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…
Two important speeches (from President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio) on leftwing threats to America, more welfare state fraud uncovered by Nick Shirley, Ukraine continues to hit Russian ships at will, multiple marine drone attacks, TSMC has a good week (and pledges to invest more money in America), Apple sues OpenAI, and Bruce Sterling compares AI to jazz.
Trump announced a massive declassification of documents showing how exposed our election system is to hacking and foreign interference. Top White House aides and intelligence agency chiefs have all reviewed and authenticated the documents.
The documents highlight major areas of concern. Starting in 2020, Beijing carried out the largest-ever compromise of election data. Some 220 million American voters’ files were meddled with by Chinese intelligence services. China signed a data exploitation unit for this project.
Members of the Deep State within the IC worked to suppress and downplay the scope and impact of China’s election interference. U.S. spy agencies discovered that the voter data breach in 18 states was bought, stolen, or hacked by China. That breach was kept hidden; Trump, who was still president at the time, was not informed, nor was Congress. The line was that the 2020 election was the most secure in history.
CIA reported in mid-2018 that the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements opposed to Trump. In mid-2019, China’s approach was to undermine domestic confidence during the first Trump presidency. The Chinese government aimed to identify anti-Trump reporters and pay them large sums of money to produce stories that cast Trump in a negative light.
The FBI obtained raw intelligence indicating that China’s activities included efforts to produce illegal ballots for Joe Biden. These were kept out of the presidential briefing. One analyst admitted to intentionally downplaying Chinese election activities. Another official stated she was running a shadow government to keep intelligence on China’s election interference away from the media and the White House. Numerous burn bags have been found.
Americans were lied to about the security of our election systems, including voting machines. They’re highly susceptible to attack. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and non-state actors have the ability to compromise our election infrastructure.
Michigan police raided a Democrat GOTV organization and were so concerned they contacted the FBI in Detroit. The documents state that canvassers signed voter registration forms in other people’s names, registered nonexistent individuals, and got paid based on the number of applications they produced. The FBI believed crimes were committed, but the Biden DOJ slow-walked and suppressed the case.
Today at 9:40 p.m. ET, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) completed its latest major wave of strikes against Iran.
U.S. forces, including fighter jets, aerial drones, and warships, launched precision munitions that hit dozens of Iranian military targets such as coastal surveillance and air defense sites, military logistics infrastructure, and maritime capabilities. This was the sixth consecutive night of U.S. strikes against Iran.
At the Commander in Chief’s direction, CENTCOM is further degrading Iranian military capabilities and holding Iran accountable for recent attacks on commercial shipping.
More than 50,000 U.S. service members are operating across the Middle East and remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.
“U.S. forces resumed the naval blockade against vessels transiting to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas today [July 14] at 4 p.m. ET,” the command posted to social media on Tuesday.
“There are currently more than 20 U.S. Navy warships and hundreds of military aircraft operating across the Middle East. American forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready,” the statement continued.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has requested that senior officials from more than 60 countries convene in Washington next Thursday to discuss the alarming rise of transnational far-left terrorism, according to a Washington Post report.
Snip.
The initiative is intended to expand intelligence sharing, law-enforcement cooperation and potential terrorist designations targeting militant groups with alleged ties to Antifa.
Administration officials have discussed whether foreign-terrorism links could unlock broader investigative and surveillance powers against US-based far-left revolutionaries that are a part of subversion networks.
The problem is that countries have been addressing far-left revolutionaries as a domestic threat, but in fact it’s transnational.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the upcoming event is in response to the rise of the radical left. He said far-left terrorism is “an old threat re-emerging with strong transnational links and new convergences.”
“Because this threat has not been adequately addressed in the past, each engagement, designation, or security assistance program creates a compounding effect supporting countermeasures at home and abroad,” Pigott said in a statement.
In November, the State Department designated four European far-left groups as foreign terrorist organizations and directed agencies to investigate networks accused of fomenting political violence. One of the militant groups in Germany is called Antifa Ost. Two more were in Greece and one in Italy.
During the Antifa roundtable at the White House last October, Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, briefed the president and his cabinet on a complex network of dark-money NGOs and activist groups fueling unrest nationwide via the permanent protest-industrial complex.
“We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot Inc investors,” Bruner told Trump.
Jihadists attacks and plots in the United States are down by two-thirds since ISIS’s peak. The number of people killed by jihadist terrorism in Europe dropped by roughly 97 percent from the year 2015 to the year 2024. In other words, to a very great extent, our counterterrorism strategy has worked. The threat has not disappeared, of course. It will continue to exist, particularly so long as we tolerate immigration systems that imports these threats directly into our respective homelands. But this threat has been severely diminished. The world looks very different today because of it.
For far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot – a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy. It’s treated this way by many in the press, by many in academia and our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions. You will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in the coverage of this very conference. In spite of the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective numbers and statistics, in spite of the fact that in this room today there are representatives from across the political spectrum, we will hear this organized – that this kind of organized violence and terror will be dismissed. It will be dismissed as a partisan fiction.
A whole industry grew up in our countries around the study of extremism. We have think tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with the unspoken understanding among them that the only kind of political violence that was a true threat to our system – I’m sorry – that only one kind of political violence was a true threat to the system. A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous act of evil. It is. But a bomb planted by a Marxist revolutionary – well, that’s just merely a tragic excess of idealism. Perhaps its means were misplaced or overzealous, but its ends were virtuous and just. That’s the implication of how they treat it.
For years, this extraordinary ideological prejudice was embedded in the way we talked about political violence and extremism. It was repeated again and again, until it was accepted as the neutral and objective baseline, so entrenched – so entrenched in the mainstream conventional wisdom that it came to be regarded as an apolitical fact. It is the reason why, here in my country, so many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression so long as they served a left-wing cause.
It is why during those George Floyd – so-called George Floyd – riots in the summer of 2020, as criminals and extremists burned and looted their way through American great – America’s great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees, city governments all across the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these acts of violence and terror. It is the reason for the now infamous image – and you all recall this – of a news anchor from a very prominent agency – a news anchor standing in a neighborhood consumed in flames; meanwhile the chyron on the bottom read that the protests were mostly peaceful. This was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused; it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end.
“Move over, Somali Learing Centers! Nick Shirley and Dr. Oz just visited Asian “adult daycares” and found a whole bunch of fraud.” “We uncovered over $190,000,000 in fraud as these fraudsters use the elderly and needy to commit fraud through adult and personal home care scams in NYC. Your tax dollars are paying for elderly Koreans and Chinese to play ping pong and do tai chi, while the fraudsters give $ kickbacks to those who enroll.”
“I Watched the DSA Go Crazy. The Democrats May Be Next. The anti-democratic far Left is using the same strategy that helped them capture the Democratic Socialists of America.”
How worried should Democrats be about the Democratic Socialists of America? In the wake of a series of DSA victories in New York City, Jonathan Chait raised the alarm in The Atlantic, writing that as the group has risen in power, it has also grown “more hostile to the [Democratic] party, more illiberal, and more dogmatic.” Long-time DSA members, including former staff member and thought leader David Duhalde and socialist magazine publisher Nathan J. Robinson, pushed back, dismissing Chait as someone who doesn’t know or understand the DSA.
Well, I know the DSA, and as someone who was a member and served in local leadership, I can say that Chait has it right: today’s DSA is not a harmless organization. It includes disciplined, radicalized networks that have methodically expanded their power over the last decade in pursuit of extremist goals.
As the Democratic Party grapples with the DSA’s growing influence and extremism, it would do well to recognize that the same dynamic underway now—first accommodation, then capture, then surrender to insurgent radicals—already played out on a smaller scale within the DSA itself. The only defense is to out-organize it.
For decades, the DSA was mostly composed of a cohort of aging Boomers left over from its founding in 1982. It prioritized open debate and political tolerance. Following in the tradition of founder Michael Harrington, members viewed the DSA not as a revolutionary vanguard but as a reformist bridge to mainstream labor-liberalism, and they prioritized parliamentary process and pluralism.
But in the mid-2010s, the character of the organization began to change. I was in Boston at the time and witnessed the last days of the “old” DSA. New, younger members began to enter the organization, while Senator Bernie Sanders and the socialist magazine Jacobin grew their followings.
As the DSA’s cultural power expanded and it began to amass electoral victories, more leftists of varying extremist commitments were drawn in. This was an explicit strategy called “the big tent,” advanced by the then-DSA Jacobin Left. In August 2025, DSA delegates voted to remove a constitutional provision barring Leninists from entry. The provision was already a dead letter.
The old DSA’s high-mindedness became its fatal weakness. Veteran members assumed the younger generation played by the same rules of persuasion, but the newcomers’ goal was not to win arguments—it was to transform the institution and its politics.
As the organization grew, it began to profess more extreme ideas—and demand that its members do the same. First there were the purity tests of Black Lives Matter and BDS, then apologia for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and support for Hamas and its atrocities.
The new DSA—with the help of hype-man Hasan Piker—advanced these agendas with what American labor leader Walter Reuther called “the Communists’ highly developed technique of name-calling and character assassination.” The Harringtonites fought back, but their efforts came far too late, and many prominent members of the older generation eventually left.
In a sense Jake Altman is wrong. The Democrat Party has largely already been captured by allied forces under the guise of “social justice” at the same time the commies were taking over the DSA, and were able to do it for much the same reasons: “no enemies on the left”, along with a heaping bowlful of white guilt.
A coalition of state financial officers said it uncovered roughly $225 million in alleged fraud across America’s schools over the past six years, identifying nearly 90 cases involving embezzlement, fake invoices, inflated enrollment, bid-rigging and kickbacks.
In a new report obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) and Open the Books analyzed every Education Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) Semiannual Report to Congress issued between Oct. 1, 2019, and March 31, 2026, revealing alleged fraud across 24 states and Puerto Rico.
Some other examples snipped.
In Texas, former Houston Independent School District Chief Operating Officer Brian Busby and contractor Anthony Hutchison allegedly orchestrated a fraud scheme of more than $6 million, involving school construction and grounds maintenance contracts in exchange for cash bribes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in home renovations.
A federal jury found Busby and Hutchison guilty of conspiracy, bribery, filing false tax returns, and witness tampering, with Hutchison also convicted on seven wire fraud counts, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
“Bureaucratic bloat, insider dealing, and poor oversight prompted Governor Abbott and the Texas Education Agency to intervene in HISD and appoint new leadership,” HISD Superintendent Mike Miles told Fox News Digital. “School funding was being squandered, the quality of schools had deteriorated, and the majority of students’ education was being neglected. That is no longer the case. Since June 2023, we have made it a priority to eliminate waste and most importantly, now every decision we make is focused on closing student achievement gaps, preparing students for the future, and supporting teachers.”
More proof that Democrats in office are scumbags all the way down. “Swalwell pal Sen. Ruben Gallego had sexual relationships with two House staffers, sources reveal to The Post.”
Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, engaged in sexual relationships with at least two House staffers and his “very flirtatious” habits with others may come back to haunt him, The Post has learned.
The 46-year-old lawmaker admitted to the two relationships — both with aides to Texas Democrats — to one source while a second person said they had recently learned of the romantic entanglements.
A third source confirmed one of the dalliances, both of which are said to have been consensual and occurred during Gallego’s decade representing Phoenix in the House.
So he’s just an adulterer, not a rapist (as far as we know). Does this put him in the top half of senate Democrats for morality? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“Marine Drones Hit Two Russian Tankers: Magyar Hit 11 More Ships.” I’ve arranged these from most recent to least recent, which is all of five days ago.
“American Marine Drone Hits Iranian Submarine Repair Facility & Submarine at Bandar Abbas.” The drone used to attack the facility was the Corsair, manufactured by Austin company Saronic. Speaking of which:
“Sea Drone Company Saronic Announces $3.2 Billion Texas Shipyard. The company says the project is aimed at strengthening U.S. shipbuilding as autonomous vessels play an increasingly prominent role in modern warfare.”
Austin-based defense technology company Saronic, known for building autonomous watercraft, announced plans to invest more than $3.2 billion in a new shipyard at the Port of Brownsville that is expected to create 10,000 jobs.
Gov. Greg Abbott joined Saronic CEO Dino Mavrookas Thursday at the company’s Austin headquarters to announce the project, known as Port Alpha.
The shipyard’s initial phase will occupy more than 800 acres, with the potential to expand to more than 4,000 acres. Saronic plans to break ground this year and begin producing ships in 2028.
“The initial phase of Port Alpha will more than double America’s shipbuilding capacity today and will make it the largest shipyard in the country,” said Mavrookas.
Port Alpha will be designed for advanced manufacturing, software-based production, and autonomous vessels.
Mavrookas framed the project as a response to the decline of American shipbuilding and the increasing maritime capabilities of China.
“Today, China is now outbuilding the United States in shipbuilding capacity 230 to one,” he said.
“A nation that cannot build ships cannot project power, cannot protect its supply chains, and cannot defend its interests,” Mavrookas added. “We are at that moment right now. Port Alpha is our answer.”
Saronic designs and manufactures autonomous vessels for the U.S. military, including the Corsair, Mirage, and Marauder.
This is good news for American drone manufacturing (and shipbuilding). However, on a personal level, I note that Saronic has had the same technical writing position open for most of this year. Indeed, I’ve applied for it multiple times when listed, but gotten no contacts save form replies. Maybe with all their new activity they’ll finally be hiring…
Former Obama staffer accused of stealing from colleagues to fund drug habit.
Adam Fetcher, 42, was let go from his role as Chief Communications Officer for the City of Minneapolis last week amid a police probe, The Minnesota Star Tribune reported.
According to the outlet, Fetcher, who earned $186,495 a year in his role, is accused of stealing cash and credit cards from three of his colleagues and racking up fraudulent charges in smoke shops.
Fetcher’s drug of choice was Kratom, “a substance which is used to manage opioid withdrawal.”
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy wants the Trump administration to crack down on legal immigration after last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision thwarting a presidential executive order to address birthright citizenship.
In a letter to the Trump administration, Roy (R–Austin) said that while the administration works to secure the nation from illegal immigration, the current level of legal immigration should be reassessed to ensure that the “economic opportunities, cultural and social cohesion, or security” of American citizens is not negatively impacted.
Expressing concern about increasing pressure on housing, schools, and healthcare services, Roy wrote that the “American people deserve transparency so we can ensure our immigration system puts American workers, taxpayers, and communities first.”
According to the congressman, the U.S. takes in approximately one million legal immigrants each year because of the Immigration Act of 1990. This accounts for roughly 34 million immigrants over the last 35 years. He also explained that more than 10 million nonimmigrant visas are issued to visitors such as guest workers, foreign students, and tourists.
Roy went on to cite an analysis of last year’s Current Population Survey (CPS) by the Center for Immigration Studies, which highlighted legal and illegal immigrant totals of “53.3 million and 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population in January 2025.”
Ashrafuzzaman Khan, a former top official of the Islamic Circle of North America in Queens, New York, personally slaughtered seven university professors as the chief executioner of Jamaat-e-Islami’s Al Badr death squads during the 1971 Bangladesh massacre. Despite being convicted in absentia of war crimes, he helped build one of America’s largest Muslim organizations and continues to live freely in the United States.
Here’s a weird Texas crime story: “Lavaca County Justice of the Peace Commits Suicide Following Arrest for Compelling Prostitution, Sexual Assault. Travis Hill had been a fugitive since Monday, when he failed to appear for a pre-trial appointment.” Lavaca County is in south central Texas between Houston and Seguin on highway 90.
A Lavaca County justice of the peace who was arrested earlier this month on felony charges committed suicide on Thursday as law enforcement agents attempted to arrest him a second time.
Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Travis Mitchell Hill was arrested July 11 on first- degree felony charges of compelling prostitution, second-degree sexual assault, and solicitation of prostitution, but reportedly had been released on bond.
Usually, compelling prostitution is upgraded to a first-degree felony when the victim is a minor.
The Lavaca County Sheriff’s Office was made aware of allegations against Hill six weeks ago, but since Hill was an elected official and a practicing criminal defense attorney, Lavaca County Attorney James Reeves recused himself and referred the case to the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG). The Texas Rangers were leading the investigation.
Hill did not appear for a pre-trial appointment Monday, when he was supposed to receive an ankle monitor. The U.S. Marshal’s Office was assisting local law enforcement with locating him on Thursday.
According to a statement issued by Reeves, Hill was located Thursday evening “at a remote location in Gonzales County, Texas. During law enforcement’s encounter with Mr. Hill, he committed suicide.” No other details were provided.
“Hill was appointed as justice of the peace in 2011 by the Lavaca County Commissioners Court. He had reportedly previously run as a Democrat for Lavaca County district clerk in the March 2011 primary, but switched to the Republican Party sometime later.” There are no more details about the charges against him online that I can find.
Follow-up: Remember the killing of Tory-turned-reform MP Ann Widdecombe in last week’s LinkSwarm? Turns out the suspect arrested is probably a commie. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.
“Houston Man Killed by ICE, Hailed as Father Chasing ‘American Dream,’ Had Meth in His Car.” That would be illegal alien Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who tried to run over an ice agent in his truck.
Unexpected headlines: “A tech company is repurposing its sexbots into AI teachers’ aides and they’re already being used in at least one New York state school.”
As Flock cameras are installed across the nation, citizens are growing more concerned about the potential privacy violations posed by automatic license plate readers.
On Friday, U.S. Rep. Keith Self wrote on X that “[i]f transparency is now considered a threat, we’ve already drifted too far from the principles of a free Republic,” responding to an article about Flock’s CEO, who said that it is “terroristic” for the public to want to know where the company’s automatic license plate readers are being installed.
Flock cameras do not act like traditional license plate readers. Powered by AI, they capture details such as the make and model of a passing vehicle, as well as any unique or identifying features such as dents, scratches, stickers, and aftermarket parts.
The ALPRs also capture data on vehicles, regardless of whether they have been implicated in a crime. Police departments do not need a search warrant to access Flock data, heightening concerns about Fourth Amendment violations.
“TSMC posts record revenue in second quarter on AI demand.” “Revenue in the April-June period of this year came in at T$1.27 trillion ($39.62 billion), according to Reuters calculations, slightly above a T$1.264 trillion LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 20 analysts.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
We’re living in an Age of AI. Why was there a “Jazz Age”? Why did jazz create an “Age”? Why was there this period between the Great War and the Great Depression, where a new form of music was very important, and people around the world cared about it?
You can theorize about jazz. You can say that there were social reasons: that jazz was fun and new and sexy, and women wanted to wear short skirts and dance the Charleston.
Or you could say that jazz was infrastructural — that music from the town of New Orleans could be recorded, and exported, and transmitted on the radio. There were new forms of mass media, so it was easier to spread a viral fad, around the world. So, that somehow explains jazz.
Or you could say that jazz was political — that there was an oppressed class of black people living under apartheid, and jazz musicians and composers were making their voices heard.
Or you could say that the Great War had just ended, and it was followed by a plague of flu that killed even more people than the worst war in history. You might say that jazz was a method for musicians to rescue mankind by changing the subject. Jazz was strange and extreme, because it was denying and avoiding the trauma of a lost generation. With more trauma — depression and war — well on the way.
It’s pretty clear to me that the generation of AI — and it’s been going on for ten years, it’s a generation — has a lot of that unspoken Jazz Age anguish. It’s a vivid displacement activity for a lost and troubled era.
I’m a novelist, so I notice the peculiar emotional expressions here. I notice things like AI burnout, AI psychosis, unhealthy relations with imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends, AI fakes, stock market bubbles, and the fear of missing out. That stark fear. So much fear. The fear of missing that golden chance. Also, the fear that AI is real this time, and is really happening. The apocalyptic terror that AI will lead to the destruction of the world.
This is not the cyberpunk dystopian dark side of AI. This is the propulsive force of AI. It’s the restless and itchy drive that forces you to leave your apartment and rush downtown to the jazz club.
Why do you go? The jazz club is not a place for the angels. You might drink bootleg liquor there and become an alcoholic. Or you might get in a fight, or catch a venereal disease. There’s cocaine and marijuana there. Someone might mug you and take your purse or wallet. But also, in New York, Duke Ellington is playing! In Paris, Django Reinhart is playing! It may be a wild scene, but you’re crazy not to go!
This is the high summer of AI. The scene is red hot. I’ve been aware of AI for my entire, extensive lifetime, and it’s never been this technically intense and this deeply felt. Rational people, with education and money and power and experience, are cracking up in public. They’re losing their heads over it. Billionaires, captains of industry, politicians, military, spies. Worldwide. Old and young, men and women.
It’s a craze.
I’m very interested in it. I follow its every little up and down. It is so far out and science fictional that it might have been built just to entertain elderly cyberpunk writers. I do not invest in it. I’m not selling any of it to you. I don’t use it much personally. It isn’t changing my life — not much as yet. I’m not afraid of it. I don’t even think it will last. It’s defining an era, an era which is ten years old and counting, but something else will show up. AI is not a fraud, or pretense, or a fake. It’s a real and powerful technology and we’re never going back to the way things were. I recognize all that, but also, I take consolation in continuity.
Now that Ken Paxton is officially the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, we can finally turn our full attention to the absolute freakshow the Democrats have selected to run against him.
In case you hadn’t noticed, James Talarico is an cringey weirdo who is deeply out of step with the state he wants to represent. So here’s a roundup.
After cruising to the Democrat nomination for U.S. Senate in March, James Talarico now appears focused on a different challenge: convincing Texas general election voters he is more moderate than the progressive activist Republicans have spent years watching online.
