The Supreme Court green-lights verifying American citizenship for voting, fraud, fraud, and more fraud, Trump gets Greenland without having to buy it, Cruz looks at EPIC City terrorism ties, the Clancy holdout juror speaks, some horrifying child abuse cases, and completely different horrifying murder house, and a surprising amount of Norm Macdonald.
The Supreme Court on Sept. 25 said the Trump administration can use an updated immigration database to verify the citizenship of voters.
A majority of justices agreed to stay pending the outcome of an appeal of a June order from a federal judge that barred the use of a revamped database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.
U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had found that federal officials were violating the privacy rights of American citizens by disclosing the citizenship status and Social Security numbers, among other data, in the restructured database. She vacated the 2025 update, which connected Social Security information to the system.
A federal appeals court later upheld the decision.
Trump administration officials then asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing in a Sept. 8 brief that the order “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by states to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes.”
Six justices sided with the administration. In a per curiam opinion, they said that claims from the organizations that sued over the updated database “likely lack merit,” including the allegation that federal officials are violating federal laws, because Congress authorized the Department of Homeland Security to request and receive citizenship information and immigration status from other agencies, including the Social Security Administration, in a 1996 statute called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
The majority also said that keeping in place the prohibition “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies.”
States regularly use the system. Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden recently said the state in the fall of 2025 ran the names of its 18 million registered voters through the database and identified 2,724 people who may be noncitizens.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
“USDA Targets 170 NYC Retailers in SNAP Fraud Sweep. ‘SNAP benefits should go to Americans, not fraudsters or illegal immigrants,’ White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud Executive Director Scott Brady said.”
The Trump administration has stopped more than $5.8 billion in SNAP fraud since taking office, and its latest sweep just hit New York City, where hundreds of undercover investigations led to enforcement action against 170 retailers across all five boroughs.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced “Operation SNAP Back” on Friday as part of a broader push against retailer fraud in the nearly $100 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“This is just the latest action in the Trump Administration’s fight against fraud. The message is clear, if you accept any portion of an annual $100 billion taxpayer program, you must follow the rules or face the consequences,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said. “We owe it to every American taxpayer to safeguard their hard-earned dollars, and these latest enforcement actions are just a small part of the Food and Nutrition Administration’s efforts to remove criminals and bad actors from food stamps.”
The cases involve SNAP trafficking, where benefits are exchanged for cash, along with retailers accused of allowing benefits to be used for alcohol and other ineligible non-food items. USDA says penalties can range from temporary suspension to permanent disqualification and monetary fines. Several cases were also referred to the USDA Office of Inspector General for possible criminal investigation and prosecution.
Investigators used undercover purchases at stores suspected of violating SNAP rules. Some retailers were caught exchanging benefits for cash, while others allegedly processed transactions for prohibited products.
“SNAP benefits should go to Americans, not fraudsters or illegal immigrants,” White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud Executive Director Scott Brady said. “And thanks to Secretary Rollins, such waste and abuse will stop.”
Here’s your reminder that the fraud is still continuing – boldly, even! – after months of nonstop reporting about it.
Katie Daviscourt of the Post Millennial did some looking into Somali-run daycares in the Seattle area, many of which receive tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars monthly, and you’ll never guess what she found.
Most showed no signs of kids.
Many neighbors say they’ve never seen anything that looks like a daycare in the area!
These families get together, watch each other’s kids sometimes, incorporate as a “daycare,” and collect tens of thousands a month.
Here’s the PM:
In total, Daviscourt reported that in just two neighborhoods there were over $5 million in potential abuses of taxpayer funds, and they had gone to over 20 locations reporting to be daycare locations. Under Seattle’s Child Care Assistance Program, daycares can request government funding in order to back their businesses when they are caring for low-to-middle-income families.
Vice President JD Vance and the White House’s anti-fraud task force canceled Affordable Care Act policies covering more than 760,000 people, the administration announced Tuesday, citing suspected improper and fraudulent enrollments.
The task force, along with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, estimates the move will save taxpayers $2.2 billion.
Following the cancellation of 315,000 enrollments, the vice president said officials are going to conduct “additional verification” on about 419,000 more enrollees, whom they suspect may be improperly enrolled or ineligible for the program. Similarly, the Trump administration is banning some insurance brokers who are thought to be complicit in the fraudulent enrollment.
“We expect that most of these people are fraudulently enrolled,” Vance said. “We’re going to make sure that they’re, first of all, legal residents of the United States of America, and second of all, we’re going to make sure that they actually meet the income threshold requirements in order to receive these Obamacare benefits.”
Snip.
“This is what the fraud task force is all about,” the vice president said, alongside CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and other senior administration officials at Tuesday’s press conference. “Saving the American taxpayers money, and on the other hand, ensuring that these programs that are very important” are not victim to waste and fraud.
Oz noted that CMS has issued termination notices to hundreds of brokers, including 469 in late August, and has placed a moratorium on new agents and brokers while officials investigate the eligibility of the additional 419,000 enrollees.
“There will be no new brokers for Obamacare in this country for the next six months, and we do not feel at all conflicted about that decision, because most of the fraud, a disproportionate amount of the fraud, is taking place from these individuals,” Oz said.
The ACA — colloquially known as Obamacare — was passed in 2010 under former President Barack Obama.
And its baleful effects on health care and the federal budget live on…
California runs the nation’s largest welfare system, devoting more than $180 billion annually to food, health care, and other programs for the poor and downtrodden. To sustain the arrangement, the state imposes the nation’s highest tax rates.
In theory, these programs are supposed to help struggling Californians. In reality, many serve large numbers of illegal immigrants. Today, California oversees a shadow welfare system that allows noncitizens to receive health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance, and even smartphones on the taxpayers’ dime.
We visited four public-services offices in Southern California, each of which admitted that illegal aliens can enroll in public-welfare programs or receive benefits on their children’s behalf. In total, California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year. The state’s shadow welfare system, it seems, shows no signs of slowing down.
Local officials were remarkably transparent. In Glendale, we spoke to a welfare officer about California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a state-funded alternative to Supplemental Security Income that provides monthly cash assistance to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled.
“If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI,” he said. “I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”
In Los Angeles, we heard more of the same. We asked another welfare officer about the benefits available to illegal immigrants and their children. While some state programs are closed to illegals, we learned, they are open to those aliens’ U.S.-born children.
“If you were born here and the child was born here, you get money for two,” the officer said of CalWORKs, the state’s version of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. “Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her.”
These benefits add up. In California, illegal immigrants can qualify for CAPI, public health insurance, and various tax credits. Their children qualify for others, including CalWORKs and, as in other states, Section 8 rental subsidies. All told, a family of five in California with two illegal-alien parents, two U.S.-born children, and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year.
State leaders are proud of it. In a recent podcast episode, Governor Gavin Newsom bragged about his “controversial” decision to extend Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants. His wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, encouraged people to sign up for the California Earned Income Tax Credit, a program whose promotional materials assure applicants that “no Social Security number” is “no problem.”
Snip.
Federal law generally prohibits states from using federal dollars to serve illegal aliens. To dodge those restrictions, California created parallel state- and locally funded programs that allowed the state to extend benefits to illegal immigrants. Perhaps as a result, more than one in four California residents today is foreign-born.
Medicaid is a good example. Federal law prohibits states from using federal dollars to provide wraparound coverage to illegal immigrants. So, California used a state-funding “bucket” within its Medi-Cal program to extend “full-scope” coverage to illegal aliens. The expansions enrolled some 1.7 million people, costing the state an estimated $10 billion annually—more than twice what the state legislative analyst originally projected.
California also uses a distinct legal category that enables certain migrants to qualify for state programs. The state deems certain aliens to be “permanently residing under color of law”—living in California with the “knowledge and permission” of immigration enforcement—and allows them to use this designation to enroll in Medi-Cal, CAPI, and other government programs. In practice, because aged or disabled individuals are typically not deported, this means elderly foreign retirees can arrive in California and receive extensive benefits.
Another way that California shuffles cash to illegal immigrants is through those aliens’ children. CalWORKs allows illegal-immigrant parents to receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born kids. BenefitsCal, the state’s welfare clearinghouse, even tells applicants that the program will accept a “statement” that the applicant “intend[s] to file or [is] taking steps to become federally eligible” to qualify for the program.
This model—permissive rules and large loopholes—costs the state billions per year. As benefits and eligibility continue to expand, that figure will only increase in the years ahead.
California shows no sign of paring back this largesse. In 2022, Newsom signed a bill into law that extended taxpayer-funded food benefits to illegal low-income residents. Beginning next October, qualified Californians 55 and older will become eligible for that program, regardless of immigration status. California’s Legislative Analyst estimates that it could cost up to an additional $400 million a year.
Is there any doubt that California Democrats love illegal aliens far more than citizens? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
California Democrats pulled up the ladder to prevent the likes of Nick Shirley and local reporters like JJ Smith, Amy Reichert, and many others from finding out where millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars were fraudulently spent.
In my story, Karen Bass Feels Heat From Feds Over Millions in Stolen and Laundered ‘Homeless’ Funds, we learned that Bill Essayli, who’s supposed to be the U.S. attorney in Central California (LA area) but isn’t because John Thune can’t do his job, this week announced the arrests and indictments of four individuals who had stolen millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars. They were supposed to house and help the homeless, but they helped themselves instead.
After the indictments were announced and after the U.S. House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Authority operators to please come to Washington to have a little chat — under oath — the homeless authority announced it no longer wanted to receive federal funding and, in fact, plans to get out of the homeless business entirely.
Bass and the people in Los Angeles who have run this agency into the ground after bilking taxpayers for years are getting out of the homeless business.
The California Post reports, “LAHSA will not seek to retain responsibility for the annual application for federal homelessness funding, the Homeless Management Information System, the annual point-in-time count or the coordinated-entry system.”
The same federal funding that came from your pockets and mine. The same federal funding lost after these alleged California homeless advocates threw piles of cash in front of an industrial fan and pointed it in the general direction of people who deserve to be in prison.
Follow-up: “Satellite imagery shows significant damage to Moscow Oil Refinery after Ukraine’s drone strike yesterday. Multiple strikes are recorded and oil tanks confirmed destroyed. Additionally, a Pantsir booster intercepted a car.”
“Big JDAM Air Strike on Troop Concentration in Bilytske, Donetsk.” Early in the war, Ukraine couldn’t have carried out a JDAM strike, due to fears of Russian aircraft and SAM batteries, indicating serious Ukrainian degradation of those categories of Russian weapons.
More winning: “Cuba Hit With National Power Grid Collapse As Oil Sources Dry Up.”
Cuba’s power grid collapsed once again this week, this time at a national level, leaving millions of people across the island without electricity. This is the sixth time since the US cut off fuel sources to the island since January that the national grid has collapsed and it’s the most utility shutdown events in the country’s recent history.
Even when Cuba’s grid is in operation, only 30% of the population at most receives electricity at any given time. Many regions stay dark 20 to 30 hours at a stretch. Some provinces have reported 60–90 hours without power. Havana has gone from 4 hours a day early in the year to 18 hours after the fuel cutoff.
“Protocols are now in place to begin the gradual restoration of the system,” said Felix Estrada, an official with Cuba’s National Electrical Union (UNE). Power had returned to a handful of scattered neighborhoods in Havana by late evening, primarily around hospitals, but much of the city remained completely dark.
Many exhausted residents of the capital Havana were already without power when the national blackout hit.
“Yesterday I’d gone without power for 24 hours. They turned the lights on for an hour, and then the grid collapsed,” said Frank Lorenzo, a 23-year-old Havana resident.
Iranian citizens have witnessed some dazzling laser shows recently — but they’re not the kind you’d see at a Metallica concert.
The US military has been deploying lasers in the Strait of Hormuz to knock out regime hardware, taking out “drones and incoming cruise missiles at a much lower cost than using more expensive kinetic weapons like missiles,” the Department of War recently confirmed.
The US project to harness laser power has been 50 years in the making and outstrips the capabilities of any other military on Earth.
A linked story suggests it’s the High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Greg Gutfeld is rightly upset that Austin’s commie twerp of a U.S. rep is more upset at an illegal alien getting shot than the murder of Andrew Wimsatt, an American citizen he theoretically represented.
On Labor Day a man, Andrew Wimsatt, was viciously murdered in an Austin Park – in an attempted beheading. This creep didn’t give two shits about it.
We often hear leftists accuse billionaires of buying government, and most times the accusations are at least partly off-base.
But not always, and sometimes they are literally doing precisely that: putting privately funded leftists into government offices to run a parallel government that nobody ever voted for. It’s a technocrat’s wet dream.
One such program, funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, placed and paid the salaries of “government employees” strategically inserted into Attorney General offices in Blue states, funding regulations and lawsuits aimed at targets that Bloomberg’s NYU-based NGO program identified as vulnerable to its pressure. The goal was, of course, fighting climate change.
BREAKING: Bloomberg-Backed Climate Group Paying Salaries of Democratic State AG Officials Quietly Shuts Down Amid Congressional, Legal Scrutiny.
“A group housed at the New York University School of Law and backed by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg quietly closed its doors in late August amid congressional scrutiny into its funding and operations. The so-called State Energy and Environmental Impact Center’s signature initiative involved placing paid, climate-focused “fellows” in Democrat-controlled state attorney general offices nationwide as those offices sued the oil industry and other energy providers.”
Think of it as a cousin to “Zuckerbucks,” where a private entity funds a program that places people in government offices as either quasi- or fully government employees, with a mandate to pursue the NGO’s agenda. The same sort of thing happens with grants to news organizations, where an outside group pays for employees or “coverage” of specific issues, and the stories are still technically the product of the news organization, but the content is directed at producing the results desired by the people who cut the checks.
Snip.
Bloomberg, cut a big check to NYU, which in turn established a program to place its people directly into the offices of State Attorneys General, where they proceeded to sue and harass businesses targeted by the organization.
James Comer opened an investigation into the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, and out of the blue, it closed. He sought documents from it, and “poof!” It’s gone.
In my view, Angela Merkel bears a grave responsibility for the collapse of the centre and the growing ability of the political extremes to set the agenda.
The almost one-third of voters who would support Alternative für Deutschland in a national election are not fascists or Nazis. A substantial proportion are disillusioned CDU voters.
What has disappointed these voters? First, what I see as Merkel’s failures on so many fronts: immigration. Security. Energy. A sustainable strategy for business and economic growth. Digitalisation. Infrastructure maintenance. The list is almost endless.
Second, the extraordinary denial of reality that, in my assessment, Merkel allowed to take hold when it came to immigrants’ responsibility for antisemitism, violence against women, terrorism and gang crime.
Coming from Denmark, where we have reliable statistics on all these matters, I find it frankly shocking to listen to the nonsense coming from Germany’s political elite.
But I would also trace back to Merkel the rise of what is often called “Islamo-leftism” – a tendency that has recently gained ground in Sweden and is also growing in Germany. In Sweden, polls have indicated that 85 per cent of Muslim voters support parties to the left of centre, with almost one in five supporting the Left Party, Vänsterpartiet – a party tainted by antisemitism and the glorification of terrorism. I see no compelling reason to assume that the pattern in Germany is fundamentally different.
My argument, then, is that it is not only the rise in support for the AfD that can be traced back to Merkel. The same applies to the growing support for parties on the German left that promote the political and religious views of a significant proportion of the people, Merkel invited to Germany. Not least on the Gaza question.
Both Democrats and the international left has derided President Trump’s focus on Greenland, saying the U.S. controlling it was a fantasy. Now that he’s signed an agreement with Denmark, I doubt they’re laughing now.
The US-Greenland-Denmark agreement has now been published. I haven’t read it, but Arnaud Bertrand has. This is his analysis of the terms, which appear very favorable to the United States, and well calculated to achieve the goal of preventing undue influence over the Arctic by any hostile power.
Snip.
