Been an interesting day. While I wasn’t looking, a giant branch cracked and fell onto my driveway. I park in my garage, so nothing was harmed, and it was relatively easy to haul the branch to the other side of the driveway to trim down for trash.
This week: Stephen Green takes a look at fraud in the Los Angeles Homeless Industrial Complex, Minnesota can’t go a week without more reports of Somali fraud and/or violence, Ukraine starts hitting Russian data centers, more of that illegal alien voting fraud that never happens, Ft. Hood jihadi shooter gets a firing squad, Vietnamese man arrested for selling “roof rabbit,” and an all-Lamborghini drag race.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Stephen Green: “You’ll Never Believe How L.A.’s ‘Ambitious Effort’ to Fix Homelessness Totally Failed.” Oh, I bet I can.
Five years ago, a coalition of the usual lefty pressure organizations — public labor unions, progressive activist groups, and “housing advocates” — pushed for a citywide ballot initiative called United to House L.A. or ULA.
Here’s the initiative that made the ballot in 2022: “Shall an ordinance be adopted to add a tax on the sale or transfer of real property valued at over $5 million to fund affordable housing and tenant assistance programs?”
It passed, naturally, because voters like to feel good about themselves for doing their bit to promote “affordable housing and tenant assistance,” while feeling even better about not having to actually pay for any of it. Set a cap at “soak the rich level,” and you’ll be amazed at how altruistic people become with other people’s money.
It was billed as a “mansion tax” to fund low-income housing.
Over at the L.A. Times way back when, staff writer Benjamin Oreskes actually led with “an ambitious effort to address the homelessness crisis,” because the paper wasn’t at all pushing a lefty agenda. No, sir-ee.
Meanwhile, RAND warned in 2022 that “the revenue raised by Measure ULA may disappoint,” pointing to “the city’s Affordable Housing Linkage Fee — a 2018 program that amounts to a tax on new market rate housing construction to fund affordable housing construction — suggested that it would raise $100 million per year. However, the actual revenue to date has been around one third of that amount or lower.”
Supporters claimed the “mansion tax” would raise $900 million a year, or $2.7 billion over its first three years. “Instead,” the New York Post reported this weekend, ULA “brought in about $1.2 billion.” That’s less than half the expected revenues, nearly three years after passage.
Snip.
The Post also reported that ULA “blocked the building of 9,100 homes, wiped out 16,650 full-time construction jobs and cost $452 million in revenue.” So ULA might have raised $1.2 billion, but at the cost of nearly half a billion in lost income taxes, and more than 16,000 jobs.
And that affordable housing? Still hasn’t happened: “The City has barely touched the cash, spending just $114 million as of May — less than 10% of the money raised,” the Post reported, but no new affordable housing units have been built.
For Democrats, big pots of money that never get used for their professed purpose is the goal.
Also Stephen Green: “Look Inside the Luxury Tower Housing L.A.’s Homeless Bureaucracy.”
A California-based independent journalist going by InnerRhythmMedia — think of him as Nick Shirley 2.0 — recently looked into the headquarters of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and what he found looked more like a multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley firm than a joint city-county government project.
Snip.
As broken down by Wall Street Apes on Tuesday, LAHSA “is headquartered in a luxury high rise building where employees enjoy VIP amenities like a fitness center, rock climbing wall, an infrared sauna, a cold plunge, and a helipad.”
And the pay? Oh my, the pay:
Chief Executive Officer, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, $491,908
“The Congressional Budget Office estimates roughly 1 million lawfully present immigrants will lose eligibility for Affordable Care Act subsidies by 2034, while about 100,000 could lose Medicare coverage. The Center for Medicare Advocacy says some Medicare terminations are expected Feb. 1, 2027.” Good. People shouldn’t move to America to go on welfare.
“FBI thwarts ‘Minnesota man’s’ jihadi plot to shoot up Mall of America.” “‘Minnesota man’ Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud was apparently looking to shoot up America’s most famous shopping mall.” Why, it’s almost like importing unassimilated Somalis into the American heartland has negative consequences…
The ATF admits that the ruling in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF applies to everyone.
Effective October 9, 2026, ATF will no longer require individuals to seek ATF approval under the NFA before making or transferring short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers, and “any other weapon[s]” as defined in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(e). ATF will also no longer require such items to be registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. These policies apply uniformly to anyone otherwise subject to these requirements, not just to the plaintiffs.
However, it’s not all sunshine, silencers and kittens: “The injunction does not disturb the NFA’s application to machineguns and destructive devices. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act maintained the $200 tax on such items. Consequently, all NFA provisions still apply to machineguns and destructive devices.” And state laws for the same items still apply. (Hat tip: Gun Owners of America.)
“Iran’s Economy ‘Deteriorating Rapidly,’ Regime’s National Security Chief Rezaei Admits. Iran’s currency hits new historic low, trading at 2.7 million rials to the dollar.”
The Iranian economy is “rapidly deteriorating” under the weight of President Donald Trump’s Operation Economic Outcast, the regime’s national security chief Mohsen Rezaei said. The admission comes six weeks after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched a sweeping sanctions campaign to cut off the regime’s global commercial and financial access.
Since President Donald Trump threatened Tehran with an “Economic D-Day” in August, the regime has struggled to break the U.S. naval blockade or find buyers for its oil. “This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat,” he wrote on Truth Social in August. “These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide.”
Just months after boasting that Iran would ‘neutralize’ U.S. sanctions, Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad has been forced to leave the office. “Iran’s oil minister has resigned days after allegations that an intermediary trust selling Iranian oil abroad owed millions of dollars’ worth of export receipts to the state,” The Guardian reported on Monday. “Mohsen Paknejad’s departure comes as Iran grapples with a dire economic situation, including inflation running at 85%.”
The Mullahs would rather the Iranian people starve their give up their dreams of nuclear weapons.
“Ukraine Attacks Key Pumping Station Near Moscow.” “This is connected by product pipelines to the Ryazan and Moscow oil refineries, and then also connects the major airports of the Moscow region.”
“Followup: “Su-34 and Su-35 Confirmed Destroyed At Khanskaya Air Base.”
Interesting development: Montenegro detained “Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the pro-war Russian military-blogger network Rybar, along with his wife and three associates. Rybar often supports Russia’s war aims while reporting battlefield weaknesses that the Russian Defense Ministry downplays, including Ukrainian strikes on supply routes serving occupied Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea…Zvinchuk is under UK and EU sanctions and is on a U.S. wanted list tied to alleged election interference.”
Remember that Top Gear episodes where the lads tried their hands at driving 18-wheelers, and Jeremy Clarkson drove to the finish line blithely unaware his rig had caught fire? Well, thanks to a Ukrainian drone, a Russian truck driver just recreated that scene in Crimea.
More than 1,600 convictions have been secured by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Child Exploitation Unit as part of its efforts to combat online predators and child pornography.
According to figures released Tuesday by the Office of the Attorney General, the unit has made 278 arrests for online solicitation of a minor, resulting in 214 convictions. Another 610 arrests for possession of child pornography have resulted in 1,410 convictions. Numerous cases remain pending.
The figures were released as part of an update on the attorney general’s law enforcement operations.
Snip.
Paxton’s Human Trafficking Unit has separately made 373 arrests and secured 126 convictions, with several cases still pending.
The attorney general also announced that the office’s Fugitive Apprehension Unit has now made 18,291 arrests since its inception, including 68 individuals on the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Top 10 Most Wanted List.
“‘Worst of the worst‘: Latest ICE roundup nabs pedophiles, animal abusers.”
“Yesterday, the brave patriots of ICE arrested pedophiles, animal abusers, drug traffickers, and other public safety threats from our communities,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. “Even while facing a more than 1,600% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line, ICE will not be deterred. Illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S. We will find you, arrest you, and remove you from our nation.”
Topping the Wednesday roundup was Edis Canales-Montoya of Honduras, who was convicted of sexual conduct against a child.
Gonzalo Sanchez of Mexico was convicted for possession of child pornography and driving under the influence.
Carlos Arturo Zelaya-Argueta of El Salvador was convicted of sexual abuse of an animal and drug distribution.
Manuel Gomez-Lopez of Guatemala was convicted for the manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance.
Jesus Garcia-Serrano of Mexico was convicted for obstructing a criminal investigation and for unlawful possession of handguns.
That thing that never happens happened again. “Federal grand jury indicts 10 immigrants in Minnesota for illegally voting in US elections.”
Today we are announcing that a federal grand jury returned an indictment against 10 foreign nationals who have committed unlawful voting and registration offenses in the state of Minnesota. In total, the grand jury’s indictments include 9 counts of illegal voting by an alien, and 9 counts of making a false claim of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Charges include illegally voting in the general elections of 2022, 2024, and the primary elections of this year, of August 2026.
The defendants that have been charged include foreign nationals from Brazil, Ghana, and Liberia.
MS NOW’s Morning Joe aired the second installment of its midterm series, “The Voter Files,” on Tuesday. Network contributor Elise Jordan spoke with a panel of black voters from Wayne County, Michigan, who had backed Rep. Haley Stevens in the state’s Democratic Senate primary. Their remarks did not bode well for Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
The consensus was that the far-left El-Sayed has wrongly taken black support for granted. Panelists said he assumes that because black voters typically vote Democratic, they would set aside their reservations, and vote for him — no outreach required.
One woman noted, “I think he’s taken advantage that we, as black people, are Democratic, and he thinks we’re gonna vote for him anyway, and I’m like, ‘No sir.’”
“I’m gonna have to put uncommitted down on that little circle and move on,” she added. “If you’re going to Congress to represent me, I need you to talk about what’s going on in this community.”
Another woman on the panel felt El-Sayed had missed opportunities to let black people know who he is. “We don’t understand him,” she said. “We don’t know him.”
I wonder how much resentment is based on the unspoken assumption that he’ll be directing graft to Muslims rather than blacks…
The Department of War (DOW) issued a press release September 29 announcing the latest change the Trump administration is making at U.S. service academies, including West Point and the Naval Academy. In order to keep the academies “laser-focused on lethality and readiness,” there will no longer be any civilians appointed to tenured positions at the academies.
“This directly addresses the critical issues of academic stagnation and complacency that are often associated with tenure, and which threaten to dilute the academies’ primary focus on warfighting and tactical dominance,” the DOW press release argued.
This will necessitate a major hiring adjustment, and I would not be at all surprised if the Trump administration ends up in court over this simply because judges seem to interfere with everything this administration does, particularly if it undercuts bloated bureaucracy
“Death by U.S. Army Firing Squad Approved for 2009 Fort Hood Gunman.” “Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army psychiatrist, was convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder in 2013 after he fired at soldiers and one civilian inside the Soldier Readiness Center, a medical facility, on the west side of the U.S. Army base on November 5, 2009. Hasan caused 13 deaths and injured 32 others before being shot and captured alive, although he was paralyzed from the waist down as a result.” I don’t think they’ll have any problem getting soldiers to volunteer for the firing squad.
President Donald Trump weighed in on France’s ongoing school protest crisis on Tuesday, arguing that the unrest reflected broader concerns about immigration and integration.
In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration. This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!”
Conservatives have only been warning about unassimilated Muslims in the French banlieues since the 1990s…
“Quebec Elects Separatists Vowing To Break From Canada.” Well, that will come in handy 30 years or so hence to resettle French natives fleeing the new Paris Caliphate…
TSMC planning to build a fab in Texas? This is speculative and preliminary, and Musk has already denied TSMC will help run Terafab, but the move makes a lot of economic sense for both parties. Plus fabs employ a whole lot more people than data centers.
Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner interview William Shatner. Not always geared to my interests, but there are some nuggets. And holy crap, Shatner looks great for someone who’s 95.
The Honest Trailer for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Dwight sent over this story about a formerly pregnant tranny “man” who got mag-dumped by his inlaws (“who took turns shooting him”), but trying to make sense of it just made my brain hurt.
Another Iran update: More Jihadis dirtnaped, Iran’s neighbors want the Islamic regime finished off, Mossad gives regime members person-to-person call warnings, Uncle Sam fast-tracks a lot of weapon sales to the Middle East, and the BRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT of Freedom rings out over the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel Defense Forces killed top Iranian intelligence official Esmaeil Khatib and Hamas commander Yahya Abu Labda in separate airstrikes in the Middle East overnight.
The IDF confirmed Khatib, Iran’s intelligence minister, was killed in the strike in Tehran on Wednesday morning.
“Khatib played a significant role during the recent protests throughout Iran, including the arrest & killing of protestors and led terrorist activities against Israelis & Americans around the world,” the IDF wrote in a post announcing Khatib’s death. “Similarly, he operated against Iranian citizens during the Mahsa Amini protests.”
