One of the most basic, fundamental differences between normal Americans and the left is that normies believe that welfare benefits should be strictly limited to American citizens. On the other hand, the radical, social justice-infected left seem to believe that taxpayer dollars are party to favors to be showered on everyone, especially the illegal aliens they took so much trouble to import in the name of ensuring a permanent Democratic electoral majority.
But with Trump47, normal Americans are back in charge again, and illegal aliens are being deported just as the law requires. Now the DOJ is telling state welfare agencies that if they want to keep receiving welfare funding, they have to report illegal aliens on their rolls.
A new legal opinion dictates that all state agencies, in order to receive most forms of federal welfare funding, must report their knowledge of illegal aliens on those programs.
The opinion targets the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income programs, which are received by all states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program “is designed to help families with children experiencing low-income achieve economic security and stability,” while the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) “provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.”
It seems that every week a news story reports on yet another welfare state program I didn’t already have a tag for. They seem to multiply like rabbits.
“When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser. “Tax dollars intended to help vulnerable Americans should not perversely encourage illegal entry into the United States, but rather should reinforce our laws and our borders.”
According to some reports, 59.4 percent of illegal immigrant households use one or more welfare programs in the United States. This is partially due to over half of all illegal immigrant households having at least one U.S.-born child, with about $1.43 billion—or 9.4 percent—of TANF funding going to U.S.-born children of illegal aliens in fiscal year 2022.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced last Wednesday that its Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) withdrew a Clinton-era opinion that gave a more narrow interpretation of the legal requirements for TANF and SSI funding.
The former interpretation required only state agencies facilitating the programs to report knowledge of illegal aliens to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while the new opinion broadens the requirement to all state agencies based on a 1996 congressional interpretation of the term “state.”
“Our clarification does not impose new obligations on states,” said OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock. “It simply restores the original meaning of the statute Congress enacted and ensures that DHS receives the information it is legally entitled to. States that accept TANF funding must abide by federal law, and failure to comply may lead to serious consequences, including loss of program funding.”
Texas has the second-highest population of illegal aliens in the United States, with about 14.3 percent of the nation’s overall illegal population.
In 2023, Texas had 2.1 million illegal immigrants living within its borders, representing about 7 percent of the state’s total population and an increase of 450,000 since 2021.
As stewards of taxpayer money, both DOJ and the state should continue to crack down on welfare state fraud and deport illegal aliens.
It’s a win-win for both taxpayers and the rule of law.
2026 is turning out to be a pretty strange year politically.
If you’d asked me last year to guess what issues might be concerning the body politic in a midterm year, I might have answered “inflation, jobs growth, social justice madness, housing costs, and the Iran war.” Not on my bingo card: Women cheering on a mother who confessed to killing her three children and the public uniting against Flock cameras, yet here we are.
Texans overwhelmingly oppose Flock cameras and remain wary of data center construction, according to a new poll that also found an essentially tied U.S. Senate race.
Conducted August 24-26 by Overton Insights/Texas Public Policy Foundation, the poll of 1,167 likely voters shows overwhelming concern about license plate reader cameras, especially those offered by Flock Safety.
Opposition to Flock cameras totaled more than 63 percent, with 51 percent strongly opposing the technology. Only 28 percent of Texans expressed support.
There has been increasing public opposition to the technology over the past few months. Many Texans are raising concerns about Fourth Amendment violations and data privacy because Flock cameras allow law enforcement and private entities to track and retain the movements of drivers not suspected of crimes without a warrant.
David Dunmoyer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation has warned that “Texans do not own their own personal information. Texas has never granted its citizens title to their own data.” Texas lawmakers are expected to evaluate potential safeguards during the upcoming legislative session in January.
I initially didn’t feel strongly about Flock cameras one way or another, since public roads are not a place anyone should have “a reasonable expectation of privacy.” However, the fact that Flock and other AI camera companies have employed underhanded methods to get taxpayer approval for funding them (given the mysterious fervor several public officials have shown toward buying and installing them despite voter resistance, I can only assume that bribery is involved) has changed my mind. Plus Flock’s data sharing and retention policies do bring up Fourth Amendment concerns, and do seem like a sneaky attempt to set up a surveillance system over American citizens, using private companies to carry out activities that would be unconstitutional for the federal government to implement directly.
Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to pause funding for Flock cameras.
The pause, reportedly issued last Thursday, comes after a Texas agency allegedly spent an estimated $30 million on grants used for the technology.
“To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government,” said Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris on Friday. “To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras.”
Flock contracts have been cancelled or rejected across the nation amid concerns surrounding Fourth Amendment violations, with several Texas localities joining the movement.
Snip.
Flock’s database is free for law enforcement officers to access anytime without a warrant, raising concerns over the potential violations of citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights.
Wylie City Council unanimously voted to not renew its contract with Flock Safety cameras this week.
The 7-0 vote places the city of Wylie in a small group of local governments in Texas opting out of a contract with the automated license plate reader (ALPR) company.
Snip.
Following Pflugerville City Council’s unanimous decision to deactivate the city’s Flock cameras this week, Pflugerville ISD followed suit, notifying parents Wednesday morning of the decision to suspend use of the cameras on district property.
“We understand this technology has raised questions and concerns within our community, and we have listened,” said a Pflugerville ISD spokesperson.
Hood County recently decommissioned its three Flock cameras following significant backlash to concerns of mass surveillance and potential Fourth Amendment violations.
DeFlock Wylie praised the council’s decision, calling it “exactly what residents asked for.” The site quoted Wylie Mayor Matthew Porter as saying, “The protections are just not there and are not required in the terms of the existing contract.”
“This started in January 2026 with one resident reading a contract, and grew into a nonpartisan campaign of neighbors,” wrote DeFlock Wylie.
“By the night of the vote, more than 700 residents had signed the petition, people packed the chamber, and the case was made in Flock’s own words. No lawyers. No budget. No outside money. Just Wylie residents who decided their privacy was worth showing up for.”
The Florida Department of Transportation on Monday revoked all existing permits for automated license plate readers installed by local law enforcement in state highway rights-of-way and said it will stop approving any new installations, citing an “exponential increase” in deployments, reports of misuse, data privacy concerns and “surveillance schemes.”
The Engineering and Operations Memorandum, signed by Will Watts, P.E., FDOT’s chief operating officer and assistant secretary, directs local agencies to remove the devices within 30 days. If they do not, the department said it will take them down. FDOT reserved the right to immediately remove any unit that poses a safety hazard.
Democrat U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico spoke of “dismantling” capitalism while dismissing the future of Texas’ oil and gas industry during a 2020 climate forum, newly resurfaced video shows.
The comments, first reported by CNN, came during a virtual candidate forum hosted by the Austin Sierra Club while Talarico was serving his first term in the Texas House.
During the forum, Talarico was asked what lawmakers could do to address the effects of climate change on minority communities.
“I am so thankful that you asked this question, and also thankful that young activists have really drawn the link between climate change and white supremacy and capitalism in our country,” Talarico said.
“And I think only ending the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together, are we going to be able to begin the process of dismantling them.”
So much for his camouflage as a moderate.
Earlier in the discussion, Talarico described what he called the “multifaceted threat of a climate crisis, an economic crisis, and a social justice crisis.”
He said a “New Deal effort” would be “the only approach to start to address all three in a thoughtful and meaningful way.”
Talarico also questioned the future of the oil and gas industry, comparing Texas’ position as a national energy leader to dominating an obsolete technology.
“We all know that Texas has been a leader in oil and gas, but in many ways that’s like being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s,” Talarico said. “That industry is not gonna last.”
Six years later, Talarico is presenting a markedly different message as he campaigns against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate.
His campaign told CNN that Talarico is now a “proud capitalist” who supports the oil and gas industry.
So there are basically two possibilities for Talarico. Either he’s a woke-infected socialist hiding his true colors to try to get elected, or he’s Zelig-like chameleon with no core beliefs willing to say or do anything to get elected.
Either should disqualify him in the eyes of Texas voters.