To sum up:
– The US secured a permanent military foothold that even an independent Greenland would inherit whether it likes it or not
– The US now has veto power over any non-NATO military presence in Greenland, and over who can invest in its strategic infrastructure and resources (beyond NATO and the EU)
– Denmark signed away its say over the principle of new US bases, with only the right to discuss the “implementation details”
– Danish authorities no longer set the rules for US military movement across the island
– And all of it is now justified by the defense of “the American continent”
Lindsay Clancy holdout juror Michael P. Desronvil speaks out.
Michael is a Catholic from a Haitian immigrant family and moved to Massachusetts when he was a young child.
The liberal women who so badly want to destroy him for refusing to acquit a child killer do not know how to handle that. Their woke brains simply cannot compute how to proceed.
Several jurors who wanted to let Clancy off the hook have claimed that Michael did not follow the jury instructions, but they have incriminated themselves with statements indicating they had an ideological agenda in the courtroom. Michael says he “kept getting cut off” by these other jurors, who apparently knew his own thoughts better than him.
This lines up with a statement from a fourth juror who says she was ultimately badgered into changing her vote.”
A female 4th juror comes forward and says the other jurors were pushing to acquit on *DAY 1*
In fact, a whole lot of basic jury procedures seem to have been discarded in the Clancy trial. “Lindsay Clancy jurors broke cardinal rule and used phones to RESEARCH killer mom during deliberations, holdout claims.”
“Feds arrest, indict hundreds in Trump voter fraud crackdown: ‘Catching it all over the country.’ The Justice Department says its crackdown on noncitizen voting and election fraud has already produced more than 200 arrests and indictments, with that number possibly doubling soon and state election officials themselves now facing potential charges for looking the other way.”
Since the Trump Justice Department warned state and local election officials that they could be charged with allowing fraudulent voting activities, more than 200 arrests and indictments have been secured in a crackdown on election fraud and noncitizen voting, and that number could double soon, a top official revealed to Just the News.
“I think there are a lot of nervous election officials because I think some of them know that they’ve been looking the other way when this is happening, and we’re catching it all over the country,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Monday night in an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.
Dhillon also hinted at further developments in the coming weeks, suggesting her department has developed evidence calling into question New Jersey’s claim that a computer glitch allowed thousands of foreigners to register to vote in that state and about 400 to actually cast ballots in violation of law.
“I’m not sure we have the correct numbers from New Jersey. They’re not really cooperating with us, and so we will get to the bottom of what happened there. And you know, New Jersey tried to blame a vendor for a mistake or a glitch, quote unquote. But you know, I think there’ll be another side to that story,” she said.
Snip.
Over the weekend, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News that his agency is investigating 1,620 cases of voter fraud involving noncitizens and has made 151 arrests. He said his department is also looking into an additional 300,000 cases based on states’ voter rolls.
That thing that never happens keeps happening. “DOJ Charges 16 Noncitizens in Voter Fraud Cases.”
Howard Dean speaks to the ChiComs: “DNC Chairman Emeritus Howard Dean delivered the American welcome address at a China dialogue involving the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank identified in congressional commission testimony as ‘run by Chinese intelligence.’ The Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament, which co-organized the event, has an equally explicit allegiance. Its charter says it: ‘upholds the comprehensive leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Ties between the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the proposed EPIC City development in North Texas came under scrutiny during a recent U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing chaired by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
EPIC City, which has been criticized as an Islamic enclave and housing development exclusive to Muslims, is a proposal from the East Plano Islamic Center.
The Wednesday hearing of the subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action, and federal rights was titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America.”
Sen. Cruz addressed the fact that Democrat senators failed to attend the meeting, stating that “their campaign is now openly embracing terrorist organizations waging war on America.”
Cruz heard from witnesses that alleged ties between CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and EPIC City.
Arielle F. Klepach, senior litigation counsel for the National Jewish Advocacy Center, called attention to the connection in her written testimony.
She likened the EPIC City development, later rebranded as “The Meadow” following significant backlash, to a pattern of “mega-mosque” building projects in Europe commonly motivated by “Islamist separatism.”
This movement is a “deliberate attempt to cut Muslim communities off spiritually, intellectually, and culturally from the surrounding secular society,” with the building projects in particular “generally [containing] community-like features such as schools, libraries, and gyms,” according to Klepach.
“The American version of this pattern is EPIC City,” Klepach said. “CAIR-Texas and CAIR-DFW have publicly defended EPIC City in the disputes, and CAIR’s national leadership has spoken at the EPIC mosque, reflecting an active advocacy relationship between CAIR and the EPIC religious community.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was designated a foreign terrorist organization by Gov. Greg Abbott late last year, along with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The hearing also revisited CAIR’s role as an unindicted co-conspirator to the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The foundation and five of its officials were convicted of “funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas” during a 2008 federal trial. CAIR was not charged in the case.
Lara Burns, senior research fellow for the George Washington University Program on Extremism, drew the connection between CAIR and Hamas in her written testimony.
“The United States Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee served as the original Hamas infrastructure in the United States, initially consisting of the HLF (the fundraising arm),” alongside others, according to Burns.
“At the [2008] trial, still today the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in American history, [various arms of the Muslim Brotherhood] were identified as unindicted co-conspirators/joint ventures as was [CAIR],” she added.
A father-and-son serial killer house of horror found in Pennsylvania.
A Pennsylvania father and son have come under suspicion after the son was discovered to be traveling with a woman with a fake ID that used the name of a missing woman.
Police searched the home of the man and his dad and found the most disturbing scene imaginable.
he investigation is still unfolding but this is some seriously unsettling stuff going on.
Here’s the latest from ABC 6 in Philly on the now 7 missing women connected to this case against Eugene Horsch and his deceased father RC:
Blair Tonzelli was 35 years old when she went missing in 2023. She was the first woman named in this case.
Police say when Horsch was arrested, he was with a woman in possession of an identification card with Tonzelli’s name on it. The woman allegedly told police Eugene Horsch gave her the ID.
Amy McHale was 44 years old when she was last seen in 2016. Shortly after news broke of Horsch’s arrest, her family told Action she was last seen at the W. Chew Avenue house.
McHale had previously been married to Ray Horsch, who has also become a central figure in this case.
Gabrielle Amarando was 22 years old when she disappeared in 2012.
A childhood friend of Amarando told Action News that loved ones grew increasingly concerned when they stopped hearing from her…
Roughly 14 years later, her family got the confirmation they were looking for.
In August, police said the women were seen in photos and videos recovered during the investigation, in which both are seen alive and then later appearing to be dead.
‘Based on the video and photo evidence — if the images in the video are real and not altered in any way, based on their review — the M.E. would believe the individuals depicted in the images are deceased,’ Philadelphia Police Inspector Ray Evers.
Maribel Fresses was the other woman seen in the videos and photos. She [was] 27 when she disappeared in 2018.
Police also saw photos and videos of two other unidentified women, both alive and then dead, as well as video of the elder Horsch strangling a woman to death.
Five urns believed to have the unidentified remains of five women were found in the home.
Millions of photos and videos have so far revealed that at least 7 women who went missing ultimately met their demise at the hands of the Horsches.
Shades of H. H. Holmes…
UK functionaries go out of their way to protect their precious illegal aliens. “British government mobilizes HUNDREDS of police and defense units to protect migrant boat from British protesters.”
Third World migrants are being led across the channel by French authorities, where British police then escort them into harbor, put them aboard taxpayer-funded coach buses, and give them a police escort with hundreds of officers.
Snip.
Earlier in the day, British protesters gathered by land and by sea to peacefully demonstrate against a group of 60 or so migrants that was set to land in southern England in Gosport.
Because of the protesters gathered along the coast, authorities had to scramble to find a new landing spot for the “newcomers.” The buses were seen with a massive police escort.
The reason for the escort was due to the fear that the British protesters would get “mostly peaceful” and attack the invaders or the masked bus drivers who are helping traffic them into the country:
One GB News reporter summed up the massive taxpayer expenditure that was spent to assist the migrants:
The whole thing from start to finish today, for this one boat of 60-odd or however many it turns out to be, to go all the way flanked by a massive French ship, then to our [Royal National Lifeboat Institution] boats, then all of those resources pumped into Gosport.
And THEN, it looks as though because of the local reaction, they’ve decided to not to that, take them down either to Eastport or Dover or somewhere else anyway.
So goodness knows what the resources are going to be like there.
We are talking MILLIONS of Pounds today alone, for a group of 60 illegal migrants.
Is there any doubt the Labour government prioritizes importing illegal aliens into the country over taking care of their own citizens?
Forget about Somali daycare fraud for a moment – have you heard about toddler fight club? A daycare in Fort Worth, TX is facing investigations and litigation after evidence showed staff abusing young children and forcing them to fight each other.
One mother, Heather Harris, knew something was wrong when she picked up her 4-year-old son at the Arka Montessori Academy of Risinger daycare. He was crying uncontrollably and was covered in bruises. Employees told the mother her son had fought with another child, but their explanations did not add up, according to a lawsuit filed this month by Harris and her husband, Richard Harris. She insisted on seeing the classroom’s surveillance footage.
The disturbing footage shows staff at the daycare swing a child around like a rag-doll and trying to force him to fight another child.
I’m skipping right past the obvious “First Rule of Toddler Fight Club” joke to point out that if my (theoretical) kid were forced into that, both daycare and the employees would be facing both a huge civil lawsuit and criminal charges.
More horrifying child abuse: “Transgender ICU nurse arrested on multiple counts of abusing NICU baby at Michigan hospital.”
[Kieran Ansley], a now-former nurse at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital has been charged with child abuse after a 4-month-old girl in his [sic] care was found with multiple broken bones and bruising.
The injuries were noticed by the infant’s mother during an early morning visit in April, records show. Tests and a full skeletal survey found multiple fractures, including broken leg bones and multiple bruises, court records show. Bruising was found on the infant’s hands, arms, thigh, buttocks, abdomen and tongue, court records show.
‘The totality of the findings resulted in a diagnosis of pediatric physical abuse,’ court documents show.
More horrifying details snipped. Hell’s too good for him.
Dallas’ “Y’all Street” continues to capitalize on momentum as the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) enters a new era of growth.
North Texas has added a stock exchange alongside its iconic stockyards, and companies are beginning to flock to the TXSE’s transfer portal. TXSE opened in July, and September has seen the first corporate commitments and primary listing transfers.
On September 16, Texas Capital’s Texas Equity Index exchange-traded fund (ETF) and Texas Oil Index ETF became the TXSE’s first primary listings. The company’s CEO, President, and Chairman, Rob Holmes, rang the bell on “Y’all Street” to celebrate the company’s primary listing transfer. Texas Capital was formerly listed on the Nasdaq.
Holmes stated in a Bloomberg interview about the transfer, “Once this exchange came to fruition, it was our responsibility to look at the three exchanges and pick the best one for Texas Capital.”
He praised the TXSE’s investor base as an affirmation of the exchange’s technological and strategic innovation. The TXSE saw over $275 million in total investment, with major investors including BlackRock, JP Morgan Chase, and Charles Schwab.
Competing securities exchanges include the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, both based in New York City.
Holmes asserted that TXSE’s net present value (NPV) is “better” than its New York rivals.
“On this exchange, instead of just paying a fee, we pay a fee, but at the end of the day we have a net cash position from the exchange,” he said.
If someone can explain what that last sentence means, please do so in the comments…
“Democrat candidate caught crying in the back of cop car after DUI arrest. Washington state Democratic House candidate Krista Perez was seen crying, praying and sobbing in the back of a patrol car after her DUI arrest.” Washington state has a jungle primary, with two Democratic candidates for House of Representatives District 29-Position 1 (the state has 49 districts of two reps each) facing each other in November, so Republicans won’t be able to take advantage here.
Jay Leno’s Law, exempting classic cars from California’s draconian emissions regulations, was signed into law in a rare act of sanity from Governor Hairgel. But note it doesn’t take effect until January 1, 2028.
Paramount and Netflix continue to fight over control of Warner Brothers, with California’s state government continuing to oppose the Paramount bid, the sticking point reportedly being preserving liberal control of geriatric news network CNN. As a result, Paramount is threatening to move out of California over the state’s opposition to the merger and their generally business hostile environment. And one potential destination for Paramount’s new HQ is Austin.
Austin could soon be home to more film and television productions as a major Hollywood studio eyes Texas for a potential move.
Paramount is considering relocating some of its operations out of California as the company fights to close its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Austin has emerged as a possible destination.
The potential move is far from a done deal. But according to the New York Post, Paramount CEO David Ellison and his partners are in discussions about establishing a movie and television studio at the Bluebonnet Business Center at 9219 Old Manor Road in East Austin.
If Paramount follows through, the move could give Austin a new role as an operations base for one of the entertainment industry’s largest companies.
Austin already has a long history with filmmaking, from the independent movies that helped put the city on Hollywood’s radar to a growing network of production facilities. And if Paramount ultimately chooses the reported East Austin site, it would be joining a particularly film-heavy stretch of Old Manor Road.
Snip.
The nearly $111 billion deal has received approval from the U.S. Department of Justice and other regulators, but California and 11 other states have sued to block the merger, arguing that it would reduce competition in the entertainment industry.
And the Netflix bid wouldn’t? It would essentially mean the end of the movie theater business in America.
Paramount has agreed to delay closing the deal while the antitrust case proceeds. The trial is scheduled to begin March 2, 2027. But beginning Oct. 1, Paramount is expected to owe Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders $7 million per day in so-called “ticking fees” until the deal closes. Paramount has estimated that the fees could total roughly $1.3 billion if the case stretches into the spring.
According to Variety, Ellison has reportedly told senior executives that Paramount could begin the process of moving operations out of California on Oct. 1 if California Attorney General Rob Bonta does not agree to settlement negotiations by then.
The New York Post reported that Austin is among the possible destinations, with Paramount reportedly exploring the Bluebonnet Business Center. Paramount has not formally announced a move to Austin, and the company’s California exit remains contingent on the outcome of the antitrust dispute.
California Democrats seem to believe that private businesses should serve the needs of the Party, not the interests of shareholders. California’s high tax, high regulation environment has been sending businesses streaming toward the exits for decades, and now film-making, the industry that’s defined California’s image to the world for over a century, looks poised to exit “Hotel California” while they still have a chance to leave.
RFK, Jr. presses the pause button for medicaid payments over Democrat fraud, we pound Iran some more, Ukraine sinks floating cranes and sets giant logistics hubs aflame, and a punk rock auction.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have paused more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota due to fraud concerns.
“That includes more than $887 million for California and over $200 million for Minnesota,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference. “If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”
“In Minnesota and California, our reviews are going back to just over the last few years, turned up the same recurring theme again and again every single quarter: Claims in these same high-risk categories that the states have not yet been able to document fully and acceptably to the federal government. Claims that are unresolved and claims that smell like fraud. And if it smells like fraud, we’re not paying for it anymore.”
RFK Jr. says HHS loses $100,000,000,000 a year to theft.
He found some thieves would bribe poor people with flat screen TVs to get their patient numbers and enroll them in hospice.
Then they would proceed to bill Medicaid “$6,000 a month FOREVER.”
RFK JR: “We shut down 800 hospices. You know what a hospice is? Where you’re going to die. Typically, if you go to a hospice, you leave within 18 days because your dying is terminal.”
“We started looking at these hospices in Los Angeles, and the people never died. Two or three years later they were there, and we’re paying $6,000 a month.”
“We found a hotel room with 29 hospices in it. I mean a hotel, every room was a hospice, and none of them had any patients. They were just addresses.”
“The guys who own them, they were Estonians and Armenians and people from Eastern Europe who were getting the patient numbers. They were stealing them from doctors’ offices.”
“They were also going into poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles and they’d say to the people, ‘We’ll give you this $375 flat-screen TV. You give us your patient number and we’re going to enroll you in this hospice. You don’t ever have to go. We’re just going to enroll you,’ and then we’ll charge Medicaid $6,000 a month forever. And the guy never dies, of course, because he was never sick.”
