RFK, Jr. presses the pause button for medicaid payments over Democrat fraud, we pound Iran some more, Ukraine sinks floating cranes and sets giant logistics hubs aflame, and a punk rock auction.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have paused more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota due to fraud concerns.
“That includes more than $887 million for California and over $200 million for Minnesota,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference. “If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”
“In Minnesota and California, our reviews are going back to just over the last few years, turned up the same recurring theme again and again every single quarter: Claims in these same high-risk categories that the states have not yet been able to document fully and acceptably to the federal government. Claims that are unresolved and claims that smell like fraud. And if it smells like fraud, we’re not paying for it anymore.”
RFK Jr. says HHS loses $100,000,000,000 a year to theft.
He found some thieves would bribe poor people with flat screen TVs to get their patient numbers and enroll them in hospice.
Then they would proceed to bill Medicaid “$6,000 a month FOREVER.”
RFK JR: “We shut down 800 hospices. You know what a hospice is? Where you’re going to die. Typically, if you go to a hospice, you leave within 18 days because your dying is terminal.”
“We started looking at these hospices in Los Angeles, and the people never died. Two or three years later they were there, and we’re paying $6,000 a month.”
“We found a hotel room with 29 hospices in it. I mean a hotel, every room was a hospice, and none of them had any patients. They were just addresses.”
“The guys who own them, they were Estonians and Armenians and people from Eastern Europe who were getting the patient numbers. They were stealing them from doctors’ offices.”
“They were also going into poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles and they’d say to the people, ‘We’ll give you this $375 flat-screen TV. You give us your patient number and we’re going to enroll you in this hospice. You don’t ever have to go. We’re just going to enroll you,’ and then we’ll charge Medicaid $6,000 a month forever. And the guy never dies, of course, because he was never sick.”
“We didn’t get a single call from a congressman or from a business owner saying, ‘Oh, you shut down my hospice and all these patients are on the street.’ None of them, because they were all crooked and they knew they were crooke
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces successfully completed the 13th straight night of strikes against Iran, July 23, at 9 p.m. ET.
CENTCOM targeted Iranian military command centers, drone storage facilities, communication networks, coastal surveillance sites, and maritime capabilities to further diminish the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The international waterway remains open for transit despite recent attacks from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Commercial vessels continue to freely navigate the strait with U.S. military support.
I’m noticing a couple of dogs that aren’t currently barking: Hezbollah and Hamas. It turns out that when your paymaster is broke, running out of missiles and getting the snot blown out of them, they don’t have a lot of time, money and attention to lavish on helping their two catspaws murder Jews…
When President Donald Trump talked about some of the things China has done to literally steal our democracy by seeing to it that, in 2020, its Manchurian candidate was elected in the form of a semi-comatose Joe Biden, many of the things he mentioned had already been in the news, but they may not have been covered by the legacy media.
Case in point: Trump mentioned in his July 16 address to the nation that China stole TikTok data to create fake U.S. driver’s licenses.
If you follow conservative media, you may have known this. If you get your news from the legacy media, you most likely didn’t know it, and if you heard it now, you won’t believe it. That’s the group Trump was targeting in his address. His national address strategy was to speak past the legacy media and to begin the process of planting the seeds of the truth in the minds of those who rely on the CNNs, ABCs, and NBCs of the world.
Strategically, Trump is now trying to break through the information barrier that the legacy media and the left have created to keep the majority of Americans in the dark on what’s really happened to corrupt our elections.
A year ago, Brooke Singman published a lengthy piece on the Fox News website that detailed just how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) executed its TikTok data theft scheme. Her primary source for the story was the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
The Senate Judiciary Committee launched its own investigation into this after the FBI had announced its own investigation in July 2025. As Singman reported, the CCP allegedly worked to get “fake driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S. who would cast a vote for candidate Biden.”
It is not clear how successful the CCP was in getting its ballots for Biden to count.
In July 2025, a Grassley spokesperson told Fox News, “Chairman Grassley is in receipt of an FBI document (response) to a request he made based on legally protected whistleblower disclosures…. The document alleges serious national security concerns that need to be fully investigated by the FBI.”
As stated in that document, the intent of the alleged scheme was for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to produce and export fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S., so as to create “tens of thousands of fraudulent mail-in votes for US Presidential candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.”
According to the document at the center of these investigations, by August 2020, “the Chinese government had produced a large amount of fraudulent United States driver’s licenses that were secretly exported to the United States,” Fox News reported.
The fraudulent drivers licenses would allow tens of thousands of Chinese students and immigrants sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party to vote for US Presidential Candidate USPER Joe ((Biden)), despite not being eligible to vote in the United States… China had collected private US user data from millions of TikTok accounts, to include name, ID and address, which would allow the Chinese government to use real US persons’ information to create the fraudulent driver’s license, the document states.
Reporting on the investigation indicates that the fake IDs included true ID numbers and the true addresses of U.S. citizens, which made the fraud difficult to detect.
“China planned to use the fraudulent driver’s licenses to account for tens of thousands of mail-in votes,” according to the document.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill spurned the Department of Justice’s request for information on the nearly 6,600 noncitizens who were improperly added to the state’s voter rolls, raising the ire of Trump administration officials who are making election security a priority heading in the November midterms.
The move follows Sherrill’s announcement on Tuesday that thousands of noncitizens had been added to New Jersey voter rolls, with 400 individuals casting ballots. Later that day, the DOJ requested the names, addresses, nationalities, and registration locations of the 6,600 non-citizens who were marked as voters, even though they identified themselves as noncitizens. Noncitizens convicted of voting in U.S. elections can face criminal penalties including deportation.
“Ensuring that U.S. citizen’s votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizen’s votes is of paramount importance,” the letter from the DOJ stated.
Sherrill voiced concerns that the information would be misused by the DOJ.
“We are not in the practice of turning this kind of personally identifying data over to the federal government because we have seen them weaponize it,” Sherrill said at an event on Thursday.
And by “weaponize” she means “Keeping our precious illegal aliens from voting for Democrats and/or deporting them.” You know, enforcing the law.
Here’s Melat Kiros, a “democratic” socialist activist, explaining the party’s plan to fundamentally change America by electing people from the “Global South”….
That’s the explicit plan from the DSA.
Mass immigration, elect immigrants to office Mamdani and Ilhan Omar-style, and have them fundamentally change what America is.
On February 2, 2021, a national targeting security specialist at U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center circulated a referral to colleagues across the agency. The subject was Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, scheduled to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport three days later aboard Qatar Airways flight 701 from Doha, arriving 2:25 p.m. He was returning from the World Health Organization’s mission to Wuhan investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The referral asked that Daszak be considered for a Tactical Terrorism Response Team examination – a secondary inspection that can include questioning and a review of electronic devices. Which, now we know, never happened.
Senator Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the underlying records Monday. They show CBP flagged Daszak as “an extremely high person of interest,” built out a formal targeting event, and then stood down two days before his flight at the request of the FBI’s New York Field Office.
It’s bad enough that Zohran Mamdani has become the leader of the new Democratic Party, having been anointed by none other than its King, Barack Obama. But now, their shining new star, Hasan Piker, is not even bothering to hide behind the words “Democratic Socialist.” He’s gone full-blown Commie.
These pitiful cosplay revolutionaries are not a match for Donald Trump, who can flick them off his jacket like a piece of lint, but he only has a few more years left, and the Democrats are collapsing into an even more fanatical cult. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Mamdani had made big promises to “arrest Benjamin Netanyahu” if he ever came to New York as a “war criminal.” But he had to backtrack on that because he doesn’t have the authority to do so because Trump smacked him down.
He still calls on the Federal Government to make the arrest. To me, he looks like someone who believes he’s the alternative president in our virtual Civil War, like a would-be Jefferson Davis.
Snip.
Hasan Piker is now riding high on his newfound fame and glory. He proudly displays the front page of the New York Times with the Twin Towers ablaze after 9/11 and has said on streaming that the US “deserved” it, later clarifying that our foreign policy was bad enough that we should be attacked.
Hasan Piker is dangerous because he is so stupid. He’s so stupid, he doesn’t even seem to know the horrific atrocities under Mao. He showed up at a recent Democratic event wearing a Mao costume.
Hasan Piker, like Zohran Mamdani, like all of the Manson family girlies who fawn all over them, were raised in American schools amid Critical Race and Gender Theory, the so-called “real history” they indoctrinated our kids with. Now we are seeing the fruits of their labor.
It’s Joseph McCarthy’s ultimate nightmare finally realized. Maybe it wasn’t true that the military was infested with Commies, but if it came back to today, he’d see evidence of infiltration everywhere, from culture to academia to politics.
If the Democrats go Full Commie thanks to the stalking horse of Social Justice, then it really will be time to stock up on ammunition. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
For those who know, rigged elections do happen in the Americas. They’ve been happening for years in Nicaragua, ever since the Sandinistas brought Daniel Ortega to power in the 1980s.
Many young people will have forgotten that there was massive enthusiasm for the Sandinistas across the international left. Five years ago, Quillette ran a wonderful piece about the support for Sandinistas found across the American left. It’s amazing how many leftists of the 1980s who went for the Sandinistas have stayed with us: Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio.
The poor in Nicaragua are in a wretched condition. Ortega effectively made himself president for life when he exceeded the country’s constitutional limits on his office. This week, he finally announced plans for the abolition of elections. He explained in a public rant that this was necessary to stop “the traitors.”
The only thing missing was Ortega announcing that he had to end elections “to save our democracy.”
I was writing about this commie scumbag back in college, and he’s long overdue to be dirtnapped. Maybe after we’ve finished with Venezuela, Iran and Cuba…
“Two Democratic Senate candidates have received backlash for accepting donations from a Democrat megadonor with former ties to Jeffrey Epstein. James Talarico and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D- Ga., who is running for re-election, have both received donations from Reid Hoffman, a billionaire who has admitted to spending time on Epstein’s Caribbean island.” It’s always OK when they do it…
“University of Houston Poised To Eliminate 40 Percent of Core Curriculum.” Which is a good thing, since the “core curriculum” items being eliminated are absolute social justice bullshit.
As first reported by the Houston Chronicle, UH officials are currently finalizing a proposal to bring before University of Houston System regents at the August board meeting.
The Chronicle reported that approximately 100 courses are on the chopping block. Examples include:
Black Liberation Theology
Black Liberation Studies
Intro to LGBT Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Latino Leadership, Activism, and Organizing
Mexican American Urban Communities
Sexuality and Society
The Chronicle further reported that while UH will eliminate core eligibility for coursework explicitly grounded in grievance studies, government and history coursework discussing “histories for specific demographics” was not impacted.