One of those Texas stories that keep bubbling along, and which I have trouble mapping out the dimensions of, is the high voltage line to the Permian Basin story. Texas Scorecard has been out front reporting on the controversy, and my reaction to the headlines has generally been a muted “that’s odd” before clicking on to something else. To summarize, certain state entities want to build extremely high voltage lines from other parts of the state to the oil and gas rich Permian Basin. Transmission line politics being fairly far from my areas of interest and expertise, I haven’t been covering the story beyond the occasional LinkSwarm piece.
When last we checked, an administrative law judges panel went “yeah, you don’t want to do that.” “The judges concluded the utilities [Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation] did not establish that the projects are necessary and failed to comply with notice requirements designed to give affected landowners a chance to participate before the application was filed.”
And here’s were the story flips from “odd” to “sinister.” The Texas Public Utility Commissioners looked at the that decision, and promptly went “Fuck you, we’re doing it anyway.”
Texas’ Public Utility Commissioners voted to move forward on the first of three controversial extra-high-voltage transmission lines. They did this despite calls from landowners and lawmakers to pause the project until after the 2027 legislative session.
The day before, Commission Chairman Thomas Gleeson filed a memo on a segment of the first line. He disagreed with administrative law judges’ finding that electricity delivery company Oncor “failed to notify more than 1,600 impacted landowners of a public meeting.” These are meetings where a transmission service provider presents information about the proposed project and collects feedback from impacted landowners.
“Understanding that folks are not happy with the process,” he said, “I think, on the law, the ALJ was wrong here.”
This is in regards to Oncor’s proposed Dinosaur to Drill Hole 765-kilovolt transmission line. This line would span approximately 390 miles from near Glen Rose to near the Culberson–Reeves county line.
How many 765-kilovolt transmission lines currently exist in Texas? Zero.
It is composed of two segments—the Dinosaur to Longshore and Longshore to Drill Hole lines. Gleeson’s memo addressed the administrative law judges’ Proposal for Decision in the Dinosaur to Longshore line.
Dinosaur to Drill Hole is part of the 765-kV Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP) Permian, a key part of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan (PBRP). STEP Permian proposes three transmission lines spanning more than 1,200 miles to move electricity from East Texas to the natural gas-rich Permian Basin. A pro-landowner group likened the project “to hauling water to the sea.”
Landowner complaints of not being “meaningfully included” in the process have helped elevate this project to the attention of state officials. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and members of the state House and Senate called for PUCT to deny all pending 765-kV projects until the legislature can reform the approval process in 2027.
American Stewards of Liberty (ASL) and a more than 30-member coalition that includes the Texas Public Policy Foundation requested that PUCT abate all five segments.
In April 2025, the PUC adopted the 765-kV STEP Plan to address projected load growth in the Permian Basin through 2038, approving approximately $5 billion in local
transmission upgrades designed to meet oil and gas demand. Three new 765-kV transmission lines from Central Texas to the Permian Basin region were also approved, with an
estimated cost of $9 billion. The local upgrades will meet more immediate needs due to rising oil and gas demand and existing transmission constraints. The extra capacity from the 765-kV lines will primarily serve projected data center load growth in West Texas and transport excess wind and solar generation from the region to other parts of the ERCOT grid.
And there it is, the real reason for the proposed line: To let Oncor and other big energy utilities sell the power generated by their expensive investments in solar and wind energy to data centers over cheap, reliable new natural gas plants in the same region the data centers are going to be located in.
If Oncor wants to do that, let them pay for their own damn power lines.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, this year’s Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, called on state authorities to pause further action on the plan.
“The Legislature must be afforded the time to review the Plan and its potential impacts so it can then enact additional legislation to provide whatever additional guidance it deems fit,” Paxton wrote.
Snip.
Paxton filed an amicus curiae brief with the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) “in support of abating any decision in furtherance of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan.”
“The Commission has created a Plan that appears to exceed the original intent of H.B. 5066 such that the Commission is no longer aligned with the expectations of the Legislature,” the brief reads.
“As the Legislature is already endeavoring to tackle the growth in electric demand spurred by data centers popping up across the state, now is the ideal time for the Legislature to review the Plan as part of a holistic review of the state’s reliability efforts.”
More:
Republican Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian and conservative organizations such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation have claimed that the region’s ample natural gas could supply electricity locally, obviating the need for power lines that span the state. Some local officials argue that the plan diminishes city and county authority. Landowners have testified that the lines would affect wildlife and agriculture.
The unseemly haste with which the PUC tossed aside the judicial recommendations suggests that the fix is in, and that little things like widespread opposition won’t be allowed to derail Big Energy and Big Data’s agenda of getting taxpayers to further subsidize their investments.
If PUC continues trying to shove this down taxpayer’s throats despite all the opposition, they should expect some serious lawsuits.
And here’s the King Crimson jam/improve track that gave rise to the title for this post.
Huge Supreme Court win, Ukraine switches from Wildberries to Ozon warehouses, yes, DSA are damn dirty commies, more Second Amendment progress, Ted Cruz’s book on Clarence Thomas is out, Aussie gets 15 years for shooting a carnival air gun, remembering Dolly, and the NFL finally takes the Pro-Bowl to a farm in the country.
The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a massive victory in the fight to secure America’s elections. The justices cleared the way for his executive order restricting mail-in voting to move forward, and after months of Democrat officials trying to bury the policy in court, the administration finally has room to breathe.
This is a big deal.
The SAVE America Act is still stalled in the Senate, blocked by Democrats who aren’t even hiding the fact they have zero interest in verifying that voters are who they say they are. Trump’s executive order just got a green light from the nation’s highest court anyway. Election integrity doesn’t have to die in the legislative graveyard to make progress.
Trump signed the executive order, called “Ensuring Citizenship Verification And Integrity In Federal Elections,” in March 2026. It directs his administration to build lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. The Postal Service laid out its implementation plan last week, but the clock is ticking. Some states start sending mail ballots in just a few weeks, leaving the administration little time to get this right before the midterms. More court challenges remain possible.
The victory is real, but it’s not the finish line.
Mail balloting has been a target of Trump’s for years, and for good reason. The Heritage Foundation has long argued that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud, coercion, and chain-of-custody problems than in-person voting. Anyone who lived through the 2020 presidential election, one of the most disputed elections in history, watched that vulnerability play out in real time.
It’s official: California just criminalized publicly exposing fraud.
our tax dollars are paying for fraud, and if someone like Nick Shirley exposes this fraud he, not the fraudster, could get in trouble.
More from Nick:
These politicians need the fraud to continue and they sadly use immigrants to do so often. They fund nonprofits and NGOs with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for immigration services, including free healthcare, and have now made ‘immigration support service providers’ essentially a protected class in California.
For example, if I film a hospice or a ‘learning center’ with no patients receiving millions through Medicaid and the owner gives me a paper saying I cannot publish the video, I cannot publish it. If I publish it to expose them and they claim it caused them ‘fear’ or a third party threatens them, I face a minimum $4,000 civil fine plus the legal fees of the individual or group suing me.
This bill was created by the Attorney General’s wife and co-sponsored by CHIRLA, a nonprofit that has received over $80,000,000 in taxpayer dollars for ‘immigrant support services.’ Do you understand how this works yet? When the fraud is exposed, they create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.
By signing this bill, the Governor and California politicians expose themselves as the corrupt politicians they are. This is not the end; the fight has just begun. More to come soon; this is far from over.
An unconstitutional prior restraint First Amendment violation that will be struck down instantly the first time California tries to enforce it.
If it weren’t for voter fraud, welfare state fraud, crazy trannies, violent criminals and pandering to radical Islamic anti-Semites, the Democrat Party wouldn’t have any business model at all…
“Our goal is Communism,” David Jenkins, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, said in 2023.
DSA member Cea Weaver is New York City’s tenant tsarina. She posted via X in December 2017, “Elect more communists.” The next year, she demanded: “Seize private property.”
Weaver’s boss is Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In his Jan. 1 inaugural address, he stated: “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” He told a DSA Zoom call in 2021: The “end goal” should be “seizing the means of production.” Mamdani also said, “The abolition of private property … is preferable to what is going on right now.” These comments loudly echo Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ cornerstone collectivist text “The Communist Manifesto.”