“We didn’t get a single call from a congressman or from a business owner saying, ‘Oh, you shut down my hospice and all these patients are on the street.’ None of them, because they were all crooked and they knew they were crooke
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces successfully completed the 13th straight night of strikes against Iran, July 23, at 9 p.m. ET.
CENTCOM targeted Iranian military command centers, drone storage facilities, communication networks, coastal surveillance sites, and maritime capabilities to further diminish the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The international waterway remains open for transit despite recent attacks from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Commercial vessels continue to freely navigate the strait with U.S. military support.
I’m noticing a couple of dogs that aren’t currently barking: Hezbollah and Hamas. It turns out that when your paymaster is broke, running out of missiles and getting the snot blown out of them, they don’t have a lot of time, money and attention to lavish on helping their two catspaws murder Jews…
When President Donald Trump talked about some of the things China has done to literally steal our democracy by seeing to it that, in 2020, its Manchurian candidate was elected in the form of a semi-comatose Joe Biden, many of the things he mentioned had already been in the news, but they may not have been covered by the legacy media.
Case in point: Trump mentioned in his July 16 address to the nation that China stole TikTok data to create fake U.S. driver’s licenses.
If you follow conservative media, you may have known this. If you get your news from the legacy media, you most likely didn’t know it, and if you heard it now, you won’t believe it. That’s the group Trump was targeting in his address. His national address strategy was to speak past the legacy media and to begin the process of planting the seeds of the truth in the minds of those who rely on the CNNs, ABCs, and NBCs of the world.
Strategically, Trump is now trying to break through the information barrier that the legacy media and the left have created to keep the majority of Americans in the dark on what’s really happened to corrupt our elections.
A year ago, Brooke Singman published a lengthy piece on the Fox News website that detailed just how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) executed its TikTok data theft scheme. Her primary source for the story was the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
The Senate Judiciary Committee launched its own investigation into this after the FBI had announced its own investigation in July 2025. As Singman reported, the CCP allegedly worked to get “fake driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S. who would cast a vote for candidate Biden.”
It is not clear how successful the CCP was in getting its ballots for Biden to count.
In July 2025, a Grassley spokesperson told Fox News, “Chairman Grassley is in receipt of an FBI document (response) to a request he made based on legally protected whistleblower disclosures…. The document alleges serious national security concerns that need to be fully investigated by the FBI.”
As stated in that document, the intent of the alleged scheme was for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to produce and export fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S., so as to create “tens of thousands of fraudulent mail-in votes for US Presidential candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.”
According to the document at the center of these investigations, by August 2020, “the Chinese government had produced a large amount of fraudulent United States driver’s licenses that were secretly exported to the United States,” Fox News reported.
The fraudulent drivers licenses would allow tens of thousands of Chinese students and immigrants sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party to vote for US Presidential Candidate USPER Joe ((Biden)), despite not being eligible to vote in the United States… China had collected private US user data from millions of TikTok accounts, to include name, ID and address, which would allow the Chinese government to use real US persons’ information to create the fraudulent driver’s license, the document states.
Reporting on the investigation indicates that the fake IDs included true ID numbers and the true addresses of U.S. citizens, which made the fraud difficult to detect.
“China planned to use the fraudulent driver’s licenses to account for tens of thousands of mail-in votes,” according to the document.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill spurned the Department of Justice’s request for information on the nearly 6,600 noncitizens who were improperly added to the state’s voter rolls, raising the ire of Trump administration officials who are making election security a priority heading in the November midterms.
The move follows Sherrill’s announcement on Tuesday that thousands of noncitizens had been added to New Jersey voter rolls, with 400 individuals casting ballots. Later that day, the DOJ requested the names, addresses, nationalities, and registration locations of the 6,600 non-citizens who were marked as voters, even though they identified themselves as noncitizens. Noncitizens convicted of voting in U.S. elections can face criminal penalties including deportation.
“Ensuring that U.S. citizen’s votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizen’s votes is of paramount importance,” the letter from the DOJ stated.
Sherrill voiced concerns that the information would be misused by the DOJ.
“We are not in the practice of turning this kind of personally identifying data over to the federal government because we have seen them weaponize it,” Sherrill said at an event on Thursday.
And by “weaponize” she means “Keeping our precious illegal aliens from voting for Democrats and/or deporting them.” You know, enforcing the law.
Here’s Melat Kiros, a “democratic” socialist activist, explaining the party’s plan to fundamentally change America by electing people from the “Global South”….
That’s the explicit plan from the DSA.
Mass immigration, elect immigrants to office Mamdani and Ilhan Omar-style, and have them fundamentally change what America is.
On February 2, 2021, a national targeting security specialist at U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center circulated a referral to colleagues across the agency. The subject was Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, scheduled to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport three days later aboard Qatar Airways flight 701 from Doha, arriving 2:25 p.m. He was returning from the World Health Organization’s mission to Wuhan investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The referral asked that Daszak be considered for a Tactical Terrorism Response Team examination – a secondary inspection that can include questioning and a review of electronic devices. Which, now we know, never happened.
Senator Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the underlying records Monday. They show CBP flagged Daszak as “an extremely high person of interest,” built out a formal targeting event, and then stood down two days before his flight at the request of the FBI’s New York Field Office.
It’s bad enough that Zohran Mamdani has become the leader of the new Democratic Party, having been anointed by none other than its King, Barack Obama. But now, their shining new star, Hasan Piker, is not even bothering to hide behind the words “Democratic Socialist.” He’s gone full-blown Commie.
These pitiful cosplay revolutionaries are not a match for Donald Trump, who can flick them off his jacket like a piece of lint, but he only has a few more years left, and the Democrats are collapsing into an even more fanatical cult. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Mamdani had made big promises to “arrest Benjamin Netanyahu” if he ever came to New York as a “war criminal.” But he had to backtrack on that because he doesn’t have the authority to do so because Trump smacked him down.
He still calls on the Federal Government to make the arrest. To me, he looks like someone who believes he’s the alternative president in our virtual Civil War, like a would-be Jefferson Davis.
Snip.
Hasan Piker is now riding high on his newfound fame and glory. He proudly displays the front page of the New York Times with the Twin Towers ablaze after 9/11 and has said on streaming that the US “deserved” it, later clarifying that our foreign policy was bad enough that we should be attacked.
Hasan Piker is dangerous because he is so stupid. He’s so stupid, he doesn’t even seem to know the horrific atrocities under Mao. He showed up at a recent Democratic event wearing a Mao costume.
Hasan Piker, like Zohran Mamdani, like all of the Manson family girlies who fawn all over them, were raised in American schools amid Critical Race and Gender Theory, the so-called “real history” they indoctrinated our kids with. Now we are seeing the fruits of their labor.
It’s Joseph McCarthy’s ultimate nightmare finally realized. Maybe it wasn’t true that the military was infested with Commies, but if it came back to today, he’d see evidence of infiltration everywhere, from culture to academia to politics.
If the Democrats go Full Commie thanks to the stalking horse of Social Justice, then it really will be time to stock up on ammunition. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
For those who know, rigged elections do happen in the Americas. They’ve been happening for years in Nicaragua, ever since the Sandinistas brought Daniel Ortega to power in the 1980s.
Many young people will have forgotten that there was massive enthusiasm for the Sandinistas across the international left. Five years ago, Quillette ran a wonderful piece about the support for Sandinistas found across the American left. It’s amazing how many leftists of the 1980s who went for the Sandinistas have stayed with us: Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio.
The poor in Nicaragua are in a wretched condition. Ortega effectively made himself president for life when he exceeded the country’s constitutional limits on his office. This week, he finally announced plans for the abolition of elections. He explained in a public rant that this was necessary to stop “the traitors.”
The only thing missing was Ortega announcing that he had to end elections “to save our democracy.”
I was writing about this commie scumbag back in college, and he’s long overdue to be dirtnapped. Maybe after we’ve finished with Venezuela, Iran and Cuba…
“Two Democratic Senate candidates have received backlash for accepting donations from a Democrat megadonor with former ties to Jeffrey Epstein. James Talarico and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D- Ga., who is running for re-election, have both received donations from Reid Hoffman, a billionaire who has admitted to spending time on Epstein’s Caribbean island.” It’s always OK when they do it…
“University of Houston Poised To Eliminate 40 Percent of Core Curriculum.” Which is a good thing, since the “core curriculum” items being eliminated are absolute social justice bullshit.
As first reported by the Houston Chronicle, UH officials are currently finalizing a proposal to bring before University of Houston System regents at the August board meeting.
The Chronicle reported that approximately 100 courses are on the chopping block. Examples include:
Black Liberation Theology
Black Liberation Studies
Intro to LGBT Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Latino Leadership, Activism, and Organizing
Mexican American Urban Communities
Sexuality and Society
The Chronicle further reported that while UH will eliminate core eligibility for coursework explicitly grounded in grievance studies, government and history coursework discussing “histories for specific demographics” was not impacted.
The review in question is required under Senate Bill 37, a measure state lawmakers passed in 2025. The new law also requires boards of regents to conduct a review of all general education curricula every five years.
General education requirements are a set of courses all students must complete, regardless of major. Higher education authors Jason Brennan and Phil Magness have criticized these mandates as a subsidy for economically unsustainable programs that frequently protect woke curricula from accountability.
Eliminate them all and lay off those teaching them.
Ukraine has agreed on a plan to acquire 16 Rafale fighter jets from France together with the accompanying weapon systems, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a press conference here late Monday following a meeting of the group of countries that have pledged support to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Macron agreed on a roadmap between their two countries that also includes the acquisition of a first batch of SAMP/T NG air-defense batteries, complementing systems and their missiles to be delivered in coming weeks, Macron said. France will also provide radar systems and additional missiles, the president said.
The countries further approved licensing agreements for production in Ukraine of the AASM glide-bomb kit, the Aster 30 air-defense interceptor that arms the SAMP/T system as well as the SCALP/Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile, Macron said.
Don’t get too excited, though. “The first Rafale jets are expected to fly in Ukrainian skies as early as 2028 or 2029.”
Concerning news: “U.S. Reaches 41 New World Screwworm Cases as Sterile Fly Production Continues Rollout.”
Primary news: “Trump-backed candidates, including ex-Giants, Jets kicker Jay Feely, easily win Arizona primaries — socialist House hopeful gets smoked.”
A full slate of Republican candidates endorsed by President Trump, including former NFL kicker Jay Feely, emerged victorious Tuesday in Arizona’s primary elections while a Democratic socialist House hopeful suffered a crushing defeat.
Feely, who played for six teams — including the Jets and Giants — during his 14 seasons as a pro, defeated former state lawmaker Joseph Chaplik in the Grand Canyon State’s 1st Congressional District, which covers northeastern Maricopa County and is the wealthiest in Arizona.
The 1st District seat is being vacated by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), who opted to run for governor. Democrats have targeted the district as a key flip opportunity as they try to regain the House majority after four years out of power.
Feely, a former CBS football analyst who was endorsed by Trump in January, touted his close ties to the president on the campaign trail.
“Who can call [Trump] and who can get him to answer? That’s me,” he said during a primary debate last month. “He will take my call and he will listen. I have the ability to have the ear of the president.”
In the Democratic primary, former state Rep. Amish Shah led onetime TV journalist Marlene Galán-Woods by 6.9 percentage points with 84% of the expected vote in, but the race had yet to be called as of Wednesday morning.
In the open 5th District, Trump-backed former Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb topped construction contractor Daniel Keenan by nearly 17 percentage points.
Lamb, who rose to prominence for taking on Mexican cartels smuggling drugs across the border and into Arizona, will head to the midterms as the heavy favorite over Democratic nominee Elizabeth Lee in the solidly red district.
Snip.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who has represented the 5th District since 2017, opted not to seek another term and ran in the GOP gubernatorial primary instead.
That decision paid off handsomely as Biggs, with the support of Trump, topped Schweikert Tuesday night by nearly 60 percentage points.
Snip.
In the 4th District, centered in the Phoenix suburbs of Tempe and Mesa, incumbent Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) swamped Democratic socialist primary challenger Kai Newkirk by 30 percentage points.
Newkirk, who accused Stanton of being too supportive of Israel and corporations and slammed the congressman’s vote in favor of the Laken Riley Act mandating illegal immigrants who are arrested, charged or convicted of “burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting” be held by immigration authorities.
Food contamination news: “Nearly 1.6M eggs from Texas farms recalled for possible Salmonella contamination.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a statement on Wednesday detailing the voluntary recall of 1,589,577 dozen eggs from Midwest Poultry Services, L.P., which may be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis.
Midwest Poultry Services said that as of Wednesday, it was not aware of any illnesses related to the eggs.
The identifying codes printed on the left or right sides of the carton P-1950 or 0840962 with a Julian date between 157 and 184 are recalled, according to the FDA report. They were available to consumers at Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana, as well as Brookshire Grocery locations across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Mississippi. The full list of products that have been recalled is provided in the FDA’s announcement.
“Judge puts temporary pause on Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.” “U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order barring Paramount from closing the transaction, a corporate tie-up that would unite two movie studios, two streaming platforms and two news organizations under the control of David Ellison, the son of billionaire technology tycoon Larry Ellison.” I know you’ll be shocked to learn that Martínez-Olguín was appointed by “Joe Biden.”
Missed this from a couple of months ago: “Every Single Horse Running In The 151st Kentucky Derby Is Related To Secretariat.”
“Astronomers announce the discovery of space sugar.
Using the Yebes 40-m and IRAM 30-m radio telescopes, the astronomers scanned the molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027, a chemically rich region located roughly 8,200 parsecs (26,745 light-years) from Earth near the Milky Way’s center.
They picked up 12 sets of radio emission lines that matched the predicted spectral fingerprint of erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar with the chemical formula C4H8O4.
‘Erythrulose, with 14 atoms in its structure, represents the largest non-cyclic molecular species identified so far in the interstellar medium, and the first detected molecule containing four oxygen atoms,’ they said.
Potter and Potter have an auction for “Skaters, Punks & Rebels: A Countercultural Cross-Section” next month. Probably not bidding on anything, but man, a 1983 concert with Black Flag, Fear and Circle Jerks would have been something to behold…
So here’s a video arguing that, since humans are primates, doing a deadhang improves a whole lot of muscle groups. It says most people struggle to do ten seconds at first. Since I don’t have a chinning bar, that’s not an exercise I can do at home, so I did two separate ten second hangs last Saturday on park equipment while I was out walking my dogs. Result: A few hour later my left wrist was in quite a bit of pain, but that faded over a day. This Saturday I think I’ll go for 12 seconds…but only once.
As usual, open video tabs start to accumulate on things that aren’t quite worth a separate post, but a bit too interesting to throw into a LinkSwarm. So here’s a tab-clearing roundup.
Inside Apple’s push for domestic semiconductor production:
Includes a look at TSMC’s Arizona fab complex, an ASML EUV stepper (which we covered here), and a Foxconn assembly line.
The title of this Jordan Petersen lecture is “Why South Park Works,” but it’s actually about how human perception works.
As a bonus, here’s a version of the basketball-gorilla test he talks about.
Critical Drinker on Paramount winning Warner Brothers:
New boss David Ellison is a fan of male action heroes, and not a fan of “The Message.” “I think it’s fair to say this guy sees middle America for what it is, a potentially huge market that’s been badly neglected in recent years, mostly by people who absolutely hate them.”
“If ever there was a definitive signal that the age of identity politics and the message has come to an end in Hollywood, I think this just might be it. The great experiment that’s decimated pop culture for the past decade is well and truly over. Good fucking riddance.”
Testing Ukrainian anti-drone shotgun slugs:
Basically metal petals attached with string.
Why Teddy Roosevelt didn’t fight in World War I:
To grossly boil down: because Woodrow Wilson didn’t want a no-win situation of either an ex-president ending up dead in a trench or making Roosevelt so popular again that he could beat him in the 1920 presidential election.