Republicans are already framing the effort as a “moderate media makeover” ahead of what is expected to become the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history.
During an interview with CBS News the day after Paxton won the Republican Senate runoff, officially setting the general-election matchup, Talarico was asked about his assertion that there are six sexes and a 2021 statement in which he said, “God is non-binary.”
“What did you mean by that?” the interviewer asked. “Do you regret describing it that way?”
“God can’t be defined by human categories,” replied Talarico. “There are some statements I’ve made that I regret. Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringey comments.”
Yeah, because he said them. Why are they cringey? Because they reflect Talarico’s empty-headed, far-left social justice warrior blatherings. If he didn’t mean them, why did he say them? Was he lying then, or is he lying now? Or is he, like so many Democrat politicians, simply “post-truth” and willing to say anything he thinks people want to hear?
In one recent appearance on the Texas Take podcast, Talarico attempted to downplay his past support for gun control measures, insisting that “I’m not interested in taking anyone’s guns.”
I seem to remember a lot of similar statements from Colorado and Virginia Democrats who, after getting elected, immediately started trying to take people’s guns.
Republicans quickly pointed to prior comments and legislation they argue tell a different story.
In a 2020 appearance as a surrogate for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, Talarico said it “encourages violence against black sons and daughters” when President Donald Trump allows “weapons of war on our streets and in our classrooms.”
Republicans have also highlighted legislation backed by Talarico that sought additional restrictions on handgun sales and concealed carry permitting requirements.
Among the measures Republicans pointed to were proposals that would have imposed additional regulatory burdens related to handgun licensing, mirroring states like California and New York.
You know, the same measures the Supreme Court has said are unconstitutional.
Talarico has similarly attempted to dismiss Republican attacks over his past climate activism.
On the Texas Take podcast appearance, Talarico argued Republicans fabricated claims that he was vegan.
However, in a 2022 campaign video Talarico announced his campaign would “go vegan” as part of efforts to combat what he described as an “existential climate crisis.”
I would wager that veganism is even a pander too far for most Texas Democrats. It’s like Talarico is trying to run for California State Rep from Big Sur or the Castro District.
The issue intersects with another difficult political vulnerability for Democrats in Texas: oil and gas policy.
In another recent podcast appearance with Democrat congressional candidate Bobby Pulido, Talarico attempted to position himself as supportive of the Texas energy industry.
“The idea that politicians in Washington think they can eliminate this industry is something we had to fight against, something we have to fight against in our own party,” said Talarico.
Republicans quickly countered by resurfacing climate proposals and activist rhetoric previously associated with Talarico, including legislation aimed at dramatically reducing statewide emissions and past activism promoting climate change curriculum mandates in public schools.
Conservatives online also circulated previous comments from Talarico discussing efforts to inspire a “new generation of climate activists,” as well as his participation in demonstrations inspired by activist Greta Thunberg.
He’s just a grab bag of every bad idea to ooze out of the radical left over the past half-century. Like Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom, one gets the impression that Talarico is an empty vessel with no actual personality beyond plasticity to conform to whatever leftwing activist nonsense is the current Will of the Party.
For most of the 21st century, the Great White Whale in the Democrats’ fever dream has been their “Turn Texas Blue” fantasy. In recent memory, this has given us such luminaries as Wendy Davis and the fakest fake Latino in the history of fake Latinos, Beto O’Rourke.
On the one hand, I am usually a big fan of these efforts because they’re such monumental wastes of money for the Democrats. The Texas races become national affairs, and Dem donors from all over the country hemorrhage cash that could be spent on winnable contests elsewhere.
On the other hand, I know how good the Democrats are at playing the long game. I never rule out the possibility of them eventually getting what they want, no matter how long it takes.
This year’s Turn Texas Blue drama star is James Talarico. Talarico has positioned himself as a throwback Dem moderate, a departure from the present-day Dem craziness. It’s completely disingenuous, but the Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media are dutifully playing along with the charade.
Here are some examples of this wingnut’s lunacy from a post that my HotAir colleague Beege Welborn wrote:
ICYMI
Here is a small sampling of James Talarico psychotic statements.
There is no way anyone can convince me Texans will vote for this freak over Paxton. pic.twitter.com/3FaHC5LAvq
Let me pull out these genuine nuggets of Talarico weirdness so we have them down in text form.
“Jesus Christ himself was a radical feminist.”
“The American flag is such a complicated symbol for most of us.”
“God is non-binary.”
“You can’t call yourself a Christian and reject the stranger seeking asylum at our southern border.”
“Our trans community needs abortion care too.”
“Modern science recognizes that there are many more than two sexes. In fact, there are six.”
“Prophetic voices like Jesus have helped me reckon with my own whiteness.” I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty sure that a fundamental tenant of Christianity is there there are no “prophetic voices like Jesus.” As the singular Redeemer of mankind, he is not comparable to “other prophets,” even those of the Old Testament, because other prophets are not the Light and the Way.
There are a couple more, but I think you get the idea. It’s like he heard the most cringey social justice pandering from all the failed 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and went “Hey, I want to try that in Texas!” Hence the Babylon Bee headline “Democrats Denounce ‘Dirty Trick’ Of Playing Videos Of James Talarico Saying Things.”
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but the “theology expert” running for the U.S. Senate in Texas may be a huge weirdo.
Sure, you knew he called God non-binary, he daydreams about trans kids, and he’s David French’s ideal of a Christian in the public square, but that’s not all of James Talarico’s problems.
Yes, if your school has banned pornography for kids don’t worry, Talarico stocks it in his church’s library right between Left Behind Kids and Jesus Calling. Oh, and Talarico was raised in this church, has preached there several times, and remains closely associated with it.
Yeah, anyone who checked out this book from this church should have their hard drive checked immediately.
Here’s the Daily Wire with the treasure trove of oppo research:
Books found in the St. Andrew’s catalog include the book ‘Gender Queer,’ which includes illustrations of oral sex and masturbation, and the book ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue,’ which discusses anal rape and incest.
‘This Book Is Gay,’ has a chapter on the ‘ins and outs of gay sex,’ while the book ‘Becoming Nicole’ tells the story of a gender-confused teen boy who identifies as a girl with the support of his family. In ‘The Courage to Be Queer,’ the author claims that ‘God is queer.’
Other books in the church catalog include ‘This Book is Gay,’ ‘Trans Kids, Our Kids: Stories and Resources from the Frontlines of the Movement for Transgender Youth,’ ‘Called OUT: The Voices and Gifts of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Presbyterians,’ ‘The Courage to Be Queer,’ and ‘Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family.’
James Talarico believes that Christians are called to embrace progressive social views on everything from abortion to gender.
The Texas Senate candidate’s conception of Christian moral teaching, which he tirelessly promotes as the foundation of his campaign, seems to have been shaped by the church he has attended since childhood, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.
The minister of St. Andrew’s, the Reverend Jim Rigby, often brings politics into his sermons, frequently criticizing the Trump administration from the pulpit. His April 26 sermon, delivered a day after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, is a striking example. “There was an assassination attempt,” he told his congregation, “and I know a lot of people have mixed feelings” — he paused, and laughter rippled across the congregation — “but it’s really, really important if we’re going to be the healing agents of the world, to recognize that violence isn’t going to get rid of the problem that we have.”
St. Andrew’s church leadership passed an official resolution against Christian nationalism on Tuesday, shunning the narrative that America has a Christian founding. The leaders promote the idea that the United States has fundamentally corrupt roots, primarily in the unjust acquisition of Native American lands and enslavement of black Americans.
Advertised as Sunday school classes in St. Andrew’s news bulletin, the church’s summer “adult education” sessions are used to promote these ideas. The May 15–21 bulletin introduces one such class: “Christianity today, especially the American version, has discovered some interesting ways to ignore the message of Jesus,” it reads. The study aims to answer financial, political, ethical, and legal questions about Christopher Columbus and is rooted in sources like “art, Bible, Church documents, guest speakers, U.S. federal law, and the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Snip.
Throughout its studies and sermons, the church refuses to use terms for God that its members call “feudal” — words such as “Lord” or “King.” They have also rewritten hymns to be “inclusive” and read from the “Inclusive Bible” during services. During a Scripture reading from Galatians 5, for example, St. Andrew’s PowerPoint slide clarifies that “the word ‘kindom,’ often used by mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi–Diaz, replaces ‘kingdom’ because it represents an egalitarian realm and emphasizes our familial relationship with each other.”
Another primary feature of this so-called inclusivity is the omission of any gendered language about God. On the church’s “Inclusive Language” web page, the church’s leaders connect what they call “sexist theology” to a culture of rape, and the leaders are specifically perturbed by the thought of little girls perceiving God as a “he” because they believe God is higher than gender. Talarico, a seminary student and Texas state legislator, has himself promoted this “genderless” conception of God on the floor of the Texas state house, calling God “nonbinary” during a debate.
Now we know where the “cringe” first took root.
Children’s education at St. Andrew’s takes the form of “inclusive” Sunday school curriculum and an expansive library of “banned books.” Members of the church insist that St. Andrew’s library collects these so-called banned books, a term they use to refer to texts that have been barred from school libraries because they promote a particular political view or deal with sensitive topics such as sexuality. Beyond the books already on its shelves, the church has a wish list through Bookshop.org with a range of shocking titles.
Two of these books, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, celebrate Palestinian activism.
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth suggests that the history of the Alamo was blown out of proportion to create “a historic Anglo narrative” that distracted Americans from the so-called true origin of this conflict: Mexico’s efforts to abolish slavery.
Another one of these books, The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, criticizes the concept of human exceptionalism and advocates for nonhuman rights — including the rights of animals and artificial intelligence.
There are also several books that discuss transgenderism and even one, Marley’s Pride, advertised for its “glossary of terms to help adults answer kids’ questions about the LGBTQ+ community.”
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Speaking of Talarico’s religion, this Not The Bee piece literally popped into my Inbox while I was already proofing this.
Texas state Rep. James Talarico opened a legislative session with a heretic prayer, invoked old Communist-adjacent phrase h/t @reddit_lies who spotted it on Reddit; I tracked down the original video.
The prayer addresses God as ‘holy mystery’ with ‘so many names’ — Torah, Quran, Gita, Dharma — treating all religious traditions as equally valid expressions of the same God.
Jesus is described as ‘a barefoot rabbi’ who ‘expressed’ God’s love… one expression among many implied.
The closing line: ‘build a new world in the shell of the old.’
That phrase has a specific origin. It comes from the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) Preamble, written in 1905. It’s syndicalist labor movement language. Not explicitly Communist – but they wanted to abolish capitalism and the state all the same.
Yeah, I didn’t have “Channeling the Wobblies” on my 2026 Senate Race checklist.
“The Democrats’ Greatest Fear: The GOP Will Turn James Talarico Into a Creepy, Unmanly Weirdo.” I’m omitting the opening segment on how Democrats institutionally hate men and children.