The magnificently named Darializa Avila Chevalier rode Mamdani’s endorsement all the way to the Democrat nomination for New York’s 13th Congressional District.
“I’m a democratic socialist,” she boasted June 29 on MS Now. She also wants to “seize the means of production,” as she advised in a not-quite-deleted September 2019 X post. She confessed that December: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag.” In April 2020, she wrote: “Most of the theory I have read is communism but the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.” The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserved 3,657 such messages that Chevalier thought she had erased.
For months, the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz was Tehran’s ultimate card dominated commentary on the war.
As a narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas had historically passed, it appeared to be a chokepoint Iran could close or severely disrupt at will. It did not need to destroy every tanker. Hitting a small percentage with drones, cruise missiles, speedboats, or mines would spike insurance rates, deter crews and companies, and effectively shut the strait without continuous physical control.
This idea was not new for 2026. It had long been a feature of the Iranian strategic posture, treated as both a military instrument and a political myth-proof that even under pressure Tehran retained a decisive lever over the global energy system. Parts of the Western media and independent analysts amplified the same narrative.
Relying on incomplete open-source shipping data, especially once vessels began sailing dark, many concluded that the United States had been caught unprepared and lacked a realistic path to reopen the waterway. Hormuz, they argued, was effectively closed or closable at Iran’s discretion. That framing was powerful, but also incomplete.
The assumption that Iran’s detection and targeting system could not be dismantled without dramatic escalation proved wrong. Under the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and with significant involvement from the Fifth Fleet and Air Force components, the United States ran a sustained effort to degrade the sensors Iran needed to find and hit ships.
Iran relied on mobile truck-mounted radars, drones, cruise missiles, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats, and naval mines. Inside the narrow strait, ships move in relatively predictable lanes. Iran combined active radars with passive electro-optical and infrared cameras on elevated terrain and islands such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa.
Mobile radars would radiate briefly to locate shipping, then shut down and move before anti-radiation missiles could arrive. Once a ship’s approximate position was known, strike systems could be sent to search.
The vulnerability was that every radar emission could be detected. American aircraft responded systematically with anti-radiation missiles while visual and intelligence efforts located the passive sensors. This was the core of what some involved called “draining the swamp.”
Iran had redundancy, but the number of sensors was finite. Hundreds of precision strikes gradually reduced Iran’s ability to see traffic in the strait. As the detection layer thinned, the effectiveness of the strike systems declined with it.
Parallel efforts neutralized mines with unmanned vessels and declared the southern lane near Oman largely clear. Convoys moved under escort, often at night with the automated information system (AIS) off. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis radars and standard missile (SM)-family interceptors formed the backbone; drones and Apache helicopters armed with laser-guided rockets provided additional cover. American ships also engaged IRGC speedboats that closed on the convoys.
On the commercial side, the United States addressed insurance barriers. In early March, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for maritime trade.
The DFC, working with the Treasury and CENTCOM, established a revolving reinsurance facility of roughly $20 billion-later expanded with private partners including Chubb-focused on hull, machinery, and cargo cover. Early uptake was limited. As Iranian success rates fell, more vessels joined.
Results have been significant. CENTCOM has reported assisting well over a thousand commercial vessels and moving hundreds of millions of barrels since the spring. Independent trackers often showed lower numbers because much of the traffic sailed dark. Pre-war throughput was 20 million to 21 million barrels per day.
Flows through Hormuz remain below that, but combined with the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline and Saudi Arabia’s pipeline to Yanbu in the Red Sea, volumes recovered enough to keep oil prices in the $85 to $95 range-elevated, but far from the predicted catastrophe.
Followup: “Satellite Imagery of Multiple Ozon Warehouses Destroyed by Ukraine.”
“Big Blast as Drone Storage is Hit By Drone & Project 05060 Patrol Boat Destroyed in Crimea.”
“Ukraine Destroys Rare Su-33 (First Destroyed), MiG-29 and Orion Attack Drone At Anapa Airport.” This was just the other side of the Kerch Straight Bridge. The Su-33 is normally a carrier based aircraft, but since Russia’s only aircraft carrier has been out of service since 2017, they’re doing much desk landing these days.
The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.
U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice conceded that Americans are allowed to carry in Postal Service buildings.
Snip.
On August 18, a federal judge ruled against Biden’s “ghost gun” ban, saying it violates multiple parts of the Constitution….Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Biden’s “Ghost Gun” rule violates the 2nd and 5th Amendments,
Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is being upheld and gun rights expanded.
More progress: “CDC restores info showing how many good guys with guns stop bad guys after Biden removed it.”
Concerning: “Maryland felony cases against Zizian trans death cult members abruptly suspended. After 18 months of prosecution, Maryland abruptly put its cases against three Zizian trans cult members on indefinite hold. Officials have not publicly explained why.”
The cases against cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and subordinates Michelle “Jamie” “Alex” Zajko and Daniel “Hastur” Blank were made inactive on Aug. 14; All scheduled future trial dates were canceled.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested together following a national manhunt on Feb. 16, 2025 in rural western Maryland. They were found with a cache of weapons in their two box trucks. They had spent years moving around the country as members of the Zizians, a radical transgender cult who has been linked to at least eight violent deaths.
The three initially faced only misdemeanor trespassing, firearms and obstruction charges after an elderly Frostburg-area property owner reported that they had arrived in box trucks and asked to camp on his property.
Authorities later added charges involving the alleged illegal possession and carrying of concealed and loaded firearms.
LaSota, a biological male who identifies as a woman and uses the name “Ziz,” is the founder and ideological leader of the Zizians. The group is made up of transgender vegan extremists, several of whom have elite educational backgrounds in science and mathematics. Members embraced an esoteric ideology combining leftist transgender politics, anarchism, rationalism and veganism.
Snip.
Though the state charges have been suspended, LaSota is being held on a federal detainer request on a federal indictment of being a fugitive from justice in possession of firearms and ammunition. On Tuesday, he was transferred into federal custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.
Zajko, meanwhile, is awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania. She was charged in June with murdering her adoptive parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, on New Year’s Eve 2022. The case had gone cold for years before the surprise announcement by prosecutors in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Authorities allege Zajko traveled from Vermont to her childhood home in Chester Heights on the night of her 30th birthday and participated in the execution-style killings.
Bad news for justice in Colorado: “Former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst Yvonne Missy Woods pleaded guilty to four felonies — cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public official, and forgery, after facing 102 felony charges tied to misconduct in 58 cases dating back to 2008. Woods worked at CBI for 29 years, from January 1994 to November 2023, and was qualified as an expert witness more than 500 times. A routine audit in late 2023 uncovered anomalies in her work; an internal investigation found she purposefully deleted DNA data to skip required testing steps. Retesting of roughly 3,000 affected cases cost the state an estimated $11 million. Among the high-profile cases she handled was the 2003 Kobe Bryant sexual assault investigation. ”
“ICE Arrests 1,328 Illegal Aliens in DC, Virginia, Maryland in 14 Days. Of those arrested, almost 400 illegal immigrants had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, including a Salvadoran national wanted in Richmond, Virginia, on a murder warrant.”
“Other crimes included rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, DUI, robbery and attempted murder.” Also: “They also arrested members of MS-13, 18th Street Gang, and Tren de Aragua gangs.” MS-13 and Tren de Aragua we’ve covered here before. According to Wikipedia, “The 18th Street Gang, also known as Eighteen St, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic (largely Mexican and Central American), street gang from Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest street gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000–50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America.” Evidently they’re enemies with MS-13.
“Lottery Boss Appears in Court over $95 Million Scandal. Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity tied to the controversial 2023 jackpot.”
Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief appeared in a Travis County courtroom Friday morning as the criminal case stemming from the controversial 2023 Lotto Texas jackpot moves forward.
Grief appeared alongside his attorney before District Judge Dayna Blazey in the 167th District Court. Prosecutors and attorneys representing the entity formerly known as the Texas Lottery Commission were also present.
Court records show Grief waived formal magistration Friday. Another hearing concerning his personal-recognizance bond was set for October 16.
Shortly after Friday’s proceedings, Travis County District Attorney José Garza formally announced that a grand jury had indicted both Grief and the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission for abuse of official capacity.
