Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Democrats who voted against:

• Gabe Amo of Rhode Island
• Joyce Beatty of Ohio
• Wesley Bell of Missouri
• Sanford Bishop Jr. of Georgia
• Shontel Brown of Ohio
• Andre Carson of Indiana
• Troy Carter of Louisiana
• Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida
• Yvette Clarke of New York
• Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri
• Jim Clyburn of South Carolina
• Jasmine Crockett of Texas
• Danny Davis of Illinois
• Veronica Escobar of Texas
• Adriano Espaillat of New York
• Cleo Fields of Louisiana
• Shomari Figures of Alabama
• Valerie Foushee of North Carolina
• Maxwell Frost of Florida
• Sylvia Garcia of Texas
• Al Green of Texas
• Jimmy Gomez of California
• Jahana Hayes of Connecticut
• Steven Horsford of Nevada
• Glenn Ivey of Maryland
• Jonathan Jackson of Illinois
• Pramila Jayapal of Washington
• Hank Johnson Jr. of Georgia
• Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California
• Robin Kelly of Illinois
• Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois
• Summer Lee of Pennsylvania
• Lucy McBath of Georgia
• LaMonica McIver of New Jersey
• Robert Menendez of New Jersey
• Kweisi Mfume of Maryland
• Gwen Moore of Wisconsin
• Seth Moulton of Massachusetts
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
• Ilhan Omar of Minnesota
• Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts
• Mike Quigley of Illinois
• Delia Ramirez of Illinois
• Emily Randall of Washington
• Robert Scott of Virginia
• Terri Sewell of Alabama
• Lateefah Simon of California
• Marilyn Strickland of Washington
• Emilia Strong Sykes of Ohio
• Shri Thanedar of Michigan
• Bennie Thompson of Mississippi
• Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
• Lauren Underwood of Illinois
• Nydia Velazquez of New York
• Maxine Waters of California
• Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey
• Nikema Williams of Georgia
• Frederica Wilson of Florida

Democrats who voted “present”

• Alma Adams of North Carolina
• Donald Beyer Jr. of Virginia
• Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon
• Julia Brownley of California
• Janelle Bynum of Oregon
• Salud Carbajal of California
• Greg Casar of Texas
• Diana DeGette of Colorado
• Mark DeSaulnier of California
• Maxine Dexter of Oregon
• Lloyd Doggett of Texas
• Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania
• Lois Frankel of Florida
• Laura Friedman of California
• John Garamendi of California
• Daniel Goldman of New York
• Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire
• Val Hoyle of Oregon
• Sara Jacobs of California
• Julie Johnson of Texas
• Timothy Kennedy of New York
• Ro Khanna of California
• Doris Matsui of California
• Jennifer McClellan of Virginia
• Grace Meng of New York
• Brittany Pettersen of Colorado
• Chellie Pingree of Maine
• Mark Pocan of Wisconsin
• Andrea Salinas of Oregon
• Linda Sanchez of California
• Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania
• Brad Sherman of California
• Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia
• Mike Thompson of California
• Jill Tokuda of Hawaii
• Paul Tonko of New York
• Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico
• James Walkinshaw of Virginia

Democrats who did not vote:

• Nanette Diaz Barragan of California
• Sean Casten of Illinois
• Kathy Castor of Florida
• Joaquin Castro of Texas
• Steve Cohen of Tennessee
• Herbert Conaway Jr. of New Jersey
• Robert Garcia of California
• Jesus Garcia of Illinois
• George Latimer of New York
• Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico
• Kevin Mullin of California
• Joe Neguse of Colorado
• Donald Norcross of New Jersey
• Nancy Pelosi of California
• Raul Ruiz of California
• Janice Schakowsky of Illinois
• Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico
• Eric Swalwell of California
• Norma Torres of California
• Ritchie Torres of New York
• Marc Veasey of Texas
• Eugene Vindman of Virginia

Name and shame…

After Charlie Kirk was assassinated last week, conservatives noted that most political violence comes from the left. The left bristles at this fact and has responded by dramatically padding the numbers to pretend the reverse is true.

Consider a Sept. 12 piece from The Economist claiming, “extremists on both left and right commit violence, although more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers.”

Right up front, the piece admits it used data “largely compiled by researchers whom sceptical (sic) conservatives would probably dismiss as biased.” The disclaimer is meant to inoculate The Economist’s audience to its sloppy reporting, as if challenges from conservatives will somehow prove The Economist’s accuracy.