The Dems can’t win elections without a loyal army of unmarried women — and they can’t drive ’em to the polls without selling ’em juicy red meat on the campaign trail.
Yet the same red meat that motivates unmarried women will further alienate married men, married women, AND unmarried Gen Z men.
So the Democrats settled on a novel strategy: They’ll still cater to unmarried women… but deliver their message via an “avatar” who cosplays as a macho dude.
That’s the holy grail for the Dems: A man who thinks and behaves exactly like a radical feminist, yet looks and sounds like a rough-and-tumble Alpha male.
It’s the strategy behind Graham Platner’s senatorial bid in Maine. (‘Cause what could be more manly than a Nazi tattoo?) It was the strategy behind Kamala Harris’ V.P. selection of “America’s coach,” Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.). And it’s the strategy behind their latest scheme to turn Texas blue, the Senate campaign of the Dems’ current “it boy,” James Talarico. There’s a lot riding on Talarico’s unique brand of masculinity.
But the Dems are already fretting about Talarico’s masculinity being (ahem) neutered.
From The 19th: “Republicans Want to Make the Texas Senate Race About Manliness”
Republicans are focusing on one question in one of November’s top races: Is the Democrat a real man?
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who clinched the GOP’s nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday night, released a new ad Wednesday — his first of the general election — accusing his opponent, state Sen. James Talarico, of being too “low-T for Texas.” “Low-T” is a reference to testosterone levels and often used as an insult by influencers in the so-called manosphere, who say low testosterone makes someone weaker.
Talarico has all the manly testosterone of Boy George wearing a frilly mini-dress to a Village People karaoke night at a Fire Island cabaret during Pridefest.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy and one of his top advisers, picked up on a similar line of attack, posting on the social media platform X on Wednesday that Democrats had nominated the “their first transgender senate candidate.” Talarico is cisgender and identifies as an LGBTQ+ ally; he is in a relationship with a woman.
“She’s from Canada! You wouldn’t know her.”
According to this report, “Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico’s mysterious beau is a vegan political lobbyist who previously worked as his chief of staff, The Post has learned. Brianna Menard, 30, describes herself as a “committed vegan,” yoga buff and cat mom who likes “dancing the night away” at local gay bar Cheer Up Charlies in Austin.”
Oh, a girlfriend who just happens to like hanging out at a gay bar.
It’s hard to think of a list of candidate traits and positions less likely to appeal to Texas voters at large. But team Talarico is evidently embracing the freakshow reputation. “Talarico Campaign Embraces ‘Talafreako’ Nickname Tied to Far-Left Positions. Paxton coined the nickname while criticizing Talarico’s progressive positions. The Democrat’s campaign is now selling it on T-shirts.”
As Republicans seek to highlight Democrat James Talarico’s record on transgender issues, immigration, and other progressive causes ahead of November’s U.S. Senate election, the lawmaker’s campaign is embracing one of the nicknames those positions have earned him.
The Talarico campaign recently began selling merchandise bearing the phrase “I’m a Talafreako,” a reference to a nickname used by Republican nominee Ken Paxton during his runoff victory speech.
“He goes by a few names that you may all have heard of,” Paxton told supporters. “Some people know him as Tofu Talarico, some people call him Six Gender Jimmy. I’ve even heard some people call him James Talafreako.”
Paxton then explained the reasoning behind the nickname, pointing to Talarico’s positions on immigration and transgender issues.
“He wants open borders, and even said a welcome mat should be at our southern border,” said Paxton. “He’s a threat to our children. He wants boys in girls’ sports, gender mutilation surgery performed on kids.”
Paxton also referenced a comment from Talarico in which the Democrat said “trans kids” were among the things he loved most outside his family and friends.
Now the campaign’s online store features apparel prominently displaying the nickname.
There are times and places where this sort of “embrace the label” jujitsu might work, but I rather doubt that a statewide election in Texas is one of them.
Let’s end with two more Babylon Bee pieces: “Democrats Hopeful Average Texas Voter Wants To Ban Steak And Thinks God Is Gay.”
“Beto, but gayer” or “Tim Walz, but weirder” strike me as very poor personas to get elected just about anywhere or any time, but especially not Texas in 2026.
Friday’s LinkSwarm entry on crazy tranny shooter Robert Paul Westman’s link to various satanic death cults was pretty brief, but there seems to be a lot more to cover there. Starting with America’s Transtifa problem.
At the start of the year, only eight days into President Trump’s second term, the FBI’s counterterrorism division held an unclassified briefing on an emerging domestic terrorism threat: “Nihilistic Accelerationism.”
I was at an FBI briefing just 6 months ago where “Nihilistic Accelerationism” was a hot topic as an emerging threat. That meant groups like The Com, 764, O9A…
Not sure what happened to that priority but they were very much surveilled at the time. We failed w/ Robin Westman. pic.twitter.com/QHmhCnXYIA
I hadn’t run across “The Com” before. I think I’ll have to add a little Quick Reference Glossary at the bottom.
As far as I can tell, “Accelerationism” comes in two main flavors. The technoutopian, transhumanist flavor is mostly libertarian-tinged immanization of the Singularity escutcheon eschaton sorts, the kind of people who want to bring about a tech-driven Utopia. They’re almost certainly wrong about living forever in a tech-heaven as a digitized, uploaded consciousnesses, but they’re builders, not destroyers.
Then there’s the other kind. You know The Dark Knight meme?
That’s them. They want to make the world itself Hell, and the hand-basket isn’t traveling fast enough for them.
Some of the most recent examples of nihilism and accelerationist beliefs can be found alarmingly emanating from the political far-left. Violence, chaos, and destruction are recurring themes found in their online posts, propaganda, manifestos, and civil disobedience (also known as “civil terrorism”).
Take, for example, the transgender mass shooter last week that carried out a horrific attack against Christians at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, killing two children and injuring 17 others before taking his own life, wrote in a dark, troubling manifesto posted online that he was “tired of being trans.”
GPS—Robert "Robin" Westman devices were present during at least 5 antifa protests. Upon cross pollinating devices at his residence, there were numerous ‘burner’ phones. His devices have also appeared to have been present with a number of Zizians, including their founder Jack… pic.twitter.com/wXka6GznT6
GPS—Robert “Robin” Westman devices were present during at least 5 antifa protests. Upon cross pollinating devices at his residence, there were numerous ‘burner’ phones. His devices have also appeared to have been present with a number of Zizians, including their founder Jack LaSota, on two occasions two months apart.
It adds up, because he claims to “hate fascism & inequality”, he had “1312” in his username. He was 100% trantifa, not a “right winger” like many lying Antifa are trying to claim to distance themselves from the sh*t storm surrounding the church shooting of children.
It’s also important to point out that the Far Left/Antifa to Trans pipeline many times, terminates with incorporating Nazi ideology through the Pro Palestine intersection involved.
The Zizians, are a cult-like group that has been widely described in media reports as a radical collective primarily consisting of transgender vegans with ties to rationalist communities, anti-AI ideologies, and extreme activism.
The whole online vegan/pedophile crossover puts that Ryan Long bit in a new light:
This group has been linked to a series of murders and suspicious deaths across multiple U.S. states in 2025, earning it labels like “trans murder cult” or “vegan death cult” in various news outlets and online discussions.
The Zizians originated from online rationalist and effective altruism circles in the Bay Area, drawing in highly intelligent individuals, including math geniuses and programmers.
The group’s leader, Jack LaSota (also known as “Ziz” or “Jack Ziz”), is a transgender person who reportedly promoted extreme veganism, anti-artificial intelligence views, and authoritarian control over members.
Experts have compared it to cults using models like Steven Hassan’s BITE (Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control) framework, noting how it allegedly manipulated followers through emotional and ideological means.
The group has been accused of issuing “kill orders” and fostering an environment that led to violence, though not all members are implicated in crimes.
In early 2025, the group came under scrutiny after a traffic stop in Vermont led to the discovery of connections to the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David Maland. A 21-year-old transgender member of the Zizians was indicted on federal murder charges and faces the death penalty.
The Zizians have been tied to the deaths of a Pennsylvania couple (parents of one member) and other incidents in California, including an attempted murder and a faked death. In total, the group is linked to at least six killings across three states: Vermont, Pennsylvania, and California.
Additional arrests include LaSota on trespassing charges (held without bail) and other members like Alexander Leatham and Suri Dao, who face trial for related murders. One case involved a German math prodigy allegedly drawn into the group before her involvement in crimes.
As of mid-2025, multiple members are in custody, with ongoing trials and federal investigations. The U.S. Justice Department is pursuing capital punishment in at least one case. The group has gone underground, but it has sparked broader discussions about cult dynamics in online communities.
Zizians. Great. I’ll add that to the list.
Some of these groups get categorized as “neo-Nazi,” but the trans cult is entirely on the left, and Satanists are hardly flocking to vote Republican. (And then there’s the whole “how did a party with ‘national socialism’ in its name get assigned to the right?” thing.)
Seruga also claimed that the transgender mass shooter was also “100% trantifa,” which opens up another rabbit hole that Andy Ngo, senior editor at The Post Millennial, has covered in-depth for quite some time about the disturbing rise of “trans militancy” across America.
Ngo’s new report, titled “The Violent Ideology and Lies Fueling Trans Militancy,” warns that the transgender mass shooter attack on Christians in Minneapolis last week “wasn’t an isolated attack….”
This propaganda is blasted nonstop across social media, Reddit threads, internet forums, and radical leftist blogs.
But wait! That’s not the only crazy Satanic deathcult out there! The FBI has also warned people about The Com, which also evidently runs a SWATing-for-hire service.
In recent weeks, VICE has reported on the recruitment and radicalization of children as young as 12 by Satanic neo-Nazi accelerationist groups like 764, No Lives Matter, and Milikolosskrieg, which operate within a wider criminal network primarily through encrypted messaging platforms like Signal, Telegram, and Discord. While it might be tempting to dismiss this as little more than disaffected kids venting online, the influence of this network has been directly tied to numerous incidents of real-world violence—leading it to be identified as a threat in a series of public service announcements by the FBI, which refers to it as ‘The Com.’
At the end of last month, Minnesotan 20-year-old Logan Anthony Seitz was arrested for stabbing a woman “around 20 times” in a park. In a criminal complaint obtained by CBS, he told investigators he’d had the urge to randomly kill a person since he was ten years old and went out that day intending to find his victim. But coverage of the case missed a crucial detail: Seitz is a longtime member of SR1, a subgroup of a notorious The Com-adjacent sextortion network known as 764. His attack was not only acknowledged but celebrated on Telegram channels associated with these groups, where he is known by the alias ‘Corrupt.’