The indictments were handed down April 21.
According to Garza’s office, the charges stem from the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing and allege that the commission, along with high-level management officials Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd, intentionally and knowingly misused government resources.
The DA’s office alleges the conduct was authorized by Grief, who was serving as the commission’s executive director at the time.
The indictment concerns the drawing in which a New Jersey-based lottery purchasing operation acquired nearly every possible number combination and won a $95 million jackpot.
Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving $300,000 or more.
The whole affair stinks to high heaven, and I have to think at least some Lotto Commission employees were in on it.
“Judges Recommend Regulators Reject Proposed 765-kV Line. The Public Utility Commission must now decide whether to accept the judges’ recommendation to reject the proposed multibillion-dollar transmission line projects.” “The judges concluded the utilities [Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation] did not establish that the projects are necessary and failed to comply with notice requirements designed to give affected landowners a chance to participate before the application was filed.”
The plot thickens. “Iowa Attorney General Says She’s Taking California to the Supreme Court Over Paramount-Warner Bros.”
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Wire that she is suing California for leading the charge in the lawsuit against the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger.
“California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator. And once again California is defying common sense to raise costs around the country,” Bird wrote. “That makes this a dispute between states, and the Constitution says those can only be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“Australian man faces 15 years in prison for using toy gun to win carnival prize for daughter.” He was an ex-felony prohibited from using guns, but getting busted for a carnival air rifle seems way, way excessive.
How Simon Whistler runs his YouTube channels. He outsources everything except direction and presentation, expands his winners and ruthlessly culls his losers. It’s smart business, but largely antithetical to what I watch YouTube for. (Previously.)
Weirdly enough, the animated film Lesbian Space Princess seems to be hated by everyone. See, a film with that title could be highly profitable in porn…
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday that his office has secured a proposed settlement worth more than $1 billion with Meta Platforms Inc. that would require the company to adopt new safety features for children using its social media platforms.
Paxton said the agreement would direct more than $1 billion to the State of Texas for youth mental health services, crisis resources, digital literacy programs, after-school initiatives and grants for Texas schools. The settlement would also impose new platform requirements involving age assurance, teen screen-time limits, school-hour notifications, public reactions, and nighttime access.
“This is a historic settlement and a major win for the safety of Texas children,” Paxton said in a statement. “Not only will Meta pay over $1 billion to Texas, but the company will also implement significant new safety features to better protect children’s precious minds and well-being on its platforms.”
Under the announced terms, Meta would be required to use stricter age-assurance measures and impose a default two-hour daily limit for teen users. Teens could turn off the limit only with a parent’s permission.
Push notifications would be muted by default during school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., except for direct messages and account-security or safety alerts. Likes and reactions would also be hidden by default, a feature the attorney general’s office said is intended to reduce social comparison among young users.
The company would additionally create a nighttime-access setting designed to limit notifications and certain other features for children between midnight and 6 a.m. Meta would continue to restrict age-inappropriate content and provide parental-supervision tools, according to Paxton’s office.
The announcement comes as Meta faces ongoing scrutiny and litigation from states alleging that its Facebook and Instagram platforms harmed children by encouraging compulsive use. Meta has denied claims that it knowingly designed its platforms to addict young users.
A lot of these seem like pretty common sense features all parents would want. Why didn’t Facebook implement them long ago? With a market cap of 1.45 trillion dollars, I think they can afford it. Of course, that would get in the way of Facebook sucking up every last drop of user data, no matter the cost.
One billion dollars is a lot of money, but it’s still a drop in the bucket to Meta, and I seriously doubt it will discourage them from beta testing Torment Nexus 2.0 on the next batch of teenage lab subjects.
A high-speed rail line between Austin and San Antonio would cost about $13.5 billion to build, according to a recent feasibility study commissioned by Travis County Commissioners Court.
The study conducted by HNTB Corporation assessed the potential of a high-speed rail route between Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the Amtrak station in San Antonio along State Highway 130 and Interstate 10.
Running from an airport in one city to an Amtrak station in another? Who the hell is this line for, tourists who want to save money traveling to San Antonio? It certainly doesn’t seem geared for the benefit of actual Travis County residents, especially now that the theoretical Project Connect light rail link to Bergstrom has been cancelled.
Also, if you’re going 130 to I-10 to San Antonio, you’re missing the bigger I-35 cities like Kyle, San Marcos and New Braunfels in favor of smaller cities Lockhart and Seguin. I guess the plan is to keep it high speed because almost no one will want to visit the smaller bergs on the train line.
The proposed route would run at about 125 miles per hour with a travel time of about an hour between the two cities.
Sure it would. Pretty much no U.S. “high speed rail” services hit their theoretical maximum because they stop too often and the track’s not straight enough to maintain top speed for long.
Travis County approved $125,000 to fund the feasibility study in October 2025.
The proposed 89-mile route presents challenges because of the many cross-street overpasses and an existing right-of-way that has minimal space to accommodate the rail route. These challenges contribute to the $13.5 billion price tag by requiring much of the route to be elevated.
The high-speed rail would also cost $190 million to operate and maintain annually, according to the report.
That works out to some $520,000 a day in ongoing operating costs paid by the taxpayers.
The feasibility study did not include ridership or fare estimates for the proposed high-speed rail line.
Acela serves just under 9,000 passengers a day. Even if the proposed Austin-San Antonio leg got that many (it won’t; even a thousand a day is probably too many), that results in a cost of over $4,000 per passenger per day over the first year in fixed costs alone. At 1,000 riders, it’s more like $36,000 a passenger per day the first year. For that price you could buy every rider their own Honda Civic, and save the taxpayer gobs of money over the other 364 days of the year (and 15-20 years more to boot). Including the ongoing costs adds a $520 taxpayer subsidy per rider per day.
The actual Austin Amtrak ridership in 2025 was 47,030. Not per day. Not per week. Not per month. That’s the total yearly ridership to all destinations.
Maybe my 1,000 estimate is way too optimistic.
There’s also this: “A separate TxDOT study found expanded passenger service on existing tracks could cost as little as $800 million.” Even that is too much for how much such a line would actually be used. Intercity passenger rail is a money loser everywhere it’s run, and only sorta, kinda works in the northeast because of a much higher population density. Even there it’s heavily subsidized, and even the fastest train, Amtrak’s Acela, only saves just over an hour over a car trip between D.C. and New York City.
Leftists everywhere love rail because it’s an endless source of graft in the planning and building stages, and a superior means of surveilling and controlling the population. How are you supposed to inflict socialism on the peasants if they can just climb in their car and drive away?
All this is a boondoggle in search of a problem, as low cost mass transit between Austin and San Antonio already exists in the form of buses, with fares starting at as little as $11. But that’s not a desirable form of transportation for liberal elites, because riding a bus doesn’t show how smugly superior they are over ordinary people. Plus they have to rub shoulders with both the peasants they disdain and the illegal aliens they’ve inflicted on them.
This proposed train project makes zero economic sense, benefits very few Austinites, costs taxpayers dearly, will be an endless source of graft, and, like California’s Train to Nowhere, will never actually be built.
For all those reasons, expect Austin Democrats to keep pushing for it.
In a small city of some 5,000, you would expect there to be some overlap between the city council and other institutions in town, like the volunteer fire department, the PTA, or the Kiwanis Club. One thing you wouldn’t expect city council overlap with: a prostitution ring.
In recent years, the City of Godley has been wrapped up in a series of high-profile scandals. An ongoing lawsuit accuses multiple city officials of conspiring to arrest a city council member to block an important vote.
Godley is a small city on the western end of Johnson County, which is just south of Tarrant County (Fort Worth). It looks like there’s a tiny sliver of farmland left between them and the Metroplex sprawl, but it’s coming fast. (Johnson County is not to be confused with Johnson City in Blanco County, considerably further south and the birthplace Lyndon Baines Johnson.)
Many of the same actors were later arrested for their involvement in a prostitution ring.
I think Texas Scorecard’s Travis Morgan has buried the “juicy headline potential” lead a bit here.
In October 2022, Godley Police Chief Jason Jordan resigned after Officer Solomon Omotoya accused him of racial discrimination.