The Hamas commander was reportedly killed during an IDF airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, according to the Times of Israel.
The strikes come a day after Israel killed Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, in an airstrike.
Abu Labda was a prominent figure in the development of Hamas’s precision missile project, according to the Times of Israel.
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) for the first time hit Iranian naval targets in the Caspian Sea on Wednesday, striking infrastructure and ships at the port of Bandar Anzali in northern Iran, at a distance of some 1,300 kilometers (over 800 miles) from Israel.
In addition, the IAF continued striking targets belonging to the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij militia, and the Air Force, among others.
The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that the strikes in Bandar Anzali hit several ships, a repair facility, as well as a headquarters controlling naval operations in the Caspian Sea.
The US has deployed A-10 Warthogs attack jets, Ah-64 Apache helicopters, and 5,000-pound ground penetrator bombs to take out Iranian drones, boats, and mines to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, America’s top general said Thursday.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vowed at a Pentagon news conference that the US would “hunt and kill” all of Tehran’s weapons facilities and assets being used against the strait, a critical trade route through which 20% of the world’s oil supply is transported.
“We continue to hunt and kill afloat assets, including more than 120 vessels and 44 minelayers,” Caine told reporters alongside War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Simon Whistler has a meaty update on the war, including how all the Persian Gulf nations now agree that the Islamic Republic of Iran must go.
“Iran’s response to this war has managed to achieve something truly remarkable. [Ali Larijani]’s own neighbors, who had previously gone to bat for them, are now done dodging missiles and are reportedly pushing Washington to eliminate the Iranian threat for good, destroying the tools of repression.”
Skipping over the deaths of Ali Larijani and Gholam Reza Soleimani, previously reported here.
“Since the war began, American and Israeli forces have been running what amounts to a parallel campaign alongside the more headline grabbing strikes on nuclear sites and missile infrastructure. This campaign has been aimed squarely at the regime’s domestic repression capabilities and infrastructure, and it’s been accelerating massively in recent days. These targets should tell you something about what this part of the campaign is actually designed to do. Destroying missile launchers and stockpiles might degrade Iran’s ability to hit back, but destroying a law enforcement station and the men who run it degrades Iran’s ability to keep the lid on a country that it only barely had a grasp on before all of this kicked off.”
Skipping lightly over news of Iranians celebrating the traditional Chaharshanbe Suri fire festival, and the regime cracking down on same (no Zoroastrian fire festivals allowed in Islamic Iran), because it’s hard to get a sense of scale there.
“Noras, or Persian New Year falls on March 20th this year. This holiday is historically one of the largest public gatherings in Iranian life and has often been a flash point for protests against the regime. Last year, they arrested dozens of people across multiple provinces during Nar and that was before any of this broke out. this year. Suffice it to say, the situation has uh changed a bit. We don’t want to rest too much on Naras as a make or break moment, though. But it nevertheless represents a significant test of the coalition’s core theory for ousting or at least seriously pressuring the regime. Degrade their tools of oppression enough and the population will be able to do the rest.”
“The Guards have never been a domestic military force, but instead an ideologically driven group of hardliners explicitly set up to defend the Islamic Republic’s continued existence, no matter what the cost. Whatever comes next on the streets of Tehran, it does not appear likely that these men will simply lay down their weapons and go quietly into that good night.”
“The IRGC’s hardliner stance did not just reveal the power dynamics going on in Tehran, though. It helped to reshape the entire region’s posture in ways that would have been difficult to imagine just a few weeks ago. Before the war started, the Gulf States were the closest thing that Iran has to a coalition against American military action. Despite hosting US bases, most of them had adamantly pushed the White House not to strike Iran and were actively working to try and find common ground between Washington and Iran so they can avoid conflict.”
“While this was partially out of self-preservation interests, they knew the conflict in the region is never good for their bottom line, at least in the short term. They were still some of the best friends that Tehran had left. The Emirates had spent years rebuilding its relationship with Iran, and Aman’s foreign minister was in Washington discussing the matter with Vice President JD. Vance the day before the strikes took place. None of them doubted that Iran posed a threat. They hosted US bases for a reason, after all. But they calculated that living with the Iranian threat would be preferable instead of being largely defenseless in a war.”
“Iran’s response to Operation Epic Fury settled that debate in about 72 hours. Since February the 28th, Iran has launched over 1,800 projectiles split between ballistic missiles and drones at the UAE alone.”
“Bahrain took it even further, branding Iran treacherous. Bahrain even took the lead in sponsoring a UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran for its targets in this conflict which passed with unusually lopsided support. While not everyone throughout the Gulf was quite as forceful as that, they’ve all been moving in the same direction.”
“Behind the public statements urging peace, the private messaging to Washington has been far more direct: ‘Finish the job.'”
“Gulf officials have been pushing the Trump administration for what amounts to a permanent end to Iran’s ability to threaten their infrastructure.”
“In the space of three weeks, Iran has managed to turn every Gulf state that was lobbying Washington on its behalf into a partner actively backing the campaign to destroy its military capabilities. It is by almost any measure one of the most self-defeating foreign policy decisions a country has made in the modern Middle East.”
“A recent Goldman Sachs stress test published on March 15th showed that if the strait remained effectively closed through April, Qatar and Kuwait could see their full-year GDP contract by 14%, the worst since the 1990 Gulf War. The UAE and Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be quite as hard hit, but they’d both take a 5 and 3-point hit, respectively.”
Whistler also offers up a nice roundup of the current state of Israel’s incursion into Lebanon: “By March 16th, at least three separate IDF divisions were operating simultaneously inside of southern Lebanon, pushing through Kiam, Bins Jabel, and Marion in the most significant ground operations since their 2006 intervention. Evacuation orders are now covering everything south of the Latani, which when combines with the evacuated areas in the Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut totals to roughly 14% of the entirety of Lebanon’s territory.”
“Israeli Defense Minister [Israel] Katz has said at least parts of the operation are modeled explicitly on Gaza, offered no timeline for withdrawal, and some ministers are already floating the idea of a semi-permanent security zone. For now, there are no signs of a push toward Beirut or anything beyond the Litani.”
“In the last 48 hours alone, [Lebanese President Joseph Aoun] publicly called Hezbollah’s decision to enter the war a trap and an almost overt ambush serving Iranian interests, warned that the country is on the path to become a second Gaza, and floated a four-point plan calling for an immediate ceasefire, international backing for the Lebanese armed forces to oversee disarmament, direct negotiations with Israel, and long-term border security agreements.”
“While all of this is unprecedented for a Lebanese president, Beirut is currently falling short of Israeli expectations for two reasons. First, Lebanon has a long history of promising to finally get tough on Hezbollah that, well, hasn’t exactly materialized. Second, and more pertinently, the LAF [Lebanese Armed Forces] are already struggling to implement the ban on Hezbollah’s military operations that we reported on just a week ago. Hezbollah’s attack was earth-shattering for Beirut, which appeared to have finally found a moment of cross sectarian agreement that Hezbollah simply had to go. And while there were initially promising signs that the LAF was taking this seriously, the army has largely stalled. LAF commander [Rodolphe Haykal] has essentially refused to enforce the government’s ban on Hezbollah military activities, and the United States has even suspended some coordination with the LAF over it. The country’s prime minister has considered firing him for the whole debacle.”
“Now look, in fairness to Haykal, this isn’t just some random act of indifference where he’d rather sit around and watch Warfronts than go out and disarm the group. Though we couldn’t blame him if that was the case, could we? Rather, his calculation is that 20 to 30% of the LA Shia and would possibly refuse to mobilize against Hezbollah entirely, risking a total fracture of the military. Keep in mind that in Lebanon, sectarian identity is front and center just about everything that happens, especially in politics, and the LAF is broadly considered to be the last cross-sector institution in the country.”
“All that said, the inaction here is seriously jeopardizing the country’s sovereignty. The lesson that Israel took away from the October 7th attacks, rightly or wrongly, was that they couldn’t afford to allow a hostile force to exist along its borders anymore. In the aftermath of the 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon, Israel made it clear that disarmament of the group was an absolute bare minimum condition. And the tragic thing is that the LAF largely delivered on this. Earlier this year, they completed phase one of the operation. And while it was slowgoing, potentially so slow that Hezbollah was actually rearming faster elsewhere in the country than it was being disarmed, the LAF nevertheless demonstrated that it could deliver.”
“And all of this isn’t helped by the fact that even today, right now, Hezbollah continues to launch on Israel. While their stockpile has been severely reduced and seems likely to be further reduced in their ongoing clashes with the IDF, they don’t appear to be anywhere close to surrender.”
One of the reasons Iran was caught off guard at the opening of this war is that its leadership did not take Yahya Sinwar or Hassan Nasrallah’s approach. The Iranian regime—a state built on terror—was acting like a state and forgot what happens to those who spread terror. What Hezbollah and Hamas understood, and what Iran forgot, is that when you attack Israel, you become prey.
After the regime’s decapitation on the first day, Larijani grasped that reality. As Iran’s most senior surviving security official, he never stayed in the same place twice, and maintained exceptionally high security awareness.
In the end, it took a combination of precise intelligence, special ground capabilities, and rapid decision-making at both the political level and the by chief of staff to complete the operation. The time between the intelligence alert and the order for the strike was less than an hour; that’s an incredibly tight kill chain. This wasn’t a Hamas or Hezbollah target; exploiting this opportunity meant scrambling aircraft all the way to Iran.
Snip.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Israel is chasing internal repression forces from their headquarters to secret muster points at sports stadiums, even to neighborhood police stations. All in an effort to demonstrate to the Iranians that the regime’s fangs have been removed.
Meanwhile, Israel is calling mid- and low-level commanders, threatening them and their families if they don’t stand aside in the event of an uprising.
One conversation is worth recounting.
“Can you hear me?” a Mossad agent can be heard, speaking in Farsi. “We know everything about you. You are on our blacklist, and we have all the information about you.”
“OK,” the commander said in the recording.
“I called to warn you in advance that you should stand with your people’s side,” the Mossad agent said. “And if you will not do that, your destiny will be as your leader. Do you hear me?”
“Brother, I swear on the Quran, I’m not your enemy,” the commander said. “I’m a dead man already. Just please come help us.”
Last night, a very senior Israeli source outlined to me Israel’s five objectives in this war:
To act jointly with the United States to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
To permanently deny any future Iranian regime the ability to again close the strait — including through the development of alternative pipelines.
To dismantle Iran’s weapons industry, with an emphasis on ballistic missile capabilities — this time targeting not just equipment but the factories that produce it.
To complete the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has authorized the country’s military to kill Iranian and Hezbollah officials without explicit approval from higher-ups.
Katz announced the blanket order as he alerted Israeli residents that the military had taken out top Iranian intelligence official Esmaeil Khatib. Katz said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the directive overnight.
The purpose of the authorization is to thwart the possibility of delays in Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion against Iran, according to Israeli network Channel 12. Katz vowed that there were more “significant surprises” to come as part of the development.
In the past several days, targeted Israeli strikes have assassinated several top Tehran officials, dealing a devastating blow to the Iranian regime’s power structure as the war moves well into its third week.
Snip.
The assassinations come as Israel has ramped up its attacks targeting Basij checkpoints and infrastructure. The Guard’s Basij unit has notably been targeted in the war, as the paramilitary force has long been seen as the leading military unit behind the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters over the winter and behind repression in general against regime dissidents.
The Israeli military is targeting Basij personnel and facilities as the country seeks to weaken the Islamic regime enough to encourage Iranian citizens to topple the power structure.
“We’re undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people a chance to oust it,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday.
Next regime figure to get droned announced. “Hossein Dehghan, who was sanctioned in 2019 for his alleged role in an attack that killed 241 American troops, has been named to replace the assassinated Ali Larijani. According to a report by Iran International, Iran appointed former Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan on Thursday as the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council,”
The Trump administration announced plans to sell more than $16.5 billion worth of radar systems, air defense equipment, and fighter aircraft weaponry to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan Thursday, as Iranian missiles and drones continued to hit sensitive infrastructure across the Gulf region.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an emergency waiver to bypass the mandatory congressional review period for the sales, the Pentagon said in its press release.
For the UAE, the State Department approved $2.1 billion worth of 10 FS-LIDS counter-drone interception systems, along with 240 Coyote backpack-carried drone interceptor systems, along with related sensors and munitions.
Another planned sale to the UAE includes a THAAD long-range discrimination radar, as well as Sentinel A-4 uplinkers and THAAD tactical operations and launch and control systems. A third sale set for Abu Dhabi includes $644 million worth of F-16 munitions and upgrades, including GBU-39/B small diameter bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions guidance systems (JDAMs), along with 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles and eight guidance sections, the Pentagon said.