It’s not the first time a case like this has been traced back to The Com. Between July and October 2024, at least six unprovoked assaults in Hässelby, Stockholm were filmed and posted on Telegram channels linked to 764. A 14-year-old boy was detained on suspicion of two assaults, and confessed to one—the attempted murder of an 80-year-old man. In April 2025, two individuals linked to 764 were arrested in connection with a bomb plot targeting a Lady Gaga concert in Brazil attended by over 2 million fans.
The threat posed by these groups, which are often influenced or inspired by the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), has now drawn the attention of the United States’ federal government.
On July 23, the FBI issued three PSAs about The Com, highlighting the growing dangers it poses to young people online. According to the briefings, The Com has thousands of members, primarily between 11 and 25 years of age. Most recruits are drawn in through gaming platforms and social media. The Com groups featured in the FBI reports engage in a range of criminal activities, including ransomware attacks, stabbings, sabotage, swatting, extortion, the distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), DDoS attacks, SIM swapping, and cryptocurrency theft, among other things.
Just sound like a lovely bunch all-around, don’t they? It’s like they went “Why be a mere online edgelord when I can rape children and kill people in real life?”
Consider this yet another reason for rational, law-abiding citizens to go armed.
Glossary of Far-Left Satanic Transsexual Death Cults
This is a quick overview for my own reference and people researching the topic.
Note: Some of these entries link to Wikipedia articles, and the usual caveats apply.
Accelerationists: See Nihilistic Accelerationists.
The Com: FBI’s term for an aggregate of almost all the Satanic pedophile death cults mentioned here.
CVLT: “CVLT, also known as Cult, is an international Neo-Nazi and nihilistic online organization that was responsible for acts of child exploitation. Several of the organization’s leaders were arrested in US for producing child pornography and coercing minors to commit self-harm. According to police, CVLT has exploited approximately 2 minors in California and 16 minors around the world in total. US Department of Justice described it as “an online group that espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism, and pedophilia as its core principles”. CVLT is affiliated with The Com, a broad network of international cybercriminals. CVLT became known after one of its leaders, Kaleb Merritt, was caught and convicted of raping a girl and taking inappropriate pictures of her. CVLT was created in 2019 by a French-Indian school student, named Rohan Rane.”
8864: See 764.
Milikolosskrieg: Relatively new group of neo-Nazi accelerationsists whose membership seems to skew young (12-18).
Nihilistic Accelerationists: People who want to see the world (especially the “normie” world) burn, and will embrace any evil and any tool to achieve their goals.
No Lives Matter: “No Lives Matter (NLM) is a misanthropic, neo-Nazi online group that advocates for violence, terrorism and the destruction of humanity. Its core principles are radical nihilism and anti-humanism.”
Order of the 9 Angels: Neo-Nazi Satanists enthusiastic about rape and pedophilia. They think “respectable” “left-hand path” groups like The Church of Satan and The Order of Set are wimpy, cringing pussies. “Back in the 1990s a weirdo (named Myall back in the day) claimed that family knew the REAL SECRET of the nine angles. It was mainly Neo-Nazi stuff — ‘Kill a Jew for Satan.’ The guy claimed 100s of followers and had several Orders he was running.'” There’s even a timeline of crimes connected to the group.
764: Global Satanic child predator network. “An international network of predators steeped in Satanism lure children from seemingly harmless online platforms like Discord, Minecraft, and Roblox and extort them to sexually exploit and grievously harm themselves. Some victims are even pushed to suicide.”
The abuse perpetrated by members of com groups is extreme. They have coerced children into sexual abuse or self-harm, causing them to deeply lacerate their bodies to carve “cutsigns” of an abuser’s online alias into their skin. Victims have flushed their heads in toilets, attacked their siblings, killed their pets, and in some extreme instances, attempted or died by suicide. Court records from the United States and European nations reveal participants in this network have also been accused of robberies, in-person sexual abuse of minors, kidnapping, weapons violations, swatting, and murder.
“Transtifa“: Neologism describing radical left-wing transsexuals who feel violence (up to and including murder) is justified against anyone who rejects radical transsexual ideology.
Zizians: “A cult-like group that has been widely described in media reports as a radical collective primarily consisting of transgender vegans with ties to rationalist communities, anti-AI ideologies, and extreme activism.”
Parents, monitor your children’s Internet activities. There are some real sickos out there.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch some sappy dog rescue videos to get this out of my head…
I’m pretty much over my cold, except the occasional cough and continued draining of the Strategic Mucus Reserve.
The USAID revelation continues, with every left-wing, anti-American cause getting their snout into the trough of taxpayer money. Plus blows against the illegal alien and tranny pander brigades. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Second Amendment advocates have long know that “Everytown for Gun Safety” was, like all the other branches of the Brady Bunch hydra, pure Astrotruf, but thanks to database revelations, we now know that taxpayers were footing the bill.
Have you ever heard of NEO Philanthropy? They’re a left-wing group that has been around for more than 40 years. NEO wants folks to believe it is a partnership between “changemakers and funders.” They claim to provide “resources to groups accelerating change.” Race, gender and DEI are huge for them, but guns are a problem.
An incredible website database has outed NEO Philanthropy’s actual duties, and those of thousands of other similar groups. NEO, it turns out, is nothing more than a middleman. It receives money and funnels some of it to Everytown for Gun Safety as well as other leftwing, anti-gun groups.
The website database is called DataRepublican.com, and it will forever change the way nonprofits handle their funding, especially those on the left.
Snip.
On Wednesday, pro-gun official Hannah Hill “exposed taxpayer money flowing to Bloomberg gun control orgs.”
The next day, she used the website to link USAID funds that went to Everytown, Giffords and more gun-control organizations.
👀 Yesterday, @hannahhill_sc exposed taxpayer money flowing to Bloomberg gun control orgs.
Today, @DataRepublican's tool helped 2A advocates link USAID funds to Everytown, Giffords & more.
George Soros got his nose in the trough as well. Who was bankrolling the campaign to appoint pro-crime Soros DAs? You were.
Beginning about a decade ago, George Soros began funding campaigns for people who became known as the “Soros prosecutors.” Local prosecutorial races, which once had a few thousand spent on them, suddenly started seeing hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars pouring in, totaling about $50 million to elect 75 prosecutors nationwide.
Every one of those prosecutors is a radical leftist who immediately set about remaking the local justice system in accordance with leftist values: Criminals are victims of the system and should not be prosecuted; Republicans are enemies of the people and should be prosecuted. Some of these prosecutors are wreaking havoc on a scale that doesn’t make the news; others have done such horrible things that their names hit the headlines:
Kim Gardner, the woman who used false charges to destroy Eric Greitens, Missouri’s Republican governor, and whose tenure was distinguished by slandering the police, violating open records laws, persecuting the McCloskeys for defending their property against BLM rioters, discriminating against employees on racial grounds, and letting the most egregious criminals walk free.
Lawrence Krasner, the Philadelphia DA who just promised to prosecute the pardoned January 6ers. He couldn’t name a crime, though. He seemed to be operating on the Lavrentiy Beria principle of “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
Andrew Warren, the Florida prosecutor who announced that he would no longer prosecute entire categories of criminal activities because he didn’t like the Florida laws. Governor Ron DeSantis fired him.
George Gascón, a District Attorney who managed to break both the San Francisco and Los Angeles criminal justice systems. He was finally voted out of office in L.A. this past November.
Kimberly Foxx, the Cook County Chicago prosecutor who turned the criminal justice system into a revolving door, creating a staggering wave of violence in already beleaguered Chicago.
And then there’s Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg, who brought an utterly spurious and quite obviously political case against Donald Trump for allegedly criminal hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
Without exception, the Soros prosecutors, most of whom received money from the Tides organizations, have been disastrous for their communities and, in Bragg’s case, for America as a whole. (Although one could argue that Bragg’s manifest political persecution of Donald Trump helped return Trump to the White House, which, to date, has been an incredibly good thing.)
Thus, there’s a straight line from Soros to Tides to corrupt prosecutors.
But what does this have to do with USAID? Well, back in October 2020, when no one was paying too much attention (COVID, BLM, the election), and USAID-funded mainstream media outlets were busy quashing stories that harmed Democrat interests, USAID was Funding the Tides Center:
Nearly $170 million in government grants has passed through a liberal dark money behemoth that houses numerous left-wing groups, including the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, tax forms show.
The taxpayer-funded grants were disbursed to groups through the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based nonprofit incubator that wealthy liberal donors use to bankroll progressive causes. A number of radical left-wing groups have fallen under the auspices of the Tides Center, which acts as a “fiscal sponsor” to nonprofits by providing its 501(c)(3) tax and legal status. This arrangement lets the groups under its umbrella avoid registering with the IRS.
[snip]
[Scott] Walter [president of the Capitol Research Center] noted that the Tides Center’s recipient profile on USASpending.gov, which posts government grants, shows $34 million in federal funding since 2008. The grants were primarily from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Health and Human Services.
And Stephen Green discovered that USAID was also funding #BlackLivesMatter so they could help burn down your city.
More than $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds from the Biden administration ended up helping groups that sponsored or committed terrorism.
Federal watchdog reports and other documents show former President Joe Biden’s aid programs funneled the money toward a network of terrorism in the Muslim world — largely by reversing Trump-era policies.
Snip.
The Biden administration gave $1,053,400,000 in taxpayer money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which claims to help war-afflicted Palestinian civilians but is tied to terrorists fighting Israel, according to U.S. and Israeli intelligence. Biden reversed a Trump-era ban on UNRWA funding in 2021 but brought back the ban last year after Israel accused UNWRA workers of participating in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Intelligence officials later revealed that more than 1,000 UNRWA employees, or around 10%, were linked to the groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to documents found on the bodies of dead terrorists and other evidence. A dozen took part in the Oct. 7 massacre, including a Hamas commander who was teaching in elementary school for UNRWA and led a siege against an Israeli kibbutz that killed almost 100 people.
UNWRA’s schools have long used curriculum for Palestinian children that glorifies terrorists and martyrdom, a March 2023 report from UN Watch found.
The curriculum comes from the Palestinian Authority (PA), a governing body in the West Bank that the Biden administration considered more friendly to American interests than Hamas. The PA also made a profit from Biden’s presidency despite its program that pays Palestinians and their families as a reward for acts of terror against Jews.
Trump and Congress passed a law in 2018 blocking economic support funds for the PA due to its program. Trump later paused all remaining funding for the PA before Biden took office and resumed it.
The Biden administration in part revived the economic support fund that Trump’s law restricts. The State Department claimed in documents from 2021 that “most” of the money did not “directly benefit the PA” in violation of the law. However, officials sent $265 million straight to the PA for its “security forces and justice sector institutions” throughout Biden’s presidency, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Under Biden, the PA agreed to pay more than $97 million to reward the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attacks, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.
They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.
So Treasury official David A. Lebryk resigned rather than testifying. Sounds like he should be subpoenaed and/or indicted…
Another media beneficiary of USAID taxpayer subsidies: Christianity Today. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and also render unto Caesar what is God’s…as long as Caesar is paying you enough.