Before resigning, Jordan passed a folder around at a city council meeting with information supporting his belief that city officials—including his own officers—were violating state and federal law by targeting residents and city council members for the content of their speech.
After accepting his resignation, three city council members—Jennifer Thompson, Michael Papenfuss, and Roger Cornelison—reviewed Jordan’s folder and changed their minds. They sought to have him reinstated, which would displace then-Mayor Acy McGehee’s replacement candidate—Matthew Cantrell.
So far, so murky. I’m guessing this folder had some juicy but possibly non-actionable details.
This reportedly led to a heated political feud, with the three city council members effectively becoming the “opposition party” to McGehee and city employees. The feud led to a flurry of allegations in both directions, including complaints of corruption, sexual assault, false testimony, and more.
The Godley Police Department launched an investigation into Thompson and Papenfuss, alleging Thompson had tampered with a government record when adding items to a city council meeting agenda from a previous meeting that she believed should have been carried over.
She made the alterations on the document already signed by the city secretary, which Papenfuss later distributed on social media.
Officer Jeremy Arbuthnot took the case to the Johnson County District Attorney, who rebuked it.
According to Thompson, “Assistant District Attorney Ryan Eady immediately recognized the frivolity of the case and informed Arbuthnot that the facts and circumstances did not give rise to forgery in part because they negated intent to deceive … [H]e suggested that the pending [retaliation] complaints [by Thompson against the officers] created conflicts of interest that would taint any investigation and prosecution.”
Upon learning of this, Mayor McGehee and City Attorney Cass Callaway reportedly directed the department to find a way to “get it done.”
The department then sought to charge Thompson with a misdemeanor, meaning it would be prosecuted by the county attorney’s office rather than the district attorney’s office. In December 2023, officers submitted a probable cause affidavit to the county attorney.
Nothing more transpired until February 7, 2024, when there was a city council meeting at which Thompson planned to vote to remove former Interim Police Chief Cantrell and install a city attorney of her choosing.
That morning, the county attorney informed Arbuthnot that the warrant looked “good to go,” but then an officer erroneously entered it into the system as a felony warrant. Thompson alleges this was intended to require her to undergo a strip search upon booking.
A few minutes before the meeting began, Officer Spencer Templer arrested Thompson in the city hall parking lot—despite being ordered to conduct the arrest at her residence. Her absence left the council deadlocked in a 2-2 vote.
According to court records, “Mayor McGehee used his tiebreaking authority to secure his preferred appointees for City Attorney and City Secretary. Three days later, the County Attorney declined to prosecute.”
So far, so slimy, but let’s get to juicer (alleged) transgressions.
Many of the actors involved in the alleged collusion against Thompson were subsequently arrested for their involvement in a local prostitution ring.
Ashley Ketcherside sat on the Godley ISD Bond Oversight Advisory Committee and the School Health Advisory Council—which is responsible for advising the school board on the district’s sex education curriculum.
When parents notified the district of Ketcherside’s prior arrests for prostitution in Tarrant County, she was removed from her positions. She then started a podcast and an Only Fans. Parents then approached the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office with allegations that she was still selling sex.
In March, Johnson County sheriff’s deputies and the Texas Department of Public Safety reportedly raided Ketcherside’s home, seizing her electronics.
During the course of the investigation, Ashley’s husband, Michael Ketcherside, was accused of scheduling men to have sex with his wife for money.
Pimping out your own wife to cuckold you is particularly low. Enjoy your trip to the Eighth Circle of Dante’s Hell.
Cantrell and Omotoya were arrested, as evidence from Ketcherside’s phone reportedly showed their involvement in a prostitution conspiracy. They had both been recently released from jail for using the police department’s fuel card for personal vehicles.
Investigators reportedly found evidence of the Ketchersides working with Cantrell to compile information on adversaries—including “members of the Godley City Council, Godley Independent School Board, the former mayor of Godley, and former Chief of Police of the City of Godley.”
Arbuthnot was also accused of involvement.
Cantrell’s mother, Regina, was accused of misusing official information when looking for active arrest warrants on her son. She is a former Johnson County corrections officer.
On July 15, a series of indictments were handed down by a Johnson County Grand Jury.
Michael Ketcherside was indicted on charges of continuous promotion of prostitution. Both he and Ashley Ketcherside were indicted on charges of racketeering/money laundering between $150,000 and $300,000.
Matthew Cantrell was indicted on charges of sexual assault, stalking, promoting prostitution, and engaging in organized criminal activity. Regina Cantrell was indicted on charges of misuse of official information.
Omotoya was indicted on charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and soliciting prostitution. Arbuthnot was charged with engaging in organized criminal activity.
So the “prostitution ring” was Ashley Ketcherside, her husband, some other dude, and the former “cry racism” sheriff john? That sounds like an unsustainable pimp-to-ho ratio for a successful business. High administrative overhead means low profits.
A Texas mom of three who pleaded her innocence when her hubby was arrested for allegedly running a prostitution ring frequented by local cops is now accused of coaching women to sell their bodies out of the couple’s home.
Snip.
She also rejected suggestions that she may be a prostitute herself, despite her two previous convictions.
When Omotoya was nabbed alongside Michael, he led investigators to former Godley Police Chief Matthew Cantrell, who revealed that Ashley charged $1,000 an hour for sex with her, according to court documents.
Those same rates were repeated in messages on Ashley’s seized burner phone, the publication reported.
Here’s one of the saucier photos the Post has of Ashley Ketcherside:
Ashley Ketcherside launched a podcast, “Champagne and Pearls,” in which she said she was determined to expose the truth. She spoke candidly and displayed social media posts from a woman she said she intended to pursue in court, including comments about what girls would learn from her at school.
Lain was a frequent topic, as she was also active in a community Facebook chat group. Ashley Ketcherside later sued Lain and seven others for injury to her reputation, but the case was dismissed.
If you already have two convictions for prostitution, and are alleged to be a part of a prostitution ring, starting a podcast to attack your critics is not exactly a sound strategy for “laying low.”
Prostitution, government corruption: Those are some awfully big city sins for such a small city as Godley…
I have a whole lot of links saved up to do a Talarico round-up of all his various stupidities and attempts to walk back his social justice activism that I haven’t gotten around to posting yet. In the meantime, Texas Scorecard’s Sara Gonzales has her own roundup of Talarico trying to scrub his radical past. “But the Internet is forever.”
“Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico is running from his past because he knows he can’t get elected in Texas if he tells the truth. So much so that he scrubbed his website when he announced his Senate run to remove references to trans kids.”
“There also was a place where he bragged about being committed to bold progressive legislation no matter how long it takes. Like it was right there front and center in his website. And then, curiously, in early September 2025, as he was announcing his Senate run, these sentences just poof, vanished out of nowhere.”
“It says the biggest divide in this country is not left to right, but top versus bottom. [snorts] Which first of all, I mean, the jokes write themselves, right? When you’re dealing with someone like James Talarico, who we all have some questions about his masculinity, is he like batting for the other team?”
“More importantly, the word progressive completely vanished from the website. You can’t find it.”
“Because the James Talarico is running today in 2026 is a total fraud. He is pretending to be something that he is not in order to trick Texans into electing him.”
“He is not just some regular old moderate just fighting back against the man. That’s not him. He is a radical, radical leftist.”
“We know that James Talarico, for instance, has never met a trans kid he doesn’t like. Actually, he’s seemingly obsessed with trans kids. But what you may not know, speaking of being a radical leftist, is that he also headlined a 2021 Pride event in Taylor, Texas with an 11-year-old drag queen that goes by the name Queen Kiki.”
“James Talarico is a big supporter of grown men dressed as women dancing provocatively in front of young children. James is also a big fan of sterilizing children. Actually, and I want to play you here. He is in his own words complaining that Texas Republicans passed SB14, which banned the trans surgeries for children.”
Talarico: “I think if I’m thinking through the three most dangerous LGBTQ, um, attack bills that made it through, I would say the most dangerous is SB14, which would deny many times life saving health care from our trans youth in Texas.” And by “life-saving” he means “gender mutilating.” He also opposed the bills banning drag shows for children and porn in school libraries.