Kuwait is set to receive $8 billion in Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars, the administration further announced Thursday, along with a slew of accompanying electronic equipment. Jordan, meanwhile, is slated to receive $70.5 million worth of maintenance, logistics, and munitions support for its F-16s, C-130s and F-5 aircraft.
The planned sales come as Iran has targeted sensitive early warning and missile defense radar sensors in several US-aligned countries in the Gulf. Iran has also repeatedly struck civilian centers and, increasingly over the last 48 hours, oil and gas infrastructure with drones and missiles.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday praised Gulf states for their support for Washington’s war effort, saying Iran’s “reckless” pattern of counterattacks has brought some of those countries “squarely into our orbit.” He specifically named the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Speaking alongside Hegseth at the Pentagon, the US’ top-ranking general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, said the US military will continue to work with Gulf states “to help them to improve any defensive capabilities that they need.”
Missile plant hit: “Karaj Surface-to-Surface Missile Plant” destroyed by U.S. strikes. This was March 1, but CENTCOM only released the images today.
Iran evidently managed to damage an F-35:
“Likely hit by a Qaem-118 short range SAM.” The pilot returned to base safely and made an emergency landing.
Once again, this was just what I was able to gather from various sources. If you think I’ve missed something, feel free to share it in the comments below.
There are multiple rumors floating around about Schrodinger’s Ayatollah, who still hasn’t been seen in public since the initial strikes. The first is that he shuffled off his mortal aba in the airstrike that killed his father Ayatollah Senior and most of Iran’s ruling council.
“We know the new so-called not-so-supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured,” Hegseth said in a press briefing on Friday, March 13. “He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement.”
“Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders,” Hegseth added. “Why a written statement? I think you know why. … He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy.”
Here’s the obligatory Simon Whistler video to sort through the possibilities.
“According to Iranian leaders, he’s alive and well. According to US defense leaders, he’s quote wounded and likefully disfigured. And as regional experts and conflict observers have recently pointed out, he might already be in a coma or even dead.”
“One week after he was elevated to rule Iran, the younger Khamenei hasn’t been seen and he hasn’t been heard, raising the distinct possibility that the world and even the people of Iran don’t actually know who’s in charge of Iran’s war effort.”
“A longtime adviser and money man who had assisted his father for decades, Motjaba was already rumored not to be on his father’s short list for succession even before the current war with the US and Israel began. Instead, Motjaba was an avatar of some of Iran’s most hardline fighting factions. The internal repression forces known as the Basij, which Motjaba essentially controlled himself, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, where he’d been close with the deceased General Qasem Soleimani and his successor Hossein Taeb.”
“Motjaba was widely understood to be much more extreme than his father, even in his open support of Iranian nuclear weapons, which his father had always publicly denied pursuing. Motjaba had spent years in Iran building a loyal support network, angling to take over despite his father’s wishes, and along with his father, Motjaba’s wife, his mother, and one of his sons were all reported killed in the early waves of US and Israeli bombing.”
“Claims from Israeli intelligence as well as anonymous Iranian officials speaking to the global press confirmed that Motjaba is in significantly worse shape than the Iranian regime will acknowledge.”
Trump: “I hear he’s not alive.”
Back to Whistler: “We can observe a convergence of analysis from the US, Israel, purported Iranian insiders, Iranian opposition sources, and others on the out-abouts. What’s probably true here? While it’s more likely than not that Motjaba Khamenei is alive in some form, most accounts on his whereabouts and status have converged on the idea that he’s in bad shape, isolated, and even if he is alert, he probably isn’t the person calling the shots in Iran on a daily basis.”
“If Motjaba isn’t calling the shots, then who is?”
“The answer may be a facet of the groups that helped elevate him to the leadership. The Revolutionary Guard, the Basij Paramilitaries, and Iran’s hardline factions.”
“It’s not clear that those leaders can exert direct control over the Iranian military. Iran has already shifted into a wartime strategy called mosaic defense. An approach that’s meant to make the country more resilient to decapitation strikes and command and control destruction than it otherwise would be.”
“In a mosaic defense, Iran essentially fractures into decentralized individually controlled military units, each given control of certain regions, certain paramilitary allies, and certain warfighting assets. Those units have their broad instructions from the top. But after that, they’re essentially on their own.” A mosaic defense can be effective in running a decentralized insurgency, but is a lot less useful when you’re trying to defend your country against two of the world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated militaries.
“On the one hand, that’s helpful in ensuring that Iran’s military can still function when people like the Supreme Leader are killed. But on the other hand, it’s very difficult to reign those mosaic forces back in once they’ve been given the order to decentralize.”
“Already, Iranian leaders have suggested that some of Iran’s actions, like the pervasive strikes on Gulf Energy infrastructure, may have been due to mosaic forces making their own decisions about how to handle the war. With a hardline supreme leader legitimizing the commands and the power of Iran’s revolutionary guard and Basij, there’s a real risk that those forces will only become less responsive to more moderate civil leaders.” Yeah, “moderate civil leaders” isn’t exactly what anyone thinks of when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Kharg Islands/Marines/Hormuz stuff snipped.
I think the Babylon Bee nicely captures the consensus about Mojtaba: “‘It’s Just A Flesh Wound!‘ Says Legless Torso Of Iranian Ayatollah.”
But beyond dead, coma, and crippled, another possibility about MiniMe Khamenei has recently surfaced, namely that he might be a prancing Nancy Boy.
President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.
Trump couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.
Others in the room also found it “hilarious” and joined the president’s reaction, while one senior intelligence official “has not stopped laughing about it for days,” said one person familiar with the briefing.
The shocking claim was described to The Post by two intelligence community officials and a third person close to the White House.
Of course, all this could merely be scurrilous rumor or psychological warfare aimed at the regime. The idea that Mojtaba enjoys having burly men pound his poop-chute would obviously radically reduce his support among the notoriously anti-gay power circles of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader doing the same things that get others hung from cranes might make regime figures less likely to follow his orders, especially if they start suspecting they’re being issued from inside a strapless lavender evening gown.
There is another possibility: Like Liberace and Oscar Wilde, Mojtaba Khamenei could be both gay and dead…
Iran Strikes: Day 14, lots of counter-drone measures, more welfare state fraud in California and Pennsylvania, a bishop raids the children’s fund, a new refinery rises in Brownsville, Old Glory 1, dirty antifa commie 0, caffeine is good for your brain, BuzzardFeed, and the cutest hotel greeters. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Donald Trump said that he thinks new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father, the former supreme leader, was killed on the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, is alive but “damaged.”
Khamenei has not been seen by Iranians since his selection on Sunday by a clerical assembly, and his first comments were read out by a television presenter on Thursday.
An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the newly appointed supreme leader was lightly injured but was continuing to operate, after state television described him as war-wounded.
“I think he probably is (alive). I think he is damaged, but I think he’s probably alive in some form, you know,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” His remarks were published by Fox News late on Thursday.
Military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island – the loading site for most of the Islamic Republic’s oil exports – were “totally obliterated” by US airstrikes during a historic bombing raid in the Persian Gulf, President Trump announced Friday.
“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The island, located about 16 miles off the Iranian coast, is one-third the size of Manhattan and controls 90% of Iranian crude oil exports.
Trump said the island’s oil infrastructure was not targeted but may be hit in future strikes, if the Iranian regime doesn’t allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Most IRGC facilities have been bombed into oblivion, but the IRGC is still functioning as a Secret Police force, threatening Iranians with death if they take to the streets to protest or rise up against the regime.
Snip.
Iranian state media claim the overnight strikes on Basij checkpoints were meant to stir unrest inside the country.
“This is an attempt to undermine public confidence in Iran’s stable security apparatus. The enemy is trying to open a new internal front,” one outlet said.
Fars news agency reported that at least 10 security and Basij personnel were killed in attacks at several sites across Tehran.
At this point, the crucial war-winning strategy is to destroy the IRGC’s ability to intimidate a populace desperate to get rid of them.
loitering munition-type drones now appear to be operating over Tehran.
More than 10 checkpoints, as well as several mobile IRGC (IRGC) military vehicles in different areas of the city, are said to have been targeted and destroyed by drone strikes. (@etelaf10)
This type of weapon can patrol for a long time over an area, wait for targets to appear, and then strike. This is all the easier when enemy air defense systems are degraded or neutralized.
This could facilitate the emergence of a broader national uprising, by weakening the regime’s control at the street level.
Uncle Sam cues up more Whoop Ass: “The USS Tripoli, and the 2,500 Marines on the amphibious assault ship, are headed to the Middle East to bolster U.S. military power there as the war in Iran enters its third week.” Maybe they’ll be occupying Kharg Island in the near future, and we’ll let China beg us to sell them Iranian oil…
Iran also attacked a refinery in northern Iraq. Maybe Iran is trying to see if they can survive as a state that exports nothing but terror…
Communist China is facing a devastating energy crisis as massive gas lines stretch for miles across the country, with desperate Hong Kong residents rushing across the border to fill their tanks amid fears that escalating war with Iran could cripple global oil supplies.
The scenes coming out of China paint a picture of panic and desperation — exactly what happens when authoritarian regimes fail to secure reliable energy for their people. While President Trump’s America First energy policies have made us energy independent, China’s reliance on hostile nations like Iran has left them vulnerable and scrambling.
Hong Kong citizens, already suffering under Beijing’s iron fist, are now forced to join endless queues just to get basic fuel for their vehicles. The images are reminiscent of the Carter administration’s gas crisis — a stark reminder of what happens when nations don’t prioritize energy independence.
The Carter-era gas lines weren’t from a shortage of supply, they were from the federal government’s monkeying with allocation.
Medicare is federally administered, and hospices must be certified for reimbursements. But the state issues the licenses for hospices to operate.
Three years ago, California’s state auditor sounded the alarm that Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010 – more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.
Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbilled Medicare by $105 million in a single year.
The state revoked 280 hospice licenses, but things have only gotten worse since then.
The CBS News analysis reveals that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state.
It goes downhill from there:
There are about 1,800 licensed hospices in Los Angeles County, California, which is more than six times the national average for the county’s senior population.
Nearly 500 hospices are operating within a 3-mile radius, the densest concentration of agencies in the county.
89 companies are registered to a single building in Van Nuys.
The illegal alien voter fraud that Democrats swear up and down never happens happened again. “ICE arrests illegal migrant who allegedly fraudulently voted in seven federal elections.”
The Department of Homeland Security has announced the arrest of an illegal migrant who allegedly voted in seven federal elections since 2008, despite being deported over 20 years ago.
DHS said Mahady Sacko, who came to the United States illegally from the African country of Mauritania, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the FBI in Philadelphia. He has been charged with voter fraud.
“This criminal illegal alien committed a felony by voting in federal elections dating back to 2008.”
If you’re waiting in long lines at the airport, you can thank Democrats love of illegal aliens. “Democrats Block DHS Funding Despite Airport Delays, Rising Iranian Threat.”
Senate Democrats have blocked another test vote on Thursday, pushed by Republicans attempting to end the ongoing 27-day partial government shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Republican leaders contend that Democrat lawmakers refuse to negotiate in good faith and are only interested in abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a subagency under DHS.
Nairobi-based contractors have seen footage capturing bathroom visits, naked people, and intimate moments, according to an investigation from two Swedish newspapers.
That’s right. This report from the newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten claims Meta is outsourcing video to Sama, a tech firm in KENYA, where human workers pore over millions of hours of video to help train Meta’s A.I. assistant that is paired with the glasses.
See, A.I. isn’t really A.I. That’s just a marketing label. These programs are Large-Language Models (LLMs) that can search and summarize vast quantities of data in a split second, but they require an army of human input to train them so they can provide accurate answers to users. Once the programs run out of data provided by humans, they stall out.
Sama was also used by OpenAI to train its LLM. Why? Well, labor in Africa is CHEAP. If you can pay thousands of workers $2 an hour instead of $30 an hour to train your overhyped search bot, you save billions of dollars.
The other advantage is anonymity … for the companies, that is. If you were paying Americans to watch videos of fellow Americans undressing and having sex, they would probably report it to the media en masse.
What a shock that Facebook “smart glasses” are simply another way to invade your privacy…
“HUGE Storm Shadow Strike on Bryansk Electronics Factory.” Plus a look at the aftermath. “90-94% of its production goes into Russian weapons – semiconductors, circuit boards, power modules for missiles, radars, drones, aircraft and more.” And as we know, Russia has very little in the way of semiconductor production.