The review in question is required under Senate Bill 37, a measure state lawmakers passed in 2025. The new law also requires boards of regents to conduct a review of all general education curricula every five years.
General education requirements are a set of courses all students must complete, regardless of major. Higher education authors Jason Brennan and Phil Magness have criticized these mandates as a subsidy for economically unsustainable programs that frequently protect woke curricula from accountability.
Eliminate them all and lay off those teaching them.
Ukraine has agreed on a plan to acquire 16 Rafale fighter jets from France together with the accompanying weapon systems, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a press conference here late Monday following a meeting of the group of countries that have pledged support to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Macron agreed on a roadmap between their two countries that also includes the acquisition of a first batch of SAMP/T NG air-defense batteries, complementing systems and their missiles to be delivered in coming weeks, Macron said. France will also provide radar systems and additional missiles, the president said.
The countries further approved licensing agreements for production in Ukraine of the AASM glide-bomb kit, the Aster 30 air-defense interceptor that arms the SAMP/T system as well as the SCALP/Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile, Macron said.
Don’t get too excited, though. “The first Rafale jets are expected to fly in Ukrainian skies as early as 2028 or 2029.”
Concerning news: “U.S. Reaches 41 New World Screwworm Cases as Sterile Fly Production Continues Rollout.”
Primary news: “Trump-backed candidates, including ex-Giants, Jets kicker Jay Feely, easily win Arizona primaries — socialist House hopeful gets smoked.”
A full slate of Republican candidates endorsed by President Trump, including former NFL kicker Jay Feely, emerged victorious Tuesday in Arizona’s primary elections while a Democratic socialist House hopeful suffered a crushing defeat.
Feely, who played for six teams — including the Jets and Giants — during his 14 seasons as a pro, defeated former state lawmaker Joseph Chaplik in the Grand Canyon State’s 1st Congressional District, which covers northeastern Maricopa County and is the wealthiest in Arizona.
The 1st District seat is being vacated by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), who opted to run for governor. Democrats have targeted the district as a key flip opportunity as they try to regain the House majority after four years out of power.
Feely, a former CBS football analyst who was endorsed by Trump in January, touted his close ties to the president on the campaign trail.
“Who can call [Trump] and who can get him to answer? That’s me,” he said during a primary debate last month. “He will take my call and he will listen. I have the ability to have the ear of the president.”
In the Democratic primary, former state Rep. Amish Shah led onetime TV journalist Marlene Galán-Woods by 6.9 percentage points with 84% of the expected vote in, but the race had yet to be called as of Wednesday morning.
In the open 5th District, Trump-backed former Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb topped construction contractor Daniel Keenan by nearly 17 percentage points.
Lamb, who rose to prominence for taking on Mexican cartels smuggling drugs across the border and into Arizona, will head to the midterms as the heavy favorite over Democratic nominee Elizabeth Lee in the solidly red district.
Snip.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who has represented the 5th District since 2017, opted not to seek another term and ran in the GOP gubernatorial primary instead.
That decision paid off handsomely as Biggs, with the support of Trump, topped Schweikert Tuesday night by nearly 60 percentage points.
Snip.
In the 4th District, centered in the Phoenix suburbs of Tempe and Mesa, incumbent Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) swamped Democratic socialist primary challenger Kai Newkirk by 30 percentage points.
Newkirk, who accused Stanton of being too supportive of Israel and corporations and slammed the congressman’s vote in favor of the Laken Riley Act mandating illegal immigrants who are arrested, charged or convicted of “burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting” be held by immigration authorities.
Food contamination news: “Nearly 1.6M eggs from Texas farms recalled for possible Salmonella contamination.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a statement on Wednesday detailing the voluntary recall of 1,589,577 dozen eggs from Midwest Poultry Services, L.P., which may be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis.
Midwest Poultry Services said that as of Wednesday, it was not aware of any illnesses related to the eggs.
The identifying codes printed on the left or right sides of the carton P-1950 or 0840962 with a Julian date between 157 and 184 are recalled, according to the FDA report. They were available to consumers at Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana, as well as Brookshire Grocery locations across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Mississippi. The full list of products that have been recalled is provided in the FDA’s announcement.
“Judge puts temporary pause on Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.” “U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order barring Paramount from closing the transaction, a corporate tie-up that would unite two movie studios, two streaming platforms and two news organizations under the control of David Ellison, the son of billionaire technology tycoon Larry Ellison.” I know you’ll be shocked to learn that Martínez-Olguín was appointed by “Joe Biden.”
Missed this from a couple of months ago: “Every Single Horse Running In The 151st Kentucky Derby Is Related To Secretariat.”
“Astronomers announce the discovery of space sugar.
Using the Yebes 40-m and IRAM 30-m radio telescopes, the astronomers scanned the molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027, a chemically rich region located roughly 8,200 parsecs (26,745 light-years) from Earth near the Milky Way’s center.
They picked up 12 sets of radio emission lines that matched the predicted spectral fingerprint of erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar with the chemical formula C4H8O4.
‘Erythrulose, with 14 atoms in its structure, represents the largest non-cyclic molecular species identified so far in the interstellar medium, and the first detected molecule containing four oxygen atoms,’ they said.
Potter and Potter have an auction for “Skaters, Punks & Rebels: A Countercultural Cross-Section” next month. Probably not bidding on anything, but man, a 1983 concert with Black Flag, Fear and Circle Jerks would have been something to behold…
So here’s a video arguing that, since humans are primates, doing a deadhang improves a whole lot of muscle groups. It says most people struggle to do ten seconds at first. Since I don’t have a chinning bar, that’s not an exercise I can do at home, so I did two separate ten second hangs last Saturday on park equipment while I was out walking my dogs. Result: A few hour later my left wrist was in quite a bit of pain, but that faded over a day. This Saturday I think I’ll go for 12 seconds…but only once.
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.
More California fraud! More Minnesota fraud! Ukraine continues pounding Russia! Murder still illegal!
Personally, this week has been an exercise in frustration, mainly due to trying to replace an old, cracked car keyfob where the results were my car refusing to turn on. Which means I’m behind on all my errands. Solved now, but it was a pain. Also, for some reason Bluehost has crapped out 429 errors more than usual today.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“New House Oversight Report Claims Walz, Ellison Were Aware of Fraud in 2019. “These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.”
Following a months-long investigation, the House Oversight Committee released a report Monday accusing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison of knowing about rampant fraud in the state’s federally funded social services programs as far back as 2019, and turning a blind eye.
The investigation also draws on testimony Walz and Ellison provided during a March hearing before the committee.
The 205-page report, titled “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion,” states that Walz and Ellison:
Possessed the legal and procedural authority to stop payments and ban fraudulent providers from participating in these programs, but repeatedly failed to act. As a result, billions of American taxpayer dollars were potentially paid to fraudulent actors. These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.
Testimony and documents obtained to date establish a consistent pattern: fraud warnings were elevated to the most senior levels of the Minnesota state government, meaningful corrective action was delayed or avoided, and payments continued long after credible signs of fraud emerged.
Senior officials in Governor Walz’s office and Attorney General Ellison’s office were aware of credible, systemic fraud concerns in social services programs as early as 2019 within the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and by April 2020 within the state Department of Education (MDE), despite later public statements by Governor Walz suggesting otherwise.
The committee concluded that Minnesota officials had ample authority to suspend payments to providers suspected of fraud but repeatedly failed to do so. Investigators found that state agencies continued funding Feeding Our Future even after identifying serious deficiencies, allowing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to flow to fraudsters until federal authorities intervened.
Of course they were aware. It was a major conduit for lining the pockets of the left!
California is home to the lion’s share of illegal immigrant families in the United States with children who received federal welfare assistance in 2024, according to a federal report published on June 10.
More than 80 percent of all nationwide cash assistance allocated to such households was spent in California. The report tracked $759 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spent in 2024 on families headed by a parent living in the country illegally.
In those cases, the child qualified for federal welfare, even though the parent was excluded from the federal program because of immigration status.
“These cases receive relatively little public attention, yet … data show that they are far from a negligible part of the program,” wrote authors David Swegle, director of the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, in the report.
Nationally, the federal government paid 85,000 households with qualifying children receiving assistance who were living with their illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. in 2024.
“Although the benefit is formally paid on behalf of the child, it still supports a household that includes an immigration-status-ineligible parent,” the authors stated. “The significance of these cases therefore cannot be judged solely by the fact that the adult is not the formal recipient.”
The cases are also significant because they don’t have to adhere to the TANF rules requiring work expectations, such as regularly applying for jobs, and the payments aren’t limited to the federal 60-month lifetime limit, according to the report. The illegal immigrant families, therefore, can receive federal welfare until the child turns 18 years old.
Low-income American families are held to the federal welfare restrictions that require work participation and are restricted to a 60-month lifetime limit, the authors said.
The number of TANF cases involving an illegal immigrant parent reached nearly 850,000—or 10 percent of all cases—in 2024, up from nearly 6 percent in 2001.
Of those, nearly 78,000 households—or about 91 percent—also received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the report revealed.
Most of the illegal immigrant parents—over 106,000—identified as Hispanic, while 5.3 percent were White, 4.3 percent were Black, and 2 percent were Asian, the report stated.
Here’s an idea: California doesn’t get any more cash for illegal aliens, period, until they repeal all the sanctuary city declarations, allow federal auditing of all their welfare programs, and implement SAVE Act compliant measures to ensure only citizens vote.
More Cali fraud: “Federal Government Pauses Funding To Los Angeles Homeless Agency Citing Fraud Allegations.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on June 11 suspended federal funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), cutting off millions of dollars to the L.A. region, over allegations of fraud and widespread mismanagement.
It’s superbly managed to line the pockets of leftists.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development about his department’s proposed FY2026 budget in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 14, 2026. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
HUD action to suspend federal funding comes in the wake of an investigation into LAHSA, Secretary Scott Turner announced Thursday, adding that the agency has “uncovered evidence of LAHSA’s false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures,” including a lack of financial management and lack of safeguards against conflicts of interest.
The Los Angeles Continuum of Care (CoC), led by LAHSA, has received nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars over the last five years. Despite federal assistance, L.A. remains the epicenter of the nation’s “drug-fueled” homeless crisis, according to Turner.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD will fund results, not corrupt failure or the homeless-industrial complex,” Turner said in a statement. “Year after year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled to LAHSA with little accountability. Meanwhile, homelessness skyrocketed. Taxpayers will no longer bankroll an organization that puts its own self-interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve.”
HUD stated in a letter to LAHSA that suspension of funding will be final if the agency does not contest the notice by requesting a hearing. LAHSA must file a written hearing request within 30 days of receipt of the notice.
The Homeless Industrial Complex maw is insatiable.