You’ve never heard of the “Zizians,” and neither had I until this afternoon, but you’re probably going to be hearing a lot more about them now that this weirdo California cult has been connected to the shootout in Vermont last week that left a Border Patrol agent dead. Credit to Andy Ngo for putting together the pieces of this bizarre puzzle. When the shootout went down in Vermont on January 20, the initial reports were very thin, but piece by piece, we’ve learned more about the two suspects, Teresa Youngblut, a 21-year-old from Seattle, and Felix Bauckholt, a math genius from Germany who had worked in the financial industry on an H1B visa. About seven months ago, Youngblut’s parents had reported her missing, saying she had cut off contact with them and they were concerned she might be in a coercive relationship. The police didn’t do anything, saying that as an adult, she couldn’t be considered a runaway.
Youngblut and Bauckholt showed up in Vermont a couple of weeks ago and attracted suspicion because they were wearing black “tactical” gear and Youngblut had a pistol in a visible holster. Eventually, this led to an attempted traffic stop on I-91 in which both Youngblut and Bauckholt pulled pistols. Bauckholt was killed in the resulting shootout, but Younglut survived and will face charges.
The Department of Justice will ensure that, consistent with law, ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ do not receive access to Federal funds from the Department,’ Bondi’s first-day memo says.
‘Consistent with applicable statutes, regulations, court orders, and terms, the Department of Justice shall pause the distribution of all funds until a review has been completed, terminate any agreements that are in violation of law or are the source of waste, fraud, or abuse, and initiate clawback or recoupment procedures, where appropriate.’
It’s no secret that Chicago has forsaken its own low-income residents to virtue signal as a so-called ‘sanctuary city’ for illegal immigrants – to the point where local residents have been excoriating city officials during official meetings, and major businesses such as Ken Griffin’s Citadel moved to Miami due to the city devolving into “Afghanistan.”
Now, the Trump DOJ is suing Chicago, the state of Illinois, local officials over laws creating said ‘sanctuary,’ and have accused the defendants of impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts. In their complaint, the DOJ has asked a judge to declare the state and local measures unconstitutional due to the federal government’s supremacy.
One of the laws challenged by the Wednesday lawsuit prohibits officials from complying with federal immigration detainers and providing certain information about noncitizens.
“The challenged provisions of Illinois, Chicago, and Cook County law reflect their intentional effort to obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and to impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe,” reads the lawsuit.
Named in the case are Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), as well as the city’s police superintendent and other city officials.
The case, filed in federal court in Chicago, marks one of the first major cases brought by the Trump administration in such a case, and comes after the Wednesday confirmation of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who issued a same-day memo restricting sanctuary cities from accessing DOJ funds.
The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it, and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangers, unexploded bombs, and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.
Trump’s affinity for beachfront property aside, I don’t see how rebuilding Gaza is a proper use of American tax dollars.
Sudden Putin Death Syndrome strike again. “Russian singer who donated to Ukraine and called Putin an ‘idiot’ mysteriously falls to his death from a window.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Kamala Harris team lied about Joe Rogan’s attempt to get her on his show. Of course they did. The whole campaign was built on lies and an attempt to install Harris in the White House without enduring any scrutiny from voters.
Speaking of which, remember when CBS swore up and down they didn’t deceptively edit the Kamala Harris video They lied.
Winning. “President Trump Signs Executive Order Barring Men from Women’s Sports.”
On Wednesday, National Girls and Women in Sports Day, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring men from women’s sports through Title IX, withholding funding from universities that insist on allowing male athletes to encroach on women’s competition.
The order will also empower women who are forced to compete against men to sue their schools and directs the Department of Homeland Security to deny visa applications from foreign athletes who identify themselves as the opposite sex in order to compete in the U.S.
At the signing ceremony, Trump specifically cited the importance of protecting female athletes at the upcoming 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and the World Cup.
“My administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes. We’re just not going to let it happen,” Trump said.
J.K. Rowling had something to say about it as well:
Congratulations to every single person on the left who’s been campaigning to destroy women’s and girls’ rights. Without you, there’d be no images like this. pic.twitter.com/mzR7l5k1OW
Our vile media: “Newsweek runs puff piece on gender transition of man who held family hostage, raped them, and killed their kids.
More dictates from the Texas House Cabal: “Speaker Burrows Confirms House Rules Were Written by Democrat Lawyer. The new rules mandate that all House committee vice-chairs be Democrats and expand their authority.”
Follow-up: Charges against Aaron Dunn and Wallis Nader, two of the Lina Hidalgo’s aides indicted for vote rigging, have been been dismissed by the Texas Office of the Attorney General, and a third against Alex Triantaphyllis is expected to be dismissed as well, though it’s unclear why.
“Lazy Thanksgiving Weekend Video Blogging” continues here at BattleSwarm, with a random Ryan Long comedy bit on activists.
“I feel like vegans are the most hated activist group vegans get so much shit. People will be like ‘FUck you. You’re like that pedophile. They’re like ‘behind him there’s a vegan!'”
Happy Friday the 13th! Harris continues to slip behind Trump despite (because?) of their debate on the network of her Best Friend Forever, Haitian immigrants in Ohio accused of eating roof rabbit, Texas blasts Biden Administration overreach (again), Conor McGregor steps into a different kind of ring, a worse than usual remake idea, and American cats meet a variety of grisly ends.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
You know that Harris bounce? Nate Silver says not so much. “I’d also note that Harris’s raw polling averages have DECLINED in most swing states since the start of the DNC. This data is NOT subject to the convention bounce adjustment. She’s had a run of pretty mediocre state polling.”
It’s not surprising that the snap polling, including by groups that conservatives trust, like Trafalgar, is showing that Harris “won” the debate. And I think that’s true. She was more polished, more prepared; she had her canned barbs. But there’s something strange going on here. While she won the debate, Democrats always come across in snap polling as winning the debates. I saw people sharing on X the history of snap polling after debates with Donald Trump, first with Hillary and then with Biden. In every one of those debates—six in total—clear majorities said that Trump lost the debate. I’m not sure what to read into that.
So, it was anger at the moderators, frustration that Trump wasn’t making a lot of the points I thought he could have made, but he was being Trump. And I’ve misjudged his appeal to voters and his electoral success so many times, so it is what it is.
But there’s something else I took away from this—and it’s showing on the screen just to the side of me here. One thing I really noticed throughout was the faces that Harris was making—very condescending, very mocking, very childish, actually. I think that’s the one thing I remember more than anything about the debate.
Now, I think Trump did a very good job, even though he didn’t make the points I thought he could have, like showing how she flip-flopped. He hit hard on the border and the economy, and I think that may have a lasting impact.
What’s showing up in the focus groups—ones I’ve seen not by right-wing groups, but CNN, Reuters, NBC—there seems to be a disconnect between who they think won the debate and how they’re reacting substantively.
Trafalgar was consistent with the others, showing a 15-point win for Harris in terms of who won the debate, but no movement in who people were going to vote for. CNN was interesting—they had an even larger, 20-plus-point win for Harris, but found that on the key issue—voters’ most important issue—the economy, Trump actually improved over pre-debate polling. Similar findings came from Reuters and NBC.
Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, is one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “extraordinary friends,” according to a report in the New York Times.
Walden and Harris have known each other since 1994, while their husbands, Matt Walden and Doug Emhoff, have known each other since the 1980s.
Dana Walden has donated to dozens of Democrats and contributed to Harris’ political campaigns since at least 2003, when she ran for district attorney in San Francisco.
While the legacy media has yet to find any evidence of pet consumption that it’s willing to accept, there are some much larger issues regarding the crisis that has been created in Springfield through the importation of nearly 20,000 Haitian illegals.
Former Ohio State Representative Kyle Koehler has sounded a warning regarding the consequences that have followed the Biden administration’s policy that gave temporary protected status to more than 100,000 Haitian migrants, including those relocated to Springfield.
🚨🚨 BREAKING:
Former Ohio State Rep. Kyle Koehler (@repkoehler) has made SHOCKING revelations about the illegal Haitian crisis in Springfield, Ohio during a recent speech.
1.) The Haitian illegals in Ohio are given $600-$1600 per month on Debit Cards through the Refugee Cash… pic.twitter.com/aWDyVcx7b3
Among the concerns raised by Koehler are the strain on the local school system with more than 1,600 non-English speaking students now enrolled and Haitian refugees who are 20 years old being placed Freshman High School classrooms with 13 year old kids.
Koehler also voiced concern over an individual who is renting his 63 homes to the relocated Haitians for as little as $250 per month, with 20-25 individuals living in each home.
Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) has also weighed in on the controversy, saying that he too has heard from Springfield residents complaining that pets and wildlife were being abducted and that health services are being severely strained by an influx of individuals with communicable diseases like TB and HIV.
The community of 60,000 residents is clearly facing serious issues related to the open border policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
When tales of Haitian immigrants eating cats emerged on social media this week, it suddenly focused attention on the city of Springfield, Ohio, but now we are learning there’s more to the story:
“Those 20,000 Haitians did not show up overnight or uninvited. Though flown in by the federal government, they were not forced on the city by the federal government. Elections have consequences. Springfield voted for this. They signaled their virtue, their signal was seen, and virtue arrived. This is what they wanted. This is what they got. They’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Much commentary has focused on whether it’s true that pets are being killed and eaten by the Haitians, but that’s not really the point. The point is why Springfield became the destination for thousands of Haitians (who may or may not eat cats).
It’s a long story. First of all, you’ll find liberals insisting that these Haitians are not illegal immigrants. Research further, however, and you learn that most of them entered the country illegally, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after making their way through Central America. After Haiti descended into its latest crisis, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to all Haitians in the U.S., so you may say that they have been retroactively (but temporarily) “legalized.”
Now let’s talk about Springfield, which is a “blue” island of liberalism in a sea of Republican “red.” Ohio was once a battleground state, closely contested in every presidential election, and then Trump came along and the Buckeye State has now become a GOP stronghold. Springfield was a city of 58,662 residents before the Haitian influx, and the city sits in Clark County (population 136,000) which voted 61% for Trump in 2020.
You see that, if the Democrats can turn these Haitians into voters, they can make Clark County “blue,” and a similar calculus is being applied nationwide by the Biden administration’s immigration policy. Democrats insist that the “Great Replacement” is a right-wing conspiracy theory, but we can see them doing it — blatantly, deliberately, in front of our eyes — in places like Springfield. And this brings us to the late Warren Copeland.