Russian planes can barely fly in the right direction. They are catching fire in midair. Technical failures are increasing. Emergency landings are happening one after another…There is a dramatic increase in both military and civilian plane crashes.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are now afraid to even buy tickets. Flights are being postponed indefinitely. This is not a scene from a disaster movie. These images are from Russia.
And for millions of people, airports are now like giant open air prisons. The collapse of the system has reached such a terrifying scale that it can no longer be hidden.
A good bit of this was predicted when sanctions against Russian aviation came down in 2022.
Then there’s the story of civilians flown on an unheated military cargo plane in sub-zero temperatures…
Stephen Green: “I Have Seen the Future of Anti-Drone Warfare, and It’s Dirt-Cheap (Really!)”
Today’s news about Ukraine’s Sting counter-drone caught my eye, and what it might mean for U.S. and other Western forces going forward.
I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they’re both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia’s Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran’s Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.
Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.
So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.
And a local startup firm called Wild Hornets delivered on all three counts.
A typical quadcopter design and just over a foot tall, Stings are made mostly from 3D-printed parts and can be assembled in about two minutes. Unlike some drones that must be launched into the air via catapult (really), Sting takes off vertically like a helicopter before tipping over and using its stubby wings to fly like a plane, with an intercept range of 15 miles or so. Vertical takeoff allows operators to deploy and launch in less than 15 minutes.
The Ukes designed themselves a mini Osprey. That goes boom. Nifty.
There’s a camera on board, which the operator then uses to fly into incoming Geran-2s. With a top speed of about 190 MPH, they’re fast enough to enjoy a reported 80-90% successful intercept rate — and better than 90% in more recent operations. There’s a faster — and presumably more difficult to intercept — jet-powered Geran-3, but they’re much more expensive to build, require more fuel, and have shorter range. Russia uses far fewer of those.
The best part of Sting? The basic model costs about $2,500 to manufacture, compared to an estimated $70k–$80k for each Russian-built Geran-2. The economics of mass drone warfare are brutal.
A federal jury in Philadelphia has delivered a resounding guilty verdict against two Pennsylvania brothers and a longtime associate, convicting them of masterminding one of the most elaborate and prolonged racketeering operations uncovered in recent years. The scheme, which prosecutors say drained more than $32 million from Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program while exploiting vulnerable foreign workers through the H-1B visa system, spanned over a decade and involved layers of deception across multiple states.
At the center of the criminal enterprise – self-dubbed the “Savani Group” – were brothers Bhaskar Savani, 60, a trained dentist from Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Arun Savani, 58, from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Bhaskar controlled the group’s extensive network of dental practices, while Arun oversaw finances and real estate holdings. Together, they built what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described as a “complex web” of sham entities and fraudulent operations, amassing tens of millions through outright fraud “at every turn.”
A third defendant, Aleksandra “Ola” Radomiak, 48, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania—a longtime associate—was also convicted for her role, primarily in the healthcare fraud components.
The multi-faceted conspiracy encompassed several interlocking schemes:
Visa fraud and worker exploitation: The group filed numerous false H-1B visa petitions with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. These applications misrepresented job titles, duties, and other details to bring in foreign workers—most from India—who were dependent on the Savani Group for their legal status. Once employed, many were coerced into kicking back portions of their salaries and paying additional fees back to the enterprise, creating a captive, underpaid workforce.
Healthcare fraud against Medicaid: After the Savani Group’s legitimate dental practices lost their Medicaid contracts due to prior issues, the conspirators pivoted to using nominee-owned shell entities and sham dental practices. They fraudulently billed Pennsylvania Medicaid in the names of non-treating dentists for services that were either unnecessary, never performed, or grossly inflated. This alone resulted in over $32 million in improper payments, robbing taxpayers and depriving the healthcare system of vital resources.
Money laundering and tax evasion: Proceeds from the fraud were funneled through a sophisticated network of financial transactions, including concealment and transactional money laundering. The group also conspired to defraud the U.S. Treasury via wire fraud tied to false tax returns.
Obstruction of justice: When federal investigators closed in, the conspirators actively obstructed a grand jury probe.
Two cooperating government witnesses, Lynette Sharp and Seth Sikes, both pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists and testified against [Benjamin] Song.
Sharp alleged Song admitted to shooting someone when she helped him evade law enforcement after the officer was shot.
Likewise, Sikes alleged that Song said, “Get to the rifles,” and testified he heard gunshots coming from behind him where Song was and turned to see a muzzle flash.
Sharp met Song in 2022, and Sikes met him in 2024 while Song was teaching martial arts at a Fort Worth community center.
Both witnesses testified that they became friends with the defendants.
“I love them,” Sharp said on the stand, after wiping tears.
Sikes testified he and others trusted Song, whom he described as a “very charismatic person” that people would follow.
Cameron Arnold (also known as Autumn Hill), Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris (also known as Meagan Morris), Maricela Rueda, and Song face the most serious charges of attempted murder, discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and providing material support to terrorists.
Other defendants facing lesser charges include Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada.
All have pleaded not guilty.
Sharp and Sikes said group members considered themselves victims of society or those who wanted to protect “marginalized” people.
This ideology led them to become caught up in protest culture, offering a rare glimpse into the inner workings of protestors known as Antifa.
Antifa is modeled after a group that worked as the violent arm of the Communist Party in Germany in the 1930s. Some symbols from the original group are still used by the movement today, such as the logo and the raised-fist salute.
Song, who received an “other than honorable” discharge from the Army, recruited Sharp and Sikes to train with the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), often described as a left-wing alternative to counter the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Sharp and Sikes said they learned gun safety and practiced marksmanship. Various defendants in the Antifa case frequently trained with AR-style weapons, they said.
The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals lifted a block Wednesday on a lower court ruling that prevented the Trump administration from deporting illegal migrants to “third countries” that are willing to accept them.
The Trump administration had appealed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling last week, after he ruled in February that the Department of Homeland Security’s deportation policy was unlawful and violates due process protections under the U.S. Constitution.
The administration argued Murphy’s order violated two previous Supreme Court rulings and created an “unworkable scheme” that threatened to derail negotiations with other countries, along with thousands of deportations, per Fox News.
California’s climate-cult-driven political leaders assumed gasoline demand would fade quickly as electric vehicles took hold. Acting on that prediction, they created conditions that forced refineries to close, blocked new projects, and added regulations expecting everyone would share their disdain for fossil fuels and reliable internal combustion engines.
But reality didn’t match their models. Tens of millions of drivers still rely on gasoline every day, and by shrinking supply faster than demand declined, our eco-activist bureaucrats created a fragile, high‑risk system.
Californians are being warned to brace themselves for the FO phase of the FAFO cycle.
Gavin Newsom’s green agenda and global oil turmoil will risk sending California’s gas prices above a wallet-crushing $8 a gallon — potentially returning drivers to the desperate fuel rationing not seen since the 1970s, state lawmakers and industry experts warned.
With drivers in the Golden State already facing the highest gas prices in the US, Southern California state Sen. Suzette Valladares has urged the governor to scrap California’s cap-and-invest program that charges oil makers for carbon emissions. She dubbed Newsom’s program the “cap-and-tax” scheme, and warned that closing any further oil refineries in the state could trigger economic collapse.
“It’s not scaremongering at all,” Valladares told The California Post of a report from the USC Marshall School of Business that found gas prices could reach $8 a gallon by the end of 2026.
The way things are going, it wouldn’t shock me to see California gas prices hit $8 a gallon this month…
Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”
The FBI is expanding its criminal probe into suspected election irregularities, secretly obtaining a large tranche of voting records from Arizona’s largest county with a recent grand jury subpoena, multiple people familiar with the probe told Just the News.
The sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury probe, said FBI agents are receiving terabytes of electronic election data from Maricopa County, about a month after the bureau first disclosed an investigation into election irregularities by raiding a warehouse near Atlanta and seizing ballots from the 2020 election conducted in Fulton County, Georgia’s largest metropolis.
The subpoena comes five years after the GOP-led Arizona state Senate conducted a lengthy investigation into the 2020 election and concluded there were significant irregularities.
“As Democrats make anti-ICE messaging a centerpiece of their midterm election strategy, a new NBC poll shows that the Democratic Party is more unpopular than ICE. Of the 14 subjects surveyed—a list that also included “AI, that is Artificial Intelligence”—only Iran had a lower approval rating than the Democratic Party.”
Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said about the decision, “Texas has made a noticeable effort to embrace the business community. In doing so, it has created a policy and regulatory environment that can allow the company to maximize shareholder value.”
Its attraction to the state, according to ExxonMobil, is due in part to its de facto status as the company’s home, with 30 percent of the company’s global employee base and 75 percent of its domestic employee base located in Texas. The company is already headquartered in Spring.
“Texas’ legal and regulatory environment, including its modernized business statutes” was also referenced as a strategic reason for the relocation, along with the presence of the Texas Business Court, which ExxonMobil praised as “designed to resolve complex disputes efficiently.”
Thanks to Democrats’ soft on crime policies in California, not even luxury apartments are immune from rampaging mobs.
A group linked to a late-night street takeover forced its way into a luxury downtown Los Angeles apartment tower early Sunday, fighting with staff and leaving shattered glass and overturned furniture behind, according to police and video of the incident, according to the NY Post.
The disturbance happened around 3 a.m. at the Circa LA Apartments on South Figueroa Street, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Authorities told KTLA that a crowd involved in a nearby street takeover moved toward the upscale high-rise and began vandalizing the property.
Video shows a large group gathering outside the building before targeting the lobby. One person is seen throwing an object at a suited employee who appeared to be working near the front desk. The worker initially stood outside but retreated inside as other staff gathered in the lobby.
The crowd soon forced its way into the building. Outside, several people smashed glass doors and windows, while one individual used a metal barricade to ram the entrance.
The Post writes that once inside, members of the group knocked over furniture and ran through the lobby as the scene descended into chaos. At one point, a person appeared to grab a box from the front desk while others rummaged through it before the group dispersed as sirens approached.
This is your city on Democrats…
“Michigan rep not seeking reelection because she can’t “be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while remaining a member of the Democratic Party.” “Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett announced she will not seek re-election and will not run for public office again, saying the decision is faith-based and rooted in her commitment to Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture.”
I have compromised my relationship with Jesus for too long, and I’m grateful God did not give up on me. He gave me time to repent, turn, and be fully devoted to Him
That conviction includes the issues I cannot reconcile with Scripture: abortion, the normalization of the gay lifestyle, and the push to redefine gender.
Pope Leo XIV accepts San Diego bishop’s resignation over embezzlement scandal. Bishop Emanuel Shaleta stepped down from his post at Saint Peter’s Chaldean last month, the Vatican said in a bulletin Tuesday. Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop has replaced him in the interim.”
Shaleta has been charged with eight counts of embezzlement, eight counts of money laundering, and an “aggravated white collar crime” enhancement related to $272,000 in missing funds from the church, according to NBC News, and pleaded not guilty to all charges during a court appearance Monday.
Authorities allege that Shaleta spent months pocketing $30,000 in monthly cash payments from a tenant and hid the crime by moving money from a church account that held funds to help the less fortunate into the church’s operations account.
“PM who ran New Zealand into the ground during Covid flees country for greener pastures.” Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who locked down harder and longer than just about any other country, has emigrated to Australia. Hopefully a Bunyip or Drop Bear will eat her…
BlackRock is like a roach motel: Your money can check in, but it can never check out. “BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) is blocking investors from fully exiting its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund after redemption requests hit 9.3% of shares in Q1, well above the fund’s 5% quarterly cap. It marks the first time withdrawal requests have exceeded that limit.”
“Trump Set To Suspend Jones Act To Help Tame Oil Prices.” The century old Jones Act “that requires American-built ships to be used to transport goods between US ports.” I’m sure that right now Peter Zeihan is already working on a video to celebrate…
Unexpected South Carolina Democrat senate candidate Alvin Greene, RIP. They didn’t even mention his comic book…
Speaking of novelty candidates, Literally Anybody Else is running for mayor of North Richland Hills, a Metroplex city northeast of Fort Worth. That’s the name of the guy running: Literally Anybody Else. His cause for running against incumbent mayor Jack McCarty is “lying to the people about carport regulations.”
Ian McCollum examines whether force reset triggers will destroy the value of existing legal-to-own machine guns. The answer, from recent auction results, is probably not. Particularly eye-opening is two registered drop-in auto-sears, which allow conversion of certain modern sporting rifles to full-auto, went for $40,000 and $52,000. For what is essentially a stamped bit of metal.
Rick Beato has a theory that all those people building AI data centers are going to go bankrupt, because people can run AI tools and datasets on their own computers. He compares this to how recording studios who had borrowed money to buy expensive mixing boards circa 1999 went out of business when Napster crashed the music business. I think his larger point is correct, but I think a lot of musicians were already already into cheaper prosumer digital tools in the early 1990s.