A possible reason for my continued unemployment? “Of the 369,000 jobs the Labor Department says were created since the start of Trump’s second term, nearly all — 348,000 of them — went to women, with only 21,000 going to men.” I wonder if Kurt Schlichter would be interested in filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of myself and other men…
One year after Frisco high school student Karmelo Anthony was indicted on murder charges over the fatal stabbing of [Austin Metcalf], his trial concluded with the jury’s verdict that Anthony is guilty of murder.
During their sentencing deliberations, the jury considered a “sudden passion” claim, but eventually rejected it and decided that Anthony would face a 35-year prison sentence.
He will be eligible for parole after 17 and a half years.
Like Kyle Rittenhouse’s not guilty verdict, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who doesn’t view the world through social justice-tinted glasses.
“Whistleblower vindicated: Biden officials invented loophole to impose gender identity, flout court. Leaders ‘actively engaged in efforts to thwart at least one regional office from following the plain and unambiguous meaning’ of the injunction against their gender identity reading of Title IX, Department of Education concludes.”
High-ranking Biden administration officials conspired to violate a 2022 court order against their interpretation of Title IX as covering “gender identity” within the definition of “sex,” and may have also tried to conceal those efforts through coercion and intimidation, according to a Department of Education report made public Wednesday after lengthy outside review.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel told President Trump the department “fully substantiated the allegations” by whistleblower Timothy Mattson, who now leads the department’s Office for Civil Rights’ regional office in Kansas City, recommending sanctions against current and former officials and compensation for Mattson for the risk he took coming forward.
You know the giant Democrat tantrum over ICE funding? We won.
Democrats put everything they had in their effort to shut down President Donald Trump’s border control plans. And what exactly have they achieved for their often-infantile antics?
Well, let’s see. This week, the House passed a bill that funds ICE for three years. Deportations are near all-time highs. Oh, and it looks like Trump’s border wall will be completed next year.
On Tuesday, the House passed a “budget reconciliation” bill that provides enough money ($38 billion) to fund ICE for the rest of Trump’s term, plus $28 billion for the Border Patrol, and another $5 billion for border security technology and screening.
And what did Democrats get for shutting down all or part of the government for nearly four months?
Bupkus. Zilch. Nada. Nichts. Niente. 没有什么.This has to be one of the most embarrassing political defeats in history.
If Border Czar Tom Homan is intimidated by the Left’s endless anti-ICE rhetoric and threats, he’s not showing it. In fact, on Monday, he announced he’s doubling down on illegal immigrant operations in New York City and plans a surge in the very near future. This is a direct “in your face” move to counter Gov. Kathy Hochul’s efforts to kneecap federal enforcement in the Empire State.
He spoke as ongoing violent anti-ICE protests continued throughout the weekend at Delaney Hall, a detention facility in nearby Newark, New Jersey.
It’s coming, he told Fox & Friends:
Trump border czar Tom Homan revealed Monday that the administration has already drawn up an operational plan and warned Hochul before she signed legislation late last month restricting ICE activities and banning masked immigration agents in New York.
“You’re going to see more ICE than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan said, according to Bloomberg. “I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming.”
Maine Democrats obeyed The Will of The Party and lined up yo vote for the Nazi.”
Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued progressive veteran, will win the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate race, according to a projection by the Associated Press.
Maine Governor Janet Mills suspended her own Senate primary campaign on April 30, effectively handing the nomination to Platner.
Platner has painted himself as an outsider to the Democratic establishment since his fiery campaign launch last fall. In line with those of other progressive and populist candidates, Platner’s political bid has focused on working-class issues, including affordability, universal health care, and labor union relations.
He will advance to face Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins in November. Collins is seen as a moderate Republican, often crossing party lines to vote with Democrats. However, because Collins appeals to a more moderate, centrist bloc of voters, she has received backlash from her supporters on several occasions for voting with her own party, including her vote to advance the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018.
The Senate campaign has been rocked by controversies since last year. In October, CNN and several other outlets uncovered Platner’s past Reddit posts and comments, which included offensive comments about police and sexual assault survivors. He’s since been ensnared in a number of other scandals, including those involving his Nazi tattoo, his marital infidelity, and his past treatment of women.
Remember all that self-serving “when they go low, we go high” blather Democrats mouthed to further the laughable illusion of their moral superiority? They never meant it.
“Trump ally Nikol Pashinyan wins Armenian election, paving way for US-backed peace deal.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party won a majority in the country’s parliamentary elections, marking a victory for Donald Trump after the president endorsed him.
Pashinyan first took power in 2018 in the so-called Velvet Revolution, then won again in the 2021 snap elections triggered by his crushing loss of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War against Azerbaijan. Armenia held its first regular election since he first took power in 2018 on Sunday, during which he won reelection with a vote total far above his closest rival.
The latest preliminary results on Monday gave Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party 49.82% of the vote, the Associated Press reported, with the pro-Russian Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia bloc coming in second with 23.28% of the vote. The Armenia Alliance bloc led by former President Robert Kocharyan is hovering around 10%, while the rest of the splintered opposition remained in the mid to low single digits.
He beat three pro-Russian parties, another black eye for Putin.
Two independent candidates for U.S. Senate have fundraising profiles on ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s key fundraising platform, raising questions about the candidates’ true political independence as they look to capture two long-held Republican seats this fall.
ActBlue allows independent candidates to fundraise on its platforms on a “case-by-case basis,” based on whether a Democrat is in the race, the candidate has an endorsement from the Democratic Party, or the candidate has demonstrated alignment with the Democratic Party’s ideals and policy goals.
But both independent candidates — Seth Bodnar in Montana and Dan Osborn in Nebraska — are running against Democrats, as well as Republicans. While the Nebraska Democratic Party has endorsed Osborn, Bodnar has not received an official Democratic endorsement.
Speaking of ActBlue shenanigans: “Clinton-Appointed Federal Judge Bars Texas AG Paxton’s Lawsuit Against ActBlue.”
A federal judge has barred Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from pursuing his state court lawsuit against ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising platform.
President Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled Thursday that the case represented no more than a retaliation campaign for ActBlue’s political activities supporting Paxton’s opponent in the 2026 U.S. Senate race.
Stearns issued a preliminary injunction preventing Paxton from pursuing the Texas case. The judge found the lawsuit attempted to undermine protected political speech and therefore violated the First Amendment.
“The truth is plain and captured in Paxton’s own declarations: The lawsuit was filed in retaliation for (and in an attempt to suppress) ActBlue’s efforts to fund Talarico’s campaign,” Stearns wrote in the ruling.
Neither Paxton’s office nor ActBlue immediately returned a request for comment.
Paxton filed the initial lawsuit in April in Texas state court as he campaigned as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat.
The suit singled out ActBlue, a Massachusetts-based fundraising platform that claims to have raised billions for Democratic candidates and causes since its founding in 2004. It sought civil penalties and an order blocking ActBlue from accepting certain gift card donations.
The Texas attorney general alleged that ActBlue employed deceptive practices after the fundraising platform resumed gift card and foreign prepaid debit card donations after informing Congress that it had ceased conducting the transactions. Paxton alleged the practices could empower foreign nationals to hide their identities while making political contributions, potentially in violation of state law.
Under Sterns logic, no Republican could ever sue ActBlue for breaking the law because they ran against Democrats using the platform to raise money.
SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk a trillionaire. Maybe he could give me a million to run an anti-Social justice Warrior center here in Austin…
“Basic Health Fixes Doctors Know Work But Can’t Make Money From.” I do own dogs and cook at home for all but one meal a week, but only do strength training once a week.
“How Japan Finally Made It Impossible to Make Babies.” Women in the workforce + culture of overwork + high Tokyo prices = shrinking population. And the rest of the west faces similar (if less currently less severe) demographic problems.
Everyone and their dog is already reporting on how California’s Democratic fraud machine stole a runoff spot from Spencer Pratt and gave it to Nithya Raman so they could prevent a Republican from even having a chance of being elected mayor of Los Angeles. The steal was so brazen (just like those 3 AM ballot dumps in 2020), either Democrats feel immune to DOJ prosecution, or else the graft they rake of Los Angeles is so vital for running the entire Democrat machine they can’t even risk Pratt getting into a runoff.
But that’s not the only fraud news out of California, so let’s have a quick roundup.
Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey, also known as “Anika,” entered a plea to one count of paying another person to register to vote, a federal charge that carries a penalty of up to five years behind bars.
Sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 31.
According to her plea agreement, for nearly 20 years, Armstrong periodically worked as a “petition circulator.” In that role, she was paid by coordinators to collect voter signatures on official petitions that qualify initiatives, referendums and recalls for California state ballots. Prosecutors said Armstrong drove around the Los Angeles area to find registered voters to sign the petitions.
After gathering enough signatures, Armstrong returned the petitions to her coordinators, who then paid her a set amount for each registered voter’s signature. The amount she was paid varied depending on the specific ballot initiative. Because her coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, Armstrong endeavored to ensure the people who signed her petitions were registered voters, court papers show.
Armstrong admitted soliciting signatures in Skid Row, a convenient place for the defendant to collect signatures because of its high concentration of people in a relatively small area who were willing to sign petitions in exchange for cash.
Armstrong regularly paid amounts between $2 and $3 to induce people to sign her petitions, officials said.
Prosecutors said some homeless people did not have an address to put on the forms, so on occasion, Armstrong provided her own former address in Los Angeles to write on the registration form. Such registration forms simultaneously registered an individual to vote in California elections and in federal elections.
“This is not an allegation, this is not a theory, this is an example of admitted voter fraud,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said when Armstrong was charged. “We’re going to aggressively prosecute voter fraud.”
A video shot by conservative media figure James O’Keefe and reposted by an account called “Real America’s Voice” showed a woman handing cash to a homeless person. In a post on social media, O’Keefe said his video led to Armstrong being charged.
Essayli said on June 5 that his office has “multiple” probes underway into alleged voting fraud. While declining to provide any specifics, he pointed to the Armstrong case as an example of the sort of thing he is investigating.
“Yes, there is evidence of election fraud in California,” he said.
Nithya Raman is the Zohran Mamdani of Los Angeles. She is an extremely wealthy champagne socialist who wants Los Angeles to become even more “progressive” than it has under current Democratic Mayor Karen Bass.
She was a solid 8 points behind Republican reality star Spencer Pratt on Election Day.
As many people anticipated, over the last week, the distant 3rd-place Raman has managed to overcome her deficit despite her dismal polling and debate performance.
You can see how Raman SURGED in the mail-in count:
This “DEMOCRACY IN ACTION” is a statistical impossibility. Theoretically, the math is possible, but it has never happened in history. The odds are so unlikely that the human mind is incapable of comprehending it.
Snip.