For most of the past three decades, Copeland was the mayor of Springfield. He was a professor at Wittenberg University, a local institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Anyone who knows anything about the ELCA will tell you it is the pluperfect example of degenerate liberal Protestantism. “The ELCA has drifted so far into pagan goddess worship that to call it ‘Lutheranism’ is an insult to Luther; to call it ‘Christian’ is blasphemy,” as I wrote in 2016. Copeland was a radical obsessed with “social justice,” and the fact that Springfield repeatedly elected him as their mayor tells you something about the politics of the city. Indeed, Springfield eagerly welcomed the influx of Haitians. Read this article from December 2022:
A surge in the number of Springfield residents from Haiti has resulted in an outpouring of language assistance and additional forms of help from the Springfield City School District and others who are trying to meet their needs.
Social Justice destroys everything it touches.
Citizens have questions to City Council about vetting of Haitian refugees in Sylacauga, Alabama. City Council: “Meeting adjourned.”
For the first time in EU history, Germany is at the forefront of immigration suspension. Other EU countries will follow.
The Schengen Area…is an area encompassing 29 European countries that have officially abolished border controls at their mutual borders.
Reuters reports Germany Tightens Controls at All Borders in Immigration Crackdown.
Germany’s government announced plans to impose tighter controls at all of the country’s land borders in what it called an attempt to tackle irregular migration and protect the public from threats such as Islamist extremism.
The controls within what is normally a wide area of free movement – the European Schengen zone – will start on Sept. 16 and initially last for six months, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Monday.
The government has also designed a scheme enabling authorities to reject more migrants directly at German borders, Faeser said, without adding details on the controversial and legally fraught move.
The restrictions are part of a series of measures Germany has taken to toughen its stance on irregular migration in recent years following a surge in arrivals, in particular people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East.
Recent deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers have stoked concerns over immigration. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a knife attack in the western city of Solingen that killed three people in August.
Polls show it is also voters’ top concern in the state of Brandenburg, which is set to hold elections in two weeks.
Scholz and Faeser’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are fighting to retain control of the government there, in a vote billed as a test of strength of the SPD ahead of next year’s federal election.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.
Seems like Germans are getting tired of all that vibrant raping and stabbing diversity…
On Wednesday, a federal court ruled in favor of Elon Musk’s X Corp in its case challenging California’s content moderation laws, citing free speech violations. X Corp filed a lawsuit to block the controversial law, which took effect on January 1, 2024.
The legislation requires social media companies to disclose details of their content moderation policies to the state or face civil penalties.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a previous lower court’s decision that ruled against pausing enforcement of the state law. The panel of three judges decided the law facially violated the First Amendment, Reuters reported.
“X Corp. is likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. wrote in his case opinion.
In the complaint filed in Sept. 2023, X Corporation argued that Assembly Bill 587 violates the company’s First Amendment rights because it pressures “companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech that the State deems undesirable or harmful” which “interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments” of the company.
For free speech advocates, we often feel that other citizens have become passive observers as an anti-free speech movement grows around us, threatening our “indispensable right.”
One of the most infamous figures in this movement has been former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been the smiling face of censorship. As the head of the Labour Party, Blair pushed through some of the early crackdowns on free speech in the United Kingdom. He is now calling for global censorship to expand these efforts.
In an interview on LBC Radio, Blair declared:
“The world is going to have to come together and agree on some rules around social media platforms. It’s not just how people can provoke hostility and hatred but I think… the impact on young people particularly when they’ve got access to mobile phones very young and they are reading a whole lot of stuff and receiving a whole lot of stuff that I think is really messing with their minds in a big way.”
Remember, when the want to crackdown on “misinformation,” the sort of things they want to ban are opinions contrary to their social justice agenda. Such as “the Chinese coronavirus came from a lab” or “there are only two biological sexes.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “Illegal Alien Charged With Stealing U.S. Citizen’s Identity to Vote in Elections. She voted in the 2016 and 2020 primaries and general elections.”
The Biden Administration wants Texas to cede Fronton Island to federal control. Texas Governor Greg Abbott told them to get stuffed.
I am in receipt of a letter from the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) to the Texas General Land Office (GLO) … given that it concerns actions taken under Operation Lone Star to secure Texas’ southern border around Fronton Island against the ongoing invasion of Texas by transnational criminal cartels — a crisis created and incentivized by your Administration,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott added that the letter “alleges that GLO has altered the flow of the Rio Grande by engaging in activities on Fronton Island without USIBWC’s approval.”
“It also alleges that [the] GLO trespassed on federal land in the process of facilitating cleanup and security efforts on the Island … That agency responded in a letter … detailing that GLO has not engaged in construction activities at all, and, in any event, Fronton Island is state-owned land.”
Abbott then responded to the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner’s request that Fronton Island be returned to its pre-construction conditions: “You are either unaware of, or indifferent to, what those ‘pre-construction conditions’ were.”
Before Texas secured Fronton Island, Abbott wrote, “[T]ransnational criminal cartels had assumed practical control of the densely vegetated Island and used it to terrorize Texas communities.”
He recounted occasions when authorities found the criminal cartels to be using the “thick vegetation” to “stash weapons, plant explosives, evade apprehension, and engage in open warfare against rival cartels and against state and federal officers.”
“Are you aware that your appointee is asking Texas to return grenades and rocket launchers along with IEDs to the Island?” he asked the Biden administration.
Abbott continued, “Your open-border policies have allowed an invasion at the southern border and incentivized criminal activity that threatens the lives of Texas law enforcement, soldiers, and citizens.”
“Yet … the federal government has refused to enforce federal laws — even in dangerous areas like Fronton Island.”
“I determined that Texas could not ignore an ongoing invasion of its sovereign territory,” Abbott said of his decision on October 5, 2023 to move a “heavily armed invasion force” onto Fronton Island.
He then addressed USIBWC’s complaint that Texas had built “two sediment bridges.”
“Your Administration’s letter betrays a basic misunderstanding of facts on the ground, and its claims are unsupported by either science or common sense.”
Dwight has been sending me tidbits on the ongoing meltdown among government officials in New York City following FBI raids. Like this: “Paranoid police officials meeting in parking lots as fed raids leave NYPD, City Hall in shock.” “Law enforcement sources telling The Post that they’re afraid NYPD headquarters is bugged and their words are being recorded.” Plus New York City Mayor Eric Adams evidently has several burner phones, which is both highly suspicious and probably justified. And since Adams is reportedly using the messaging app Signal, presumably they’re modern Android or iPhones, which are: A.) More expensive than classic burner phones, and B.) Probably not conducive to quick SIM card swaps, ala Stringer Bell on The Wire.
Anyway, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban just resigned.
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori dead at 86. Fujimori revived Peru’s economy and destroyed the Maoist Shining Path guerillas, but in the end he too fell prey to Peru’s long history of government abuse of power and corruption. In the end, he too was corrupt and committed human rights abuses…and was still arguably the most successful (and important) President in Peru’s troubled history.
“The head of the UN wants to create a fake bank that will circumvent EU and US sanctions against Russian banks.”
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham pushed back against a Biden-Harris administration proposal to “lease nearly 150,000 offshore acres to an energy company (Hecate Energy) with no experience in wind projects.” But it’s easy to understand why the Biden Administration wants to hand the assignment to Hecate: They donate lots of money to Democrats.
Alan Dershowitz announces he’s leaving the Democratic Party over its “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist convention.” One wonders what took him so long.
Remember Taral Patel the Ft. Bend democrat who faked hate crimes against himself? Now he’s facing even more felony charges. “Last week a grand jury indicted him on four felony counts of Online Impersonation and four misdemeanor charges including Online Impersonation and Misrepresentation of Identity with intent to ‘harm.'”
Self-cleaning litter box has the unfortunate downside of killing your cat.
Rick Beato interviews bassist Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame. It’s an interesting interview, especially the part about how he sold all his stuff to go on tour with Buddy Rich, only to find out that Rich’s old bassist had agreed to come back, so he was out of a job…
“Optronic Technologies, Inc., better known to backyard astronomers as the parent company of both Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments, has shut its offices and storefront in Watsonville, California.” Actual manufacturing was done in Tijuana, so I’m not sure how much California’s new minimum wage law had an effect.
There are rumors that Barbie director Greta Gerwig wants to make an all female Fight Club remake. That’s about as good an idea as an all-male reboot of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Comedian Kevin Hart’s chain of vegetarian restaurants in LA closed down. 1. How’s that minimum wage working out for you, California? 2. Vegetarian restaurants aren’t even profitable in LA. 3. Stick to comedy. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember all the way back to November of last year, when there was great enthusiasm for New York Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams for not being insane? Granted, after Bill de Blasio, lots of people look sane by comparison, but Adams, an ex-cop, was widely hailed for condemning the “defund the police” madness, and for beating a variety of truly loony left types in the Democratic primary before beating Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general. His victory in deep blue NYC was seen as proof that even liberal bastions were tired of rising crime and the loony left’s antics.
The mayor, who said on Sunday that white supremacy and “anarchists” are on the rise, suggested that he can trust no one in the Police Department as much as he can his own kin.
(rolls eye) Yes, new York City is such a well-known nexus of “white supremacy.”
“Personal security — my life, my life — I want in the hands of my brother with his 20-year law enforcement experience,” Mr. Adams said. “He has the police experience, but he also has the personal experience. He knows his brother, and he’s going to keep his brother safe.”
New York City public school students are getting a taste of life under the new Adams administration. Starting this week, city schools will debut “Vegan Fridays” with an inaugural meal of veggie tacos, broccoli, and carrot and lemon salad.
The city is phasing in the shift and plans to offer cheese sandwiches as a backup; officials said non-vegan items will be available by request. One school indicated that vegan breakfasts will consist of bagels and jelly, and cereal. Beverages appear to be exempt from the new rule, and milk will still be offered.
Adams, a proud and vocal vegan, promised to make school meals, which are free to the 930,000 students, healthier during his mayoral campaign.
“Plant-based options in schools means healthy eating and healthy living, and improving the quality of life for thousands of New York City students,” he said in a statement.
Adams supported a pilot project in Brooklyn that became the basis for citywide Meatless Mondays in 2019. Meatless Fridays followed last spring.
One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured ‘Socialists’, as who should say, ‘Red Indians’. He was probably right-—the I.L.P. [Independent Labor Party] were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.
Even “sane” Democrats turned out to be loony tunes leftists once they get into power.
More Democrats accepting foreign payola, Russia sabre-rattles over Ukraine, a Supreme Court justice retires, Canada revolts, Harris County’s soft-on-crime policies are getting cops killed, and the war over tranny madness spreads. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm.
Long time Democratic power broker Tony Podesta has earned $1 million over the past half year lobbying the Biden White House at the behest of a blacklisted Chinese tech giant, recent federal disclosures show. Huawei, which was placed under trade sanctions during the Trump administration, paid Podesta $500,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 in an attempt to shake off the trade impact of the restrictions, according to the disclosure form filed on the evening of Jan. 20.
With the $500,000 Podesta made from the previous three months lobbying the White House, he has been compensated $1 million over a six-month period for the lobbying effort.