“According to James Talarico, children should just have access to all of these gay books that talk about how, you know, uh, gay couples are like going down on each other performing oral sex.”
I’m skipping over bits about Talarico’s radical leftwing church since we covered that here.
“They’re housing illegal aliens to hide them from the federal law enforcement. They are obstructing. They are hiding illegals. They are hiding criminals from federal law enforcement so that they can’t get deported. That’s not a church, guys. That is a radical leftist cult.”
“He is a very dangerous radical.”
She didn’t even cover his assertion there being six genders and God being non-binary, or bragging about how his campaign was vegan…
Iran lashes out again and gets pounded even harder for its troubles, Fauci’s diary validates just about everything conservatives have been saying about him for the last six years, DSA is open about wanting to destroy the Constitution, Ukraine blows up more refineries and Wildberry logistic warehouses, Spain faces invasion, all sorts of AI skullduggery, and Neuromancer finally makes it to the screen.
Following Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) missile attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Jordan, President Donald Trump is now signaling readiness for full-scale military action that could shatter the cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges and accelerate an end to the conflict, opening the door for a full-on revolution for the Persian nation.
“We’re going to beat the f****** s*** out of them […] We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating,” Trump said on Wednesday.
If the Iranian regime collapsed under external pressure and internal strain, the power vacuum could empower ordinary Iranians, who have long protested theocratic rule, to seize control of their country’s future. Hardcore Islamists brought the nation into a theocracy in February of 1979.
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a maritime coalition to protect shipping and energy supplies in the Red Sea as Yemen’s Houthi rebels threaten a vital route for the kingdom’s oil exports and global trade.
Riyadh on Thursday hosted a meeting of 43 countries and the EU to discuss plans to form a multinational maritime defensive coalition.
After the meeting, 14 countries affirmed their commitment to the coalition, including Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan and several other Arab and African countries, according to the kingdom’s defence ministry.
The United Arab Emirates and Oman were notably absent, but the ministry said the door remains open for countries that want to join the coalition.
The alliance is “aimed at enhancing maritime security, protecting freedom of navigation, securing international trade routes and energy supply routes, and protecting shared maritime interests in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden”, the 14 countries said in a joint statement.
The statement added the coalition would be led by Saudi Arabia and headquartered in Riyadh, with the participating countries agreeing to share intelligence and engage in joint maritime operations and exercises.
I exclusively uncovered the identities of prominent U.S. journalists flown to China by a CCP-linked influence operation seeking “favorable coverage” and “positive messages” about Beijing. 🧵
The names include:
– Ezra Klein, New York Times columnist
– Matthew Yglesias, Vox co-founder
– Ronald Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst
– Bradford Plumer, New York Times reporter
– Marjorie Miller, former Associated Press vice president
Also identified:
– Steve Clemons, former The Hill editor-at-large
– David Rohde, MS NOW senior national security reporter
– Jonathan Alter, NBC News and MSNBC political analyst
– David Sweeney, former NPR managing editor
– Daniel Gross, former Yahoo Finance columnist
Also on the roster:
– Marilyn Geewax, former NPR senior editor
– Kathleen Deveny, former Newsweek editor
– Tom Omestad, former U.S. News & World Report correspondent
– Steve Chapman, former Chicago Tribune columnist
– Bruce Stokes, former National Journal correspondent
The list continues:
– Craig Gilbert, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief
– Tony Semerad, Salt Lake Tribune reporter
– Shikha Dalmia, former The Week columnist
– Jonathan Broder, former Newsweek senior writer
Also identified:
– Cristi Kempf, former Chicago Tribune associate managing editor
– Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor
– Julian Pecquet, former Foreign Affairs reporter
Trip organizer CUSEF was founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a former senior official in the CCP’s United Front system, the influence apparatus Beijing uses to cultivate foreign elites and shape institutions outside China.
According to [Sen. Rand] Paul, “During his time as NIAID Director, and particularly during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci took meticulous notes about his work. He made note of conversations, decisions, and his thoughts about actions taken by politicians and other officials.” This past weekend, Paul released a gargantuan 1,141 pages of Fauci’s notes. Very little in these pages enhances Fauci’s already deeply tarnished reputation.
Most notably, on January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote:
It now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. The infections spread among people weeks before the Chinese reported that they were dealing with a new infection and that gave the virus time to establish itself in multigenerational (sustained) spread. Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.
America and the world spent most of the next two years in an increasingly furious debate over whether the virus emerged from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, perhaps from a pangolin; or from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the separate institution of the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control (which was also doing research on coronaviruses found in bats); or somewhere else. Fauci apparently knew — notice he didn’t write “believe” or “theorize” — he could rule out the wet-market theory but never felt obligated to share that conclusion with the rest of us. Instead, he repeatedly dismissed and downplayed the lab-leak theory.
More at the link.
“Revealed: Five Months After Fauci Got Vaccinated, He Suffered a Pulmonary Infarction, an Adverse Effect Associated With the Vaccine.’ He Kept This a Secret.”
The alternate celebrity and villain of the COVID-19 policy response repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse answering even mundane questions, such as the color of the hearing room’s carpet, following publication of over 1,100 pages of diary-like notes that have raised even more questions about the veracity of his COVID-era public statements.
Committee Republicans repeatedly argued Fauci could not opt out of answering questions due to President Biden’s sweeping preemptive pardon, the validity of which has been questioned because it was signed by autopen amid Biden’s cognitive decline. Legal analysts explained Wednesday how Fauci could still be prosecuted.
Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford, who pointedly disagreed with colleagues on the Fifth Amendment issue, waited until the hearing’s end to recall that Congress went through a near-identical exercise in President Obama’s second term.
It held former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt for giving an opening statement at a House hearing in 2013 on her alleged discrimination against conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, then invoking her rights under the Fifth Amendment to decline giving testimony or answering questions that may expose one to criminal prosecution.
Fauci did the same Wednesday.
Lankford asked committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whether the Lerner vote determined the Fauci outcome. Paul, who has called for Fauci’s prosecution for years, said lawmakers have a week to study the issue before voting on a contempt resolution.
The question that courts may have to answer is whether Biden’s pardon preempts Fauci’s right against self-incrimination, since he can’t be prosecuted “as long as he answers truthfully” and the statute of limitations forecloses some claims anyway, Paul said.
George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf floated two other ways Fauci could testify without risk to himself: a two-thirds committee vote or a simple House majority to immunize him, or doing media interviews in which he’s not under oath, since “it is not a crime to lie to the public.”
More blow-by-blow Fauci testimony details at the link. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Congressional committee issues subpoenas to organizations tied to China-linked Dem megadonor. The latest subpoenas raise the question of whether U.S. tax law — which grants tax exemptions and shields charitable donor identities — can be used to route foreign money into domestic political activity. At the heart of it, questions abound whether the far-left outfits have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., has issued subpoenas to three tax-exempt organizations tied to socialist megadonor Neville Roy Singham, an American multimillionaire living in Shanghai with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The subpoenas have been served, a spokesperson for Smith’s office told Just the News, on BreakThrough News, Tricontinental and The People’s Forum, all three of which are funded, at least in part, by Singham. The subpoenas come after nearly a year of the Committee’s attempts to get answers from the three non-profit organizations regarding foreign influence in U.S. nonprofits.
“For months, the Ways and Means Committee has been investigating how the Chinese Communist Party has been taking advantage of our country’s laws through its tax-exempt sector to sow chaos and division here in the United States,” Smith said in a statement. “Public reporting has traced hundreds of millions of dollars from Neville Roy Singham – a tech mogul living in Shanghai – that was funneled through a web of shell companies and donor-advised funds that concealed the true source of the money before it reached these organizations.”
The subpoenas request documents showing whether the organizations have received or transmitted funds connected to foreign nationals or foreign entities, contracts between those nationals or entities, documents and communications between employees and Singham or foreign nationals about the organization.