Finally, my excessive Diet Dr Pepper habit is paying off! “Large Study Shows High Caffeine Intake Linked To Reduced Dementia Risk.”
BuzzFeed is buzzard feed. “BuzzFeed, the digital media empire that captured the attention of millennials in the mid-2010s through shareable listicles, viral video content and more, expressed ‘substantial doubt’ Thursday about its ability to continue operations.”
(Hat tip: Clownfish TV, from whom I’ve stolen the buzzard feed line.)
Critical Drinker is considerably less than impressed with The Bride! “Jesus Fuck Mothering Christ. I have seen a lot of crappy movies in my time, but I don’t think I’ve seen many that were so completely determined to waste such an insane amount of money and talent.”
Today’s Habitual Linecrosser:
“Aloha Snackbar.” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one before, but it’s still funny…
U.S. forces pass the 5,500 targets mark, the regime starts emptying the bank accounts of citizens to stay afloat, China’s weapons are (still) garbage, more Iranian planes cratered on runways, a tanker burns off Iraq, Weekend at Mojtaba’s, and the idea that our troops in harm’s way might be eating well enrages the Democrat Media Complex.
CENTCOM operations briefing:
“Every day, we’re striking hard at Iranian ballistic missile and drones. To date, we have struck more than 5,500 targets inside Iran including more than 60 ships using a variety of precision weapon systems.”
“Since the first 24 hours of this campaign, Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks have dropped drastically but it’s worth pointing out that Iranian forces continue to deliberately target innocent civilians in Gulf countries while hiding behind their own people as they launch attacks from highly populated cities in Iran.”
“Our warfighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds, so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.
Note that YouTube’s auto-translate function renders Operation Epic Fury as “Operation Epicure,” so if you see that somewhere in any Iran reports, you know someone was asleep at the switch…
Iran’s attacks targeting radars and other missile defense equipment in the Gulf have not achieved the regime’s objective of degrading air defenses enough to reliably penetrate them. Interception rates of ballistic missiles have not changed significantly.
Iran likely seeks to preserve the option to threaten, disrupt, and selectively control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz without fully halting Iranian crude exports that still rely on the waterway by mining it heavily.
The combined force continues to target several key internal security sites in Tehran City and Kurdish-populated areas in northwestern Iran. An open-source intelligence (OSINT) analyst reported that the combined force struck several internal security sites in Marivan City, Kurdistan Province, which is about 10 miles east of the Iran-Iraq border in northwestern Iran. Marivan City and other mountainous cities in Kurdistan Province are hotspots for anti-regime protests and clashes between Iranian security forces and Kurdish anti-regime groups.
Russia is reportedly sharing advanced drone tactics with Iran to support Iranian attacks against US forces and assets in the Middle East, which highlights deepening cooperation between key US adversaries. The CNN report comes after three unspecified officials told the Washington Post on March 6 that Russia has provided Iran with the locations of US military assets, including warships and aircraft, since the war started on February 28.
China continues to supply Iran with precursors for solid fuel to support Iran’s ballistic missile program. An OSINT analyst reported on March 11 that the Iranian cargo vessel Barzin departed Gaolan Port in China, likely carrying a shipment of missile fuel precursors, and is now en route to Iran.
Some elements of Hezbollah’s political support appear to be fracturing due to Hezbollah’s participation in the war. Hezbollah ally, the Amal Movement, recently voted in favor of the Lebanese cabinet’s decision to ban Hezbollah’s military activity. The Amal Movement has been Hezbollah’s key political and strategic ally since 2005.
Not a lot new there if you’ve been following along here.
Has the regime run out of money and just started stealing?
The Iranian Mullah Regime cannot meet the payroll of the Regime Security Forces…
…so, it is stealing the next payroll from everyone else.
Food security issues started the last Iranian mass insurrection. The Mullah Regime just lit the short fuze for the next one. https://t.co/xIIQaxfTWe
Coalition air power continues to pound the greater Tehran area:
Iran got $5 billion in Chinese MilTech that proved absolutely worthless:
And it changes EVERYTHING about who's really fighting this war.
🚨 CHINA SECRETLY ARMED IRAN WITH $5 BILLION IN WEAPONS →EVERY SINGLE ONE FAILED 🚨
A secret oil-for-weapons deal between China and Iran has been exposed by Reuters. Beijing raided its own People's Liberation Army… pic.twitter.com/nesaOtWeKt
CHINA SECRETLY ARMED IRAN WITH $5 BILLION IN WEAPONS →EVERY SINGLE ONE FAILED 🚨
A secret oil-for-weapons deal between China and Iran has been exposed by Reuters. Beijing raided its own People’s Liberation Army inventory to fast-track delivery before the war started.
$5 BILLION. Pulled from China’s own military stockpile.
WHAT HAPPENED:
→ US-Israeli strikes destroyed the ENTIRE stockpile on DAY ONE
→ CM-302 missiles launched at US Navy – ZERO hits
→ Some malfunctioned mid-flight. Others intercepted by SM-3 and SM-6
→ 100% failure rate. Not a single US warship scratched.
💀 China’s “world’s best anti-ship missile” = couldn’t hit a destroyer
💀 CM-302 has NO data link, NO satellite guidance, NO active terminal tracking
💀 Once launched it flies BLIND — and the US Navy knew it
💀 $5 BILLION in Chinese weapons = DESTROYED in hours
⚠️ China denied the deal publicly. Reuters confirmed it.
⚠️ This violates the UN weapons embargo reimposed last September
⚠️ China pulled weapons from its OWN military – meaning its Pacific fleet is now WEAKER
They’re showing you Iran’s missile launches and calling it a threat.
They’re NOT showing you that China armed Iran with its best weapons → and they ALL failed against American destroyers.
You don’t secretly arm a country with $5 billion in weapons from your own military unless you’re betting on them winning. China bet everything on Iran. And lost.
Oil terminals at Iraqi ports on Thursday said they have suspended operations following attacks on tankers near its waters, according to Iraqi authorities cited by state media.
Farhan al-Fartousi, director general of the state-owned General Company for Ports of Iraq (GCPI), said was quoted by the Iraqi News Agency (INA) as saying, “The operation of oil ports has been suspended, commercial ports continue operations.”
Ships remain in the waiting area, and loading and unloading are ongoing at the North and South Um Qasr ports, the INA reported.
This decision, the news outlet reported, was taken after a tanker loaded with petroleum products – supplied by the Iraqi State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) to the Iraqi Oil Tankers Company, “was involved in an incident”.
Al-Fartousi said that the vessel was carrying a fuel supply tank in the Ship-to-Ship (STS) transfer area and was in the process of loading when it was hit by an explosion. He added that “one of the smaller tankers involved flies the Maltese flag.”
SOMO is Iraq’s national company responsible for marketing and exporting the country’s crude oil and fuel oil. Headquartered in Baghdad, it manages sales to international buyers.
As per the Iraqi News Agency, rescue teams from the company, in coordination with naval units in the SDS area, recovered 38 people, including one confirmed dead. Specialized firefighting tugs from Basra Oil Port were deployed to extinguish fires on both vessels, while search-and-rescue teams continue to look for missing crew members.
There’s video:
The US loses a KC-135 refueling tanker over Iraq, evidently due to an aerial collision with another friendly aircraft (which landed safely). Rescue efforts “ongoing.”
“An SAS base in Iraq was hit by a barrage of drones last night as top UK generals confirmed that Russia was ‘definitely’ helping Iran.”
I have to give leftists and Democrats some credit because they put in no effort to conceal their true feelings, objectives, or that their hatred for President Donald Trump blinds them.
They lost their minds when data showed that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spent a lot of money to improve the lives of the military.
They latched onto the $20 million spent on steaks, lobster tails, and crab legs.
How Pete Hegseth spent taxpayer funds:
$225 million for furniture
$15.1 million for ribeye steak
$6.9 million on lobster tail
$5.3 million for new Apple devices
$2 million for Alaskan king crab
$139,224 on donuts
$124,000 for ice cream machines
$98,329 for a grand piano
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) March 10, 2026
Snip.
Also, who is “they?”
Didn’t Congress allocate the money for the Defense Department?
What does the allocated money have to do with healthcare costs, SNAP, and other services that do not fall under the defense budget?
Am I missing something here? Doesn’t Congress have to approve the budgets? How did the “they” cut those costs?
If Congress doesn’t want the military to eat well, have treats, and have a better life while serving, then maybe don’t hand the department billions.
More on that subject via Stephen Green at Instapundit:
I've heard Democrats complain more loudly about our soldiers being well fed than about fraud in California or Minnesota. They sure do have their priorities. They seem to only be upset about the military spending because they'd prefer the lobster and steak to go to illegal aliens.
As usually, this is just what I was able to collect from various sources. If you think I’ve missed anything important, feel free to share it in comments below.
Another day of airstrikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran, another roundup of news.
Note that earlier in the day the blog went down with a 429 (too many requests) error. I rattled Bluehost’s cage and they fixed it. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again…
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine held a press conference this morning with a few updates on Operation Epic Fury.
“On day ten of Operation Epic Fury, we are winning with an overwhelming and unrelenting focus on our objectives, which are the same as the day I gave my first briefing here on Operation Epic Fury,” said Hegseth. “They’re straightforward, and we are executing them with ruthless precision.”
Hegseth also reiterated the objectives: “One, destroy their missile stockpiles, their missile launchers, and their defense industrial base missiles and their ability to make them. Two, destroy their Navy, and three, permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever.”
Tuesday will be another bad day for Iran:
It’s a laser-focused, maximum authority mission, delivered with overwhelming and unrelenting precision. No hesitation, no half measures. As President Trump declared yesterday, we’re crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force. We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated. But we do so — we do so on our timeline and at our choosing. For example, today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.
The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever, so that’s on one hand. On the other hand, the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing. Yet just the bifurcation, just the trend lines that we talked about on our first briefing. You see, this is not 2003. This is not endless nation-building under those types of quagmires we saw under Bush or Obama. It’s not even close. Our generation of soldier[ [sic] will not let that happen again. And nor will this President, who very clearly ran against those kinds of never-ending, nebulously-scoped missions. Those days are dead. Instead, we’re winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance, and an unbreakable will to accomplish the President’s objectives on our timeline. We stay locked on the target because here at the Department of War, that’s our job.
Stephen Green: “Iran’s Richest Oil Region Demands Freedom, Democracy.”
Khuzestan is Iran’s most oil-rich and ethnically diverse province — and the Arabs there have finally had it up to here with the theocrats who run things in Tehran. Whoever they are today, that is.
In a daring new statement, the Khuzestan Arab Tribes Assembly this week calling for “a free, democratic, and federal Iran,” and that they “firmly believe that the Islamic Republic’s system has violated the rights of the people of Iran.”
While Khuzestan borders Iraq and is roughly one-third Arab, the assembly called the province the “beating heart of Iran” and emphasized “the protection of Iran’s territorial integrity and reject any separatist or divisive project that harms the homeland of Iran.”
“We see ourselves in the transitional phase from the current repressive regime toward a free, democratic, and federal Iran. We can play a constructive role alongside other compatriots in building a prosperous and united Iran.”
“We, along with all Iranians—Persians, Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris, Lors, Turks, and others—stand hand in hand for freedom, prosperity, and the bright future of Iran.”
You don’t put out a statement like that one unless you enjoy at least some confidence that “security” troops won’t soon make a visit to explain to you the error of you ways. You know, in a dark cell somewhere from which you will only ever emerge feet-first. So whatever the real-world political efficacy of the assembly may or may not prove to be, the people behind it seem to believe that the IRGC’s reach no longer extends there.
And — this is kind of a big deal — Khuzestan holds about 80% of Iran’s onshore oil reserves, and also accounts for about the same percentage of Iran’s onshore production. That’s nearly 60% of all of Iran’s oil production.
But he also owes his position to the IRGC, unofficially making the ayatollah subordinate to the military for the first time in the Islamic state’s 47-year history.
And yet… Mojtaba’s figurehead status might be even less than it appears because there’s also the question of whether Mojtaba remains upright and breathing. Also on Monday, Iran state television confirmed that Mojtaba was wounded, presumably during an airstrike. AP reported: “The anchors read reports describing him as ‘janbaz’ or wounded by the enemy,” even as they parade him around — virtually only! — as the new boss.
Mojtaba has yet to be seen in public since his promotion. Strange way to reassure the public about the succession, yes?
In addition to Ali Khamenei, also believed dead in the compound airstrike is the elder Khamenei’s wife, a daughter, a grandchild, a son-in-law, and Mojtaba’s wife.
Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch to believe that coalition airpower took out so much of the Khamenei family, except for the one guy the IRGC needed as a well-known figurehead to consolidate its power during a chaotic time when one military and theocratic leader after another gets chalked up as KIA.
I also note that the IRGC will need to maintain the fiction of him alive if they want to access those untold billions the Khamenei clan withdrew from government funds to stash in international bank accounts…
IRGC Qods Force Colonel Majid Kashefi killed in Israeli drone strike:
BREAKING: This beast from the IRGC Qods Force, Colonel Majid Kashefi, who had the blood of many Iranians on his hands, was eliminated in an Israeli drone strike in Iran. State media of the regime has published his image and video.#OperationEpicFury#OperationLionsRoarpic.twitter.com/aNdkFc22xK
— Babak Taghvaee – The Crisis Watch (@BabakTaghvaee1) March 10, 2026
US intelligence has begun detecting indications that Iran may be preparing to deploy naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. Officials cited by CBS News say Tehran is believed to be using small boats capable of carrying two to three naval mines each. Estimates suggest Iran could possess between 2,000 and 6,000 naval mines, including Iranian-made systems as well as variants designed in China and Russia.
More recent intelligence reporting indicates that Iran has already begun laying a limited number of mines, with a few dozen reportedly placed in the waterway in recent days. However, the deployment remains limited for now. Officials say Iran still retains around 80% to 90% of its small boats and mine-laying vessels, meaning it could potentially place hundreds more mines if tensions escalate.
US intelligence has begun detecting indications that Iran may be preparing to deploy naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. Officials cited by CBS News say Tehran is believed to be using small boats capable of carrying two to three naval mines each. Estimates suggest Iran could possess between 2,000 and 6,000 naval mines, including Iranian-made systems as well as variants designed in China and Russia.
More recent intelligence reporting indicates that Iran has already begun laying a limited number of mines, with a few dozen reportedly placed in the waterway in recent days. However, the deployment remains limited for now. Officials say Iran still retains around 80% to 90% of its small boats and mine-laying vessels, meaning it could potentially place hundreds more mines if tensions escalate.
Given the indiscriminate nature of naval mines, I can’t imagine that China would be pleased if one of their cargo or tanker ships were hit.
Kyiv has dispatched three teams of military experts to the Middle East, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on March 10 amid Iran’s ongoing drone strikes in the region.
“This week, all three (teams) will be in three different countries… Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia,” Zelensky said in a briefing with journalists.
Countries across the Middle East have come under fire from Iranian Shahed drones and missiles in the wake of Israeli-U.S. strikes against Iran on Feb. 28.
Ukraine has signalled readiness to share its extensive experience with countering the low-cost kamikaze drones, which Russia launches in daily attacks against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
MSM reporting on Iran sucks.
Iran Coverage
The headlines abound:
Iran Regime doing well, in control
Trump under pressure to end war
Khomeini son just as tough as Father
US responsible for missile on school
One headline after another essentially featuring Iranian propaganda as the news.
I suspect anyone reading this roundup already knew that…
Saudi Aramco is using their East-West pipeline to reroute oil exports away from the Strait of Hormuz to terminals on the Red Sea.
Iranian “numbers” station under attack. Numbers stations are mysterious radio stations that feature numbers spoken over the air, presumably to send coded messages to spies and other agents. But Iran seems to be jamming the station, suggesting someone other than the regime put it up.
Once again, if there are any bits of news you think I missed, feel free to share them in the comments below.
The more the Islamic Republic of Iran lashes out at other countries in the region, the more obvious it is that eliminating the regime and its nuclear ambitions was the right call. I once read a quote that if Hitler had possessed nuclear weapons in the in his bunker as the end drew near, he surely would have used him. That’s the sort of nihilistic death-spasm we’re seeing from the Iranian regime.
Some news:
U.S. submarine torpedoes Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka:
Note that secretary of defense Pete Hegseth stated that we sunk the IRIS Shahid Soleimani, but the video he showed was that Suchomimus posted, which is clearly not a Soleimani-class ship with its distinctive duel prow. There’s obviously some confusion here. But maybe Hegseth just mixed up the videos, as this CENTCOM tweet des seem to show stills from a strike on a Soleimani-class ship.
U.S. forces have struck or sunk to the bottom of the ocean more than 20 ships from the Iranian regime. Last night, CENTCOM added a Soleimani-class warship to the list. pic.twitter.com/KgW8cS726P
With complete American/Israeli air superiority over Iran, the B-52 has joined the fight:
Also, F-22 Raptors have been stationed in Israel, possibly setting the stage for the greatest Habitual Linecrosser video ever.
There are conflicting reports on whether Kurdish rebel forces have launched a ground invasion into Iran or not. Kurdish sources seem to be denying it. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re infiltrating units.
“A citizen sent a video to IranWire, reporting several consecutive explosions in the city of Baneh. The United States and Israel extensively targeted some positions of the Islamic Republic in the city of Baneh today.” Location of Baneh? Kurdistan province.
Simon Whistler explains how Russia and China are going to do “jack” and “squat” to Iran. Or, more specifically, all the moral support you can pack into a roadside IED.
Russia is too busy with its quagmire in Ukraine, and China gets more oil from the Persian Gulf states Iran has been drone and missile attacking than from Iran.
“In a way, Russia and China have delivered Iran the ultimate geopolitical insult. They don’t hate Iran. They aren’t condemning Iran, but at the end of the day, they just don’t really care that much. After decades of loyal partnership, and recent years where Iran has clearly believed that its relationships with China and Russia were growing far deeper, Iran has been discarded. It’s too inconvenient to defend. It isn’t valuable enough to save. And for Moscow and for Beijing, it’ll be easy enough to forget.”
OK, that’s the news I’ve scraped today. If there’s something significant you think I’ve missed, feel free to share it in the comments.
Iran teeters, Walz falls, more Russia’s shadow fleet has an epically bad week, more Minnesota Somali fraud fallout, more computer security vulnerabilities, and a policeman transformed into a frog using the power of AI! Plus the Austro-Hungarian and Achaemenid empires. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Personally, this week has been deeply frustrating, as I’ve been trying to withdraw money from my 401K account to pay my property taxes, a process I began mid-December, and it’s still not done. “Oh, these things take time,’ says 401K company. Then it’s “Oh, we haven’t heard back from your former employers.” Former employer: “Oh, we haven’t received the request from your 401K company.” Then: “Oh, the third party company we hired to handle 401K requests hasn’t received the request.” Now it’s “Oh, they’ve just started working on it, but they’re always slow at the end of the year.” It’s frustrating to have to jump through so many hoops to access my own money.
On to the LinkSwarm!
From the outside, it’s hard to tell how serious the chances of protesters are to free their own country, but they’re so fed up with the mullah’s rule that they’re burning mosques.
Iranian protestors demonstrating against the theocratic regime will face harsh punishment with absolutely zero leniency, Iran’s top judge has warned — as footage emerged Friday of mosques burning on the streets of Tehran amid the ongoing riots.
Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, issued the stark warning after President Trump vowed to back those peacefully demonstrating across the country.
Signaling a potentially violent crackdown, Ejei vowed the punishment for rioters would “be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”
Protesters gather as vehicles burn in Tehran, Iran.
Things in Iran seem to be moving very fast indeed…
“Authorities report that Mahmoud Haqiqat, a police station commander in Iranshahr, Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan Province, was shot and killed by unknown assailants this week in a drive-by attack. Video circulating online appears to show gunmen firing on Haqiqat’s vehicle before it crashed. Social posts and video descriptions identify him as the former head of the city’s intelligence and allege that he was involved in operations targeting anti-regime Baluch groups in the area.” Add Balochs to Kurds and Lurs as ethnic minorities pissed at the mullah’s government. There’s also a substantial Baloch population in Pakistan, and they don’t like the Pakistani government either. Hell, history records the Balochs rebelling against the Achaemenid Empire three millennia ago…
With constant pressure from liberal activists, some states now dispatch mail-in ballots 45 to 60 days before Election Day and allow the counting of such absentee votes as many as three weeks afterward, creating an election trimester that causes vote tallies to wildly fluctuate days after polls close and increasingly erodes Americans’ trust.
But conservatives are now fighting back, first with an executive order by President Donald Trump requiring all ballots to be counted on election night, followed by a challenge to Mississippi’s counting process that has not reached the U.S. Supreme Court and then the Ohio legislature’s vote to require all its ballots to arrive on election night to be tallied.
“It’s common sense that ballots should arrive by Election Day,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told Just the News this week after his state became the 35th to require mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Night in order to be counted. Previously, the state had a four-day grace period for ballots to arrive after Election Day.
“I think that trying to reduce complexity should be our goal in government, and certainly when it comes to the rules for how elections run,” LaRose said in a wide-ranging interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast. “If you were to stop the average person on the street last year and say, what’s the deadline for your ballot to get back to the board of elections, they would not know that it’s four days after. It’s kind of an arbitrary date.”
The National Conference of State Legislatures reported that many states now mail out ballots as early as 45 days to two months before Election Day and about a dozen states allow them to be counted days later — as long as three weeks afterward in Washington state, 14 days in Illinois, 10 days in Maryland and seven days in California and New York.
Tim Walz is dropping his bid for a third term as governor of Minnesota amid a national political firestorm sparked by the identification of massive welfare fraud in the state’s Somali community.
Walz released a statement Monday morning ahead of a late morning press conference announcing his withdrawal from the race.
“But as I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all. Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” Walz said. “So I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work.”
Translation: “I got caught, and I need to see if I can get away from this giant pile of graft as quickly as possible.”
Walz and fellow Minnesota Democrats have been subjected to withering attacks at the hands of Trump and his allies over the staggering scale of welfare fraud that’s taken place under their noses in recent years. Federal prosecutors announced last month that the cost of the welfare fraud perpetrated against state-run Medicaid services alone could exceed $9 billion, half or more of the $18 billion paid out since 2018.
A federal probe into the matter has been initiated, and Minnesota officials have until January 9 to provide the administration with more information regarding who is receiving the welfare benefits in the state.
It’s amazing that anyone can give Gavin Newsom a run for the title of America’s Most Incompetent Governor, but Walz is just that special.
It’s been going on a while. “Minnesota Inspector General [Carolyn Ham] covered up hundreds of millions in Somali childcare fraud in 2018.”
You know how the Somali childcare fraud has been a big thing, kind of an open secret in Minnesota for years now?
Well, not only has this been happening for at least a decade, but, according to this report, the state has known about it for at least that long.
Check out these receipts from Maze on X detailing a nine-year-old investigation into the fraud at Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program — an investigation that went nowhere.
The Minnesota child care fraud saga is so strange because years ago it was fully investigated, documented, and reported on by a team of state investigators set up to catch and stop child care fraud.
They spent years gathering evidence including many hours of surveillance footage. In 2018 they compiled a detailed report and delivered it to their boss, the DHS Inspector General.
Directly from the report: ‘Investigators, as well as the Supervisor and Manager of this unit believe that the overall fraud rate in this program is at least 50% of the $217M paid to child care centers in CY2017.’
What did the Inspector General do with this information? She refused to meet with her own team, refused to discuss the findings of the report, and then spent $90,000 of taxpayer money to have an outside company write a report saying the fraud isn’t quite as bad as her own team of investigators was claiming.
Woke is a heckuva drug, isn’t it?
So is corruption, scamming, and Democratic politics in general.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani, now at Fox News, is investigating the left-wing, billionaire-funded dark money networks in the nonprofit world and offering much-needed coverage for mainstream Americans on how these NGOs influence protest movements, unleash riots, and conduct sophisticated political pressure campaigns.
Snip.
Key details from the report:
MacKenzie Scott disclosed sending at least $5 million in a new round of donations to the Solidaire Network, on top of a $10 million gift in 2021 via her philanthropy vehicle, Yield Giving.
Solidaire funds a network of radical anti-Israel activist groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine, both of which are under House and Senate investigation for alleged coordination with Hamas-linked activities.
Other Solidaire-backed groups include the Palestinian Youth Movement and the US Palestinian Community Network, which publicly justified Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Scott’s grants are unrestricted, allowing recipients to spend funds freely. Solidaire used this flexibility to finance campaigns promoting “Palestinian liberation,” campus protests, and direct-action activism, including efforts to block U.S. military logistics supporting Israel.
Funding was often routed through fiscal sponsors such as WESPAC Foundation and Tides Foundation, structures that have drawn scrutiny from Republican lawmakers investigating possible links to extremist groups.
Scott’s cumulative charitable giving has reached roughly $26 billion since 2019, surpassing the lifetime donations of George Soros, and placing her at the center of growing political controversy over billionaire-funded activist networks.