California’s list of “registered voters” includes numerous fake and deceased individuals. Millions of fake, illegal, and dead people could be voting for specific, targeted candidates, and no one has audited the rolls to make sure it isn’t all a scam….
In May, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 73, a law that bans election observers from challenging signatures on ballot envelopes. Voters are also not required to sign their own ballots. A witness can do that for them.
There is now no mechanism to challenge these ballot dumps.
I would imagine the Democrat advantage must be D+40% or greater within the confines of the City of Los Angeles itself. Yes, there are millions of zombies in the Golden State that are unwilling to associate its tremendous decline with Democrat “leadership” or change their voting patterns to replicate those found in successful large states, such as Texas or Florida; and then there is the massive cheating, which keeps California blue against insurgents or in red wave years.
All of those things made it unlikely Pratt could prevail against Bass in November; however, the risk was too great and stood to disrupt the future California’s elite planners have envisioned. He had to go down now:
Pratt has garnered a lot of attention in recent weeks with masterfully produced, Artificial Intelligence-driven advertisements showing him mocking the elites, solving problems, and enjoying a healthy Los Angeles with a diverse coalition of voters. When you think about it, it’s a brilliant idea. Even the most skilled professionals and busy people in the world readily admit screen addiction is a problem as they are unable to estimate how often they unlock their phones to take a peek at the latest notifications, updates, and news stories. I’ve tried to convince Rachel that putting signs out at every intersection is a colossal waste of time that moves precisely zero votes, and a large reason I believe that is because people are now addicted to devices and more likely to click a viral advertisement than they are to scan the signs at the intersection or dig through the pile of mail on the countertop to review candidate policy positions.
Pratt knows the statistics are against him, but they were against Arnold Schwarzenegger too, and 17 years before California truly figured out how to rig elections. Arnold won L.A. County and didn’t win it with any sort of GOP registration advantage or party infrastructure. In fact, today’s LAGOP is still run by people who are too afraid to offend their captors by calling the uncontrolled mail-in voting system the fraudulent system that it is. In order to capture the attention of hundreds of thousands of non-Republicans he needs to win, something different has to occur.
Pratt’s marketing campaign must be replicated by urban Republicans who are crashing against the rocks trying to focus on social issues and boardroom conservatism when they could attract voters in great numbers by solving issues of crime, homelessness, and urban malaise. Those ideas are brought to life in the minds of younger voters by using technology to our advantage rather than doing things “the way we’ve always done it.” The California Democrat machine knew it couldn’t deal with another five months of relentless mockery (Alinsky’s fifth rule for radicals) by Pratt and keep its fragile coalition in one piece.
“US attorney accuses California of blocking voter roll audit. Federal prosecutors have sued California to release voter registration records, saying universal vote-by-mail and no voter ID system creates conditions for fraud.”
Federal prosecutors have accused California of denying them access to voter registration records, as a larger legal battle over voter roll maintenance unfolds in federal court.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli announced Saturday that his office was partnering with the FBI on multiple election fraud investigations.
In a social media post on Sunday, he said that California was refusing to comply with a federal request for voter registration records, which the DOJ said was needed to audit the state’s vote.
“We also have serious concerns about how California maintains its voter rolls. There are open questions about whether the state is promptly removing deceased voters, people who have moved, and individuals convicted of disqualifying felonies,” he wrote on X, asking, “What are they afraid of?”
Essayli said that California’s voting system allows voters to register using ID that “most Americans find surprising,” such as gym membership cards, employer ID cards, credit/debit cards, prescription drug labels, and insurance cards, noting that California provides free health coverage to undocumented immigrants.
California also allows third parties to collect and submit ballots on the voters’ behalf, making it “difficult to track who actually received, completed, and submitted each ballot,” Essayli said.
The dispute comes from a lawsuit filed by the DOJ against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber. Essayli said that the lawsuit to force the hand-over of the state’s voter registration rolls was now before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
He also said the Justice Department has been trying to audit California’s voter rolls for more than a year and that federal law gives the U.S. attorney general authority to review voter files and confirm that only eligible U.S. citizens were voting in federal elections.
Federal officials have argued that they have authority to review state voter registration records according to the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act.
here are some facts about California. some of this is hard to believe.
first of all, it’s important to understand the concept of “ballot harvesting,” which is perfectly legal in CA. this refers to a situation where someone completely unaffiliated with the voter can collect and submit their ballot for them.
this flow is completely legal:
– a homeless person arrives in LA, where they are eligible for cash assistance, SSI, food stamps, healthcare through medical, and an array of other taxpayer-funded services
– they are registered to vote by an NGO (many such NGOs exist and explicitly do this).
– they do not have to provide a residential address or any proof of residency to vote. they only have to provide a mailing address, which can be anywhere (church, NGO HQ, homeless shelter). their home address can be “a park” or “an underpass”.
– their ballot is mailed to the homeless shelter (or whatever address the NGO elects for them)
– the only verification done for the mail-in ballot is “signature verification” and uniqueness (only one vote per person is counted theoretically).
– the signature can be an X. if they register with an X, they can sign with an X. that is sufficient to pass verification. signature verification is also deliberately loose. the signature does not have to be a perfect match.
now consider the hypothetical scenario, which is fraudulent, but virtually impossible to detect:
– a homeless person cycles through the LA system. they get registered with their mailing address listed as the NGO HQ or homeless shelter
– they “sign” their registration with an X or nondescript, easily replicable signature
– they disappear. never seen again. or they exist, but it doesn’t matter. they don’t get purged from the voter rolls for 4-8 years typically.
– the address where they registered receives their ballot for several cycles
– operatives are aware that they have X amount of votes to make up. they fill in X many thousand mail-in ballots themselves. the ballots are manually postmarked (permitted). they forge the signature to match whatever signature (could be an X) was submitted upon registration
– ballots can be accepted even if they are postmarked at 11.59 pm. polls closed at 8 pm. (you would need an accomplice who is a USPS employee)
– the only fraud checks are de-duplication (if the homeless person through some miracle voted in person, only one of their ballots would be counted) and signature verification
– because very few of the homeless people in question would have voted in person, this gives NGO operatives tens of thousands of possible mail-in ballots to submit unilaterally.
the big problem is that there is NO way to detect this type of fraud. NGOs that register homeless people to vote exist. that isn’t a secret. ballot harvesting is fully legal. voting by mail is encouraged. signature verification is as loose as possible. de-duplication doesn’t solve anything, since few homeless people vote in person. and no one in power locally is going to spend political capital on rooting out such fraud, since they are all wholeheartedly committed to “voting rights”.
in a situation where fraud is undetectable, the absence of hard proof of fraud is not evidence that no fraud exists.
Raman has gained around 20k votes since election night. She is around 3k votes ahead of Pratt now.
there are over 72 thousand homeless people in LA county.
More Blue State welfare fraud uncovered, some of which gets shipped overseas, more Russian oil refineries knocked out of action, a CIA operative with a fortune in gold, and trouble at a Texas dam. Plus: Puppies!
Food stamps and food pantries are intended to keep struggling Americans fed.
What we found is that, in some communities, that food never reaches an American table. Instead, it gets shipped overseas and sold for profit.
The scheme works like this. Residents in cities like Lawrence, Massachusetts collect food through two channels: purchasing it at local markets using EBT cards, and picking it up for free from food banks and churches. That food is then packed into large blue barrels, dropped off at shipping companies, and sent by container ship to the Dominican Republic. Once it arrives, it is sold for profit in local stores. The people doing this see nothing wrong with it. In many cases, they do it openly.
According to a local that assisted us with this story, this fraud has been happening for over a decade.
Over the course of several weeks, Muckraker Foundation traced the full pipeline from food pantry lines in Lawrence, Massachusetts, through shipping warehouses in New York, to store shelves in Santo Domingo. This is what we found.
Lawrence is a small city about 30 miles north of Boston. It has the highest concentration of Dominican immigrants of any city in Massachusetts, and the highest rate of SNAP enrollment in the state.
John has been delivering goods in Lawrence for over 11 years, six days a week, 35 stops a day. He knows the community intimately.
“I’ve been witnessing the Dominican residents going to food bank lines and collecting non-perishable goods,” he told us, “and then packing it in barrels and in boxes, and then they ship it back to the Dominican Republic.”
“California Assembly passes “Stop Nick Shirley Act” to prevent people from uncovering fraud.”
If the bill passes the state senate, “it would become criminal to film and reveal information on taxpayer-funded immigration services like healthcare, which would include daycare, and hospices; it also covers counseling services, translation services, and immigration legal services.”
How is this not prima facia evidence that collecting fraud and graft is the highest priority of the Democrat Party?
And speaking of Democrats protecting fraud: “Seattle socialist mayor will NOT investigate fraud at Somali-run daycare centers, calls it attack on immigrants.”
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said the city has no intention of investigating fraud claims in taxpayer-funded social programs, claiming the concerns are an effort to target immigrant communities rather than address legitimate financial irregularities.
In an interview with KOMO News, Wilson was asked if she had authorized the Seattle Police Department or the city’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to investigate fraud charges involving daycare providers, particularly those in Somali and other immigrant communities. The mayor responded: “No.”
“This whole issue is not really about fraud,” said Wilson. “It’s about dividing and conquering.”
Translation: We can’t let people investigate fraud as long as Democrats are the ones raking off the graft. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
During a Wednesday cabinet meeting, Small Business Administration Chief Kelly Loeffler accused the Biden administration of concealing a staggering amount of fraud tied to the federal government’s pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program. She claimed that rather than aggressively working to recover the funds, officials tried “to hide and forgive and sweep under the rug” roughly $200 billion in “fraudulent PPP loans.” The explosive allegation, if substantiated, would represent one of the largest fraud scandals in government history.
Loeffler told colleagues that small business owners are “hit particularly hard by fraud because they’re some of our biggest taxpayers in the country.” She continued:
Think about it. At the SBA, we found $200 billion in fraudulent PPP loans that the Biden administration tried to hide and forgive and sweep under the rug.
We’ve turned the first $22 billion of that over to Treasury for collection and to DOJ for prosecution. Our inspector general is already announcing that people are going to jail.
…
We’ve announced that 140,000 people have been barred from ever getting SBA loans again — defrauding the government of about $9 billion. So we are going to continue our work under the great leadership of Vice President Vance and appreciate the partnership because it’s really accelerated our ability to get the job done.
She later posted a video of her remarks on X along with the following statement: “During the Biden Admin, PPP and EIDL [the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program] became some of THE MOST defrauded federal programs in U.S. history – robbing honest small business owners and taxpayers of vital pandemic relief, to the tune of $200 billion. … Under the leadership of @POTUS, the SBA is delivering long-awaited accountability for every criminal fraudster that the last Administration tried to forgive or sweep under the rug.”
