 5066 such that the Commission is no longer aligned with the expectations of the Legislature,” the brief reads.
“As the Legislature is already endeavoring to tackle the growth in electric demand spurred by data centers popping up across the state, now is the ideal time for the Legislature to review the Plan as part of a holistic review of the state’s reliability efforts.”
More:
Republican Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian and conservative organizations such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation have claimed that the region’s ample natural gas could supply electricity locally, obviating the need for power lines that span the state. Some local officials argue that the plan diminishes city and county authority. Landowners have testified that the lines would affect wildlife and agriculture.
The unseemly haste with which the PUC tossed aside the judicial recommendations suggests that the fix is in, and that little things like widespread opposition won’t be allowed to derail Big Energy and Big Data’s agenda of getting taxpayers to further subsidize their investments.
If PUC continues trying to shove this down taxpayer’s throats despite all the opposition, they should expect some serious lawsuits.
And here’s the King Crimson jam/improve track that gave rise to the title for this post.
Huge Supreme Court win, Ukraine switches from Wildberries to Ozon warehouses, yes, DSA are damn dirty commies, more Second Amendment progress, Ted Cruz’s book on Clarence Thomas is out, Aussie gets 15 years for shooting a carnival air gun, remembering Dolly, and the NFL finally takes the Pro-Bowl to a farm in the country.
The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a massive victory in the fight to secure America’s elections. The justices cleared the way for his executive order restricting mail-in voting to move forward, and after months of Democrat officials trying to bury the policy in court, the administration finally has room to breathe.
This is a big deal.
The SAVE America Act is still stalled in the Senate, blocked by Democrats who aren’t even hiding the fact they have zero interest in verifying that voters are who they say they are. Trump’s executive order just got a green light from the nation’s highest court anyway. Election integrity doesn’t have to die in the legislative graveyard to make progress.
Trump signed the executive order, called “Ensuring Citizenship Verification And Integrity In Federal Elections,” in March 2026. It directs his administration to build lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. The Postal Service laid out its implementation plan last week, but the clock is ticking. Some states start sending mail ballots in just a few weeks, leaving the administration little time to get this right before the midterms. More court challenges remain possible.
The victory is real, but it’s not the finish line.
Mail balloting has been a target of Trump’s for years, and for good reason. The Heritage Foundation has long argued that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud, coercion, and chain-of-custody problems than in-person voting. Anyone who lived through the 2020 presidential election, one of the most disputed elections in history, watched that vulnerability play out in real time.
It’s official: California just criminalized publicly exposing fraud.
our tax dollars are paying for fraud, and if someone like Nick Shirley exposes this fraud he, not the fraudster, could get in trouble.
More from Nick:
These politicians need the fraud to continue and they sadly use immigrants to do so often. They fund nonprofits and NGOs with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for immigration services, including free healthcare, and have now made ‘immigration support service providers’ essentially a protected class in California.
For example, if I film a hospice or a ‘learning center’ with no patients receiving millions through Medicaid and the owner gives me a paper saying I cannot publish the video, I cannot publish it. If I publish it to expose them and they claim it caused them ‘fear’ or a third party threatens them, I face a minimum $4,000 civil fine plus the legal fees of the individual or group suing me.
This bill was created by the Attorney General’s wife and co-sponsored by CHIRLA, a nonprofit that has received over $80,000,000 in taxpayer dollars for ‘immigrant support services.’ Do you understand how this works yet? When the fraud is exposed, they create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.
By signing this bill, the Governor and California politicians expose themselves as the corrupt politicians they are. This is not the end; the fight has just begun. More to come soon; this is far from over.
An unconstitutional prior restraint First Amendment violation that will be struck down instantly the first time California tries to enforce it.
If it weren’t for voter fraud, welfare state fraud, crazy trannies, violent criminals and pandering to radical Islamic anti-Semites, the Democrat Party wouldn’t have any business model at all…
“Our goal is Communism,” David Jenkins, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, said in 2023.
DSA member Cea Weaver is New York City’s tenant tsarina. She posted via X in December 2017, “Elect more communists.” The next year, she demanded: “Seize private property.”