Jobs are down, more Minnesota fraud uncovered, a bunch of military action outside the Persian Gulf, an Austin jihad shooter, Noem gets the Old Yeller treatment, Bill Clinton remains Bill Clinton, and Microsoft, amazingly, manages to get even worse.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Also consider this your “Iran Strikes: Day 7” update with a smattering of news as well. There are reports that Kurdish forces have entered Iran from Iraq, but I’m not seeing sufficient evidence for that yet.
Interesting chart showing Iran has likely “blown its wad” on missiles and drones, as day by day fewer and fewer are being launched.
Update Numbers as of Mar. 6, 12.00 AM The numbers are rounded and compiled from various media reports, with a margin of error of ±10% 15% **Corrected previous Post there was a Mistake https://t.co/eDlVfc3nzApic.twitter.com/UiHAU0yNHe
The Supreme Court upheld the standard for reviewing asylum cases, keeping it in the hands of immigration agencies.
Yes, even the leftist justices agreed. 9-0.
“We granted certiorari to determine whether the Court of Appeals applied the appropriate standard of review under the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act],” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “We conclude that the statute requires application of the substantial evidence standard to the agency’s conclusion that a given set of undisputed facts does not constitute persecution.”
Top officials in Minnesota were made aware of fraud concerns surrounding government assistance programs as early as 2019 but failed to take action as billions of dollars were stolen and warnings piled up.
Former Minnesota state officials testified to the House Oversight Committee that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were first informed that the state’s social services programs had been compromised by widespread fraud in 2019 and 2020, according to a new report from the committee.
“Testimony obtained by the Committee reveals that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of widespread fraud in social service programs, lied about their knowledge of the fraud, and retaliated against employees who dared to raise concerns. Instead of protecting vulnerable Americans, they handed over billions in taxpayer dollars to fraudsters and threw their own state employees under the bus,” said House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.).
Several different entities and state-level programs are implicated in Minnesota’s fraud scandal. The most prominent program is Feeding Our Future, which fraudsters targeted during the Covid era to steal $300 million from the Minnesota Department of Education that had been designated to provide food to poor children. Feeding Our Future is now dissolved and dozens of defendants have been convicted in connection with the scheme since 2022.
According to the committee report, Minnesota Department of Education officials first received allegations of fraud against Feeding Our Future from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019. The USDA alleged Feeding Our Future was created with forged signatures and misled sponsored food distribution sites about certain federal requirements. Minnesota officials dismissed the allegations at the time. By April 2020, Walz and Ellison’s offices were briefed about the Minnesota Department of Education’s concerns regarding Feeding Our Future, Assistant Commissioner Daron Korte testified to the committee. State officials contacted the USDA about Feeding Our Future in late 2020, but the agency’s inspector general did not act, a failure that emboldened the scammers at Feeding Our Future.
The Oversight Committee report asserts that Minnesota officials could have suspended payments to Feeding Our Future but chose not to because of potential litigation and racism accusations. Minnesota officials blamed the USDA and Feeding Our Future for perpetuating the large-scale fraud. In March 2021, the Minnesota Department of Education stopped payments to Feeding Our Future, but resumed payments voluntarily the following month after a court hearing on the matter. A court order was never issued requiring the payments, contradicting Walz’s 2022 assertion to the contrary. The lack of a court order was confirmed during the course of the Oversight Committee’s investigation.
In early 2019, Walz’s administration became aware of fraud tied to two programs administered by Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, former agency commissioner Tony Lourey testified. Another former commissioner, Jodi Harpstead, testified that Walz’s administration believed fraud connected to a child care program run out of the Department of Human Services had already been resolved. But the Oversight Committee report references two auditor reports showing otherwise, both of which were issued in 2019. The Department of Human Services lacked fraud mitigation mechanisms and felt pressure to get money out the door to justify state appropriations, the committee found. Despite credible allegations of fraud, the agency failed to act on the warnings and unilaterally stop making payments to the social services programs in question.
The Oversight Committee’s report is based on testimony from nine top current and former state officials, documents and communications, and briefings with federal and state officials. The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office recently speculated that the interwoven fraud schemes totaled nearly $9 billion in misallocated funds. Of the fraud defendants, 85 percent of them come from Minnesota’s Somali-American immigrant community. Social services programs that provide food, child care, housing, and special education have all come under scrutiny as federal investigators unravel the fraud scheme.
I know it’s been easy to overlook in all the other military news this week, but Afghanistan and Pakistan have been going at it as well, though only at a border skirmish level rather than a full-scale conflict. Since the Pakistani ISI helped create the Taliban, this is what’s known as “blowback.”
Rene Campos, a registered sex offender, is seeking elected office in California – launching a campaign for Fresno City Council amid fierce backlash and renewed questions about whether someone with his record should hold public office.
Campos was arrested in 2018 following a cyber tip to the Central California Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He was found in possession of child sex abuse material, according to court records. In 2021 he entered a no-contest plea to a single misdemeanor charge of possessing and controlling child pornography/child sex abuse material (likely under California Penal Code § 311.11). He served only one month in prison and a two year probation period.
Campos describes himself as a gay man who is running for office on the platform of “reduced crime and rehabilitation.”
Possession of child pornography is typically treated as a felony, even in a woke haven like California. How the Fresno candidate was able to make a deal for a misdemeanor charge and spend only one month in prison is a mystery, but this does help to confirm ongoing suspicions that California’s legal system is falling into steep decline.
California is notoriously soft on child sex abusers. Recently, a Sacramento parole board released Daniel Allen Funston, who was convicted in 1999 of sixteen counts of kidnapping and child molestation after a horrific crime spree in Sacramento County, during which he kidnapped, raped, and beat eight children ages 3 to 7.
Funston was originally sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 20 years, but was set free at age 64 due to a California elderly inmate program (maybe he’ll run for office, too).
Data from 2022 shows that the Golden State released over 7000 child sex offenders after less than one year of incarceration. Interestingly, “digital blocks” were added to the Megan’s Law website that prevent more recent analysis.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger is demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement provide warrants before violent illegal criminals are turned over to federal authorities, following the stabbing of a Virginia woman by an illegal immigrant with a long and violent criminal history.
Abdul Jalloh was charged with second-degree murder after Stephanie Minter was brutally stabbed in the neck at a Virginia bus stop. Jalloh had previously been charged more than 40 times, including for egregious crimes such as aggravated assault, malicious wounding, and rape. Prosecutors dropped 20 of the 43 charges against Jalloh. The Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office said the charges were dropped because Jalloh often chose victims who did not have permanent addresses, making the proceedings more difficult.
The Department of Homeland Security said Jalloh is an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone. He entered the United States in 2012.
“ICE previously lodged a detainer against Jalloh in 2020, and he was granted a final order of removal by a judge who found he could be removed to any country other than Sierra Leone,” DHS said in a statement. “This case illustrated the importance of third country removals to get criminal illegal aliens out of the U.S.”
Spanberger insists that in order for Virginia to work with federal authorities, ICE must provide a signed judicial warrant, regardless of the alien’s criminal history. DHS requested cooperation with Virginia and Spanberger to deport Jalloh following his alleged involvement in the fatal stabbing.
“We are calling on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Virginia’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murderer and violent career criminal from their jail without notifying ICE,” Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “This illegal alien’s murder of an innocent, beautiful American woman came less than 24 hours before Governor Spanberger’s demonization of ICE law enforcement. This heinous criminal is a perfect example of why we need cooperation from sanctuary jurisdictions and the importance of third country removals for the safety of the American people.”
What the Trump administration has done on the DEI front represents the beginning of a general reorientation of our politics away from wokeness. One need only survey what prominent leaders of the Left are saying about the political price the Democratic Party has paid on that score. What they are saying indicates a large political change, even if the Dems prove incapable of unmooring themselves from woke politics for the near future.
The first sign of this reorientation is a general shift in the popular mindset: the spell of woke politics has broken. This matters because it was always the way in which woke politics commanded assent in the citizens’ hearts and minds that was crucial. That assent has been questioned or denied now in a broad way, with the backing of public authority (Supreme Court decisions, executive orders, agency directives), and with widespread public support. Wokeness’s public hectoring, punitiveness, and censoriousness, and the extremism of many of its positions on the issues, is unpopular at the level of 70–30 or 80–20 opinion poll divides.
We ought to be confident, therefore, that the broken spell of wokeness augurs a permanent shift in our public life. What that means precisely, however, depends very much on how we understand wokeness and what is done going forward to ensure that woke excess does not return. Now, if, as many say, wokeness was the product of cultural Marxism (Christopher Rufo and a host of followers) or postmodernism (Jordan Peterson and another host of followers), then all that needs to be done is to combat bad ideas. On these interpretations, our universities in particular, and other cultural institutions where the influence of such ideas holds sway, need our attention. Certainly, cultural Marxism and postmodernism represent bad ideas, and the world would be a better place without their influence.
But if what wokeness represents above all is the explosive power of the civil rights revolution and the influence of an aggressive leftist interpretation of anti-discrimination politics, as another band of interpreters claims (I among them), then the task ahead is much bigger and much more difficult.
Trump’s anti-DEI measures, on this view, would represent only the first step in a broader campaign of civil rights reform. One could look long and hard without seeing much in the way of evidence for any such thing so far. Are these current efforts against DEI an illusion, a brief moment of political opportunism that will recede as public hatred of wokeness recedes—only to return in a few years when the next wave of anti-discriminatory passion rises up?
I don’t think that worry is justified. The anti-DEI campaign to date will have enduring consequences because even if it is not yet clear that what is at stake in DEI is civil rights politics, the current reorientation can only have the effect of raising our awareness of the role of anti-discrimination in our public life. This has begun on the all-important moral plane of civil rights politics. Precisely by breaking the spell of its puritanical commands, our anti-woke moment is reworking something essential to civil rights politics. Because public morality is the crucial filter of the human mind, a shift at this level will change what we see, what we think, and what we think we can say. Anti-woke sentiment, backed by changes in the law, is providing a moment of political, cultural, and mental freedom that will necessarily lead, after many decades during which this was not possible, to a general reappraisal of the moral power and the meaning of the civil rights revolution.
Sources have identified the alleged gunman as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne to Nexstar’s KXAN and The Associated Press…
Diagne is originally from Senegal, according to multiple people briefed on the investigation. One of the people told the AP that Diagne came to the U.S. in 2006 and was a naturalized U.S. citizen…
Austin mass killer captured on video wearing ‘Property of Allah’ hoodie during rampage.
“Dallas Democrats Decide To Let DA Creuzot Go. With no Republican in the race, Democrat primary winner Amber Givens will become Dallas County’s next district attorney.” Creuzot was yet another Soros-backed DA, so maybe Dallas Democrats are ever so slowly moving back to sanity.
I’m just going to embed this Asmongold clip of Bill Clinton’s Jeffrey Epstein deposition without comment.
President Trump announced Thursday that Senator Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) will replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary.
The announcement comes after Noem struggled to stand up to a public grilling by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who pressed the former South Dakota governor on Tuesday about a $220 million ad campaign contract that was subcontracted to one of her longtime allies. Trump was furious at Noem for insisting during the hearing that he had personally approved the contract and began floating Mullin’s name as a potential replacement, National Review first reported early Thursday.
Mullin will replace Noem effective March 31. It’s unclear whether Trump plans to nominate Mullin to serve in the position permanently or whether he will serve in an acting capacity, sparing him the necessity of Senate confirmation.
“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”
Already under significant scrutiny due to bipartisan criticism of her handling of Trump’s deportation agenda, Noem ran into further trouble this week during a series of hearings in which multiple lawmakers, most notably Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, asked her to explain why the agency had awarded a $220 million contract to a firm that was founded just days before, without ever opening up the bid to a competitive process. Kennedy also pointed out that part of that ad campaign was subcontracted to a strategy firm owned by Ben Yoho, the husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
A $220 million no-bid ad contract isn’t just wasteful, it’s actively criminal.
More defeats for the gambling lobby: “Two House Chairs Defeated by Challengers. State Reps. Cecil Bell and Stan Kitzman were ousted by Kristen Plaisance and Dennis Geesaman respectively.”
Plaisance ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, securing Texas’ elections, and defending state sovereignty.
Bell’s campaign and allied groups—including the Las Vegas Sands–backed casino lobby and Texans for Lawsuit Reform—reportedly spent more than $1 million attempting to defend the incumbent.
Bell, who chairs the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, had been censured by the Montgomery County Republican Party last year.
Incumbent State Rep. Stan Kitzman of Brookshire has been defeated by Dennis “Goose” Geesaman for the GOP nomination for House District 85. Kitzman served as chair of one of the House’s subcommittees on appropriations.
Geesaman, a pilot and Air Force Academy graduate, retired as a Lt. Colonel. He served five terms on the Flatonia City Council and later served as mayor.
While Texans for Lawsuit Reform and casino-funded PACs backed Kitzman’s reelection campaign, Geesaman ran on a platform of ending magnets for illegal immigration, DOGE-ing Texas, and supporting parental rights.
Kitzman also recently came under investigation for his paid work for a local governmental entity while serving in the Legislature.
Kitzman also voted to impeach Paxton, so I think we’re well rid of both of them.
The war against tranny madness continues. “Paxton Opinion Targets Therapists Behind Child ‘Psychological Transitioning.’ Psychiatric providers who help facilitate prohibited treatments may be barred from receiving public funds and could risk losing their licenses.”
Samsung Electronics America Inc. is one of five companies that have been accused by Attorney General Ken Paxton of collecting and monetizing consumers’ viewing data on smart TVs.
Following the agreement, Samsung will now make changes to not only halt the collection of viewing data without consent, but also update their TVs to include disclosures and consent screens.
Heard from some state agency people that this was coming: “Texas Dismantles DEI-Oriented HUB Network. The comptroller’s office has ended race- and sex-based preferences in state contracting.” Good.
“Former Warren Campaign Worker Says the U.S. Must Be ‘Abolished’ to Atone for Death of Ayatollah Khamenei…Calla Walsh, the communist activist who campaigned for Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Bernie Sanders, and others, said the only way to exact “justice” is the complete deconstruction of the U.S. and Israel.” What percentage of the ideological core of the Democrat Party are actively communist?
One thing that reportedly helped kill Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Brothers: GOP congressmen visiting Netflix headquarters and discovering tampons in the men’s room.
Microsoft seems to be going from bad to worse: “Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser… for your own convenience, embeds Edge into AI assistant, ignores questions about opt-in.”
Microsoft is rolling out a Copilot update to Windows Insiders that embeds web browsing directly into the assistant, opening links in a side panel rather than launching your default browser.
The plan is that users of the Copilot app in Windows will show content in the assistant’s window “so you don’t lose context.”
Copilot will also (with permission) have access to the context of tabs opened in that conversation, so the assistant can look across them when responding to user prompts. Opened tabs will be saved with the conversation so that they can be returned to, and, if a user chooses to enable it, passwords and form data can be synchronized.
Enabling password and form data synchronization might give some users pause for thought, particularly after the Windows Recall fiasco, but users worried about Redmond slurping data should probably consider an alternative to Windows anyway.
At first glance, it looks like embedding Edge into Copilot via the WebView2 control is an attempt to steer the user away from their default browser. Convenient, yes. Good for competition, possibly not. We asked Microsoft whether this would be an opt-in experience and which browser was being used, but, other than acknowledging receipt of our questions, the company did not respond.
It looks like this is going to be limited to corporate users for now, but launching web links without user control strikes me as a huge attack vector for malicious code. (Previously.)
New Zealand “Lesbian Navy Captain Faces Court Martial After $100M Ship Ran Aground, Caught Fire, Sank.” Since that happened all the way back in 2024, they’re certainly not rushing to justice…
Apple has some new computers out, so here’s M5 Pro vs. M5 Max benchmarks. My trailing edge consumer ass is still on an Intel-based MacBook Pro…
“Japanese companies are paying older workers to sit by a window and do nothing—while Western CEOs demand super-AI productivity just to keep your job.” Seems like there should be a happy medium between those two extremes…
Another would-be Trump assassin dirtnapped, Mexico burns, more leftwing fraud uncovered, disturbing news of taxpayer-funded child mutilation here and horrific rape overlooked in the UK, and some financial heavyweights are shedding their irrational social justice policies. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
I went out and early voted today, and voting was very heavy. (I was planning on going Thursday, but that the day the guy dropped off my new (used) dryer.) Because of redistricting, no voter registration cards were sent out, so just vote using one of several forms of official ID. (Gee, what an easy system! Just think how easy things could be if congressional Republicans made that their top priority!)