Yes, readers should be beyond skeptical of the source in that piece, The Prosecution Project. Its website claims to “track[] and provid[e] analysis of felony criminal cases involving illegal political violence, terrorism, and extremism occurring in the United States since 1990.”

The founder and executive director of the Prosecution Project is Michael Loadenthal, although the links naming the website’s leadership were broken Friday, meaning no names were visible. Google had not yet scrubbed Loadenthal’s name from searches.

Loadenthal is an “openly anarchist Antifa-affiliated … researcher at the University of Cincinnati who, by his own admission, is a far-left violent extremist,” The Federalist reported in 2023.

So we have an Antifa-connected researcher with rabid bias against the right, held out as an expert on deciding who is extreme. It is like using a vegetarian to define which meat eaters are the most humane — none of them, says the vegetarian.

The Prosecution Project lists January 2024 charges against John Reardon of Massachusetts, who made antisemitic threats against synagogues and the Israeli Consulate. It notes, “Influenced by events in Gaza, he also said, ‘you do realize that by supporting genocide that means it’s ok for people to commit genocide against you.’” The Department of Justice never identified Reardon’s political affiliation, but The Prosecution Project’s own account seems to indicate he was a pro-Palestine fanatic, a cause typically associated with Democrats. Yet The Prosecution Project identifies Reardon’s crimes as “rightist” because they’re “identity-focused.”

The group also lists 2022 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act charges against Edmee Chavannes — even though “Chavannes was found not guilty.”

The Prosecution Project even includes the posting of racist stickers in its tracker, as if that’s comparable to terrorism or violence. One wonders if the group will treat Democrats’ desecration of Charlie Kirk memorials with the same seriousness.

Most crimes involving race or abortion businesses are blamed on the right in the data, with nothing to back up those claims. Yet these issues and others often cross over to the left. The Federalist has reported on the progressive anti-abortion movement, for example, and the left’s Marxist oppressor-versus-oppressed framework is manifestly racist.

Comb through the ridiculous data on The Prosecution Project’s website, and you will soon conclude it is worthless to everyone except leftist propagandists trying to downplay Charlie Kirk’s murder and flip the blame for violence in the U.S. to the right.

Similarly, a biased “study” by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute was debunked this week by Amber Duke at The Daily Caller.

Nowrasteh claims politically motivated violence is rare in the U.S., but that when it happens, “right-wing terrorists” are more often to blame than the left — that is, when you exclude the terrorists who killed 2,977 victims on Sept. 11, 2001, and exclude injuries, property damage, and people who were not killed. Thus, his criteria exclude the two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, for example. Additionally, Duke found that some of the crimes Nowrasteh blamed on the right were at best questionable and at worst downright wrong.

Duke pointed to another lopsided study by the Anti-Defamation League, which also claims the right is to blame for increased political violence. Ryan James Girdusky unpacked those magic numbers and noted glaring omissions. For example, the ADL left the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson out of its study.

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)

Despite the evidence all pointing to Kirk’s killer being on the left wing of the ideological spectrum, the conspiracy theory about a right-wing shooter was pushed by a host of Democratic members of Congress, high-profile left-wing activists, liberal social media influencers, and more.

The most common evidence-free claim on the left has been that the shooter was a follower of far right influencer Nick Fuentes.

Lot’s more quotes from various lefty idiots asserting this connection without proof at the link.

As each new detail trickled out, and the killer’s transgender associations became clearer and clearer, the hysterical spin and assertions of blunt unreality mounted. Cynical pros began inserting outright lies into the mix, as partisan myrmidons took up their work and used it in desperate, craven attempts to either spin facts in ridiculous ways (“his parents are Republicans!”) or simply pretend the facts weren’t “facts” at all. All of it was done with the intent of trying to will into existence — through the spread of fear, uncertainty, and doubt — an alternate narrative whose intended moral calculus amounted to, in so many words, Charlie Kirk was killed by his own team, and this is actually your fault.

So, no, I’m not about to move on just yet.