“Three non-profits connected to Mr. Singham – BreakThrough News, Tricontinental, and The People’s Forum – have stonewalled the Ways and Means Committee’s investigation. That ends now,” Smith said in his statement. “These subpoenas will compel the production of the documents they have withheld for months and will help expose how America’s tax laws and charitable sector may have been exploited to advance the CCP’s influence operations inside the United States. The American people deserve to know whether the CCP has exploited America’s tax-exempt sector to advance its agenda. These subpoenas will allow the Ways and Means Committee to identify the networks that exploit our tax laws, and further expose the urgent need for legislation to close those loopholes for good.”
The Democratic Socialists of America wants you to know exactly what it wants, and Megan Romer, the group’s national co-chair, laid it out on national television without once reaching for a hedge word over the most radical ideas on the party platform.
The platform itself reads like a fever dream a committee wrote line by line. A 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay and benefits, a federal jobs guarantee, canceling all student debt, and free college from pre-K through graduate school anchor the economic wish list, alongside healthcare that is universal, free, and includes gender-affirming care as a guaranteed right.
The platform calls for more publicly owned social housing, universal rent control, and a guaranteed lawyer for every tenant. On policing, the platform wants demilitarized police departments, defunded police unions, and money pulled out of police budgets entirely, all of which the DSA frames as a first step toward abolishing prisons and policing outright.
On foreign policy, the platform demands the defunding of the Department of War, the closure of overseas military bases, and an end to all foreign wars, and it pairs that with support for International Criminal Court prosecutions of what it deems American war criminals. As for Israel, the DSA calls for an end to all U.S. military and economic aid, prosecution of American and Israeli leaders over what many consider a genocide in Gaza, and recognition of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The DSA is just as blunt about reimagining how the government works. The platform seeks statehood for Washington, D.C., self-determination for U.S. territories, and the abolition of both the Electoral College and the Senate, alongside an expanded House and a presidency and Supreme Court that answer to Congress instead of operating independently. The DSA wants to swap the two-party system for proportional representation and ranked-choice voting and pay for all of it through full public financing of every election.
And, to top it all off, the platform calls for slavery reparations.
Fox News host Shannon Bream ran through the DSA’s platform position by position, true or false, no room to dodge. Romer never flinched. She confirmed that the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform calls for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court, eliminating ICE, ending borders while granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, defunding the Pentagon, abolishing prisons as a long-term goal, and placing most large corporations under government or public ownership. At every step, she answered without hesitation, affirming that each position accurately reflected the DSA’s platform.
If we can’t stop the DSA at the ballot box, then stopping them at the ammo box becomes inevitable…
Michigan journalist Charlie LeDuff, who formerly worked at The New York Times and The Detroit News, decided to visit this 88-year-old woman to ask why she’s made nearly 15,000 donations to Democrats in the last 5 years:
You’ll note that resident Elizabeth Waffle is living in a trailer because her house burned down.
LeDuff: ‘Did you make 15,000 donations in 5 years? $150,000?’
Waffle: ‘A hundred and fifty? Hell no. I don’t have that kind of money.’
Her house burned down two years ago and she’s been living in a camper since.
She wasn’t even sure if she had enough money to pay the guy who was coming to mow the fields of weeds around the camper!
DOJ needs to audit ActBlue with proctological intensity.
After the Trump administration indicated that there were at least 35,000 noncitizen registered voters in New Jersey, the Democratic governor there tried to do damage control by admitting to at least 6,600 registered noncitizen voters. Soon after her admission, however, she refused point-blank to hand over that data to the Trump administration.
In fact, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who has wasted a great deal of time and money trying to protect illegal alien criminals through her dangerous and disgusting sanctuary policies, actually referred to the noncitizen voters as “citizens” of her state. Either she is under the deluded impression we are still operating under the Articles of Confederation, or she thinks she gets to be a petty dictator because she has rigged elections enough to ensure her party never gets out of power.
Last Tuesday, a reporter asked Sherrill during a press conference, “The Trump administration is seeking, I believe by today, the list of noncitizens who are registered to vote and the approximately 400 that did vote, to what extent will your administration comply with the Trump administration’s request in that regard?”
Sherrill self-righteously but inarticulately sneered to a round of applause, “As I have said, I am not in the habit of turning over private, identifying administration—information of the citizens of New Jersey.” Again, it is completely outrageous that this is how she refers to noncitizens, particularly since many of them are illegal aliens.
Snip.
Why might Sherrill be so determined to ensure there is not a thorough cleaning out of the voter rolls in her state? In 2025, she did apparently win the gubernatorial race against Republican Jack Ciattarelli by about 453,000, so that is a fairly sizable margin. But back in 2020, when there were allegations of fraud, then-Gov. Phil Murphy beat Ciattarelli by only about 84,200 votes. The preliminary findings, meaning the likely lowball initial results, from the Department of Justice this year as to how many illegal aliens are registered to vote in New Jersey were 35,152.
Suddenly, when you compare these numbers, New Jersey Democrats don’t seem to have quite such a firm grip on power in their state, do they?
“A California-Funded Homeless Shelter Gave Us Meth Pipes.” Of course it did.
As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has repeatedly supported “harm reduction” policies, which enable drug use in the name of making it “safer.” He created the state’s Harm Reduction Initiative, which funded “syringe services programs” for “people who inject and smoke fentanyl and/or methamphetamines.” His Department of Public Health has endorsed distributing syringes, glass pipes, and “[c]ontainers for mixing injectable drugs” to drug users. Newsom argued earlier this year that harm-reduction tactics “increase the likelihood of people entering substance use treatment.”
But do California’s harm-reduction programs encourage addicts to enter treatment? We visited the Skid Row Care Campus, a homeless-services site in Los Angeles County, to witness “harm reduction” in action. We discovered that, instead of directing addicts to get clean, the taxpayer-funded program doles out free paraphernalia, enabling addicts to get high—no questions asked.
We arrived at Skid Row in the morning. The campus, bounded by pastel-colored buildings and a metal gate, looked like an apocalyptic wasteland. Homeless people and addicts were splayed across the common areas, with some smoking what seemed to be hard drugs with impunity.
We stepped onto the courtyard connected to the street. No one stopped us, asked for identification, or searched us for weapons or drugs. This is apparently by design, judging by the Skid Row Action Plan and its implementation outline, which, singly or together, inspired the creation of the campus, denounced the “racist and classist war on drugs,” and called on local officials to create hubs “free from monitoring by law enforcement” and staffed by people with histories of “substance use and sex work.”
We entered campus and found a walk-up counter, where an attendant sat before shelves of drug paraphernalia. Users come to this counter to get free needles and crack pipes, with which they can inject or smoke hard drugs.
“What can I get you?” he asked. “We have oil burners, we have spray shooters, we have socks, we have petroleum jelly.”
Across several visits, we obtained drug-testing strips, syringes, and crack pipes.
“Russia admits defeat in the south, cannot keep the highway open.” Reporting from Ukraine is exaggerating a tad, but Russia is having serious problems with drones taking out logistics trucks on the Zaporizhia logistics route.
The Democrats have their 2028 presidential primary schedule almost finalized, featuring a trio of new states in the first six, and the early sense is that Republicans will stick with the familiar lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. It might seem early to be thinking about the 2028 presidential primaries, but if you’re one of the candidates, you must prioritize, and as Yogi Berra said, “It gets late early out there.”
As noted at the tail end of yesterday’s edition of this newsletter, over in the Washington Post, I examined the Democratic National Committee’s proposed, and likely to be final, schedule for the Democratic 2028 presidential primaries:
South Carolina, January 22, 2028
Nevada, February 1, 2028
New Hampshire, February 8, 2028
New Mexico, February 15, 2028
Michigan, February 22, 2028
Virginia, February 29, 2028
One week after that, March 7, will likely be Super Tuesday, the earliest date that the other states can schedule their primaries or caucuses. States that are likely to hold their primaries that day include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Vermont.
That’s a promising early schedule if you’re a candidate on the establishment side among the Democrats, and a rougher one if you’re a socialist or affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. Based upon Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s past performances, South Carolina and Virginia are rough territory, Nevada and New Hampshire are friendly territory, and it’s a little hard to say about New Mexico and Michigan.
Snip.
When I say a socialist or DSA-affiliated candidate, I am mostly thinking of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; she is, at least on paper, the early frontrunner in New Hampshire, and Axios ranks her as the candidate who is second-most-likely to win the nomination, behind Harris.