An armed man was shot and killed by the Secret Service in the early hours of the morning after unlawfully entering the secure perimeter at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was holding a shotgun and a fuel can as he tried to enter Trump’s Palm Beach residence near the north side around 1.30am on Sunday, the Secret Service said.
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in Washington, DC, last night attending the Governors’ Dinner.
Two Secret Service agents and one deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office ordered him to drop his weapons.
Things got pretty spicy in Mexico. “Mexico Kills a Drug Kingpin, and the Cartels Set the Country Ablaze.”
The good news is the cartel kingpin, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, a.k.a. “El Mencho,” is no longer with us. From the New York Times:
Mexican security forces on Sunday captured Mr. Oseguera in Tapalpa, a town of about 20,000, in the western coastal state of Jalisco, where his cartel was founded and based, the government said in a statement. Mr. Oseguera was injured in the operation and died while in transport to Mexico City for medical attention, according to the government. At least nine other cartel members were killed.
Reuters reports the raid was a result of combining U.S. intelligence-gathering with Mexican law enforcement:
The U.S. official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not offer further details on any information that the U.S.-military-led task force may have offered Mexican authorities. The official stressed the raid itself was a Mexican military operation.
A former U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity without referring specifically to the task force, said the U.S. compiled a detailed target package for El Mencho and provided it to the Mexican government for its operation.
This detailed dossier included information provided by U.S. law enforcement and U.S. intelligence, the former official said.
The former official added El Mencho was very high, if not at the top, of a list of U.S. targets in Mexico.
Virginia Democrats are advancing two bills to extend deadlines for receiving and counting mail-in absentee ballots several days after Election Day.
Delegate Adele McClure and State Senator Barbara Favola, who represent Arlington, have introduced companion bills, HB 82 and SB 58, which will extend the deadline for counting absentee ballots in Virginia from noon to 5 p.m. on the third day after Election Day, reported ARL Now.
These bills are being presented as the White House seeks to curb voter fraud in Democrat-run states, particularly in regard to mail-in voting, which President Donald Trump claims is prone to widespread fraud.
Trump has vowed to sign an executive order to eliminate mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, allowing absentee ballots only for the seriously ill and military personnel overseas to restore election integrity.
“Mail-in ballots are corrupt. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots,” Trump said on social media.
McClure and Favola said that their legislation to allow mail-in ballots to be counted well after the election will address delays caused by the U.S. Postal Service.
In June, a Pennsylvania woman appeared in federal court in connection with a $1 million-plus home care fraud scheme. Hemal Patel was charged with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute. The 59-year-old Bucks County resident, according to the U.S Attorney’s Office for Pennsylvania’s Eastern District, pocketed payments for referring patients to home care agencies. Patel and others schemed to fraudulently bill Medicaid for ghost home care services.
The scam targeted Pennsylvania’s Community HealthChoices, which uses Medicaid funds to pay for home- and community-based personal assistance services for individuals with disabilities to help keep them out of nursing homes, according to court filings. Patel was one of hundreds of people charged in the Department of Justice’s National Health Care Fraud Takedown, the largest sweep of its kind covering some $14.6 billion in intended Medicaid losses.
Payouts to personal assistance services have ballooned nationally. Between 2018 and 2024, Medicaid cash in the category grew by 144 percent, from $9.6 billion to almost $23.5 billion. But payments have absolutely exploded in Pennsylvania — by more than 10,000 percent over the period, according to an analysis of new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The massive data dump, reviewed by public spending tracker Open the Books, shows Medicaid-funded payments to Pennsylvania’s personal assistance services shot up from $5.6 million in 2018 to $583 million in 2024.
More homeless industrial complex fraud: “S.F. Homeless Nonprofit CEO Charged with Nine Felonies for Allegedly Misappropriating over $1M in Public Funds.”
The former CEO of a San Francisco-based homelessness nonprofit was charged Monday with nine felony counts after allegedly misappropriating more than $1.2 million in public funds.
Gwendolyn Westbrook, 71, is the former CEO of the United Council of Human Services. Charges against Westbrook include misappropriation of public funds, grand theft, and filing four years of false tax returns.
According to prosecutors, Westbrook misappropriated the $1.2 million through unauthorized payments to herself, improper cash withdrawals, and fraudulent reimbursements from 2019 to 2023. Prosecutors also claim Westbrook directly stole $91,000 from the United Council of Human Services.
Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “FBI Raids Los Angeles School District Headquarters, Home of Superintendent.”
Federal agents executed search warrants Wednesday at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the home of Superintendent Albert Carvalho, significantly escalating the Trump administration’s fight against the nation’s second-largest school district.
The FBI conducted the raids on the 24th floor of LAUSD’s headquarters and Carvalho’s home in LA’s San Pedro neighborhood, a vibrant waterfront area, according to Fox 11. The nature of the investigation is currently unclear. LAUSD and Carvalho have yet to address the situation.
FBI agents could be seen going in and out of Carvalho’s home carrying items in boxes. Carvalho has been LAUSD superintendent since 2022 and was re-appointed to the role this past September. The affidavit for the search warrants are currently under seal, so it is unknown if Carvalho is personally a target of the investigation.
Last week, the Trump administration moved to intervene in a civil rights lawsuit against LAUSD for alleged racial discrimination tied to a program that prioritized funding for schools with lower amounts of white students. The lawsuit was brought by the 1776 Foundation, a conservative group active in K-12 education policy and school board races.
The district has also clashed with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement efforts in the area.
The defining issue of our country, powerfully visualized in 20 seconds:
“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens not illegal aliens."
Our inquiry panel has heard extensive and deeply distressing testimony from a survivor detailing prolonged and extreme abuse, exploitation, and trafficking beginning in childhood and continuing over a number of years across multiple locations in the United Kingdom.
The panel wishes to place on record that we regard this testimony with the utmost seriousness. The survivor has provided detailed, consistent, and specific evidence over an extended period of engagement with our inquiry. She will remain anonymous and she is safe. She has made it abundantly clear that she wants the country to know her story. This is her decision, and her decision alone. Elements of her account have been independently corroborated through presented documentation and vast evidence.
The panel is also aware of additional material and supporting information that strengthens the credibility of the survivor’s account and warrants urgent and comprehensive investigation by the relevant statutory authorities.
Given the gravity of the allegations, we have thought long and hard about whether to release the following information. We believe, as does she, that the public deserves to know the truth about the rape gangs.
The survivor’s violent gang rape and abuse began at the age of 12, she was raped multiple times per day over many years. The rapes were filmed and were used as blackmail. The survivor has stated that multiple police officers were active perpetrators – money was exchanged openly and this destroyed her ability and willingness to seek help. Police vehicles were used to traffic her and some of the abuse events were called “cop nights.”
The extreme pain she suffered included filmed torture in places called ‘red rooms’.
The torture included waterboarding and strangulation by rope. Distressingly, she was raped by a dog, filmed, and forced to rewatch the footage as the men placed bets.
The co-ordination of this specific type of abuse was predominantly perpetrated by Pakistani-heritage men.
Also this:
Our rape gang inquiry is only just starting to scratch the surface – there is so very much evil among us.
Do not kid yourselves. This is happening, now. Today. All over Britain. It is an organised criminal network of rape and slavery.
China’s fishing fleets are clearing the sea out. “The People’s Republic of China (PRC), having drained as much as she can from nearby seas, has decided to strip-mine life from the most remote corners of our shared oceans.”
So scared of your own population and your inability to keep them fed and employed ashore—today—that you will knowingly strip mine life from the world’s oceans, regardless of its impact on everyone—tomorrow.
Once an ecosystem is ripped out from its foundation, there is no guarantee it can recover. They don’t care. That will be someone else’s problem. No one will do anything, as they either lack the will, or they have been bought off.
How remote and how far down the food chain is the PRC willing to go? The wholesale harvest of krill in the Antartic is as difficult to imagine as it is to see, and as such is hard to get people’s attention. It is a foundation species. If you harvest it below a certain level, the entire ecosystem will collapse.
What they are doing in South American, though?
Here’s your video.
The red are Chinese fishing boats crossing to the other side of the Pacific, rushing right up to Peru’s EEZ, before switching off their AIS and entering Peru’s territorial waters. They are doing the same off the Galapagos and Argentina.
Sounds like China is the actual existential threat to global life greens liked to claim global warming was. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
How many fingers, Winston? “Canadian tribunal fines man $750,000 for believing there are only two genders.”
“Deep penetration: Ukrainians spearhead Russian defenses in Huliaipole.”
The Ukrainian offensive near Huliaipole has developed a second axis, retaking still more territory from the Russian invaders.
This is a glorious story: Ukrainian covert cyber units set up a sting to secretly restore Starlink access to Russian units…as long as they “submit detailed information, including personal data, terminal identifiers, and geolocation coordinates.” Results: 2420 Russian control points droned and bombed.
I suppose I need to cover the weirdness of the 31st Texas congressional district race. “Congressman John Carter Faces Valentina Gomez, ‘ShamWow Guy’ in Crowded GOP Primary.” Carter was formerly my congressman until the 2020 redistricting.
Congressman John Carter (R-TX-31) is facing nine Republican challengers in the 2026 primary election for his seat, which he has held for 23 years.
Some of the contenders in the Republican primary have entered the race with unique backgrounds — including Offer Vince Shlomi, also known as the “Shamwow Guy” infomercial pitchman from the early 2000s, and social media sensation Valentina Gomez Noriega, formerly a candidate for Missouri secretary of state and best known for her unfiltered, brash tone in short videos posted online.
Other candidates in the crowded running include U.S. Army veterans William Abel, Steve Dowell, and Elvis Lossa; physician David Berry; Ed Ewald; entrepreneur and millionaire Abhiram Garapati; and businessman Raymond Hamden.
Shlomi has garnered nationwide attention after announcing his bid for CD 31, due to his familiar infomercial branding and signature voice. His campaign motto is “make America grow some balls again,” matching similar branding as seen from Gomez.
Carter is Texas’ third longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, having been the first member elected to the seat following the district’s creation through redistricting after the 2000 census. Carter cites the September 11 terrorist attacks as an event that encouraged him to run for Congress in 2002, thus leaving his prior role as district judge for the 277th District Court in Williamson County.
Carter currently serves as a member of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations while also serving on both the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee and the Defense Subcommittee.
He’s been endorsed for re-election by both President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott.
The top three fundraisers per the end-of-year campaign fiscal reports in the Republican primary were Carter, Gomez, and Garapati. Carter came in with $114,252 raised and reported $462,022 in cash on hand (COH). Gomez followed the incumbent with $56,175 in receipts and $22,196 in COH, while Garapti touted raising $30,000 with $39,000 in COH.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has admitted he had two affairs with Russian women while married to his now-ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, and issued a groveling apology for his links with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Gates, 70, told staffers at his foundation on Tuesday that he flew on a private plane with the disgraced financier and spent time with him in the US and abroad, but didn’t participate in any crime, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates said in the town hall meeting. “To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him.”
He lied about one thing. How do we know he’s not lying about all of it?
Speaking of Epstein: “World Economic Forum boss quits after review of Epstein links.”
The president and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Borge Brende, has resigned after a review into his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The forum ordered an independent review into Brende over his ties to the disgraced financier following the release of Epstein files by the US Department of Justice.
Brende has acknowledged he dined with Epstein three times between 2018 and 2019 and communicated with him by email and text, but said he was “completely unaware” of his past criminal activity.
“Illinois official got more than $300K from trucking industry while his agency gave illegal licenses…Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who is reportedly considering a run for Chicago mayor, is facing scrutiny over his role in improperly issuing CDL licenses after a series of high profile big rig crashes across the country.”
There were also fireworks after Middleton accused Roy of undermining a bill that would have imposed a national ban on transgender surgery for minors.
“Chip Roy had an amendment that would have allowed it to continue,” said Middleton. “It would have rewarded the transgender lobby; it would have rewarded Gavin Newsom and allowed these private transgender surgeries to continue in those blue states.”
Roy pushed back, saying the legislation was dead anyway but that his proposed amendment was to facilitate passage.
Days after the firm announced that they were scrapping DEI requirements for new board members, and six years after the death of George Floyd that ushered in institutionalized virtue-signaling, the bank’s head of DEI is leaving.
Megan Hogan, who’s been at the firm 12 years, is taking her shtick to Morgan Stanley according to Business Insider, which Hogan confirmed via email, telling the outlet that Morgan Stanley had extended “an amazing opportunity” to her in talent development.
She will report to Morgan’s head of talent development, Susan Reid, the firm’s global head of talent, and will begin in April.
The move comes after Goldman’s hard pivot away from DEI following Donald Trump’s second term – retooling its diversity program, known as One Million Black Women (oh god), a multibillion-dollar commitment to invest in black businesswomen and nonprofit leaders.
The bank also ended its requirement that companies it takes public have diverse boards, and stopped highlighting specific DEI targets in annual reports.
Hogan is being replaced by Lauren Uranker, another managing director who has been with the firm for 14 years who will become the new sole head of talent, development, engagement and management, according to the report.
But it’s not all good news.
Her mandate will be to concentrate on the transition to AI-supported work, team growth, and finding ways to keep top talent from fleeing.
Meet Karl Jacobson, the now-former police chief of New Haven, Connecticut. For virtually his entire career in police administration, he’s been a dedicated crusader against the pesky Second Amendment we mere mortals dare to exercise.
For years, this guy was a face of “gun violence” prevention, cozying up to anti-gun groups like Connecticut Against Gun Violence. He preached about treating gun ownership like a public health crisis, all while pushing programs to disarm the little people under the guise of safety. Because guns are icky and he has his.
But lo and behold, safety crusader Karl has been slapped with first-degree larceny charges for (allegedly) swiping almost a hundred grand in police department funds. Some of the money was for earmarked for…wait for it…youth programs for “at risk” kids. Thanks, Karl.
As with many of these big theft cases, there’s usually sex, drugs, or gambling behind the embezzlement. In this case, our fearless police chief was funding a gambling habit, racking up literally millions in wagers. Now the gun control crusader has been arrested, has resigned in disgrace and is facing prison.
Netflix isn’t getting Warner Brothers, as the Paramount Skydance offer was deemed superior. This is probably good news from both political and artistic standpoints, and may give movie theaters chances to survive longer.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that his office has reached a settlement with investment giant Vanguard, resolving part of Texas’ multistate lawsuit accusing major asset managers of manipulating the coal market through environmental investment strategies.
The agreement marks the first settlement in the case Paxton filed in 2024 against BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, in which he alleged the firms conspired to suppress coal production in pursuit of environmental goals—actions he argued drove up electricity costs for consumers.
Under the deal, Vanguard will pay $29.5 million to the participating states and adopt new restrictions on how it uses its shareholder influence. Paxton’s office said Vanguard agreed not to pressure companies to adopt environmental, social, or governance (ESG) policies that could reduce profitability, and pledged not to direct corporate strategy or threaten to divest holdings to force policy changes.
A win for investors and energy sanity.
Here’s a case like Breaking Bad if Walter White were a Texas Tech supply chain professor dealing fentanyl. “Daniel Taylor, age 50, has been charged with federal crimes and is no longer employed by the university.”
Rural Texas residents claim that a Muslim city is being built in their backyard and accuse local officials of being very secretive about the deal.
Kaufman, Texas, residents didn’t think much of it when Kaufman Solar LLC bought a massive parcel of land in 2022. However, now that a mysterious buyer from the Middle East is looking to purchase an estimated 2,000 acres of land right next door to the planned solar farm to establish a sustainable city, they are worried about the impact.