I could understand a certain amount of denialism at first, because I understand human nature. For those on the left who treat politics like a substitute religion — an increasing number of people in our irreligious age — this moment has been akin to seeing several of the central tenets of your faith publicly refuted. The revelation of the identity of the alleged shooter and the reports about his beliefs were arguably the worst possible scenario for the sorts of loud Democratic types who are deeply invested in the idea of the MAGA right as America’s true fever-swamp of hatred and violence.

I can understand ignorance as well, because I depend on documenting it for a job — the Carnival of Fools would have to fold up its tent without it. In the days before the suspect was caught, it was natural that desperate progressives who get their news from left-wing authorities would use that span of time — when the killer was still at large — to conjure their own arcane interpretive theories in defiance of the known evidence. I feel inevitable disgust at these sad attempts at spin — I know who publicly celebrated the attack on Kirk, after all, and it wasn’t anyone on my side — but again, it was expected.

But I can’t understand any of this after Tyler Robinson was caught on Friday morning. At that point, mere ignorance and wish-casting turned into an active disinformation campaign, and it was particularly appalling to see from people whose civic responsibility it is to know better. To take one example, how about the repellent Eric Swalwell? On Friday afternoon, in an audaciously sleazy bit of “partial storytelling,” the California congressman tweeted: “It doesn’t matter that Kirk’s killer was a straight white male. Or that he was from a Republican family that voted for Donald Trump. Violence has NEVER been the answer.”

If he thought this was a cute joke, he’s a moral reprobate. If he thought it was an effective deceit, he’s also a moral reprobate. I think it is thus fair to conclude that he’s a moral reprobate. The jury’s still out on his fellow California Democratic congressman Dave Min, however, who may simply be stupid. Min said on Saturday: “Now that the Charlie Kirk assassin has been identified as MAGA, I’m sure Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all the insane GOP politicians who called for retribution against the ‘RADICAL LEFT’ will now shift their focus to stopping the toxic violence of the RADICAL RIGHT.” (As it turns out, Dave? No, we won’t!)

How about Harvard Law professor — and Joe Biden legal adviser — Laurence Tribe? Tribe announced on Twitter that the killer “seems to have been ultra-MAGA, exploding the GOP/MAGA attempt to pin the blame for this tragedy on liberals.” (How he got that idea is anybody’s guess.) Later, he deleted the tweet and posted a non-apology accusing the right of “making things up” by associating the killer with transgender or left-wing causes. I can only tell you that once upon a time he had a fine legal mind.

I certainly can’t say the same for Heather Cox Richardson, the world’s most-followed Substacker. Richardson is a Temu Tribe, an oracle of the complacently progressive academic establishment, and demonstrated it once again by going on a podcast on Friday to claim that the killer was a “right-winger” and all those outraged conservatives online were now retreating “in a real hurry.” (Lest you think that was an error born of speaking off the cuff, Richardson put it in writing as well.)

Now that the gaslighting has become impossible to sustain, the left has moved on to its last line of defense: “Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed whom.” It will be a long time before I forget the five days I have just spent being gaslighted both by political operators as well as people who remain transparently in denial. I expected better of them. I held them only to the standards that I hold myself. It was a mistake.

One of former President Joe Biden’s top aides – Jeff Zients, told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that an aide with his email credentials was green lighting some of the most controversial ‘autopen’ pardons, that Hunter Biden – who received an insane pardon himself – was involved in the pardon discussions, and that Joe Biden’s brain was pea soup.

According to Axios, Zients – one of the highest ranking officials from the Biden White House – confirmed that Joe Biden had difficulty remembering dates and names, and often required extra briefings to make decisions during the final years of his presidency.

Instead of having three meetings before making a decision, for example, Biden would want four.

Zients said Biden had long had trouble with names and dates, but acknowledged to investigators that the president’s memory of such facts got worse in the final years of his term.

Jill Biden, meanwhile, spoke with Zients about ‘managing Joe’ as Zients was readying himself to take on the role of Chief of Staff in early 2023 – urging him to adjust Biden’s schedule so he could get more rest and return to the White House residence earlier in the evening.

Longtime Biden aide and deputy CoS Annie Tomasini also spoke with Zients about limiting Biden’s schedule and shortening distances and stairs.

According to Fox News, Zients “admitted that President Biden’s speech stumbles increased as he aged,” adding “He also noted that the president’s difficulty remembering dates and names worsened over time, including during the administration.”