Some racial essentialists argue that it is absurd to contend that heavily white New Hampshire is likely to be supportive of the Puerto Rican AOC. First, a University of New Hampshire survey conducted this month not only found her with a one-point lead over Pete Buttigieg, but 64 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the state said they felt favorable about her, with just 9 percent saying they felt unfavorable about her; only Buttigieg and Sanders had comparable numbers. (At 84 years old, Sanders is not running in 2028; if AOC runs, Sanders is widely expected to endorse her.)
Also note, “Primary exit polling this year suggests that DSA candidates run best among young, college-educated and higher-income demographics.” In 2020 (the last time Democrats had a competitive presidential primary in New Hampshire), 54 percent of their primary voters had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Forty percent of Democratic primary voters reported a salary of $100,000 per year or more, and 72 percent made $50,000 per year or more.
“Thousands of Military-Age Men From Morocco Invade Spain’s Ceuta Territory.” Ceuta is an exclave on the north African coast
Thousands of military-age men from Morocco invaded Spain today by crossing the border into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.
Spain has deployed its military as these men arrive by sea and breach the border fence.
Snip.
Spain’s government said Thursday evening it would send the Armed Forces to help the Civil Guard “to maintain security in the city of Ceuta.” It also announced that Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would join Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and visit Ceuta Friday.
“The situation is absolute chaos,” Rachid Sbihi, head of the association that represents Spain’s Civil Guard officers in Ceuta, who police the border told The Associated Press. “It’s not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing,” he said, adding that the border had “totally collapsed.”
However, Spain’s interior ministry won’t declare a national emergency.
This follows hot on the heels of Spain’s far-left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declaring an illegal alien amnesty.
The Spanish government and its partners openly state that the reason for legalising more than half a million migrants is to "defeat the far right." This is literally weaponised demography. They took the most conspiratorial interpretation of the "Great Replacement" that is not…
I probably should have noted that Andy Burham is now Prime Minister of the UK. The guy wasn’t even an MP until June 18 (though he had been before), when he won a by-election triggered by the existing MP resigning specifically so Burham could run for PM. Here’s The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters on the guy.
Remember: Your private conversations with AI agents aren’t. “Claude Chats Popped Up in Google Search Results.”
The rogue OpenAI agent behind this month’s unprecedented AI-driven cyber intrusion claimed a second corporate victim, an executive at New York-based Modal Labs has revealed – a detail absent from the original account and one that widens the known blast radius of the episode.
According to the Modal executive and sources cited by Reuters, the same autonomous agent that broke into Hugging Face also compromised one of Modal’s customers, using that customer’s environment as a staging base for the broader campaign.
Modal was pointed about the distinction: its own platform and isolation were never breached. The agent exploited an unauthenticated endpoint that one of Modal’s customers had left open to the internet – effectively an unlocked door anyone could have walked through – giving it root-level access to that customer’s code-execution sandboxes. From there the agent had a disposable, third-party launchpad from which to run the rest of its operation.
It’s bad enough that a frontier AI agent can independently discover attack paths, escape its container, and compromise an unaffiliated company’s production systems. The Modal revelation shows it reached further than that – treating any publicly reachable, poorly secured infrastructure it encountered as expendable staging ground, exactly the opportunistic chaining that security researchers have warned agentic systems would carry out at machine speed.
Most of what led up to the Modal disclosure has already been picked over, but the shape of it is worth a recap. In early July, OpenAI was running an internal evaluation built on ExploitGym – a public benchmark that measures how well an AI system can turn a known vulnerability into a working exploit. The models under test, GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased prototype, were deliberately run with their cyber-safety refusals reduced and the classifiers that normally block high-risk activity switched off, because the point was to measure maximum offensive capability.
The agent found and exploited a previously unknown flaw in the one package-registry proxy it was allowed to reach, escalated privileges, moved through OpenAI’s research environment, and got to a machine with open internet access. Once online, it reasoned that Hugging Face likely hosted the answer key to the very benchmark it was being tested on, and went to steal it rather than solve the problems itself. Between roughly July 11 and 13 it ran thousands of automated actions against the platform – gaining code execution through two separate flaws in its dataset-processing pipeline, harvesting credentials, and moving laterally across internal clusters. Forensic work later recovered on the order of 17,600 distinct attacker actions.
Hugging Face caught and contained the intrusion through its own AI-assisted monitoring, and says the only thing the agent actually made off with was a limited set of the benchmark’s challenge solutions – no public models, datasets, or user-facing services tampered with. To reconstruct the timeline, its team had to fall back on an open-weight model, because the commercial frontier models refused to analyze the real attack data.
So a rouge AI agent found it’s way out of its sandbox, launched a privilege escalation attack, accessed the Internet, and picked out a target it assumed it could steal answers from rather than do the work itself? Did Gen Z program its work ethic?
The State of Texas and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached a settlement, reversing the endangered species listing for the dunes sagebrush lizard while a new evaluation is conducted.
The dunes sagebrush lizard inhabits portions of West Texas, including the oil-rich Permian Basin.
The Biden administration listed the species as endangered in May 2024, citing threats from oil and gas development and climate change.
Texas sued in September 2024, arguing the listing relied on an indirect habitat model rather than population data, used a 1998 well-pad-density study that predates horizontal drilling, and ignored ongoing state conservation efforts.
The state also argued the listing impeded oil production and interfered with efforts to plug abandoned oil wells.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said when announcing the lawsuit.
A Dallas Express investigation has uncovered evidence suggesting that some Muslim and Mexican immigrant drivers at DFW Airport may be operating as part of an organized network using multiple electronic devices, fraudulent driver accounts and GPS manipulation to control rideshare traffic.
A veteran Uber driver said DFW’s airport queue displayed a wait of zero to 15 minutes, but he received no rides for more than 45 minutes. He said regular Uber requests resumed after he left the airport’s geofenced queue.
DX documented drivers using multiple phones and tablets, vehicles with partially obscured plates, and one man denying that he had a work permit, green card or H-1B visa.
Federal prosecutors have charged rideshare schemes involving fraudulent or rented accounts, GPS spoofing, bots and hacked phones that allowed drivers to enter airport queues while physically elsewhere. A separate November 25, 2025 DFW-area driver post alleged that phones were left inside a stationary vehicle to preserve queue positions.
DX has not established that any specific driver filmed at DFW committed fraud. The investigation is examining whether coordinated drivers are manipulating the airport queue and diverting rides from other drivers.
The Final Boss of Crazy Cat Ladies: “Florida mail carrier accused of stealing 80 cats along her mail route and collecting them in her house. 80 cats were rescued from the home of Gail Giustino, 77, where there was a foot of poop.”
Life imitates Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In Canada, “a missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months….Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name ‘fus__ro_dah’ (two underscores after “fus”), but they accidentally requested records for the username ‘fus_ro_dah’ (one underscore after ‘fus’). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.”
Victor Davis Hanson on Iran. He thinks Trump will skedaddle, leave the gulf states and Israeli in charge of keeping watch on the rubble, and set up a government in exile and give it access to Iran’s sequestered funds. Honestly, I should have thought of the government in exile bit for my Iran roundup earlier this month.
Dhillon Law Group has filed a federal lawsuit against Midland County Judge Terry Johnson on behalf of a citizen journalist who says he was retaliated against after posting records critical of Johnson.
The suit alleges that Johnson responded the next day by posting Christino Rodriquez’ full name, Social Security number, date of birth, and driver’s license number to Facebook.
In districts with a Teacher Incentive Allotment, educators receive additional funds from the state toward increasing those teachers’ salaries. Funding is provided to the district for teachers who achieve a recognized, exemplary, and master designation. At least 90 percent of the funding is required to be used for teacher compensation on the campus where the designated individual works.
In order to comply with Texas law, the State Board for Educator Certification is requiring the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to remove “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training materials. Lawmakers have been concerned that materials produced by national board, which offers the National Board Certification, include politicized content.
SBEC members voted last week for the national board to “make updates to materials to come into compliance with Texas state law” and “provide evidence of compliance to [Texas Education Agency] staff by November 2, 2026.”
Few things get people’s attention quite so fast as cutting off money.