If you subtracted fraud, madness and spite from social justice and the Democrat Party, you’d have almost nothing left.
Three oil tanks hit which were in between the units. Then hits on the connecting pipelines and the loading cranes as well surrounding the unit. Additionally, two additional oil tanks here were hit as well. So this was a pretty massive strike. As a result of this, it’s been estimated that between 90 to even 100% of the refinery’s processing capacity is out.
A war that looked like it was a grinding stalemate being fought to the last Russian or Ukrainian is looking increasingly like one that Ukraine is actually winning.
Ukraine’s tactical victories on the battlefield, as impressive as they are, won’t ensure victory. And as fascinating and gruesome as the videos of first-person drones on the battlefield are, those only explain why Ukraine is able to hold Russian advances back, and the modest gains on the battlefield Ukraine has made in retaking small bits of occupied territory.
Ukraine has mastered drone warfare on the battlefield, and even more importantly, has built an incredibly resilient and innovative system that adjusts hardware, software, and tactics at a blistering pace that Russia could not hope to achieve with its clunky and corrupt procurement and training systems. That explains Ukraine’s increasingly solid tactical position; unpredictably, Ukraine is now its own most important weapons supplier, and is now teaching the rest of the world how modern warfare is conducted on the ground.
But Russia can take a punch in the same way that Andre the Giant could. Ukraine needs strategic victories, and until, ironically, Trump weaned them off the teat of the West to the extent they were dependent completely on the West, all Ukraine could do was fight at the tactical level, guaranteeing a stalemate.
At the same time that Trump reduced American aid, he also allowed Ukraine to take the gloves off and to put Russian assets in Russia at risk, and the results are stunning. Not only have the tactical battle lines extended into Russia, making logistics infinitely harder, but Ukraine is now systematically dismantling key parts of Russia’s economic engine and weapons production facilities.
Virtually all major oil refineries in central Russia have been forced to halt or scale back fuel output following Ukrainian drone attacks in recent days, according to official data and sources.
The combined capacity of refineries that have fully or partially halted operations exceeds 83 million metric tons per year, or around 238,000 tons per day. That accounts for around one quarter of Russia’s total refining capacity, according to data and sources who spoke on condition of anonymity…
One of Russia’s largest refineries, Kirishi, with capacity of 20 million metric tons per year, has been fully shut since May 5, according to the sources.”
If you regularly read the LinkSwarm, most of this will be familiar to you. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Here’s a strange story with some disturbing implications: “FBI arrests former CIA official over $40 million worth of gold bars stashed at Virginia home.”
The FBI arrested a former CIA official last week after investigators discovered hundreds of gold bars hidden at his home in Virginia, according to court documents reported by NBC News on Wednesday.
The official, identified as David Rush, was charged with criminal theft of public money in a complaint filed last week in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has also been accused of lying to employers about his background for nearly two decades.
The CIA and FBI confirmed Rush’s arrest to the outlet in a joint statement and said CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred Rush for a criminal investigation.
“After a CIA internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the FBI for a law enforcement investigation,” the statement said. “The FBI is working closely with our partners at the CIA and the Department of Justice as we continue to investigate this matter fully. We are committed to following the facts, ensuring accountability, and pursuing justice in accordance with the law.”
The arrest comes after the FBI raided Rush’s home in Virginia on May 18, where law enforcement officers found more than 300 gold bars, which are estimated to be worth more than $40 million combined, according to the New York Times.
The court papers do not indicate why Rush kept so much gold, but it comes after he requested and received “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses,” which the CIA was later unable to locate.
“Work-related expenses.” What sort of “work-related expenses” involve tens of millions of dollars in gold bars? Bribing officials? Buying cocaine?
Faster, please. “US Probe of Embattled UN Gaza Relief Agency Expands to 1,500 Staffers Suspected of Hamas Ties: UNRWA Could Soon Be Labeled a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Texas’ Supreme Court has ordered a Travis County judge to quit avoiding a critical question in the fight over Austin’s troubled rail construction plan, known as Project Connect.
In a May 22 ruling, the Court said trial courts can’t simply refuse to rule on jurisdictional challenges to avoid triggering appeals. Chief Justice James Blacklock didn’t mince words, writing that “nothing about this scenario is as it should be.”
The ruling clarifies that courts may not ignore jurisdictional challenges while proceeding to trial, something that will be relevant to a similar case in which the City of McKinney is suing its own citizens to expeditiously validate its airport expansion bonds.
In 2020, Austin voters approved Proposition A, which authorized a property tax increase to fund Project Connect. The original plan promised 20.2 miles of light rail, subway, rapid bus routes, and connections to the airport.
The City of Austin formed a corporation called Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) to implement the project and issue the bonds.
However, the project was significantly scaled back by 2022.
What remained was a 9.8-mile surface line with no subway and no airport link. Community members argued the new plan constituted a “bait and switch,” since voters never approved the scaled-down version.
This led a group of taxpayers to file a lawsuit in 2023 to stop ATP’s bond issuance.
In response, the City of Austin and ATP filed a lawsuit against its own citizens under the Texas Expedited Declaratory Judgement Act (EDJA), seeking to validate the bonds and throw out any legal challenges they may face—including the pending taxpayer lawsuit.
This little-known law allows bond issuers—including cities—to file an expedited declaratory bond-validation lawsuit against a very broad group of defendants, including all taxpayers, property owners, or residents whose rights might be affected by the bonds.
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is automatically served in EDJA cases and is tasked with informing the court whether the bonds comply with Texas law.
“Issuing authority” details snipped.
Last week, Texas’ Supreme Court ruled in the OAG’s favor, finding that a jurisdictional challenge must always be addressed before proceeding to the merits.
“Proceeding to trial without first resolving the State’s challenge to the court’s authority to do so was an abuse of the district court’s otherwise broad discretion to manage the progress of the case,” reads the opinion.
Chief Justice James Blacklock did not hold back in writing the opinion of the Court.
“Nothing about this scenario is as it should be,” wrote Blacklock. “A court may not withhold a ruling on the government’s properly presented plea to the jurisdiction in order to prevent the government from appealing. And the government may not appeal from an interlocutory order that does not exist.”
The Court therefore construed the OAG’s petition for review as a petition for writ of mandamus that would order the lower court to issue a ruling on the jurisdictional challenge.
“The writ will issue only if the court does not do so. The judgment of the court of appeals is undisturbed,” wrote Blacklock.
Now, the trial court must rule on the OAG’s jurisdictional challenge. If the court denies the plea, the OAG gets an automatic appeal that pauses everything. If the court grants it, ATP’s bond validation suit gets tossed.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution outlining the locations of drop boxes for the upcoming early-voting period without consulting Recorder Justin Heap.
The board approved the resolution while it continues to deal with an ongoing lawsuit with Heap about who runs specific election functions.
In April, a judge ruled in favor of Heap, saying the board members need to hand over control of specific election functions to his office.
The board sought a stay of the motion, but the Arizona Superior Court denied it. The board then announced it was appealing the lower court’s decision.
Snip.
Heap said he was not consulted before the board approved the resolution Wednesday on drop-box locations.
“The law is not optional,” he said. “The court has already ruled that the Board does not possess unlimited authority over election administration, yet the Board continues attempting to exercise powers Arizona law assigns to the recorder.”
He also said: “Voters deserve lawful, professional election administration, not political gamesmanship and last-minute public ambushes.”
How are they supposed to manufacture votes for Democrats at the last minute without controlling the boxes?
“MSNOW Senior Washington Correspondent [Eugene Daniels] Thinks Abortion and Trans Kids Are ‘Kitchen Table Issues.’ ‘When you talk about whether or not people can have access to healthy abortions—safe abortions, that is a kitchen table issue, right?'”
Shelby Campbell…is a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary for the 13th Congressional District, which includes portions of Detroit and some of its suburbs.
She has built her campaign around provocation — relying on edgy rhetoric, inflammatory stunts, and degrading online content to attract attention. Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, she released a new video urging voters to “quit thanking the troops for sacrificing their lives” for their country.
Snip.
I don’t want to thank these men and women who join the military because they had no other option. Like, they didn’t want to go to school. They didn’t have the resources. They don’t have the knowledge. They don’t have people to like, love them. And, [yawning] they go into the military. Military preys on more rural populations.
She evidently learned nothing from John Kerry’s presidential campaign…
Did Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey honor America’s fallen warriors on Memorial Day? No. He honored George Floyd.
“Come meet the all Native American ICE troop ‘The Shadow Wolves.'” “ICE apparently has an all American Indian squadron who patrol the Mexican border in the Sonoran Desert. Their job is primarily to use native tactics to track down and stop narcos and human traffickers on the southern border.”
“Texas woman says she was arrested for making Facebook posts about town’s water quality.” “Jennifer Combs says she would complain on Facebook about the brown water coming out of her faucet in Trinidad, Texas, and then every time the police would show up afterwards. Eventually, she says, she was arrested.” Sounds like a clear First Amendment violation.
Chicago: “39 people shot, 5 cops seriously injured at black teen ‘takeovers’ during Memorial Day weekend.”
“26-year-old man arrested over bomb and death threats targeting Erika Kirk.” “Jacob Wenske, 26, was arrested Wednesday night in San Antonio…Wenske was charged with two third-degree felony counts of making a terroristic threat with the intent to impair public service, create public fear of serious bodily injury and influence government conduct, legal filings revealed.”
Livingston Dam in Texas, where Houston gets most of its drinking water, is deteriorating.
A food emergency: “Some of Texas’s oldest barbecue joints close as meat prices skyrocket Even the state’s most celebrated restaurants are struggling to remain open as costs climb, with no relief in sight.”
More of the Democrat election fraud that doesn’t exist, more Democrat welfare state fraud, a commie scumbag gets indicted, Ukraine returns to hammering Russia’s oil infrastructure, a very busy week for Kash Patel, the BBC wants us to sympathize with Muslims who enable child rape, and the best bagels in America are found in…Dallas?
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Left’s election fraud denials crumble as DOJ exposes two-decade-long California cheating scheme. FBI Director Kash Patel says prior administrations looked the other way on election cheating but ‘those days are over.'”
Despite evidence to the contrary, liberal voting activists have spent years minimizing cheating concerns and portraying those who want to investigate such problems as “election deniers.”
But the FBI and the departments of Justice and Homeland Security are now systematically exposing electoral fraud – from non-citizen voting to ballot-box-stuffing schemes that are turning the table in epic fashion.
The latest strike came Monday when a longtime voting activist in California reached a deal with federal prosecutors to admit to illegally paying homeless people to sign election petitions and paying people to register to vote. The two-decade scheme allegedly leveraged the Democrat-run state’s lax mail-in voting system, which sends ballot forms to everyone whether they ask for them or not.