Also interesting – Zients told investigators that Hunter Biden was involved in discussions about presidential pardons towards the end of Biden’s term, which included the blanket pardons of several members of the Biden family issued during Joe’s final 24 hours in office. It had been previously reported by NBC News that Hunter was sitting in on White House meetings following the former president’s horrible performance during a June 2024 debate against Donald Trump.

Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted on criminal charges related to allegations that he lied to Congress during testimony in 2020 about whether he authorized a leak of information.

Comey is facing one count of false statements and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a release from the Department of Justice.

“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

President Trump reacted gleefully to the indictment in a statement shared to Truth Social.

“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI.”

“Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Comey’s indictment in Virginia federal court comes just days before the statute of limitations for the perjury charge was set to run out. The charges come five years after Comey testified on September 30, 2020, before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information to the press related to the investigations of either possible collusion between Trump and Russia or Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized email system.

During the hearing, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) asked Comey whether he had authorized leaks related to either investigation. Comey reiterated what he said in 2017 congressional testimony, that he had not.

Cruz argued that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had said Comey authorized at least one such disclosure, related to the Clinton investigation. But the Justice Department inspector general found in 2018 that McCabe had “lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did.”

The charges also center in part on an October 2016 New York Times report, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.”

The Times article was in response to reporting in Slate that Trump had established a communications back channel with the Kremlin, involving servers at Trump Tower in Manhattan and Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions.

Hours after the Slate article was published, the Times report related the FBI’s conclusion that the back-channel claim was unfounded. The report also detailed that the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation of Russia’s malign activities in connection with the 2016 campaign were not linked to Trump and his campaign.

Special counsel John Durham probed the leaks to the Times in connection with the story as an unauthorized public disclosure (UPD) of classified information.

The February 2020 closing memorandum for the probe, obtained by veteran journalist Catherine Herridge, found there were two major government sources for the story: James Baker, FBI general counsel and a close adviser to Comey, and FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki. Baker told investigators that he was “under the belief” that he was “ultimately instructed and authorized to [provide information to the Times] by then FBI Director James Comey.”

However, Baker did not claim that Comey gave him a direct order. “Baker indicated that FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki instructed him (Baker) to disclose the information to the NYT, and Baker understood Rybicki was conveying this instruction and authorization from Comey.”

A Dallas U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility was the target of a shooting Wednesday morning that left two detainees dead, one person injured, and the suspect committing suicide at the scene.

According to the Dallas Police Department, law enforcement responded to a call at a Dallas ICE facility after reports that someone had opened fire from an adjacent building.

Two detainees were pronounced dead, with another being rushed to the hospital in critical condition with a gunshot injury.

The suspected shooter, a white male armed with a rifle on a roof, died by suicide as agents approached, FOX4 Dallas reported.

ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons spoke to CNN about the shooting as the event unfolded, saying that the scene is secure and the shooter is “down from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Bullets found had anti-ICE slogans written on them.

President Donald Trump declared his belief Tuesday that Ukraine can win its war against Russia outright, an extraordinary shift in tone with significant ramifications for U.S. policy.

Trump shared his views on Truth Social after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

“I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option,” Trump said.

Trump’s position is a 180-degree shift from his longstanding view that Ukraine would have to cede territory to Russia as a condition for ending the war. Moscow holds roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory after invading its neighbor three-and-a-half years ago. Russian forces have slowly made gains along the eastern part of Ukraine in what has become a grueling war of attrition with hundreds of thousands of estimated casualties.

Trump argued Russia is a “paper tiger” and suggested Russian people were not aware of the damage Russian President Vladimir Putin has done to their nation. He also praised the “Great Spirit” of Ukraine and said Ukraine could “maybe even go further” than reclaiming its original territory. Trump’s comments are a stark contrast from his past statements that argued Russia was winning the war and likened Zelensky to a dictator.

Trump promised the U.S. would keep sending weapons to NATO for the alliance to use in the way it sees fit. His comments will likely prompt a furious response from Putin and Russian forces in Ukraine. It also remains to be seen how Trump’s restraint-oriented cabinet members and political allies react to his unexpected shift.

As previously observed, Trump’s negotiating strategy works on persuasion and tit-for-tat strategies. Zelensky, after some early stumbles, is finally fully onboard with Trump, while Putin hasn’t offered anything in return to Trump’s overtures. That means that Zelensky gets all the carrots, and Putin gets all the sticks. Golly, who could have seen that one coming except everyone who’s actually watched Trump operate for the last ten years who isn’t suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome?