The Somali ambassador to the United Nations, Abukar Dahir Osman, who is tied to a daycare company in Ohio under investigation in Washington, might have acquired an American citizenship fraudulently, according to a source in Somaliland.
Ambassador Osman, who currently serves as the rotating president of the UN Security Council, first entered America in the mid-1980s and again in 1989. He claimed to be a refugee of a minority in Somaliland persecuted by the Somali regime at the time, a Somaliland ambassador at large who tweets under the name of Haggoogane, tells the Sun via text.
Haggoogane, whose real name is Mustafa Osman but is unrelated to the ambassador, says that the current Somali UN ambassador was far from a refugee fearing extermination by the Somali regime. Instead, he tells the Sun, the UN ambassador was part of that regime in the late 1980s. “His job was to identify anyone the regime saw as a threat,” Haggoogane says.
Between 1960 and 1991 the government of Somalia killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Isaaq and others in Somaliland, which declared independence of Mogadishu in 1991.
Following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland last month, the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, visited its capital, Hargeisa, on Tuesday, and met with President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. After Israel became the first UN member to recognize Somaliland’s independence, Mr. Osman, the Somali UN ambassador, convened an “emergency session” of the security council.
At Washington on Tuesday, the deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Service, Jim O’Neill, confirmed a rumor regarding the Somali ambassador, which has long been whispered in UN corridors.
“I can confirm public speculation that Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman, Permanent Representative of Somalia to the UN and President of the Security Council, is in fact associated with Progressive Health Care Services, a home health agency in Cincinnati,” Mr. O’Neill wrote on X. “HHS has previously taken action against Progressive in response to a conviction for Medicaid fraud. More to come.”
The United States seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic this week while also intercepting a separate stateless “dark fleet” vessel tied to Venezuelan oil exports, US officials said, marking a significant escalation in Washington’s enforcement campaign against sanctioned energy shipments.
According to US officials, the Russian-flagged tanker Marinera, previously known as Bella-1, was seized on Wednesday near Iceland after being tracked for more than two weeks across the Atlantic, reports Reuters. The operation occurred as Russian military assets, including a submarine, were operating in the general area, though officials said there were no signs of confrontation.
In a post on X, US European Command said the tanker was seized for violating US sanctions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded, writing, “The blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT — anywhere in the world.”
Two US officials said the operation was carried out by the US Coast Guard with support from the US military. The Coast Guard declined to comment. Russian officials have not issued a response, though Russian state media outlet RT published an image showing a helicopter hovering near the ship.
The Marinera had previously evaded US enforcement efforts in the Caribbean and refused boarding attempts. After those encounters, it re-registered under a Russian flag and changed its name, officials said. Sources indicated the vessel may now be heading toward British territorial waters, though its final destination has not been confirmed. The UK Ministry of Defence declined to comment.
Separately, US Southern Command confirmed that the Coast Guard intercepted another tanker, the Panama-flagged M/T Sophia, in Latin American waters early Wednesday. The vessel was described as a “stateless, sanctioned dark fleet motor tanker” linked to Venezuelan oil shipments.
U.S. First Assistant Attorney Bill Essayli Thursday called California Gov. Gavin Newsom “the king of fraud,” accusing him of a lack of oversight on spending to address homelessness.
Essayli made the comments on the “Fox and Friends” telecast, during which he discussed the federal fraud charges that were filed in October against real estate executives Steven Taylor and Cody Holmes for allegedly misusing grant money meant for homeless housing.
Holmes, 31, of Beverly Hills was charged with mail fraud charge that was allegedly linked to millions of dollars in grant money that the state paid Shangri-La Industries to purchase, build and operate homeless housing in Thousand Oaks, just north of Los Angeles. Holmes was Shangri-La’s chief financial officer.
Taylor, 44, of Brentwood, was charged with seven counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of money laundering.
Essayli Thursday said the charges are the “tip of the iceberg” in an investigation he launched with a task force in April. He said more charges would be coming, probably later this month.
The state spent $24 billion in the last five years to address homelessness and can’t account for where the money went, Essayli said on “Fox and Friends.”
California Democrats: “Hey, let’s institute a wealth tax on billionaires!” California billionaires: “See ya!”
A ballot measure that could tax the wealthiest people in California may reportedly push billionaires Larry Page and Peter Thiel to leave the state, while other wealthy residents have condemned the idea, whose supporters claim could generate up to $100 billion—though the measure has yet to be considered by state officials or voters.
Thiel, who cofounded PayPal and Palantir, and Google cofounder Page have held discussions to reduce their ties to California by the end of the year because of the billionaire tax proposal, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with their thinking.
Thiel operates the investment firm Thiel Capital and may open an office for the company in another state, with plans to spend more time outside of California, while Page has filed documents to incorporate three limited liability companies in Florida, according to the Times.
Bill Ackman weighed in, calling California “on a path to self-destruction,” adding, “Hollywood is already toast and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave, taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere.”
Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya wrote on X the proposed ballot measure would result in an “exodus of the state’s most talented entrepreneurs” who would opt to “build their companies in less regressive states,” and argued the middle class would be the worst hit by the tax.
Dear Fleeing Billionaires: Welcome to Texas! Please be sure to discard any liberal ideas you brought with you in the nearest trash receptacle…
“Major train crash on key route used to feed Putin’s war machine with North Korean military equipment…A freight train hauling 35 wagons spectacularly derailed in Russia’s remote Amur region on the Transbaikal Railway – a strategic line linked to the famed Trans-Siberian route.”
Ukraine also hit Russian shadow fleet tanker Elbus in the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey. It’s been a bad week all around for Russia’s shadow fleet…
France and UK bomb Islamic State targets in Syria. This isn’t the first time France has bombed Islamic State terrorists, as they also participated in Operation Chammal in 2014, back when the would-be caliphate was much closer to the extremely short zenith of its limited powers.
Minnesota woman tries to run over ICE agent, immediately enters find out phase.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers fatally shot a woman during an operation in Minneapolis Wednesday.
As videos of the incident went viral, the Department of Homeland Security justified the shooting on self-defense grounds, calling the slain woman a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle” by driving towards federal agents.
Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots,” said DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
“The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement.”
She wasn’t the only idiot dirtnapped trying to run over ICE agents. A Tren de Aragua scumbag tried the same trick, and met the same fate, in Portland. Naturally, the usual leftist idiots there rioted.
Yesterday, Border Patrol officers had to shoot a dangerous criminal gang member in self-defense after he committed a vehicular assault on them to evade arrest. Leftists in the sanctuary city of Portland, Ore., promptly turned out to protest his shooting — and apparently to try to accomplish his deadly intention against federal officers.
In case you still have any illusions that the Democratic Party is not essentially a criminal organization, just look at the fury and violence the last few days in blue cities over the shootings of individuals who deliberately tried to seriously injure or kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Border Patrol officers. Renee Good in Minnesota and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua member in Oregon were both violently and dangerously ramming their vehicles into officers at the time they were shot. That makes them leftist heroes and martyrs, it seems.
The American left is trying to do a repeat of the summer of love and mostly peaceful protests in 2020. They want to burn down what is still standing after their previous riots. With Democrat politicians and media lying to fuel violence and their followers cheering for murder, how can we avoid the conclusion that the Democratic Party is acting like a terror organization?
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has suspended the funding for Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV) pending an investigation into whether or not the charity is complying with federal grant requirements.
According to CCRGV, the charity learned of the suspension in late November 2025. It claims that it is “committed to compliance with federal grant requirements and will work expeditiously with DHS to resolve the matter.”
The charity stated that all of its funding was used to care for people brought to CCRGV by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) — individuals who were “released by CBP with a document that gave them permission to travel to their points of destination with instructions on where to follow up with their immigration proceedings.”
CCRGV runs the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, a place that offers food and shelter to immigrants who are awaiting court hearings.
According to reporting by Fox News, CCRGV was suspended after a DHS investigation revealed what the outlet called “major grant violations.”
The suspension follows “months of warnings and data reviews that auditors say uncovered sweeping inaccuracies, large gaps in migrant records, and significant billing outside federally allowed timeframes,” Fox News reported.
The investigators also reportedly found 248 instances in which CCRGV billed the federal government for services to immigrants outside of the 45-day window allowed by federal rules.
Surging liquefied natural gas exports from new North American export plants likely pushed global LNG shipments in 2025 by the most since 2022, Kpler data showed on Tuesday.
The annual rise in 2025 would be the steepest increase in global LNG exports since 2022, when shipments grew by 4.5% compared to 2021, the data showed.
North America was the key supplier of new LNG volumes, as Canada’s first-ever export facility, LNG Canada, started shipments in the middle of 2025, and Plaquemines LNG in Louisiana launched operations and ramped up shipments throughout the year.
Thanks to rising capacity and volumes, the U.S. is set to become the first LNG exporter in the world to have passed in 2025 the threshold of 100 million tons of LNG exports in one year.
Additional LNG supply is poised to hit the market between 2026 and 2030 as more U.S. export plants come online and Qatar begins shipments from its huge capacity expansion of the North Field export facilities.
The U.S. is set to export 14.9 billion cubic feet per day of LNG in 2025, up by 25% from 2024, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) for December. With new projects ramping up, the EIA expects U.S. LNG exports to jump to an average of 16.3 billion cubic feet per day in 2026.
President Donald Trump on Friday blocked the Delaware firm HieFo Corporation from acquiring assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore for $3 million, citing national security and China-related concerns.
The president claimed HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China,” and that there was evidence to believe HieFo, through the merger, may “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”
“The Transaction is hereby prohibited,” Trump said and ordered HieFo to “divest all interests and rights in the Emcore assets, wherever located,” within 180 days.
Snip. “HieFo purchased Emcore’s chips business and indium-phosphide wafer-fabrication operations for $2.92 million.” Indium-Phosphide is a pretty exotic wafer material used in optics and photonics chips.
Leprino Foods, the world’s largest mozzarella producer and a vital supplier to major pizza chains like Domino’s, Pizza Hut, and Papa John’s, moved its operations from California to Texas. “For over a century, the Lemoore plant in California’s Central Valley served as a cornerstone of the dairy industry, but the company is now shifting billions of dollars and hundreds of jobs into a new $870 million facility in Lubbock, Texas.”
Progress! “Corporation for Public Broadcasting votes itself out of existence. The private agency, which has distributed federal funding to PBS, NPR and hundreds of local television and radio stations across the country for more than a half-century, saw its appropriations from Congress eliminated this past summer.” They promised Big Bird and delivered leftwing propaganda.
I get an incredible sense of deja vu all over again looking at Mitre’s list of top 25 exploits for 2025.
The top 4 are all very, very old. I myself demonstrated #4 when I taught a computer security class (with corporate IT Security present) back in 1994. That’s three decades ago.
And what’s with numbers 11 and 14? One of the classic papers on software security is Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit – from 1996.
Numbers 3, 6, and 22 are web server vulnerabilities that are over 20 years old, and I’ve posted about them before.
17, 19, and 21 have been known since before I was in this industry. Call it the 1980s, although it’s likely older.
The United States carried out “large-scale strikes” against Islamic State (ISIS) targets across Syria in response to a deadly terrorist attack on American soldiers in the country.
On Friday night, over 70 terrorist targets were hit using fighter jets, helicopters, and artillery as part of the “Operation Haw[k]eye Strike,” the U.S. Military confirmed. “U.S. Central Command said the strikes hit more than 70 targets across central Syria, adding that Jordanian fighter jets supported the operation,” Reuters reported. “One U.S. official said the strikes were carried out by U.S. F-15 and A-10 jets, along with Apache helicopters and HIMARS rocket systems.”
No F-35s or B-2s. Evidently 40- or 50-year old U.S. miltech is quite sufficient to eliminate remnants of the failed caliphate.
70 is not a small number of targets, and that number reminds the world that the United States military is in a different weight class than everyone else.
The overnight strikes were in retaliation for last week’s ISIS terror attack that killed three Americans, including two soldiers, in the city of Palmyra, central Syria.
Tonight, U.S. and Jordanian forces struck 70+ ISIS targets in Syria with 100+ precision munitions. Peace through strength. pic.twitter.com/XWWvfqBBFT
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) December 20, 2025
Ahead of the strike, in a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump promised a “very serious retaliation” against “ISIS thugs in Syria” for the terrorist attack on American personnel, saying: “All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned — YOU WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE IF YOU, IN ANY WAY, ATTACK OR THREATEN THE U.S.A.”
On Friday night, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed that the U.S. Military was conducting massive strikes “to eliminate ISIS fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites.” It was “in direct response to the attack on U.S. forces that occurred on December 13th in Palmyra, Syria,” he wrote on X.