Snip.
The Kaufman County Commissioner Court meeting Jan. 20 confirms that a buyer, through a Dallas, Texas, law firm, is seeking to purchase the land, contingent on the county approving three new municipal water districts for a potential sustainable city. The lawyer verified that the potential developer is SEE Holding, a UAE-based, privately held global holding group headquartered in Dubai, apparently focused on sustainability and spearheading a net-zero emissions future.
Republican Rep. Lance Gooden also told the Daily Caller that the buyer is based in Dubai, which he says raises serious concerns that need to be addressed before any approval for the city is potentially granted.
Right now the “Islamic City” aspect is all hearsay, but it does look, at the very least, a little funny…
Given the Epstein-based charges against Prince Andrew, Mark Felton examines his service in the Falklands campaign to determine if he actually came under fire and served honorably. The answer to both seems to be yes.
Good: Richard Hammond drives a 3,000 horsepower electric hypercar. Bad: It’s made in China. Ball’s in your court, Elon…
ObamaCare bites the dust, Eurocensors try grind Twitter under its bootheel, a lot of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, Keir Starmer’s fingerprints are all over lots of censorship efforts, some homegrown Austin fraud, and the history of human occupation of north America just got a radical update.
On Thursday afternoon, the Senate rejected extending Obamacare subsidies, refusing to let taxpayers mask the skyrocketing costs of health insurance premiums caused by Barack Obama’s 2010 signature legislation.
“Senators rejected a Democratic bill to extend the subsidies for three years and a Republican alternative that would have created new health savings accounts — an unceremonious end to a monthslong effort by Democrats to prevent the COVID-19-era subsidies from expiring on Jan. 1,” the Associated Press reported. “Ahead of the votes, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York warned Republicans that if they did not vote to extend the tax credits, ‘there won’t be another chance to act,’ before premiums rise for many people who buy insurance off the ACA marketplaces.”
Just a reminder that Schumer and the Democrats got absolutely nothing from their shutdown stunt. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Europe is ramping up its war on free speech by targeting X with fines for not submitting itself to censorship regulations demanded by the European Union.
The EU levied a fine of $140 million against X, the first-ever penalty under Europe’s Digital Services Act. Europe decided that the website’s blue checkmark symbol is misleading, that it won’t give Europe access to data that will help it investigate free speech on the platform, and that it does not have a proper catalog of the ads available on the platform for Europe to examine.
This has been part of a two-year pressure campaign against X, as Europe does not believe in free speech, and X CEO Elon Musk has reduced the level of censorship on the platform. Europeans can claim that this isn’t about free speech but “transparency” all they want, but the 2023 investigation opened into X was focused on “disinformation” and “illegal content.” Now, Europe wants access to a list of X’s advertisers, wants its “researchers” to have access to the website’s algorithm to scrutinize “algorithmic bias” and “hate speech,” and to alter how the website runs with respect to its blue checkmark system.
“Note the Soros connection. As Mike Benz has repeatedly highlighted, the co-mingling of Soros and the Blob is real.”
Revelations that aren’t even shocking anymore: “Black Lives Matter Director Spent Millions in Donations on Homes, Shopping, Vacations, Indictment Alleges.”
Oklahoma City Black Lives Matter Executive Director Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson has been charged with 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering after allegedly spending millions in donations on personal indulgences.
Dickerson took over as the director of Black Lives Matter OKC (BLMOCK) in 2016 and since 2020 has raised more than $5.6 million for what donors believed was a national bail fund. The bail fund was also supplemented by grants through the Community Justice Exchange, Massachusetts Bail Fund, and Minnesota Freedom Fund.
The indictment alleges that from June 2020 to October 2025, Dickerson used at least $3.15 million in bail fund donations and grant money to supplement her lifestyle. Dickerson allegedly embezzled the funds to pay for personal shopping sprees, $50,000 in food and grocery delivery, trips to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, as well as a personal vehicle and six Oklahoma City properties registered in her name.
The indictment explains that Dickerson allegedly used interstate wire communications to send false reports to Alliance for Global Justice, a fiscal sponsor to BLMOCK, which only permitted the group to use its funds in ways compliant with its 501(c)3 nonprofit status. Dickerson, however, did not disclose how she was allegedly using the funds for personal gain.
If convicted, Dickerson faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine per count of wire fraud. For each count of money laundering, she faces ten years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, or twice the amount of criminally derived property.
So was there any #BlackLivesMatter director who wasn’t using donated money as their personal piggy bank?
The scientific journal Nature has retracted a paper published in April 2024 that overestimated the economic effects of climate change and influenced central banks worldwide to create risk management scenarios.
The article predicted a 62% drop in worldwide economic output by 2100 if carbon emissions were to continue without reduction.
On Wednesday, the three scientists who worked on the study retracted it, citing “substantial” issues with the paper.
The climate study’s findings were undermined by an article published by a separate team of economists earlier this year in Nature, calling into question problems with the data for Uzbekistan that skewed the climate study’s conclusions.
According to the New York Post, if the numbers for the Central Asian nation were excluded from the data set, the projected economic decline of 62% would actually be a far less catastrophic 23%.
The problem is that the faulty numbers, which was nearly 3 times typical estimates, had generated headlines and excitement among policymakers around the world including the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Bank.
The study was also used last year, to model the expected impact of climate change by the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).
The NGFS is a worldwide network of central banks and financial supervisors with more than 150 members across nearly 90 countries.
Members of the NGFS include the People’s Bank of China, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England – and, until earlier this year, the Federal Reserve.
The climate study’s authors, Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann and Leonie Wenz of the Potsdam Institute in Germany, reviewed and amended their paper over the summer in light of the discrepancy and the retracted the study after acknowledging that their errors were “too substantial for a correction.”
“Oopsie! Sorry to make you destroy your economy over nothing!”
“Clandestine Campaign To Defund ZeroHedge, The Federalist & Breitbart Traced To Kier Starmer Operation.”
Very early into the COVID-19 pandemic, ZeroHedge suggested that a little-known Chinese lab in Wuhan might know something about the novel coronavirus sweeping the globe. As a result, and as you know, we were subject to an intense demonetization / deplatforming campaign that included getting kicked off of Twitter, PayPal, Facebook and other platforms, dropped by our advertisers, and targeted by MSM hit pieces which colluded with foreign ‘watchdogs’ to inflict maximum damage.
These same groups also targeted outlets including The Federalist and Breitbart over various reporting, which suffered similar fates.
Now, thanks to a new book by investigative journalist Paul Holden that builds on reporting by Matt Taibbi, Paul Thacker and others, we learn that the origin of these campaigns, launched years before the pandemic, was none other than UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer’s political machine, which began targeting left-wing outlets speaking critically of Starmer such as The Canary, and then went after conservative outlets in America – just in time for the 2020 US election.
Documents and internal accounts, many drawn from newly disclosed materials, reveal a coordinated project that operated behind a veil of anonymity, misdirection, and unreported political financing.
This murky operation known as the Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) was launched and resourced through a think tank, Labour Together, that would later be fined for failing to declare £739,000 in donations between 2018 and 2020. Said funds helped underpin this clandestine anti-media strategy which affected news outlets from the UK to the United States.
At the center of the effort was Morgan McSweeney, a political strategist who has since become Starmer’s chief of staff and, according to public commentary by prominent journalists, one of the most powerful unelected figures in the modern Labour Party.
The newly disclosed materials reveal that SFFN was not in fact some grassroots, anonymous activist collective it claimed to be, but a political weapon forged by senior Labour figures and funded by millionaire donors, including individuals active in pro-Israel political advocacy.
The goal: destabilize independent media ecosystems aligned with Labour’s left under Jeremy Corbyn, elevate Starmer’s leadership bid, and delegitimize outlets – domestic and foreign – that threatened the faction’s consolidation of power.
Publicly, SFFN claimed to be run by anonymous activists. Privately, it was shaped by McSweeney and operated from the same small office suite in South London that housed Labour Together.
SFFN ultimately migrated under the umbrella of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organization that grew out of a corporate shell once controlled solely by McSweeney.
British political operative and CCDH head Imran Ahmed
CCDH would later present SFFN as one of its signature initiatives.
Three Fronts of a Political Offensive
The documents reported by Holden reveal a three-part strategy that reshaped the British political landscape – and reverberated into U.S. media and politics. In a nutshell, this is how the sausage was made:
Destabilizing Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership
SFFN’s narrative interventions were designed to amplify an “antisemitism crisis” that dogged Corbyn, boosting controversies and legitimizing a media ecosystem hostile to Labour’s left. This influence work aligned directly with the political interests of the centrist faction preparing for a post-Corbyn future.
Engineering Starmer’s Rise
Labour Together later claimed credit for helping deliver Starmer’s 2020 leadership victory, with McSweeney acting as his campaign chief. After Starmer won the July 2024 general election, McSweeney formally became chief of staff, solidifying the faction’s institutional dominance.
Silencing Dissenting Media
SFFN’s most aggressive project was an astroturf campaign against media outlets perceived as ideological threats. Targets spanned both the left (such as The Canary and Evolve Politics) and the right, as noted above.
In each case, the tactic was the same: identify advertisers appearing on targeted sites, publicly shame them through social media threads, and provide tools – including downloadable blocklists – to automatically exclude those outlets from programmatic advertising networks. The effort succeeded in devastating the business model of some targets; others survived but saw sustained pressure.
Corbyn is a dirty commie fossil who would have been a disaster as PM, but it looks like Starmer is a far nastier piece of work.
More UK rape gang coverup: “A former Metropolitan Police officer was accused of being involved in a London paedophile ring while serving with the force, but the case was ‘brushed under the carpet’ and ‘covered up,’ an LBC investigation has discovered.”
The Met launched a criminal investigation at the time into the allegations made by one of the complainants. She said the officer had abused her multiple times as a child and shared her with other “important men” at a hotel in Park Lane in central London. LBC understands the other men included an MP and a judge.
The victim also claimed that the officer targeted other “pretty girls” who were in the care system over several years.
LBC can reveal the officer was allowed to retire as a Custody Sergeant while under investigation. In 2012, officers under criminal investigation could only retire with permission from a senior officer.
LBC used to be London Broadcasting Company. (Hat tip: Instapundit.”)
The U.S. seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela as it traveled to Cuba.
“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coasts of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually, and other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people,” President Donald Trump said at the White House.
President Trump: “As you probably know, we just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — a large tanker, very large.” pic.twitter.com/I51NenxoIP
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 10, 2025
One reporter asked Trump what would happen to all the oil.
“We keep it, I guess,” responded Trump.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the FBI, DHS, and the Coast Guard, with help from the Defense Department, executed the search warrant:
Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations. This seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was conducted safely and securely—and our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil continues.
Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. For multiple… pic.twitter.com/dNr0oAGl5x
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) December 10, 2025
The U.S. placed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil company years ago.
More blue city fraud: “Austin Energy employee allegedly paid $980K to ‘fictitious vendors,’ city auditor says.”
The Austin City Auditor’s Office released a report Tuesday accusing a local couple, both of whom previously worked for the city, of defrauding the city for approximately $980,000 by sending payments to allegedly fictitious businesses.
The report focuses on the alleged actions of Mark Ybarra, who worked as a facility service specialist for Austin Energy. He was issued a city credit card by his superiors for the procurement of necessary tools and materials, the audit said.
According to the report, he used the card to “pay fictitious vendors approximately $980,000 and fraudulently reported these transactions in City records.”
“The falsified invoices he submitted were ultimately discovered by his management in Austin Energy. Some of the fictitious vendors used contact information like addresses that connected them to relatives of Mark Ybarra, or Mark himself,” reads an email to KXAN from the auditor’s office.
According to the city auditor’s report, Ybarra allegedly made payments to 22 fictitious businesses using the card. He resigned from his job in October 2023.
A grand jury indicted Ybarra on Aug. 23. He now faces a felony charge of theft greater than $300,000.
His wife, former Austin Watershed Protection employee Ambrosia Ybarra, “refused to answer questions” from city auditors. She was indicted on Sept. 15 and charged with felony theft between $150,000 and $300,000. She resigned from her job in November, the report states.
Paramount looks at the proposed Netflix-Warner Brothers merger and says “not so fast.”
Paramount Skydance has made another offer to buy Warner Bros Discovery as it seeks to trump a rival plan from Netflix to buy the company’s studio and streaming networks.
Paramount, which is backed by the billionaire Ellison family, said it was making a direct offer to shareholders of $30 (£22.50) per share to scoop up the whole of Warner Bros, including its traditional television networks.
It said its proposal was a “superior alternative” to Netflix’s, delivering more cash upfront to shareholders and greater prospect of approval by regulators.
I don’t think either of them have the best interests of movie viewers at heart…
Speaking of Netflix, remember Carl Rinsch, the director hired to produce a science fiction TV show who instead took the money and plowed it into cryptocurrency? Guilty on all counts.
“Hundreds of Porsches in Russia were rendered immobile last week, raising speculation of a hack, but the German carmaker tells The Register that its vehicles are secure. According to reports, local dealership chain Rolf traced the problem to a loss of satellite connectivity to their Vehicle Tracking Systems (VTS). This meant the systems thought a theft attempt was in progress, triggering the vehicle’s engine immobilizer. Porsche HQ was unable to help or diagnose the nature of the problem.”
Draw Mohammed winner Bosch Fawstin write to say that Patreon has frozen his account and gives different answers as to why. If anyone has a good contact there you might drop him a line. He also put up a PayPal link for donations.
Scottish comedian and actor Stanley Baxter, who also served the British Army in Burma during World War II, has died at age 99. (Previously.)
I hope your taxes are finished, or at least in the home stretch. Mine are done but not mailed out yet. I made so little last year that I’m getting every cent I sent in back, pitiful though it is.
This week: The Supreme Court hands Trump two victories, more progress in the war against illegal aliens, a trade war reprieve for everyone but China, Jasmine Crockett seems to think illegal aliens pick cotton, Tim Walz proves he’s still a putz, and after 72 years, police finally arrest an infamous Mexican bandit!
The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to fire thousands of probationary federal employees, overturning a lower court order preventing the terminations.
The Supreme Court lifted an injunction Tuesday from a California federal court barring the Trump administration from firing employees across six federal agencies. The lower court order came last month following a lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees, a powerful public sector union.
“The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the justices said in an unsigned ruling.
Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s order. Sotomayor did not explain her reasoning, while Jackson said the Trump administration failed to demonstrate the urgency of the issue.
Nearly two months after a top Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) official and support team arrived at IRS headquarters to investigate waste and fraud—aiming to streamline a bloated and corrupt federal bureaucracy—the Trump administration has begun a sizeable workforce reduction across the federal agency.
Fox News reported late Friday evening that the IRS will begin laying off about 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce — on Friday and through next week.
Most job cuts will center around the IRS Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which protects taxpayers from discrimination, audits, and investigations.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News, “In a stark contrast to the previous administration’s wildly unpopular plan to hire thousands of additional IRS agents, President Trump is focused on saving tax dollars, eliminating bloat, axing useless DEI offices, and increasing the agency’s efficiency.”
Here’s more from Fox:
In addition to the layoffs, the agency said in a letter to employees that it is eliminating its Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which is responsible for protecting taxpayers from discrimination, audits and investigations.
. . .
“This action is being taken to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the IRS in accordance with agency priorities and the Workforce Optimization Initiative outlined in a recent Executive Order,” the letter states, referring to President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the Department of Government Efficiency to get rid of wasteful spending.
The agency said it was approved to offer Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP). Information about those programs will be shared with employees at a later date, the message said.
“This calendar year to date, approximately 5% of this office left through the Deferred Resignation Program and attrition,” the message said. “An additional 75% of the office will be reduced through a RIF (Reduction in Force).”