Podesta’s latest lobbying campaign targeted the Executive Office of the President and centered around “telecommunications services and impacted trade issues,” the disclosure said.
Huawei, once the world’s largest telecom makers, has been facing international scrutiny in recent years. U.S. authorities have flagged the China-based company as a national security threat, saying the company’s close ties with China’s ruling communist regime, as well as Chinese law, could make it a potential espionage tool for Beijing.
A stream of U.S. sanctions since 2019—which have barred Huawei from using U.S. technology and software, and shut out its gears from critical U.S. infrastructure—have slashed the company’s annual revenue by a third. In November, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that further tightened restrictions on Huawei by restricting it from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S regulators.
Battered by the restrictions, Huawei has ramped up its U.S. influence operation in recent months. Podesta is one of half a dozen lobbyists the firm has engaged since July, which includes a former congressman and one former congressional aide, according to disclosure filings….
Tony Podesta’s brother, John Podesta, served as White House chief of staff to former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He was also a former counselor to President Barack Obama, overseeing climate and energy policies.
There’s your swampy Democratic Party corruption and graft, right there out in the open for all to see.
Affiliates of two European companies that fund Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline contributed to the campaign of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who Republicans say has blocked sanctions on the Kremlin-backed project.
ENGIE North America and BASF Corporation each gave $2,500 to Schumer in September through their corporate political action committees, according to newly disclosed Federal Election Commission records. ENGIE North America’s parent company and a BASF subsidiary are part of a consortium of five companies that finance Nord Stream 2, which will transport natural gas from Russia to Germany. While President Joe Biden has called the pipeline a geopolitical threat to Europe that helps Russian president Vladimir Putin, last year he waived sanctions on the project.
Republicans have pushed for legislation to enforce sanctions only to be met with resistance from Senate Democrats and the White House. Schumer for months blocked Republican requests to vote on a sanctions bill. He approved a vote on sanctions legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) earlier this month in exchange for Cruz lifting holds on several State Department nominees. The bill received bipartisan support by a 55-44 vote, but Senate Democrats used filibuster rules to block its passage. Democrats say they want to use sanctions against the pipeline as a last resort should Russia invade Ukraine.
Convicted pedophile, UAE adviser and central witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, George Nader, has pleaded guilty to his role in helping the UAE funnel millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into US campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, according to The Intercept, citing federal court documents filed last month.
In a December sentencing memo, federal prosecutors disclosed that Nader had agreed months early to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the US government by pumping millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – concealing the foreign origin of the funds.
Snip.
Nader is accused of taking instructions from UAE Crown Prince [Mohammed bin Zayed], and gave regular updates on his efforts to get close to Clinton.
In total, Nader transferred nearly $5 million from his UAE business to [Los Angeles businessperson Ahmad “Andy”] Khawaja – CEO of a Los Angeles-based payment processing company. According to prosecutors, the funds were disguised as a routine business contract between the two men. Of the total transferred, more than $3.5 million came from the UAE government and was given to pro-Clinton Democratic political committees. Prosecutors have yet to publicly identify what happened to the remaining $1.4 million Nader transferred to Khawaja.
Khawaja’s money laundering for Democrats was previously mentioned in this LinkSwarm. How many of the travails of the last five years boil down to Democrats trying to avoid going to jail for their corruption?
Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer announced he’s retiring. Biden, pandering as always, announces he’s going to nominate a black woman.
How massive would the protest have to be to make Justin Trudeau change course? Leftists hate giving up government control of people’s lives, no matter how unpopular….
Tracy Compton, a mother of two in Fairfax, Virginia, had voted for Democrats for as long as she can remember, until the COVID-related school closures.
‘I tried and went to apply to work with the Democratic Party. I was told I was not allowed to become a member of the Democratic Party [in Fairfax].’
A recording of a reorganization meeting showed fellow Democrats deeming Compton too ‘anti-school’ to be part of their political efforts.
What made Compton anti-school?
She wanted the public schools to fully reopen.
When Compton worked to collect signatures for a recall petition for the local school board, she was welcomed out of the rain by a Republican party tent, even after telling them she was a Biden voter.
In contrast, when Compton offered the petition to those inside the Democrat party tent, she was yelled at.
Now? Given a hypothetical matchup between Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden vs. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, she said she’d vote for the Republican in a heartbeat.
All Florida trends are coming up sunshine for continued freedom from Covidstan. Recently Republican registrations surpassed Democrats in the state for the first time. Net domestic migration to the state also increased during COVID. Many commentators attribute both to Governor Ron DeSantis’s pandemic management policies. Just how bad does 2022 look for Democrats in the state? According to the Miami Herald:
Evidence is piling up that Democrats in Florida have no clear bench of candidates willing to challenge Republican incumbents in South Florida, in what’s expected to be a daunting and expensive 2022 cycle for their party.
Two first-time candidates who made early announcements they would run for South Florida House seats have both since dropped their bids to pursue runs for state office. A rumored likely candidate for federal office, former state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez, was recently nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as an assistant secretary at the Department of Labor.
The three Florida seats in question represent districts in Miami, including Reps. Carlos Giménez, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Mario Diaz-Balart. Giménez is the former mayor of Miami-Dade County and an immigrant from Cuba. Salazar defeated Clinton ally Donna Shalala in 2020, and Diaz-Balart has represented his district since 2002. The Herald called these districts competitive and said redistricting provided Democrats an opportunity.
However, the only potential candidates are a few retreads who lost in 2020. Reportedly, Shalala, who is knee-deep in Clinton ick, may be considering a rematch with Salazar. She served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Health and Human Services and as President of the Clinton Foundation from June 2015 to March 2017. Former representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who lost to Giménez in 2020, may also jump in the race. To date, neither woman has announced their intentions.
Unless you owe someone favors, why run an almost certainly losing campaign in a red wave year?
Masks don’t work:
Update from the Fargo, North Dakota masking study: Two neighboring K-12 districts (same community) both with around 12,000 students 🔵 Mask mandate 🟡 Masks optional (<5% masking) Y axis= % of students positive for covid Green vertical line: when🔵 went masks optional pic.twitter.com/OoU9vmsbiz
Unvaccinated people in Austria have been locked down for two-and-a-half months. I wonder if people will stop pretending they are to blame for infection rates. pic.twitter.com/AjVpp7IvNI
“During the last year’s attempts to defund the police and reduce the number of violent encounters on the street, Baltimore kicked off what they call the Safe Streets Project.” Surprise! A Safe Streets worker was one of three people killed in a shootout. Dwight would be disappointed if I didn’t include this:
In addition to looting, murder and arson, the primary accomplishment of #BlackLivesMatter seems to be making donations disappear.
No one appears to have been in charge at Black Lives Matter for months. The address it lists on tax forms is wrong, and the charity’s two board members won’t say who controls its $60 million bankroll, a Washington Examiner investigation has found.
BLM’s shocking lack of transparency surrounding its finances and operations raises major legal and ethical red flags, multiple charity experts told the Washington Examiner.
“Like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said of BLM.
BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors appointed two activists to serve as the group’s senior directors following her resignation in May amid scrutiny over her personal finances. But both quietly announced in September that they never took the jobs due to disagreements with BLM. They told the Washington Examiner they don’t know who now leads the nation’s most influential social justice organization.
Paul Kamenar, counsel for conservative watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, said a full audit and investigation into Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that represents the national BLM movement, is warranted.
“This is grossly irregular and improper for a nonprofit with $60 million in its coffers,” Kamenar said.
Sundown Joe unwittingly greenlights a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Right now there’s a lot more jaw-jaw than war-war. I’ve avoid penning a thumbsucker on the situation because I’ve been too busy.
Virginia Republican Delegate Nick Freitas is done with having Critical Race Theory advocates calling all who oppose them racist:
Enough. I have had it, my constituents have had it, and I am no longer going to sit here while a member of this body accuses us of being bigots simply because we disagree on policy. pic.twitter.com/dx0uMyFmnB
Today’s unexpected ally in the war on transgender madness: actor Sean Penn.
Sean Penn is doubling down on his defense of traditional gender roles.
In two separate interviews this month, the two-time Academy Award-winner and ex of Madonna made comments bemoaning his perception that men are becoming more feminine.
“I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized,” the 61-year-old told the UK-based publication The i in an interview ahead of the UK release of his new film “Flag Day.”
“I don’t think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity, or ever did. But I don’t think that [in order] to be fair to women, we should become them.”
In a subsequent interview the “Milk” star did with The Independent this week, he dug his heels into the polarizing opinion, going even further in his critique of men who challenge gender norms.
“There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt,” he told the publication. Furthermore, he noted that the women in his life don’t seem bothered by the patriarchy.
“I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them,” he said.
Penn is wrong about an awful lot, but he’s right about this.
Intel to build $20 billion chip manufacturing facility near New Albany, Ohio (near Columbus), starting with two fabs. Intel had already announced a big investment initiative, and announced their were building two new fabs in Arizona last year. The Ohio location is a surprise, since there’s no fab infrastructure there, but evidently Ohio is throwing lots of money at them.
Vegetarian “meat” company Impossible Foods just laid off a bunch of people. “Technocratic elites have decided in the so-called ‘Great Reset’ in a post-COVID world that peasants should eat plant-based meat instead of the real thing as a way for ‘sustainable nutrition.'”
Yikes!
You may need to get a prescription of beta blockers after watching this video.pic.twitter.com/6GKk09DmjG
The new Superman is a “bisexual climate warrior.” Those comic book issues aren’t exactly flying off the shelf.
Speaking of comics: This comic page just sold for $3.3 million. A wee bit rich for my blood. And is possibly more than the artist made over his entire career working at Marvel…
Heh.
Yoko Ono has threatened to have her music added to Spotify unless Joe Rogan is removed
— State Line Crosser Dennis (LGB) (@Buzzsaws1990) January 28, 2022
Happy Friday the 13th! Going to be a short one, since I spent most of the week finishing up the book catalog I sent out yesterday. And there are a lot of big news topics (like the Horowitz report) I want to do longer posts on. Maybe this weekend…
Boris Johnson’s Tories won a huge general election victory, winning an absolute majority projected at 364 seats, a net gain of 47 seats. By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour lost 59 seats, down to 203. That’s the largest majority Tories have enjoyed since Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 majority following the Falklands War. The combination of Corbyn and absolute opposition to Brexit has halved the number of seats Labour holds since Tony Blair’s first term. You know that second referendum Remainers were always nattering about? They just had it.
Howard County, Maryland is bringing back forced busing. Crime, rampant drug use, forced busing: It’s like Democrats are trying to turn the areas they control into The 70s Sucked theme parks.
“Austin Council Wants Even More Homeless Hotels.” Of course they do. The more homeless hotels, the more opportunity for graft…
Ann Althouse reads the latest entry in that time-honored genre, New York Times Profile Of Woman We’re Supposed To Find Sympathetic That Actually Makes Us Hate Everyone Living In New York City.