The felony charge and plea deal announced Monday against Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina Del Ray, Calif., not only signals an investigation into others, it likely will provide legal fodder to the Justice Department’s efforts to force California to turn over its voter registration database to look for other abuses.
That case, and others like it against blue states, are working their way through the federal courts in a major initiative led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
Prosecutors said Armstrong spent two decades collecting ballot registration forms, including in California’s high-profile voter initiatives. On occasion, Brown targeted homeless people on Skid Row in Los Angeles, offering them money to fill out forms, and even sometimes letting them use her own address to put on the forms.
The plea deal mentioned Armstrong was paid by “coordinators” to gather signatures for ballots, and she used some of that money to enlist people to register to vote and sign petitions.
“Because her coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, Armstrong endeavored to ensure the people who signed her petitions were registered voters,” the DOJ said in announcing the plea deal.
“Armstrong regularly paid and offered to pay individuals cash, usually in amounts between $2 and $3, to induce them to sign her petitions,” DOJ said, adding in January she “knowingly and willfully paid another person to register to vote. She paid the person for the purpose of causing that person to register to vote in federal elections.”
Democrats have hundreds of ways to cheat in elections, and one by one the Trump Administration is shutting them down and prosecuting the perps.
A vast improvement: “Trump administration had full year of zero border releases.”
While campaigning in 2024, President Donald Trump pledged to fix the nation’s broken immigration system, a system exacerbated by the rogue incompetence of the Biden administration. Now, after 18 months into his second term, Trump has maintained his excellence in border security and upheld his campaign promise regarding illegal immigration, as the Trump administration has achieved a year of zero releases at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Whereas the Biden administration wantonly permitted, if not outright encouraged, border security agencies to release illegal immigrants into the United States, Trump has ensured such ineptitudes would not happen under his watch. After innocent victims such as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, and many others were murdered by violent illegal immigrants, the Trump administration utilized every possible avenue to ensure that such atrocities would not recur. The first barrier to accomplishing this was limiting border releases.
It is a remarkable success that shows the country’s border security issues stem from failed leadership and a failed president. Biden’s atrocious border policies made the country more dangerous. Trump’s policies made the country safe again. It’s a success that should not go unrecognized.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin touted the historic feat in a press release.
“Twelve straight months of ZERO releases at the border. Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, we are delivering the most secure border in American history,” Mullin said. “The days of catch and release are over. We are enforcing the nation’s laws and sending illegal aliens back to their home countries.”
Today – 15 individuals have been indicted for over $90 million in an alleged massive healthcare fraud scheme in Minnesota, after a sweeping FBI investigation with @TheJusticeDept
and our Interagency Partners.
These charges involve the two LARGEST Medicaid fraud cases ever charged in this district and first-of-their kind charges involving 7 additional Medicaid programs.
As alleged, the defendants defrauded Minnesota public healthcare resources for tens of millions, targeting programs such as Housing Stabilization Services, Child Care, Medicaid programs, Individualized Home Supports (IHS), and more.
In one case, defendants even developed a scheme worth over $40 million to target the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) – an autism healthcare program – paying kickbacks to parents who fraudulently used autism centers to diagnose children with autism regardless of medical necessity, and billing for services not actually provided. This not only defrauded taxpayers, but robbed valuable resources from families truly in need.
President Trump gave this law enforcement team a mandate to investigate and systematically dismantle this exact kind of public fraud in America – which grossly abuses and mismanages money from hardworking American taxpayers – and that’s exactly what we’re doing. Today’s indictment in a massive moment in this effort.
Gavin Newsom is, in many ways, the most corrupt governor in America.
By that, I don’t mean that he spends his time and effort skimming off the top to put money in his own pockets. I have no evidence that he does, although an awful lot of money flows to and through the fingers of his wife. His personal wealth is not staggering by California standards—estimated at a few tens of millions of dollars—and he has it through his relationship with the Getty Oil family. Sort of a nepo-baby once removed.
His corruption is more in the style of Putin—using power to make others rich and indebted to him, and he has pillaged the coffers of the City of San Francisco and the State of California in order to do so. The ultimate goal is ultimate power, and his path to that power has been to leverage the power he has gained at each step up the ladder to enrich a group of allies who will, in turn, fund his rise further.
In 2023 Newsom was given a bill to sign that would have required private insurers to cover hearing aids for children. Many other states require insurers to cover them.
According to NY Post, Newsom vetoed the bill and decided instead to have the state provide the hearing aids. The result was $23 million spent on hearing aids for 300 people. About $76,000 a person. About 20,000 children in CA still need hearing aids.
Well done Gavin.
The scale of Newsom’s corruption is almost beyond comprehension. California, if it were its own country, would have the fourth-largest economy in the world. Its economy is about twice the size of Russia’s, and its state budget is about 50% larger than Russia’s, despite having no war to fund against Ukraine or anybody else besides the taxpayers of California.
That gives a lot of room for corrupt spending, especially when nobody is looking to uncover it.
The other day, I took a look at Newsom’s Baby 2 Baby free diaper program, which is an obvious scam, paying highly inflated prices for cheap Mexican diapers to an NGO run by friends of his wife, who all make nice salaries.
The United States has indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro, a senior Trump administration official confirmed. A federal grand jury in Florida indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro along with five other defendants, according to court filings made public Wednesday.
The charges mark a major escalation in a long-running US legal case tied to the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft, an incident that killed four people and has remained a flashpoint in US-Cuba relations for decades.
Castro, 94, served as Cuba’s defense minister at the time of the shootdown before becoming president in 2008, following the illness of his brother Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro died in 2016.
Remember that the commie rulers have a secret corporation (GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.) that allows them to rob Cubans blind. “How is it possible for a military company to control 40% of the national economy, accumulate $14.5 billion in bank deposits, not publish financial statements, avoid paying taxes in foreign currency, and not be accountable to the National Assembly?”
Hope you enjoyed your Victory Day parade, Vlad. “Moscow Attacked By Drones: Oil Depot, Microchip Factory & Airport All Hit.” The chip factory is Angstrem, which was reportedly running some very ancient process technology indeed. But I bet a bunch of what they could produce was used by the Russian military.
Gary Grief, the former executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission, has been re-indicted in connection with a rigged jackpot following the dismissal of a prior indictment.
A summons was issued one day after Texas Scorecard originally reported that an initial indictment against Grief had been quietly dismissed by the Travis County District Attorney’s office.
The reissued indictment, a carbon copy of the first, and the new summons come amid ongoing scrutiny of the handling of the high-profile case.
Travis County District Attorney José Garza told Texas Scorecard Thursday he could not currently comment on the matter, but that his office would release more information on the case soon.
Before the latest indictment came to light, Gov. Greg Abbott called the initial dismissal “incomprehensible.”
Snip.
Court records posted to X by Dylan McKim with KXAN-AUSTIN indicate that not only was Grief summoned, but the Texas Lottery Commission itself is named. A separate indictment identifies Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd alongside Grief as “managerial agents” acting on behalf of the agency.
Notably, Ryan Mindell, Grief’s right-hand man at the Texas Lottery Commission in 2023 and his short-lived successor, is not currently summoned in connection with the case. Mindell quit the commission after lawmakers called for his removal during the 2025 legislative session.
The original indictment against Grief was secured in April 2026 on a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving more than $300,000, stemming from a rigged $95 million jackpot.
The charge came after a year-long investigation by the Texas Rangers into Grief’s controversial authorization of third-party companies that resold lottery tickets on behalf of customers, effectively enabling the online sale of Texas lottery tickets without legislative approval.
During the 2023 legislative session, Grief misled members of the Senate about resellers operating openly in Texas. The practice was ultimately outlawed during the 2025 legislative session after revelations that couriers facilitated bulk purchases, leading to a $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot win in April 2023 that was reportedly rigged by an international gambling syndicate.
Farmer and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein prevailed over Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) in a closely watched primary race on Tuesday evening, bringing to an end the most expensive U.S. House primary on record.
Massie, who has represented Kentucky’s fourth district since 2012, is one of several lawmakers to lose a seat this cycle thanks to a retribution campaign Trump has undertaken against legislators who have dared to cross him.
The bad blood between Massie and Trump dates back to the president’s first term. As early as 2020, Trump called the Kentucky Republican a “third-rate grandstander” after Massie voted against the president’s Covid-19 relief package.
While Trump and Massie seemed to make amends, with Trump endorsing Massie for reelection in 2022, the president’s second term has seen the pair butt heads repeatedly over a slew of issues, from the Iran war to tariffs.
Trump on Monday blasted Massie as an “obstructionist and a fool.”
Massie, who also controversially opposed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” worked with Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California to advance a bill in Congress to compel the Trump administration to release government files on deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Massie’s opposition to U.S. aid to Israel and his vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism made him a target of not only the president but the Republican Jewish Coalition and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as well. Both groups have spent more than $4 million on anti-Massie ads.
You can stray from the party on an issue or two and still survive, but when you make a habit of working with Democrats against stated Republican priorities time after time, expect a reckoning.
Republicans have one thing going for them in the midterms: Fat stacks of cash.
The Republican National Committee ended the month of April with more cash on hand than at any other point in the group’s history, as closely contested midterm elections draw near and the fate of Republicans’s majority in the House and Senate hang in the balance.
The RNC raised $18.6 million in April, bringing its total cash on hand to $123.8 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“Republicans have the candidates, resources, and momentum needed to win the midterms, but we cannot let up now,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement. “Democrats will spend whatever it takes to try to stop President Trump’s America First agenda, which is why the RNC is already investing aggressively in our ground game and election integrity operation, including deploying 34 State Directors and Election Integrity Directors across 17 key battleground states to drive turnout and secure victories this November.”
Democrats lie to everyone, including themselves: “Harris Campaign Didn’t Go Negative Enough on Trump, DNC Autopsy Concludes.”
A newly-released Democratic National Committee report looking back at how the party lost the 2024 election concludes that then-Vice President Kamala Harris lost, in part, because she failed to focus sufficient negative attention on President Trump.
“The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,” reads the autopsy, written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, who was asked by the DNC to investigate why the party failed to wing big in 2024.
Rivera goes on to suggest that Democrats failed to remind Americans why they disliked Trump in his first term.
“The idea Trump’s negatives were ‘baked in’ is a major failure of analysis and reality, given how his favorability has cratered less than a year into this term,” he adds.
Rivera’s finding that Harris wasn’t sufficiently negative is curious given that Harris and her surrogates incessantly depicted Trump as a threat to democracy who revealed his true colors on January 6.
Harris attacked Trump repeatedly during the campaign, calling her opponent “increasingly unhinged and unstable” and telling CNN that she believed he was a fascist who wanted “unchecked power.”