23-year-old Hunter Nadeau was arrested on scene for shooting multiple victims at the Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashau, New Hampshire, Saturday night. A 59-year-old named Robert DeCesare was killed in front of his family. At least two others were injured.

Tom Bartelson of Pepperell, Massachusetts, is the witness in the video above. He was at his nephew’s wedding in a private room of the club when the gunman entered the building dressed in all black. The shooter yelled, “The children are safe!” and “Free Palestine!” before killing DeCesare. He then moved into the club restaurant and opened fire again.

Funny no matter what the leftwing cause, the solution seems to be murdering American citizens.

A once-celebrated Boston social activist has pleaded guilty to defrauding donors — including Black Lives Matter — out of thousands of dollars that she used as a personal piggy bank.

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, pleaded guilty Monday to 18 counts of fraud-related crimes that she committed with her late husband while operating their Violence in Boston (VIB) activists group, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.

The activist scammed money — including $3,000 from a BLM group — while claiming it was to help feed children and run protests like one in 2020 over the murder of George Floyd and police violence.

Cannon-Grant also conned her way into getting $100,000 in federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits — which she used to pay off her personal auto loan and car insurance policy.

But she has now confessed to transferring funds to personal bank accounts to pay for rent, shopping sprees, delivery meals, visits to a nail salon — and even a summer vacation to Maryland.

(Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)

At least 187 code packages made available through the JavaScript repository NPM have been infected with a self-replicating worm that steals credentials from developers and publishes those secrets on GitHub, experts warn. The malware, which briefly infected multiple code packages from the security vendor CrowdStrike, steals and publishes even more credentials every time an infected package is installed.

You may remember Crowdstrike from such hits as “we helped Hillary Clinton illegally erase her secret email server.”

Google is making major changes to YouTube’s free speech policies following pressure from House Republicans and shifts among its top competitors.

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), an attorney for Alphabet, Google and YouTube’s parent company, announced a series of changes to YouTube’s approach to free speech, including the return of banned creators to the platform and the implementation of a community notes system to replace third-party fact-checkers.

YouTube is rolling back its restrictive policies surrounding political speech, especially the Covid-19 pandemic and elections. The video platform said its reliance on public health authorities was well intentioned, but expressed regret at its impact on public debate on issues that were far from settled.

More broadly, YouTube admitted senior Biden administration officials conducted extensive outreach to YouTube to influence its approach to “misinformation” and Covid-19 content that did not violate YouTube’s policies.

“Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,” the letter reads.

While YouTube independently enforced its policies, Biden officials “continued to press the Company” to remove content that did not violate the platform’s policies. The letter calls out Biden and other administration officials for creating a “political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms” under the guise of “misinformation.”

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order later this week declaring that an emerging deal involving the video-sharing app TikTok meets American security needs and constitutes a qualified divestiture under U.S. law, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under the deal, American tech company Oracle will serve as the app’s security provider, which will independently monitor the source code of the app as well as study how a U.S.-controlled copy of the TikTok content recommendation algorithm operates and interacts with phone features and updates.

Oracle will be required to “retrain” a leased duplicate TikTok algorithm…

So it will not necessarily be a Chinese spyware app any more, but will still be malware for your brain…

Texas’ border jurisdictions are scrambling to manage thousands of pending Operation Lone Star cases after key state partners abruptly pulled out, leaving local officials to coordinate housing and transportation for defendants.

Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith told Texas Scorecard the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), both of which helped provide housing for illegal crossers arrested under the border security initiative, are no longer handling those responsibilities.

The Del Rio Processing Center is reportedly shutting down, along with Val Verde County’s detention facility—the original epicenter of Operation Lone Star (OLS) prosecutions.

“We’re left holding the bag,” Smith said. “Counties are having to figure this out on their own without the infrastructure the state had in place.”

Smith said approximately half of all prosecutions tied to OLS in Kinney County have already been resolved, either through pleas or dismissals, but thousands of cases remain active.

According to numbers from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, more than 2,600 felony cases have already been resolved. Nearly 2,000 cases are still pending, in part due to lengthy appeals.

Meanwhile, the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office has more than 700 outstanding warrants for alleged smugglers and another 1,400 warrants that have not yet been executed because of limited capacity to house and transport defendants.