A Treasury Department spokesperson told Fox News, “The rollback of wasteful Biden-era hiring surges and consolidation of critical support functions are vital to improving both efficiency and quality of service. ” The spokesperson added, “The Secretary is committed to ensuring that efficiency is realized while providing the collections, privacy, and customer service the American people deserve.”
An official with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said that millions of migrants are currently receiving taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits while thousands are on voter rolls across the country and are illegally voting in American elections.
DOGE official and equity firm CEO Antonio Gracias said that migrants have obtained Social Security cards after being released into the interior of the country with a notice to appear in immigration court, with court dates scheduled an average of six years after their release.
“So now you’re in the country with some quasi-legal status, you’re waiting for your court date … you can fill out an asylum application,” Gracias explained during a recent appearance on the “All In” podcast, which featured Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro. “Once that application is in, you can file another form, a 765 to get work authorization, once you get that, you get a 766, which is the authorization and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail.”
With access to Social Security cards, Gracias says, over a million migrants have been able to receive Medicaid benefits. “We mapped this through the benefit programs, we found every benefits program that is being accessed by these people, 1.3 million are on Medicaid right now, today,” Gracias said.
He went on to explain that thousands of migrants have been found on voter rolls as well, also asserting that the Democratic Party opened the border in order to import new voters.
“We looked at voter rolls and we found that thousands are registered to vote in friendly states. And we looked even further in those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us,” Gracias explained. “I think this was a move to import voters.”
“This doesn’t include the 7.8 million that ICE has that have come in illegally that we know are here and all the people who are here illegally who we don’t know are here,” he explained.
DOGE is uncovering illegal aliens and massive fraud. It’s easy to see why Democrats are upset…
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order that once blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador.
In a 5–4 majority opinion, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory against legal challenges regarding his mass deportation agenda. The decision allows Trump to continue invoking the Alien Enemies Act to accelerate the removal of illegal immigrants believed to be in Tren de Aragua.
The nation’s highest court, however, noted that the administration should give immigrants it seeks to deport “reasonable time” to challenge their removal from the U.S. in court. Those legal challenges must take place in Texas, where the detainees are held, and not Washington, D.C., the conservative majority ruled.
“The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the ruling states. “The detainees subject to removal orders under the [Alien Enemies Act] are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration is finalizing plans to withhold all federal funding for sanctuary cities and states that provide safe harbor to illegal aliens.
“No more Sanctuary Cities! They protect the Criminals, not the Victims,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World.”
On his first day in office, Trump signed the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order laying out a framework to strictly enforce the nation’s immigration laws and “prioritize the safety, security, and financial and economic well-being of Americans.”
In the E/O, Trump authorized the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “evaluate and undertake any lawful actions” needed to ensure sanctuary jurisdictions across the U.S. are not receiving federal funds.
Now, it appears Trump is ready to drop the hammer on these Democrat strongholds.
“Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist,” the president said in his post.
Sanctuary jurisdictions are states, counties, or cities that refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies seeking to deport criminal illegal aliens.
There are about a dozen states and hundreds of cities across the US that consider themselves “sanctuaries” for illegals.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement held a hearing Wednesday to address the issue, titled “Sanctuary Jurisdictions: Magnet for Migrants, Cover for Criminals.”
Republicans contended that sanctuary cities have been an impediment to the mass deportations the Trump administration has prioritized in its first 100 days of office.
But Democrats defended Sanctuary Cities, arguing that trust between local law enforcement and the community erodes when the police comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In his opening statement, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) argued that the strong measures were necessary after Democrats deliberately trafficked over eight million unvetted illegal aliens into the country, “including some of the most dangerous, vicious criminals and cartel members in the world.”
“Congress must enact stronger laws that will prevent a future Joe Biden from ever again placing our families at risk, and that will stop today’s Democratic politicians from impeding the enforcement of our immigration and public safety laws,” said McClintock stated.
The usual talking heads said that Trump was going to trigger higher inflation (higher, that is, than the Biden inflation they’d been taking such pains to hide). Reality: Not so much. “CPI Shows 12 Month Inflation Rate at 2.4%; Lowest Core in 4 Years.”
ICE deport criminal illegal alien for the 40th time. “Julian Estrada-Garcia, 36, has four convictions for illegal entry and convictions for driving while intoxicated, possession of illicit narcotics, and fraud.” Just the sort of people Democrats are working so hard to keep us from deporting…
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX-21) Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
The SAVE Act would require states to verify U.S. citizenship and identity through documentary proof in-person when an individual registers to vote in federal elections, regardless of the registration method. Additionally, it requires states to remove “non-citizens” from voter rolls.
“The American people have spoken very clearly that they believe only American citizens should vote in American elections. There’s nothing controversial about that,” Roy said on the floor before the vote.
“This legislation is designed to restore that faith, to save our elections, to save election integrity,” he added.
The U.S. House passed the SAVE Act 220 to 208, with four Democratic members voting in favor of the legislation — one of them being Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28). No Republicans voted against the bill.
A Gallup poll from October 2024 found that 84 percent of respondents are in favor of requiring voters to provide photo identification at voting locations, and 83 percent favor requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
What do you know, another 80/20 issue Democrats are on the wrong side of. Of course, they’re lying about the SAVE Act, so if you see misinformation about it on facebook, ask them where in the ext of the bill itself do they see the nonsense they’re peddling.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is implementing a 90-day pause on retaliatory tariffs for countries that have come to the negotiating table, while raising tariffs on China to 125 percent following Beijing’s latest retaliatory levies.
Trump stated on Truth Social that he is lowering the retaliatory tariffs he unveiled earlier this week for the “worst offenders” to the baseline rate of 10 percent after more than 75 nations expressed a willingness to negotiate new trade deals with the U.S. He vowed not to raise rates on those countries for 90 days while negotiations proceed.
“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump posted.
“Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump added.
Stocks immediately surged upon Trump’s announcement with each of the three major indexes jumping by over 7 percent. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 saw their biggest gains in five years, and the tech-oriented Nasdaq jumped over 10 percent. Wall Street had been reeling since last week when Trump announced a dramatic global tariff package consisting of a 10 percent minimum tariff and much higher tariff rates for many countries worldwide.
Golly, It’s almost like Trump knew what he was doing and planned something like this all along, integrating both carrot and stick in his negotiating strategy. And it’s almost like China is on the outside looking in as Trump wins lower rates for American goods, accomplishing the decoupling of America from China and more firmly cementing other nations in America’s sphere of influence rather than China’s.
A whole lot of promising return for one week of work…
This week, President Trump instituted a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for the nations that are clearly interested in coming to the negotiating table to make deals more fair to the United States. The reality is brutally simple: America holds all the cards.
“What’s the largest consumer market on Earth? The United States,” Kevin O’Leary noted this week. “Almost 40% of all goods consumed worldwide. What’s the largest GDP? 25 or 26% of the world? The United States of America. China needs the United States.”
Even our top competitor in the global market, China, needs us more than we need them.
During a recent appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” investor Chamath Palihapitiya laid out a stark picture of China’s economic fragility, arguing that the ongoing tariff standoff gives the United States far more leverage than Beijing wants to admit.
“Even the Chinese economists are admitting that the tariffs are gonna hurt China a lot more than the United States,” Ingraham said, pointing to growing concern within China itself. She quoted one Chinese economist who conceded, “The impact on China is mainly that Chinese products have nowhere to go. These companies will be hit very hard.”
Palihapitiya agreed, saying Americans routinely underestimate just how dire China’s economic outlook has become. “Together, America and China represent almost half of world GDP,” he explained, “but underneath the covers, what we keep forgetting time and again is America is the market that matters.”
He pointed to a series of structural problems dragging China down, including its rapidly aging population, tightening restrictions on foreign investment, and unreliable intellectual property protections. “Foreign investment in China has fallen off of a cliff,” Palihapitiya noted, painting a picture of a nation increasingly isolated and economically vulnerable.
This tariff cliff is precisely what America needs to force real change.
China’s economic trajectory, he warned, is far from sustainable. “They have a very difficult economic forecast if they shrink,” he said. “When you look at the China case, they’re in a worse position than we are, which is why they have to sort of come to the negotiating table now and figure out some reasonable thing.”
Palihapitiya added that President Trump understands this imbalance well. “I think this is what President Trump was alluding to when he said, ‘They want to come to the table, and they don’t quite know how.’”
With China’s economy teetering on the brink, the United States is in a far stronger position than most so-called experts ever imagined—and President Trump is wasting no time seizing the advantage.
“Our investigation of MECA has yielded evidence suggesting it holds fiscal and personnel ties to US designated foreign terrorist organizations, chiefly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), alongside a host of extremist anti-government actors based in the United States,” reads the report by the NCRI, released on Monday.
MECA states on its website that it has sent more than $31 million in aid to children in “Palestine,” Iraq, and Lebanon since 1988. The nonprofit further purports to provide financial and professional assistance to community organizations in the West Bank and Gaza, fund university scholarships for Palestinians, and develop educational programs about the Middle East. MECA states that its “founding advisors” include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Edward Said, and Maxine Waters.
The supposedly humanitarian organization has expressed its support for violence against Israel. The day after October 7, MECA declared its support on social media for the attack: “We are witnessing the people of Gaza rising up to respond to decades of Israeli settler colonial violence. The US [government] bears responsibility for its political, economic & military support of this brutal apartheid regime. Join us to stand in solidarity with Palestine.”
The NCRI report identifies deeper relationships between MECA and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997 and participated in the October 7 attack on Israel.
MECA’s current director of Gaza projects, Dr. Mona El-Farra, previously served as the deputy director of the Union of Health Work Committees, which was recognized as the “health organization” of the PFLP in a 1993 USAID report. In 2014, El-Farra was reportedly denied an exit visa by Israel for “security reasons.” El-Farra and Barbara Lubin, MECA’s founder and current executive director, have both met with Leila Khaled, who joined the PFLP when it was founded in 1967 and became the first woman to hijack a plane.
A media advisory released by MECA in 2011 listed Leena Al-Arian as its communications coordinator. Al-Arian is the daughter of Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who was sentenced to 57 months in prison for “conspiring to violate a federal law that prohibits making or receiving contributions of funds, goods or services to, or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).”
I think it’s far safer to assume that every middle eastern or Islamic charity raising money for “the children” is actually buying weapons for terrorists or lining the pockets of jihadis. But I’m cynical that way…
“Journalist Matt Taibbi is suing Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove for libel, after the California Democrat claimed during her opening remarks in a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday that he’s a ‘serial sexual harasser.'” Juding from that picture, I can only assume that Kamlager-Dove has never been on the receiving end of sexual harassment…
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-ranged) evidently thinks that illegal aliens pick cotton. Eli Whitney died in vain. (Though it wasn’t until John Rust invented an improved picker that manual cotton picking finally died out after World War II.)
Follow-up: “Collin County Residents Reject Planned Islamic ‘City‘. County Judge Chris Hill said he ‘cannot support’ the proposed EPIC City project.” (Previously.)
Tim Walz gets a savage heckling from veterans at the Minnesota state capital. Say what you want about Hillary’s losing Veep pick Tim Kaine, but he wasn’t a weirdo who didn’t know when to get off the stage and slink back into relative obscurity.
Evidently made jealous by Amazon ruining J.R.R. Tolkien, Netflix decided to ruin C. S. Lewis. “Netflix offered Meryl Streep the role of Aslan in new ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ movie.”
Hoovie makes a six figure error calculating the capital gains costs of trading in a Lamborghini Countach for a lease-to-buy Bugatti Veyron. Offered here as a public service for all my viewers leasing a Bugatti Veyron…
More DOGE revelations, more leftwing violence, more pervert school teachers arrested, Baltimore builds a ghost city, astronauts get rescued, DVDs rot, and a bunch of fierce togers with a gentle mom.
Muslim charity with links to Hamas was awarded more than $7.2 million in taxpayer cash, which has now disappeared, according to a watchdog group.
An “immediate investigation” needs to be launched into The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) California chapter’s use of funds, according to the watchdog, who sent a complaint to the Department of Justice Thursday.
According to the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based, non-partisan advocacy group, the money was given to the chapter to help re-settle impoverished immigrants in California between 2022 and 2024.
In what appears to be a sleight of hand, the money – $7,217,968.44 — was sent to CAIR-Greater Los Angeles and not to CAIR-CA, which was the only group eligible to receive it, according to the complaint.
The Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Muslim organization, which is not a registered non-profit and not eligible to handle charitable donations, received the entire pot of money according to the complaint, viewed by The Post.
I think we all know where that money went: Leftwing pockets and murdering Jews.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday shuttering the Department of Education, fulfilling a long-standing conservative wish to do away with the agency.
Trump’s order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take the “necessary steps” to close the $268 billion agency and transfer its authority back to the states. The order does not immediately shutter the agency, and it will require programs and services to continue uninterrupted.
“Everybody knows it’s right,” Trump said moments before signing the order, which he said was 45 years in the making. “We have to get our children educated.”
The long-expected executive order will likely face significant legal challenges over whether Trump has the authority to dismantle the agency. Fully closing down the Department of Education will require congressional approval.
Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, Republicans have sought to eliminate the Department of Education, created in 1979 under former President Jimmy Carter, for its role in promoting left-wing ideology and encroaching on state authority. The Education Department’s responsibilities primarily consist of allocating grant money, administering student loans, and enforcing federal civil rights laws
Trump has long promised to terminate the agency and empower states to run their own education systems without federal interference. Shuttering the Education Department was a bullet point on the 2024 GOP platform.
National Review seems to think Trump’s plan is more flawed than the previous Republican Presidential attempts to shutter the Department of Education by not doing a goddamn thing…
The Department of Education has a budget of about $280 billion dollars per year. Less than 25% goes to educating our students.
It goes to a bureaucracy. It goes to a consultant. And that consultant then donates money back to the Democrats. And then it goes to a different consultant. And then it goes to an NGO. It is money laundering and money churning at its absolute best.
It appears that the entire point of both the Biden and Obama Administrations was to turn the entirety of the federal government into a giant graft machine for the radical left.
“Paxton Opinion States District Courts Cannot Order Sex Changes on Government ID.” State district courts can no longer direct state agencies to change a person’s sex on government documents.”
For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.
Once it was known that the first COVID-19 case originated in or near a Chinese communist virology lab engineering gain-in-function deadly viruses—with help from Western agencies—the left went into full persecution mode.
They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.
A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak the truth about a lab origin of the deadly virus.
The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.
The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”
Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.
Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.
Indeed, that was the point.
Biden’s role was designed as a waxen figurine for hard-left agendas that, without the “old Joe Biden from Scranton” pseudo-moderate veneer, could never have been advanced.
His handlers operated a nightmare administration: the destruction of deterrence abroad, two theater wars, 12 million illegal aliens, a weaponized justice system, hyperinflation, and $7 trillion more in debt.
By 2017, the public knew three truths about the so-called Christopher Steele dossier.
One, it was completely fallacious—fabricated by a has-been, ex-British spy Christopher Steele. He childishly had cobbled together lurid sex stories, James Bond spy fictions, and Russian-fed disinformation to destroy the Trump candidacy and later presidency.
Two, it was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. She hid her checks behind the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GSP paywalls.
Three, the FBI under James Comey hired Steele as an informant. It helped disseminate his concocted files and was also instrumental in trying to subvert the Trump campaign and later administration.
No sane person ever believed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was the work of “Russian disinformation.” Its contents a year before the 2020 election were verified by the FBI, but it kept mum about its confirmation.
The pornographic pictures, the evidence of prostitution and drug use, the electronic communications implicating Joe Biden in his family’s illicit shake-down operation of foreign governments—all were never challenged by anyone who was associated with the laptop’s contents.
Yet future Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, along with former interim CIA Director Mike Morrell, sought to fabricate a colossal lie to arm their candidate, Joe Biden, with plausible denial in the last presidential debate before the 2020 election.
They rounded up a rogue’s gallery of 51 now utterly discredited former intelligence authorities to lie to the nation that the laptop was likely fake.