Party officials interviewed hundreds of Democrats in all 50 states to create the report. Democrats had asked DNC Chairman Ken Martin for months to publicly release the findings, but Martin chose to do so only after being “presented with CNN’s reporting about much of its contents,” according to the outlet, which first obtained the nearly 200-page report.
The report is littered with notes drafted by DNC editors pointing out that many of Rivera’s claims are unsubstantiated and/or contradict publicly available reporting.
Yay think? It wasn’t the fact that, oh, Harris was a cringingly bad candidate, that Biden was an ambulatory corpse whose headless administration was a disaster for ordinary Americans thanks to inflation and letting a flood of illegal aliens enter the country, or that actual voters hate transsexual madness and social justice lunacy? But no, telling the truth would offend the Party’s toxic cadres of intersectional grievance mongers. They’d rather lie to themselves and continue to lose rather than being dragged on BlueSky.
This trucker is in Eden, Ohio, and just parked at a truck stop where he got a bite to eat at an Indian restaurant.
(Sikh Indians now own 20% of all trucking businesses in North America.)
He says foreign truckers are being hit HARD after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that logistics companies can be held liable for hiring unsafe drivers.
None of ‘em can get loads out of Ohio today. And I was talking to the Iman guy while I was in there at the Punjabi place getting something to eat, and he said that the reason they they can’t get freight out of Ohio today is because the freight workers won’t work with them anymore.
Apparently, what has happened, is yesterday they had the Supreme Court ruling that brokers could be held liable for accidents with carriers with red flags. Apparently, the trickle trickle-down effect happened like THAT.
A leftist might look at this and say it’s racist. An “inequitable” number of carriers with foreign drivers are being excluded??
Well, as it turns out, these truckers just so happen to be the ones that are the least safe.
I was looking up a few of these DoT numbers for these guys, and they do have pretty substantial track record of unsafe behavior – accidents, high out-of-service rates, things like that.
Many foreigners, even illegals, have been able to game the system, getting CDLs issued by Democrat-led states like New York and California even though they are not qualified. CDL schools run by migrants have participated in this fraud for years.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths involving 18 wheelers on U.S. roads has risen 50% in just the last 15 years. Thanks to SCOTUS, that might reverse very quickly in the near future.
As a bonus, Americans will have a chance to get back into a trucking industry that’s excluded them in favor of cheap, unsafe, illegal labor!!
The FBI announced on Wednesday that they were shutting down a scam call center in India which has defrauded hundreds of elderly Americans out of millions of dollars.
Snip.
Former CEO Adam Young, 42, of Miami, FL, and former CSO Harrison Gevirtz, 33, of Las Vegas, NV, admitted to operating a business that provided telecommunications-related services, including telephone numbers, call routing services, call tracking, and call forwarding services, to customers they knew were engaged in tech-support fraud schemes. Young and Gevirtz each pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony, in violation of federal law. They are scheduled to be sentenced on June 16, 2026. The sentences imposed will be determined by a federal district judge after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors …
Indian citizens Sahil Narang, Chirag Sachdeva, Abrar Anjum and Manish Kumar, were convicted of charges related to telemarketing fraud schemes based in the Republic of India that targeted and defrauded Americans of millions of dollars, many of them vulnerable to fraud schemes due to age or infirmity. The investigation also contributed to the conviction of another individual, Jagmeet Singh Virk, in the U.S. District Court for the Norther [sic] District of California. The investigation further revealed that call centers based in India utilized Young and Gervitz’s business to route their ‘tech fraud’ scheme calls and, in some instances, advised those fraudsters on methods intended to reduce complaints and prevent account terminations.
Now if they could just shut down every Indian company pretending to be an American company (a plague among temporary and contract work firms), that would greatly improve the situation for American job seekers.
“Texas Children’s Hospital Agrees to Create Detransition Clinic, Pay $10 Million in ‘Historic’ Settlement. The agreement stems from a years-long investigation into alleged Medicaid fraud tied to sex-change procedures on minors.”
A years-long controversy surrounding gender mutilation procedures at Texas Children’s Hospital have culminated in a sweeping settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that will force the hospital to pay $10 million, fire five doctors, halt “gender-transition” procedures, and create the nation’s first “Detransition Clinic.”
According to Paxton’s office, the settlement resolves allegations that Texas Children’s improperly billed Texas Medicaid for sex-change interventions using false diagnosis codes despite longstanding state policy prohibiting Medicaid coverage for such procedures.
Under the agreement, Texas Children’s will establish a multidisciplinary clinic intended to provide care to patients who previously underwent “gender-transition” procedures. The hospital will fully fund the clinic for at least five years, with services provided free of charge to patients.
The settlement also requires Texas Children’s to terminate and permanently revoke privileges for five physicians accused of performing the procedures. The hospital further agreed not to provide “gender-transition” services moving forward and to adopt new ethics and compliance measures.
We asked the sick leftwing freaks not to mutilate children in the name of their perverse social justice religion, and they just couldn’t help themselves.
[sigh]: “Federal Judge Again Blocks Texas Law Allowing Arrest and Deportation of Illegal Immigrants.”
Just one day before a controversial Texas law on illegal immigration was set to take effect, a federal judge granted a new injunction saying most of the law would not pass constitutional muster before the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra, who blocked implementation of Texas Senate Bill (SB) 4 in 2024, opined that the law “threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice.”
Approved by lawmakers in 2023, SB 4, filed by Texas Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), established a criminal offense for illegal entry into the state from a foreign nation, and provided a mechanism for judges to order offenders to return to their nation of origin.
Implementation was delayed until the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a pending lawsuit last month on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue, clearing the way for the law to take effect on May 15.
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a new challenge on behalf of two unnamed individuals who said they could be arrested and subject to SB 4’s provisions.
Ezra’s injunction applies to four provisions of SB 4: criminal penalties for re-entry without authorization; authorizing magistrates to order deportation; criminalization of failure to comply with a Texas magistrate’s deportation order; and SB 4’s requirement that magistrates continue a prosecution even when a person has a pending immigration case under federal law.
In his opinion released last week, Ezra noted that while federal authorities can elicit help with immigration enforcement actions from state and local law enforcement, SB 4 would clash with precedent set in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Arizona v. United States.
The offences mainly took place in Dewsbury and Batley, north Kirklees, and involved three girls.
One was just 12 years old when the offences started in 1995. They ended in 2003.
The trials began in 2023 and the perps were convicted and sentenced in 2024 through late 2025. The reason we are only learning their sentences now is because there was a court-ordered ban on reporting (they can do this in England)
Reporting restrictions had been put in place to ‘safeguard the fairness and integrity of the court process.’
Translation: They were to ensure the safety of Labour poll numbers from outraged Britons…
California is the land of expensive, useless bureaucracies, which Democrats allow to do nothing but impose more regulations on Californians.
In 2023, California created a fast-food council to micromanage fast-food restaurants from wages to working conditions. The council, the first of its kind in the United States, exists to justify California’s fast-food minimum wage hike, which jumped to $20 an hour, and the council has the ability to increase over the coming years. By now, you know how this went: Fast-food restaurants shut down, cut jobs, cut worker hours, raised prices, or did some combination of those things.
More notably, though, the council that is required to meet at least twice a year does not really exist. The last subcommittee meeting for the council took place in February 2025. It has now been over a year since the council has done anything, and even then, it could not be bothered to gather all nine members. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) plucked the council’s chairman for a different state appointment after that last subcommittee meeting, and it hasn’t gathered since.
Despite this, the council was still allocated $1.1 million from the state budget.
Fender won a lawsuit (by default) in Germany, and now it’s suing every guitar maker in the world that makes guitars that look even remotely like Stratocasters. “The decision to enforce the EU-based ruling on US builders marks a huge development in the case, and the outcome of such legal battles could very well reshape the guitar industry as we know it.” I rather suspect this strategy isn’t going to work out well for them…
Google is about to ruin the Internet. “Google is changing its search engine to focus on AI recommendations and NOT links to websites, according to its Google I/O presentation. And it’s a wrap. That’s it for the free and open internet. Niche publications and independent voices will likely get completely shut out of organic search as the internet becomes pay-to-win.” Another reason to stick to DuckDuckGo.
And speaking of science fiction first editions, I’m going to be sending a new book catalog out next week. Drop me a line if you want a copy.
Critical Drinker reviews Pragmata, mostly enjoys it. If the terminally online left hadn’t freaked out about this game, I doubt I ever would have heard about it…
Once again, the Babylon Bee is doing straight up reporting from LA: “New Polls Show Dead Heat Between ‘Make Everything Worse’ Candidate And ‘Fix Everything’ Candidate.”
Trump’s Iran blockade twists Iran’s arm into opening the Strait of Hormuz, Ukraine blows up a bunch more Russian oil and gas infrastructure, leftists try to remove more rights from their political opponents, and this weekend in Austin you can get a dog for $5!
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
I got my taxes done and mailed off. (I owed nothing because I made so little money last year.)
Trump wins again. “Iran, U.S. Announce Strait of Hormuz ‘Completely Open’ for Commercial Ships.”
The Strait of Hormuz is “completely open” for all commercial ships, the U.S. and Iran said Friday, after the agreement of a cease-fire in Lebanon.
“IRAN HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE. THANK YOU!” President Trump said in a post on Truth Social, appearing to refer to the Strait of Hormuz.
The president also said that Iran would begin working to remove all of the sea mines from the strait, with the help of the U.S.
He said in a second post that the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports “WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT” until peace negotiations with Iranian leaders are “100% COMPLETE.”
The blockade was first put into effect on Monday, with U.S. forces looking to stop Iranian and Iran-linked ships. The blockade came after negotiations in Pakistan to end the Iran war collapsed.
The president said at the time that the blockade would be enforced in an effort to stop Iran from policing the strait to its economic benefit while other countries suffer.
Iran had imposed a toll on vessels passing through the strait and has limited oil exports. It had allowed only a handful of countries, including China and India, to pass through the strait.
“Iran promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and they knowingly failed to do so…as they promised, they better begin the process of getting this INTERNATIONAL WATERWAY OPEN AND FAST!” Trump said earlier this week.
Days before Saturday’s failed negotiations in Pakistan, Trump announced a two-week cease-fire, contingent upon Iran agreeing to the “complete, immediate, and safe opening” of the Strait of Hormuz.
Meanwhile, Trump on Thursday announced that Israel has agreed to a ten-day cease-fire in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had an “opportunity to forge a historic peace agreement with Lebanon” but said Israeli forces would remain inside Lebanese territory in a “reinforced security buffer zone.”
How is an open Strait but the U.S. keeps the blockade anything but a complete win for Trump?