Weaver’s boss is Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In his Jan. 1 inaugural address, he stated: “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” He told a DSA Zoom call in 2021: The “end goal” should be “seizing the means of production.” Mamdani also said, “The abolition of private property … is preferable to what is going on right now.” These comments loudly echo Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ cornerstone collectivist text “The Communist Manifesto.”
The magnificently named Darializa Avila Chevalier rode Mamdani’s endorsement all the way to the Democrat nomination for New York’s 13th Congressional District.
“I’m a democratic socialist,” she boasted June 29 on MS Now. She also wants to “seize the means of production,” as she advised in a not-quite-deleted September 2019 X post. She confessed that December: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag.” In April 2020, she wrote: “Most of the theory I have read is communism but the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.” The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserved 3,657 such messages that Chevalier thought she had erased.
For months, the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz was Tehran’s ultimate card dominated commentary on the war.
As a narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas had historically passed, it appeared to be a chokepoint Iran could close or severely disrupt at will. It did not need to destroy every tanker. Hitting a small percentage with drones, cruise missiles, speedboats, or mines would spike insurance rates, deter crews and companies, and effectively shut the strait without continuous physical control.
This idea was not new for 2026. It had long been a feature of the Iranian strategic posture, treated as both a military instrument and a political myth-proof that even under pressure Tehran retained a decisive lever over the global energy system. Parts of the Western media and independent analysts amplified the same narrative.
Relying on incomplete open-source shipping data, especially once vessels began sailing dark, many concluded that the United States had been caught unprepared and lacked a realistic path to reopen the waterway. Hormuz, they argued, was effectively closed or closable at Iran’s discretion. That framing was powerful, but also incomplete.
The assumption that Iran’s detection and targeting system could not be dismantled without dramatic escalation proved wrong. Under the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and with significant involvement from the Fifth Fleet and Air Force components, the United States ran a sustained effort to degrade the sensors Iran needed to find and hit ships.
Iran relied on mobile truck-mounted radars, drones, cruise missiles, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats, and naval mines. Inside the narrow strait, ships move in relatively predictable lanes. Iran combined active radars with passive electro-optical and infrared cameras on elevated terrain and islands such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa.
Mobile radars would radiate briefly to locate shipping, then shut down and move before anti-radiation missiles could arrive. Once a ship’s approximate position was known, strike systems could be sent to search.
The vulnerability was that every radar emission could be detected. American aircraft responded systematically with anti-radiation missiles while visual and intelligence efforts located the passive sensors. This was the core of what some involved called “draining the swamp.”
Iran had redundancy, but the number of sensors was finite. Hundreds of precision strikes gradually reduced Iran’s ability to see traffic in the strait. As the detection layer thinned, the effectiveness of the strike systems declined with it.
Parallel efforts neutralized mines with unmanned vessels and declared the southern lane near Oman largely clear. Convoys moved under escort, often at night with the automated information system (AIS) off. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis radars and standard missile (SM)-family interceptors formed the backbone; drones and Apache helicopters armed with laser-guided rockets provided additional cover. American ships also engaged IRGC speedboats that closed on the convoys.
On the commercial side, the United States addressed insurance barriers. In early March, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for maritime trade.
The DFC, working with the Treasury and CENTCOM, established a revolving reinsurance facility of roughly $20 billion-later expanded with private partners including Chubb-focused on hull, machinery, and cargo cover. Early uptake was limited. As Iranian success rates fell, more vessels joined.
Results have been significant. CENTCOM has reported assisting well over a thousand commercial vessels and moving hundreds of millions of barrels since the spring. Independent trackers often showed lower numbers because much of the traffic sailed dark. Pre-war throughput was 20 million to 21 million barrels per day.
Flows through Hormuz remain below that, but combined with the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline and Saudi Arabia’s pipeline to Yanbu in the Red Sea, volumes recovered enough to keep oil prices in the $85 to $95 range-elevated, but far from the predicted catastrophe.
Followup: “Satellite Imagery of Multiple Ozon Warehouses Destroyed by Ukraine.”
“Big Blast as Drone Storage is Hit By Drone & Project 05060 Patrol Boat Destroyed in Crimea.”