According to the War Secretary, the U.S. was not starting a war in the region, but exacting retribution for the act of terror against its soldiers. “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” he declared.
It’s hard to imagine Obama, Biden, or even the Bushes or Reagan using the “declaration of vengeance” rhetoric, the precise sort of Old Testament language guaranteed to send the chattering classes to their fainting couches. After all, why commit acts of vengeance when you can flood the Middle East with money routed through dodgy NGOs in futile efforts to convince the jihadist organizations to make friends with us?
Don’t be deceived by all the “Trump hates war” rhetoric. You know what Trump hates worse than war? Americans dead at the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Like I said, I usually don’t pay attention to the left-leaning MSM for anything, but is it just me, or is the usual wailing and rending of garments anytime a Republican president authorizes military action either muted or entirely absent here? The attacks seem to have invoked none of the usual histrionic outrage.
My working theory is that everyone who could trot out the usual liberal talking points is already on Christmas vacation and won’t be able to perform their usual regurgitation until January. If they’re not there to spew out press releases, then for all intents and purposes they cease to exist. It seems like if airstrike falls in the forest when they’re on vacation, it doesn’t make a sound.
That vaunted American foreign policy establishment has been wrong about the Middle East most of the time. Between the Abraham Accords and obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, it seems Donald Trump has racked up more successes in the region than they ever did.
Maybe it’s time to ignore crooked NGOs and foreign policy fossils who toil away in places with [Anything] Institute for Peace at the top of their resumes.
It’s time to treat the traditional foreign policy establishment as damage and route around it.
Welcome to day three of the Schumer Shutdown! January 6 was an entirely Fed operation, Hegseth reads the brass the riot act, the Trump Administration claws back some taxpayer dollars, Ukraine hits more Russian oil refineries, Tricolor’s numerous scams, a couple of hacking attacks, Fiddy gets 50, and a Beatles demo tape leads to lunch with Sir Paul.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The “FBI disclosed to Congress that there were 275 ‘plain clothes’ agents interspersed with the crowd that gathered at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” So it was a Fed operation top to bottom. And, of course, they lied about it to congress. I guess calling “Operation MAGA Entrapment” would have been too obvious…
There are some familiar names in this Jason Curtis Anderson list of organizations setting America on fire, but a few new ones as well.
If I were investigating the organizations who are setting America on fire, I’d start here:
Foundations:
1. Open Societies 2. Tides 3. The Neville Roy Singham funds
-Community Justice Exchange -Unity & Justice Fund -Peoples Support Foundation -United Community Fund -Arc of…
-The People’s Forum
-Party for Socialism & Liberation
-Answer Coaliton
-Code Pink
-Tricontinental Institute
-Breakthrough News
-International People’s Assembly
-Venceremos Brigade
2. PAL Action
3. Palestinian Youth Movement
4. Within Our Lifetime
5. Stop Cop City
6. Samidoun (still no arrests)
7. SJP
8. National Lawyers Guild
9. DSA (planning to disrupt military supply chain)
10. AROC (blocks ports)
11. Alliance for Global Justice
12. Dissenters
13. Indivisible
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of the nation’s top military leaders in Quantico, Virginia Tuesday morning to lay out his vision for restoring the military’s “warrior ethos” by rolling back the left-wing indoctrination that’s taken hold at the Pentagon in recent years.
Warning the assembled generals to “do the honorable thing and resign” if they rejected his message, Hegseth called out the leaders for allowing physical fitness standards to slide while diverting valuable time and resources towards politically fashionable causes related to race, gender, and the environment.
“No more identity months, DEI offices, no more dudes in dresses,” Hegseth said. “No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. We are DONE with that sh**.”
The secretary announced that female physical fitness standards will be eliminated from combat roles, reiterating a directive that was first issued in March.
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men,” the Pentagon chief said.
All soldiers in combat roles, regardless of gender, must now meet the male physical fitness standards, Hegseth said, “because this job is life or death.”
“Each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS, for every combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only,” Hegseth said.
Basic physical fitness standards will also be applied to the highest ranking officers.
“It’s unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon, and leading all around the world. It’s a bad look, and it’s not who we are!” Hegseth said. “You need to meet the height and weight standards.”
“Today, at my direction, every member of the Joint Force at every rank is required to take the PT test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year. EVERY year of service.”
Summary: ““The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things.”
Analysis: True.
At least the shutdown did give us this:
President Trump is trolling Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries over their obsession with giving free healthcare to criminal aliens
One story that broke a bit late to include in last week’s LinkSwarm is the Des Moines school district superintendent who turned out to be an illegal alien with a deportation order. With further digging, it seems that Guyana-born Ian Roberts lied about pretty much his entire list of academic accomplishments.
So, he went to St. John’s with his student visa, but got his EdD from an online university no one has heard of and has a plethora of other universities listed without degrees attached.
In addition to this largely inflated and apparently fabricated professional record, Powell notes that there are some dubious awards Roberts claims which are unverifiable as well as claims to police and military service which are hard to confirm.
So who hired him? Would you believe board chair Jackie Norris, former Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama?
More: “Head of Iowa school district arrested for avoiding deportation, found with handgun after chase.”
In a 6-3 vote last Friday, the United States Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to withhold nearly $4 billion in foreign aid funds appropriated by Congress.
The ruling by the conservative majority of the court permits the White House to withhold the funds through a pocket rescission under the Impoundment Control Act.
The move also permanently stays a lower court’s order by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali who had ruled that the administration’s freezing of the funds was likely illegal and that Congress would have to approve the decision to withhold the funding.
The lower court ruling had been temporarily blocked by Chief Justice John Roberts on Sept. 9 after a federal appeals court had declined to put Ali’s ruling on hold.
A tweet from the Department of State celebrated the ruling as a win for the president’s America First foreign policy and for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and lauded the administration’s efforts to rein in what it called, “wasteful, woke, and weaponized foreign assistance and international organization spending.”
Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought announced that nearly “nearly $8 billion in funding for climate-related projects, which he labeled as ‘Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,’ is being canceled.”
So Keir Starmer, the man who refuses to stop importing unassimilated Muslim illegal aliens into the UK, now says they can only solve the illegal alien problem by imposing a mandatory digital ID on all citizens, without which they will not be permitted to work. “The government said the digital ID would be held on people’s mobile phones and become a mandatory part of the checks employers have to make when hiring staff. Over time, it would also be used to provide access to services such as childcare, welfare and access to tax records.”
So the Syrian immigrant who shot up a Manchester synagogue was named Jihad Al-Shamie. You put that in a novel and your editor would reject it as being too on-the-nose. (Hat tip: Stphen Green at Instapundit.)
Would-be Brett Kavanaugh assassin Nicholas Roske sentenced to eight years in prison. Prosecution asked for 30.
“ICE sting at Dallas strip club nabs 41 illegal aliens, rescues sex-trafficking victims.” “ICE busted into the Chicas Bonitas Cabaret and discovered that a tip they received was correct: Illegal aliens were sex trafficking girls to dance at this strip club. Out of 41 illegal aliens, 29 illegally worked at the club. Five were previously convicted criminals.”
“Plano Private School Teacher Gets 20 Years for Sex Crimes Against Student. Jacob Allred pleaded guilty to sexually exploiting a 15-year-old girl at Great Lakes Academy, which specializes in students with learning disorders.”
Virginia Democrats are using the power of the legal system to protect a transgender sex offender from being prosecuted for his crimes. The policy is in line with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger’s views.
Democratic leaders in Fairfax County, the largest county in Virginia, have repeatedly refused to prosecute Richard Cox, a man who has allegedly regularly exposed himself to women and girls in the girls’ locker rooms at two high schools and a recreation center. Cox is being charged for his crimes in Arlington County, where a detective testified he had child pornography and a Fairfax County children’s swim class schedule on his phone.
Republican Jack Ciatterelli has brought the race to a dead heat between himself and Democrat Mikie Sherrill.
But that’s not all.
AFTER this poll was taken, more news broke about Sherrill’s less than stellar record at the United States Naval Academy.
“A cheating scandal in the Naval Academy prevented her from walking at graduation.” Evidently her friends cheated and she refused to testify against them.
“Tricolor Auto’s Failure Has It All – ESG, Woke Capital, Illegal Immigration, Securities Fraud, Government Diversity Programs, BlackRock, etc.”
Tricolor Auto Group, the nation’s seventh largest used car dealer (and 3rd biggest in Texas and California), just filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy – e.g. liquidation. Its target customer had been illegal aliens, and with President Trump deciding to start enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, there has suddenly been a major “market correction” in that market segment. Not only has the customer base largely evaporated, but so have loan repayments, which Tricolor also serviced.
The “tri colors” that the name references are the colors of the Mexican flag – red, white, and green.
While the sudden loss of customers and loan repayments was the catalyst that caused the final collapse of Tricolor, its failure has revealed so much more, including securities fraud, Wall Street ESG gimmickry, race-based federal programs, etc.
Tricolor has securitized more than $2 billion of its very high risk auto loans over the past seven years. The most recent issuance was in June of this year, with JP Morgan Chase and other money center banks peddling more than $200 million of “social bonds” to credulous investors. These securities are certified as “social bonds” by the US Treasury’s CDFI (“Community Development Financial Institution”) program because Tricolor focuses on selling its cars and financial services to underserved communities, specifically Spanish-speaking non-citizens. Tricolor’s CEO, Daniel Chu, was quoted by Barron’s in 2022 as stating, “No one else is providing meaningful dollar credit to an illegal immigrant.”
As documented in this recent Barron’s article (“Tricolor Files for Bankruptcy, The Auto Lender Was Once an ESG Favorite,”) “Financial institutions until recently touted their social bond purchases as part of their commitment to ESG—or environmental, social and governance—principles. BlackRock took a $90 million stake in Tricolor in 2021 as part of its Impact Opportunities Fund focusing on businesses and projects owned, led by, or serving members of minority groups.” Of course BlackRock was involved.
You may recall that a major contributor to the financial crash of 2008 was Wall Street wizards packaging up a bunch of sub-prime mortgages, securitizing them, and then selling those “mortgage backed securities” to investors as something other than perfumed garbage. That is effectively what Tricolor has been doing with its auto loans, with the help of Wall Street.
In a Tricolor press release from March of this year titled “Tricolor Closes $328 Million Securitization to Advance Financial Inclusion at Scale in Underserved Communities,” CEO Chu stated, ”By providing deserving people with access to reliable, affordable transportation, Tricolor, which operates across six states and ranks as the third largest used auto retailer in Texas and California, helps move them into the financial mainstream and reverse systemic financial inequities in America.” Like the other securities issuance I referenced, JP Morgan Chase also promoted these odious securities, along with Barclay’s and Fifth Third Bank.
Per Car Dealership Guy, Tricolor’s bonds have collapsed to a value of 12 cents on the dollar, virtually wiping out the investors who bought those bonds. But as bad as this all sounds so far, it’s actually worse. There was massive fraud by Tricolor, which is causing losses to all parties who did business with it.
The banks who were packaging Tricolor’s securities also had lines of credit extended to Tricolor. There was a recent regulatory filing by Fifth Third Bank revealing that it was booking a $200 million impairment (loss) for fraud involving one of its customers. In this filing, Fifth Third disclosed that there was “recently discovered alleged external fraudulent activity at a commercial borrower,” and that it “is working with the appropriate law enforcement authorities in connection with this matter.” Barron’s confirmed that this commercial borrower was Tricolor. JP Morgan Chase also has about $200 million in loans outstanding to Tricolor, so it too will almost certainly be booking a massive impairment charge for this unrecoverable debt.
Some of the news reports about the Tricolor fraud state that collateral was “double pledged,” meaning that unbeknownst to the banks lending money to Tricolor, the collateral they thought was backing up their loans was also pledged to other banks.
Tricolor was also the servicer of its “buy here – pay here” loan portfolio, remitting collected payments to the banks who securitized their loans. From my experience dealing with fraud in this arena, it is quite likely that there was some level of kiting / ponzi scheme at work, and a constant inflow of new debt was necessary to keep servicing old debt that was not supported by actual assets.
Working in Tricolor’s favor to perpetuate the fraud was the aura of woke virtuosity that kept the money flowing in, which also helped shield Tricolor from appropriate due diligence by those same woke banks throwing money at it.
Working against Tricolor was President Trump’s immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security issued this press release earlier this week: “Over 2 million Illegal Aliens Out of the United States in Less than 250 days.”
Funny how, after the company’s disasterous social justice rebrand, Keir Starmer’s Labour government bailed out Jaguar/Range Rover to the tune of £1.5 billion after a hack attack, despite the company being owned by India-based Tata.