All knew the FBI had verified the laptop. But they also knew that their titles would empower their lies that the Russians likely invented the laptop to aid the sinister Trump.
The question of whether federal judges can review alien deportation orders under the Alien Enemy Act has already been decided in Ludecke v. Watkins. “The Alien Enemy Act precludes judicial review of the removal order.” Pp. 163-166. (Hat tip: Grim’s Hall.)
Sanity: ” New York’s Highest Court Blocks NYC Law Allowing Noncitizens to Vote. ‘Instead, it is plain from the language and restrictions contained in Article II that “citizen” is not meant as a floor, but as a condition of voter eligibility.'”
You may not have heard in another packed news week, but once again Recep Tayyip Erdogan is doing Erdogan things in Turkey.
Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s mayor and a high-profile member of the opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was arrested along with dozens of others Wednesday, state-run media reported, in what critics said was a significant escalation of the government’s crackdown on dissent.
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The chief public prosecutor’s office ordered the arrest of about 100 people Wednesday, saying Imamoglu and others faced allegations including membership in criminal organization, bribery, aggravated fraud and unlawful acquisition of personal data. More than 80 people had been detained so far, according to local media reports.
Imamoglu, a popular politician and member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, became mayor of Turkey’s largest city in 2019 and won reelection last year in high-profile races where he defeated candidates from Erdogan’s ruling party. He was expected to be selected as the CHP’s candidate for president in the party’s primary elections scheduled for this weekend. The mayorship of Istanbul is seen as a political stepping stone: Erdogan once held the role.
Over two decades in power, Erdogan has tightened his control over state institutions and deepened restrictions on speech and expression, including within the judiciary, bringing charges against and imprisoning opponents. He has also exerted widespread control over the media, universities and other institutions.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi released a statement overnight, calling the “violent attacks” on Tesla showrooms, service centers, Supercharger networks, and vehicles “nothing short of domestic terrorism.”
“The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism. The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences,” Bondi stated in a press release.
She continued: “We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”
The latest domestic terrorism attack on Tesla occurred at a service center in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning.
ver the next few days you’re going to see an organized progressional protest effort at Tesla stores put together by a group called Indivisible.
George Soros foundation has given Indivisible nearly $8 million dollars for their “activism”.
They’re calling these “Tesla takedown” events and they’re doing it in the midst of a domestic terror spree targeting Tesla and Tesla owners. They have these planned across the entire country. These images are just six examples.
How can this not be seen as encouraging more violence and terrorism? I personally think that any violence occurring near locations they’ve chosen should result in Soros, his foundation, Indivisible and their founders being held criminally accountable as co-conspirators.
The indivisible founders are Ezra Levin and his wife Leah Greenberg. They became “resistance” figures during Trump’s first term and their work is celebrated by elected Democrats. So yeah, it’s clear to me that the Democrats and their typical thugs are organizing this insanity.
There’s reportedly even a form protest leaders can fill out to receive “reimbursement” payments for their protests.
Meanwhile, Musk’s SpaceX Dragon crew compartment was busy returning stranded astronauts to earth, a path I’m assuming the Biden Administration didn’t pursue because there was no way to rake off leftwing graft from the rescue mission…
Plus Trump says they’ll get overtime, even if has pay it out of his own pocket:
🚨 BREAKING: Trump says he will pay the astronauts who were stranded in outer space overtime out of his own pocket.
DOOCY: They didn't get any over time. $5 per day per diem, that's $1,430 in extra pay. Can the administration fix this?
People called up North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis’ office to express polite disagreement with his policies. Ha, just kidding! They threatened to kill him and his family.
“Two Texas Universities Investigated by U.S. Department of Education for ‘Race-Exclusionary Practices.'” That would be Rice University and North Texas University.
New York Times is now saying that lab leak theory is now plausible, after years of attacking anyone who mentioned it as “conspiracy theorists.” And yes, Not The Bee used the Hot Dog Guy meme.
“Federal Prosecutors Secure Convictions for 2022 Human Smuggling Event that Killed 53.”
Federal prosecutors announced the convictions of two of the human smugglers responsible for the horrific 2022 mass casualty event wherein 53 people were killed and 11 injured after being locked into a tractor-trailer and left in the Texas heat.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) described the tragedy as the single deadliest human smuggling case in U.S. history at the time. Four men, all Mexican nationals, were charged in connection with the crime: 30-year-old Riley Covarrubias-Ponce, 28-year-old Felipe Orduna-Torres, 37-year-old Luis Rivera-Leal, and 53-year-old Armando Gonzales-Ortega.
Fast forward, and the DOJ confirmed in a press statement that Orduna-Torres and Gonzalez-Ortega were convicted for their roles in the alien smuggling conspiracy that led to the deaths.
Japan’s “evaporated people,” who completely abandon their previous life, family and friends to move to slums anonymously. Some similarities with American homeless or China’s “lie flat” movement, but I get the impression a big difference is that evaporated people are primarily motivated by shame of failure.
Baltimore offers tax incentives to inner harbor development project, only to create a ghost city.
Kotaku gets a defamation lawsuit by former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. Some people are calling it “Gawker 2.0.”
A music bigwig who helped launch Nipsey Hussle’s career and was lauded as rap’s “godfather” has been accused of running a “Mafia-like” criminal enterprise involving murder, human trafficking, robbery and extortion on the streets of Los Angeles.
Eugene Henley Jr. — known as “Big U” in the entertainment world — was one of 18 members of the Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips street gang charged in a sprawling federal racketeering complaint, the US Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
Henley has “maintained the image of an entertainment industry entrepreneur running a music label and of somebody who gives back to the community here in Los Angeles,” US Attorney Joseph T. McNally said while announcing the indictment.
Amazon driver goes ballistic, cussing out woman’s doorbell camera for “buying all this shit.” Turns out the woman is in a wheelchair. Pink slip ensues.
New Yorker art critic Jackson Arn fired for “making ‘inappropriate overtures’ at some of the party guests and appeared to be drunk.” I hold no water for Arn (a lefty who used to write for The Nation) or Conde Naste (Teen Vogue), but “getting drunk and making a pass” at a holiday party used to be a forgivable sin in corporate American, but the woke religion of social justice is incapable of offering forgiveness or redemption. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A simplified description of how your brain actually operates. I wouldn’t take it as gospel, but I’m regretting that I never actually read Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind…
Rick Beato interviews Hans Zimmer. “The job is not to listen to the director telling you what the music is he wants, because if if he knows what music he wants, then he can do it himself. My job is to sort of listen to him tell me the story and then do the thing that he can’t even imagine.”
A crippling dock strike gets the can kicked past election day, Hurricane Helene wrecks havoc on the highlands, illegal alien crime flourishes, two bombing plots aimed at “diversity” are thwarted, Texas A&M ditches woke classes, more Diddy dirt, and Japanese gamers aren’t onboard with Ubisoft’s “black samurai.”
The Biden-Harris administration’s ‘America Last’ policies have left the country vulnerable. Between draining the strategic petroleum reserve, sending hundreds of billions in cash and equipment to Ukraine (such as electrical transformers that are now needed for Hurricane Helene), and FEMA spending $640 million to help migrants, the agency tasked with emergency preparedness is now ‘broke,’ and doesn’t have enough money to get through hurricane season which typically lasts through November.
The agency is being stretched as it works with states to assess damage from Hurricane Helene and delivers meals, water, generators and other critical supplies. The storm struck Florida last week, then plowed through several states in the Southeast, flooding towns and killing more than 160 people.
Mayorkas was not specific about how much additional money the agency may need, but his remarks on Air Force One underscored concerns voiced by President Joe Biden and some lawmakers earlier this week that Congress may need to pass a supplemental spending bill this fall to help states with recovery efforts.
“This woman blasted Joe Biden live on NBC – she has family that has been trapped in NC for days and says FEMA is nowhere in sight. Why haven’t President Biden or Vice President Harris called a major press conference and/or landed on the ground in towns that were wiped off the map by last week’s flooding?”
Indeed, there are a lot of reports that some government agencies are actively hindering private rescue and relief efforts in North Carolina. “Let’s begin with this terrible report of a man who used his own helicopter to rescue stranded people above Asheville, N.C., and who was told if he continued, he would be placed under arrest.”
Also: “We have medical teams trying to access Burnsville (elevation 2,700ft) and Black Mountain. Authorities are threatening arrest. I’m gonna keep this short & simple; something is very wrong here.”
Also: “NEW – Federal Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has shut down aid flights into Western North Carolina. A NOTAM has been issued by the FAA that won’t allow anyone not approved by the state to fly aid missions.”
Plus a slate of 18-wheeler tire slashings in multiple locations that’s hopefully not government sanctioned. Hopefully…
The Trafalgar Group released a poll on Wednesday showing Trump has increased his lead in the vital swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
The recent poll shows Trump beating Harris by 2.2 points in Michigan, with Trump scoring 47.5% of the votes to Harris’s 45.3%.
On August 31, the Trafalgar Group had Trump beating Harris 47% to 46.6%, a lead of only 0.4%.
Trump is winning in Wisconsin as well, topping the Kackler by 47.1% to 46%. The poll had Trump at 47.3% to Harris’s 46.2%.
“These numbers are the best we’ve seen for Trump in this election cycle. If this momentum holds, he could easily win by a significant margin,” a polling source stated.
In Pennsylvania, which many pundits believe Harris needs to win, Trump is up, with 47.5% of the vote, compared to Harris’s 45.3%.
The Biden-Harris administration has allowed well over half a million illegal aliens with criminal histories to enter the United States.
U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-23) published the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data on social media platform X.
According to the newly released information, 662,566 noncitizens on ICE’s national docket have criminal histories. These numbers include 13,099 murder convicts, 15,811 sexual assault convicts, and 13,423 weapon offense convicts.
“We’ve known for far too long that the Biden-Harris border crisis poses a direct threat to Americans,” Gonzales said in a press release. “The truth is clear—illegal immigrants with a criminal record are coming into our country.”
The Texas congressman asserted that beyond the disturbing new data, it should also serve as a “wake-up call” for the federal government and cities across the United States that keep sanctuary policies in place.
Gonzales first requested the data on March 13 when he penned a letter requesting answers to several illegal immigration questions to President Joe Biden and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Of the seven million reported cases on ICE’s docket, the letter requested information on how many noncitizens were charged with a crime by a municipality. Additionally, the letter asked how many were noncitizens convicted of a crime and released into U.S. communities.
Over six months later, Gonzales has finally received a response.
Sure seems like Gonzales has been a lot more active on this issue since Brandon Herrera primaried him…
As ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris visited the southern border for a photo-op on Friday, alarming new revelations also emerged showing that far-left Democrats in the White House rolled out the red carpet to 650,000 migrants with criminal records. This has already fueled chaos nationwide, including a new report of an “explosion in migrant prostitution” networks across America.
A newly leaked law enforcement document obtained by New York Post journalists shows that the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua has exploited desperate migrant women into sex trafficking networks across eight states.
At least eight states have seen an explosion in migrant prostitution since the gang laid down roots in the US, with authorities in Texas, Nevada, Illinois, California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey and New York now fighting to curtail the sex trade, the memo shows. -NYPost
The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has been linked to sex trafficking in eight states including New York.
In New York City, police sources told the NYPost that Tren de Aragua gangsters are recruiting their members and victims straight out of city-run migrant shelters.
In the Big Apple, Tren de Aragua is trying to recruit foot soldiers to force women into sex trafficking — in the hopes that it will become a main source of income for the gang, according to the leaked memo.
Funny how we didn’t see or hear a single story about Tren de Aragua prior to the Biden Administration, and now they seem to be everywhere.
Speaking of sexual slavery, a Yazidi woman captured by the Islamic State was just rescued…in Gaza. From the river to the sea/No sex slave shall be free…
“Philadelphia: Muslim teen hoped to make bombs for terror group, planned LGBTQ parade jihad massacre….Muhyyee-ud-din Abdul-Rahman, 18, of West Philadelphia, not only had bomb-making materials, that were found in the trash at his home, he had tested bombs in the woods behind his home and had likely considered an attack on Philly’s LGBTQ community.” Funny how some of the Democratic Party’s vibrant diversity wants to blow up other parts of the Democratic Party’s vibrant diversity…
John Kerry admits that the First Amendment is a huge barrier to forcing leftist views down people’s throats. “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win…the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.” If anyone you know is committing #Wrongthink, be sure to report them to the Ministry of Love…
Israel hits a Russian airbase in Syria. One wonders what Russian’s adventures in Syria have gotten them other than some dead mercenaries and weapons sales.
Virginia high school teacher fired for refusing to use tranny pronouns awarded $575,000. Make them pay.
Albania wants to createa microstate in their own capital for “Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order” for the moderate Sufi Muslim sect. “His hoped-for Muslim state in Tirana, the capital of Albania, will be a Vatican-style sovereign enclave that will control territory the size of five New York City blocks and will allow alcohol, allow women to wear what they want and not impose lifestyle rules.” Not the worst idea I’ve heard this year. At least they could sell postage stamps…
A Texas A&M spokesperson has confirmed that the university will deactivate 38 certificates and 14 minors, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies minor.
The A&M spokesperson told The Battalion that the official list of deactivated programs will not be public until it appears before the Faculty Senate on October 14. A university statement cited low enrollment as the reason for deactivating the programs.
However, Theresa Morris, the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, said that the LGBTQ Studies minor was among those ending.
An official in the Department of Communication & Journalism also confirmed that certificates for both Communication, Diversity and Social Justice and Communication & Global Media are being deactivated.
Additionally, the director of Marketing and Communications in the College of Performance confirmed that the certificates for popular culture and performing social activism were also in the deactivation process.
This comes after State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) repeatedly called DEI courses and the LGBTQ studies minor an “outrageous abuse of tax money” and examples of “taxpayer-funded indoctrination.”
Good. Maybe students will be forced to choose a major that adds to the world rather than tearing it down with social justice.
“Lawsuit Accuses Democrat State House Candidate of Not Paying Vendors. House District 80 Democrat candidate Cecilia Castellano is already under investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton in a separate voter fraud case.”
A lawsuit filed in Tarrant County is accusing a Democrat running for the Texas House of Representatives of failing to pay her vendors and subcontractors in the business she operates.
House District 80 candidate Cecilia Castellano, who operates Azteca Designs and Construction, allegedly failed to provide proper compensation for work done by one of Azteca’s subcontractors, the Glass Doctor of North Texas, according to the suit.
Glass Doctor had entered an agreement to work on a project with Azteca in November 2023, where the subcontractor was slated to earn $49,643.36, according to the filing. Later, Glass Doctor was tasked with replacing damaged glass installed by another subcontractor for an additional $18,487.77.
However, Glass Doctor says the payments never arrived.
Plaintiffs instead painted a picture of Azteca going out of their way to avoid providing the payments, claiming the project was “not built pursuant to written plans” and back-charging Glass Doctor to fix work done by a third party.
Fort Bend County Judge KP George has been indicted on misdemeanor charges related to faked racist messages on social media but could face felony charges over an alleged attempt to hide evidence.
A grand jury indicted George last Thursday in relation to a scheme in collaboration with Taral Patel, his former chief of staff and now Democratic candidate for county commissioner. Patel was indicted on four felony and four misdemeanor charges after investigators tied him to fake social media and email accounts used to make offensive posts and circulate falsified polls.
“Netflix Cancellations Skyrocketed After Founder Donated, Endorsed Harris. Netflix cancellations went through the roof after co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings endorsed and donated to VP Kamala Harris.”
“[German] Green Party co-chairs Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour are stepping down. The move could make things even harder for Germany’s fractious coalition government. Germany’s Green Party is going from crisis to crisis. Three days after regional elections in the eastern state of Brandenburg delivered a stinging defeat to the party, its entire leadership has resigned. Now, the party will have to choose a replacement at its party conference in November.”
My my, hey hey/Disney cancels the movie about Rei.
Who could possibly be pissed off about a historical game starring a black samurai? Well, for starters, Japanese gamers.