“Ukraine Destroys Rare Su-33 (First Destroyed), MiG-29 and Orion Attack Drone At Anapa Airport.” This was just the other side of the Kerch Straight Bridge. The Su-33 is normally a carrier based aircraft, but since Russia’s only aircraft carrier has been out of service since 2017, they’re doing much desk landing these days.
The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.
U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice conceded that Americans are allowed to carry in Postal Service buildings.
Snip.
On August 18, a federal judge ruled against Biden’s “ghost gun” ban, saying it violates multiple parts of the Constitution….Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Biden’s “Ghost Gun” rule violates the 2nd and 5th Amendments,
Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is being upheld and gun rights expanded.
More progress: “CDC restores info showing how many good guys with guns stop bad guys after Biden removed it.”
Concerning: “Maryland felony cases against Zizian trans death cult members abruptly suspended. After 18 months of prosecution, Maryland abruptly put its cases against three Zizian trans cult members on indefinite hold. Officials have not publicly explained why.”
The cases against cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and subordinates Michelle “Jamie” “Alex” Zajko and Daniel “Hastur” Blank were made inactive on Aug. 14; All scheduled future trial dates were canceled.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested together following a national manhunt on Feb. 16, 2025 in rural western Maryland. They were found with a cache of weapons in their two box trucks. They had spent years moving around the country as members of the Zizians, a radical transgender cult who has been linked to at least eight violent deaths.
The three initially faced only misdemeanor trespassing, firearms and obstruction charges after an elderly Frostburg-area property owner reported that they had arrived in box trucks and asked to camp on his property.
Authorities later added charges involving the alleged illegal possession and carrying of concealed and loaded firearms.
LaSota, a biological male who identifies as a woman and uses the name “Ziz,” is the founder and ideological leader of the Zizians. The group is made up of transgender vegan extremists, several of whom have elite educational backgrounds in science and mathematics. Members embraced an esoteric ideology combining leftist transgender politics, anarchism, rationalism and veganism.
Snip.
Though the state charges have been suspended, LaSota is being held on a federal detainer request on a federal indictment of being a fugitive from justice in possession of firearms and ammunition. On Tuesday, he was transferred into federal custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.
Zajko, meanwhile, is awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania. She was charged in June with murdering her adoptive parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, on New Year’s Eve 2022. The case had gone cold for years before the surprise announcement by prosecutors in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Authorities allege Zajko traveled from Vermont to her childhood home in Chester Heights on the night of her 30th birthday and participated in the execution-style killings.
Bad news for justice in Colorado: “Former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst Yvonne Missy Woods pleaded guilty to four felonies — cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public official, and forgery, after facing 102 felony charges tied to misconduct in 58 cases dating back to 2008. Woods worked at CBI for 29 years, from January 1994 to November 2023, and was qualified as an expert witness more than 500 times. A routine audit in late 2023 uncovered anomalies in her work; an internal investigation found she purposefully deleted DNA data to skip required testing steps. Retesting of roughly 3,000 affected cases cost the state an estimated $11 million. Among the high-profile cases she handled was the 2003 Kobe Bryant sexual assault investigation. ”
“ICE Arrests 1,328 Illegal Aliens in DC, Virginia, Maryland in 14 Days. Of those arrested, almost 400 illegal immigrants had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, including a Salvadoran national wanted in Richmond, Virginia, on a murder warrant.”
“Other crimes included rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, DUI, robbery and attempted murder.” Also: “They also arrested members of MS-13, 18th Street Gang, and Tren de Aragua gangs.” MS-13 and Tren de Aragua we’ve covered here before. According to Wikipedia, “The 18th Street Gang, also known as Eighteen St, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic (largely Mexican and Central American), street gang from Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest street gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000–50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America.” Evidently they’re enemies with MS-13.
“Lottery Boss Appears in Court over $95 Million Scandal. Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity tied to the controversial 2023 jackpot.”
Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief appeared in a Travis County courtroom Friday morning as the criminal case stemming from the controversial 2023 Lotto Texas jackpot moves forward.
Grief appeared alongside his attorney before District Judge Dayna Blazey in the 167th District Court. Prosecutors and attorneys representing the entity formerly known as the Texas Lottery Commission were also present.
Court records show Grief waived formal magistration Friday. Another hearing concerning his personal-recognizance bond was set for October 16.