Kinney County has contracts with about 10 jails across Texas—including some as far away as the Panhandle—but the county jail cannot hold a person beyond 72 hours, as it is considered a temporary holding facility. That has forced sheriffs and prosecutors into a patchwork system for transferring detainees, with major bottlenecks since TDCJ and TDEM stopped coordinating.

The Dolph Briscoe Unit in Dilley and the Segovia Unit in Edinburg, which had filled major housing roles, are no longer available, worsening the shortage.

Plus border counties have been avoid arresting women because they don’t have room for them in separate facilities.

Gov. Greg Abbott today announced a $5.5 million grant from Texas for the construction of a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Harris County — one of multiple projects approved under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) program over the past year.

Abbott joined Eli Lilly and Company executives for a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Houston to announce its creation of a nearly one million-square foot active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing facility. The company estimated that it’ll produce around 600 new jobs and will invest more than $6.5 billion within the state.

The grant of $5.5 million towards Lilly’s new project was made possible through the JETI approval process, a property tax abatement program established through contentious legislation passed during the 88th regular legislative session.

House Bill (HB) 5, which was signed into law by Abbott in June 2023, replaced a 20-year-old initiative with a new economic incentive program. It created a pathway for school districts to grant companies a decade-long break in their property tax payments in exchange for relocation to their area. It limited the kinds of companies eligible to receive abatements and grants for projects in Texas, excluding renewable energy projects after negotiations proved its removal to be necessary for passage in the Legislature.

Let me reiterate my general opposition to government subsidies of business in almost all circumstances. Government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. However, an end to subsidizing money-losing “renewable energy” sources that made the Texas Interconnect Grid less reliable is a big plus.

One of the first projects approved under JETI this year, also in Harris County, was to assist Summit Next Gen in opening “a world-class sustainable aviation fuel manufacturing and refining facility along the Texas Gulf Coast,” in January 2025. It’s expected to produce over $1.6 billion in capital investment for Texas.

In February, Abbott made two JETI expansion project announcements: one for a new Braven Environmental facility in Texarkana, estimated to rake in more than $145 million in investment for the state, and the other for Vinton Steel’s “advanced manufacturing facility that recycles ferrous scrap into new steel products.” Vinton is expected to invest over $229 million in the state and create an additional 180 new jobs.

Brazos Midland Processing LLC, also known as Brazos Midstream, was announced as an approved recipient in late August for a “300 million cubic feet per day natural gas processing plant” in Martin County, expected to create $185 million in capital investment.

At Tuesday’s announcement of the new Lilly project, Abbott reiterated that “Texas is the best state in America for doing business.”

The White House has placed a photo of an auto-pen signature instead of a portrait of former President Biden on the “Presidential Walk of Fame” pic.twitter.com/4HRU7g8Vr8

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 24, 2025

(Hat tip: Ed Dricoll at Instapundit.)

Without warning, Bluestockings Cooperative announced that it would permanently shut down after more than 26 years, stating that “daily operations are unfortunately no longer sustainable on multiple fronts.”

“This was our absolute last resort. On top of our crew’s ongoing struggle against the organized abandonment of New York City and the constant crises, the remaining worker-owner and staff are at the limits of what they can manage in terms of health, disability, and finances,” a statement posted to Instagram reads.

The Suffolk Street shop blamed the closure on its failure as a worker-owned cooperative to “come to consensus around the guiding principles and practices Bluestockings should embody” — adding that an inability to align on political and business operations directly led to the setbacks the business faced over the last two years.

“Of course, $12,000 a month in rent, thousands in utilities, and racist, classist violence from ‘neighbors’ certainly didn’t make our work any easier,” the statement continued.

Bluestockings came under intense outrage from its posh Lower East Side neighborhood, which transformed into a “zombie apocalypse” of strung-out junkies shooting up in broad daylight who were drawn to the bookstore’s free and indiscriminate services.

The self-described “radically inclusive” shop was a state-recognized Opiate Overdose Prevention Program and offered “harm reduction services” like Narcan, drug-testing strips and a used needle-drop off bin — which neighbors alleged enabled the junkies.

In recent years, Bluestockings plunged into around $100,000 in debt to its publishers and book distributors, according to reports.

Social justice is incompatible with both profit and basic human decency. (Hat tip: Dwight.)