Shortly after Friday’s proceedings, Travis County District Attorney José Garza formally announced that a grand jury had indicted both Grief and the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission for abuse of official capacity.
The indictments were handed down April 21.
According to Garza’s office, the charges stem from the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing and allege that the commission, along with high-level management officials Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd, intentionally and knowingly misused government resources.
The DA’s office alleges the conduct was authorized by Grief, who was serving as the commission’s executive director at the time.
The indictment concerns the drawing in which a New Jersey-based lottery purchasing operation acquired nearly every possible number combination and won a $95 million jackpot.
Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving $300,000 or more.
The whole affair stinks to high heaven, and I have to think at least some Lotto Commission employees were in on it.
“Judges Recommend Regulators Reject Proposed 765-kV Line. The Public Utility Commission must now decide whether to accept the judges’ recommendation to reject the proposed multibillion-dollar transmission line projects.” “The judges concluded the utilities [Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation] did not establish that the projects are necessary and failed to comply with notice requirements designed to give affected landowners a chance to participate before the application was filed.”
The plot thickens. “Iowa Attorney General Says She’s Taking California to the Supreme Court Over Paramount-Warner Bros.”
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Wire that she is suing California for leading the charge in the lawsuit against the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger.
“California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator. And once again California is defying common sense to raise costs around the country,” Bird wrote. “That makes this a dispute between states, and the Constitution says those can only be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“Australian man faces 15 years in prison for using toy gun to win carnival prize for daughter.” He was an ex-felony prohibited from using guns, but getting busted for a carnival air rifle seems way, way excessive.
How Simon Whistler runs his YouTube channels. He outsources everything except direction and presentation, expands his winners and ruthlessly culls his losers. It’s smart business, but largely antithetical to what I watch YouTube for. (Previously.)
Weirdly enough, the animated film Lesbian Space Princess seems to be hated by everyone. See, a film with that title could be highly profitable in porn…
The LCRA is now projecting that Lake Travis may rise to between 705-710 ft. elevation by Friday, approaching the all-time record crest of 710.4 ft. from Christmas, 1991.
Four flood gates are now open, and the LCRA says they may open four more Thursday, which would exceed the previous record of six open floodgates during a 1957 flood.
Additional rainfall is forecast through Thursday, with 1-2 inches possible, along with some isolated 4 inch totals. A Flash Flood Watch has been expanded from the Hill Country to the Austin metro area.
The LCRA is warning of serious flooding, and encouraging people to take precautions to protect life and property.
Eight open floodgates on Mansfield dam means eight open gates on Tom Miller damn just north of downtown Austin. Dont be surprised if you see a repeat of that “Steve Ray Vaughn Statue Flooded” pictures we saw during the 2013 flash floods.
Keep an eye on road closures, pay attention to the evacuation notices, and pack your bugout bag and be ready to go if you’re in low-lying areas or anywhere near the river.
Here’s late blues guitar legend John Campbell with “When the Levee Breaks”:
Update: LCRA says no additional floodgates need to be opened today: “LCRA will NOT need to open additional floodgates at Mansfield Dam today. It is still possible we will need to open up to four additional floodgates over the next few days.”
The Farm to Market 2900 bridge in Kingsland over Lake LBJ (just before the Llano and Colorado rivers meet) has collapsed:
Authorities have evacuated anyone within a quarter-mile of the river, including large portions of Marble Falls. The Lower Colorado River Authority opened the Mansfield and Tom Miller dams at noon.
Nor is the hazard limited to the river:
Williamson County conducted two water rescues because of flooding Tuesday morning. One was a vehicle in high water off CR 251 in Andice, and both people were transported to a local hospital.
The second was a school bus off CR 177 in Leander. The driver and one student on broad were rescued without injuries.
I would tell you to check the low water crossing map for the Austin area, but there’s no need: Every low water crossing in Austin is closed, flooded or on caution right now:
The cliched phrase of choice is there for a reason:
Pay attention to the evacuation notices, and pack your bugout bag and be ready to go if you’re in low-lying areas or anywhere near the river.
As for myself, I’m fine. The last time I looked at a topology map I was some 85′ higher than the Mansfield Dam spillway, so I’m safe unless we get a flood of Biblical proportion.