All ships can sail through the Strait of Hormuz but this needs to be coordinated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a senior Iranian official told Reuters, adding that unfreezing Iranian funds was part of the deal.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi wrote on X that the strait was open after a ceasefire accord was agreed in Lebanon, while U.S. President Donald Trump said he believed a deal to end the Iran war would come “soon”, although the timing remains unclear.
Hundreds of ships and 20,000 seafarers have remained stranded inside the Gulf waiting to pass through the key waterway, which handles about 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
It’s still unclear who is actually calling the shots in Tehran these days.
It looks like Iran’s rulers have finally blinked — but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to weasel out of every promise they’re now making.
Tehran announced Friday that it’s opening the Strait of Hormuz, and supposedly even cooperating with US forces to sweep out all mines.
President Donald Trump says the regime has even agreed to end its quest for nuclear weapons and hand over its “nuclear dust” — nearly 1,000 pounds of highly-refined uranium now buried below various bunkers destroyed by American bombing last year.
But Trump knows Tehran has a long history of breaking its word — and it’s not even certain that the figures we’re negotiating with are the ultimate decision-makers.
Nor if Iran’s current leaders will be in charge next month: Regime factions will be a while realigning after US and Israel attacks slaughtered most of the top ranks — no one there or here knows how it’ll play out.
Snip.
Remember: Even the Islamic Republic’s so-called moderates are still Islamic fundamentalists who despise America and the West and believe that lying to non-Muslim leaders is entirely moral.
Meanwhile, a lasting peace deal that ensures Iran can’t go nuclear requires a reliable process for monitoring compliance, including “inspect anywhere, anytime” rules.
Also a must-monitor: Bans on acquisition of new missiles and missile tech, lest Tehran again threaten the entire region.
Plus financial controls to prevent the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force from again fostering and commanding terrorists far outside Iran.
If the regime doesn’t agree to these terms, and institutionalize enforcement, its oil exports must remain blocked as the bombing resumes.
For the past five weeks, opponents of the Trump administration have repeatedly called this “a war of choice,” a conflict the president launched without cause or coherent purpose. “[W]hen we ask, What is the administration doing? they can’t answer that question because they don’t know why they’re there in the first place,” Jake Sullivan told progressive talk-show host Jon Stewart. “They haven’t been able to give us an answer as to what this is all about.”
The administration has, in fact, made a clear and compelling case. It reduces to two interlocking imperatives. The first is Trump’s long-standing red line. As the president has stated repeatedly for years, “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple.” The second is the enabling condition that made this red line urgent: overmatch. Iran’s drones and ballistic missiles can overwhelm the air and missile defenses of Israel, the United States, and their Gulf allies.
In the June 2025 “12-Day War,” Iran absorbed heavy losses to its ballistic arsenal, which fell to roughly 1,500 missiles, and to key production sites. President Trump hoped that those losses would moderate Iranian behavior and bring Tehran to the negotiating table. That hope proved unfounded.
The IRGC moved immediately to rebuild. Work resumed at production plants, and stockpiles in hardened underground missile cities grew. IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Majid Mousavi stated in January 2026 that the arsenal had grown since the June war and that output across multiple sectors had already exceeded prewar levels. Israeli intelligence assessed that Iran was on track for a stockpile of roughly 8,000 ballistic missiles by 2027.
At the outset of the war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described overmatch as the factor that drove America to act. “The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy, particularly to naval assets,” he said at a March 2 press conference. He then quantified the threat. “They are producing, by some estimates, over 100 of these missiles a month. Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built a month.”
The arithmetic spoke for itself and posed two interlocking threats. The first was conventional. Iran would soon have enough missiles and drones to overwhelm the defenses of Israel and every American base in the region. The second was nuclear. The huge conventional arsenal would serve as a shield behind which Iran could pursue a nuclear weapon without fear of retaliation—directly violating the president’s red line. If Iran were left unchecked, Rubio explained, it would soon “have so many conventional missiles, so many drones, and can inflict so much damage, that no one can do anything about their nuclear program.” Once Iran crossed that threshold, which Rubio called the “point of immunity,” the window for action would close permanently.
America therefore had three choices: to do nothing, in which case Iran would soon enter a zone of immunity guaranteed by overmatch; to let Israel attack alone, in which case Iran would attack American forces and cause significant casualties; or to work together with Israel to eliminate an intolerable threat to both countries.
Myth 2: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action had moderated Iran and stabilized the Middle East before Trump broke it.
While arguing about the war, former Obama and Biden staffers are attempting to justify Obama’s nuclear deal and the strategy that produced it. The JCPOA, Sullivan tells Stewart, worked. Iran was “complying with the deal. Even the Israeli intelligence were saying they were complying with the agreement.” Trump’s 2018 unilateral withdrawal, Sullivan suggests, discarded this successful state of affairs.
This story fails to comport with reality in three crucial ways. First, the timeline doesn’t work. Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018. Tehran did not begin enriching its uranium to 60%, a major threshold that dramatically shortens the path to a nuclear weapon, until April 2021. In other words, Tehran made this crucial leap toward weaponization on Biden’s watch, not Trump’s.
And how did Biden respond? With conciliation. The administration stopped enforcing sanctions, especially against Chinese buyers. Iranian oil exports surged, and with them regime revenues. As Iran’s breakout time shrank to a matter of weeks, Biden and his team painted the increasing threat it had created as Trump’s fault. Every Iranian nuclear advance became, in their telling, not only a consequence of the 2018 withdrawal but also a justification for further conciliation. Then National Security Adviser Sullivan said so explicitly in April 2022, when Iran was racing forward under Biden’s presidency, that its progress “is a direct impact of [Trump’s] pulling out of the nuclear deal, making us less safe, giving us less visibility. And it’s one of the reasons we pursued a diplomatic path, again, when the president took office.”
Biden restored the core logic of the JCPOA unilaterally. Sanctions relief flowed while nuclear constraints collapsed. Tehran blew past the restrictions on the size of its uranium stockpiles and levels of enrichment while Washington relaxed pressure and pursued diplomacy on Iran’s terms. What Sullivan presents as the collapse of the deal was its continuation on asymmetric terms, slavish compliance in Washington without reciprocity in Tehran.
As sanctions enforcement weakened and oil revenue from China flowed, the regime did not moderate. Iran accelerated its missile and drone programs, deepened its support for proxies, and hardened the capabilities that now define the battlefield. Sanctions relief generated revenue. Revenue funded missiles, drones, and proxies. Those capabilities produced the overmatch that eroded deterrence.
The JCPOA and Biden’s de facto implementation of it financed and enabled the capabilities that drove the region toward large-scale conflict. Under Biden, Iran reached 60% enrichment and expanded its missile and drone programs. The Oct. 7 massacre in Israel was a direct result of Iran’s increasingly advantageous strategic posture.
The United States faced the same strategic choice at the end of the JCPOA process as it did at the beginning, but under worse conditions and against a stronger adversary. The policy, that is to say, ensured that the confrontation would come after Iran had advanced closer to immunity.
If ever we had a president who believes that “bigger is better,” it’s Donald Trump, and his administration just embiggened the blockade against Iran to include sanctioned ships from anywhere.
“In addition to enforcing the blockade, all Iranian vessels, vessels with active OFAC sanctions, and vessels suspected of carrying contraband, are subject to belligerent right to visit and search,” U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) announced on Thursday. But here’s where it gets really interesting: “These vessels, regardless of location, are subject to visit, board, search, and seizure.”
Emphasis added because that’s serious.
Regardless of location? If I’m reading that right, the “Persian Gulf blockade” just went global.
Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine confirmed the expanded scope this morning during a presser with War Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Under the command of Adm. Paparo, we’ll actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran,” Caine said. “This includes dark fleet vessels carrying Iranian oil. As most of you know, dark fleet vessels are those illicit or illegal ships evading international regulations, sanctions, or insurance requirements.”
Baltimore can’t decide who gets to ladle out the fraud. “Baltimore Reparations Fund Plagued by Infighting and Struggles for Control. ‘The City Hall says the mayor has final say, while commissioners maintain the body was created to independently manage the funds.'”
When the state of Maryland legalized marijuana for personal use a few years ago, it designated a percentage of sales to be put in a special fund, which would be used in part to pay reparations for slavery and to fund various social programs.
The fund now contains upwards of $35 million, but almost none of the money has been paid out because of an ongoing power struggle to control it between pretty much everyone involved in the program. Who could have predicted such a thing?
FOX News reports:
$35 million in reparations money remains unused as Baltimore officials battle over who gets control: report
Millions in reparations money remain unused as Baltimore officials battle over who gets control, according to a local report.
The Baltimore Beat reported that the $35 million in revenue from the recreational cannabis tax has not reached residents yet due to infighting between City Hall and the Community Reinvestment and Reparations Commission, a 17-member body established in November 2024 to oversee how the funds are distributed.
Since Maryland legalized recreational cannabis three years ago, “not a single dollar has reached the people it was meant to help, and the first round of funding may still be a year away,” the report said.
Why, it’s almost like that was the design…
“Huge Drone Strike on Tuapse Port! Oil Storage Hit,” an oil export terminal on the Black Sea Ukraine has hit before.
“German bill would ban home purchases for people with the wrong political views.” Germans banning rights for being an enemy of the ruling party? I think I’ve seen this movie before…
A Carrollton candidate who confessed to committing voter fraud in a past election is back on the mayoral ballot this May. While the situation is unusual, it’s not unlawful.
In 2024, Zul Mohamed pleaded guilty to more than 100 felony counts of voter fraud in his failed 2020 campaign for Carrollton mayor. A jury sentenced him to four years in state prison while agreeing with his attorney that Mohamed is mentally ill.
But Mohamed is appealing parts of his conviction and sentencing, arguing that the sting operation used to trace a mail-ballot fraud scheme back to him was constitutionally suspect, as is the court’s condition of probation that bars Mohamed from engaging in election-related activities.
Under Texas election law, a person is ineligible to be a candidate if they have been “finally convicted of a felony” or determined by a court to be “mentally incapacitated.”
(Previously.) Seems like the average 7-11 has more stringent vetting than Carrollton…
Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced an investigation into Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies at the University of North Texas.
“The DEI ideology has been a calamitous way that radical leftists have pushed a woke agenda in our educational institutions,” Paxton stated.
As part of the investigation, Paxton sent a letter to Nicole Dash, Dean of the College of Public Affairs and Human Sciences, asking UNT to detail their compliance with state law. While Dash’s academic writing primarily focuses on disaster recovery, she has also written about racial issues.
Paxton is also seeking information about “DEI policies and guidance from the University, details regarding DEI in accreditation standards, and all correspondence between UNT leadership and staff regarding DEI.”
Paxton’s investigation stems from an undercover video that was released earlier this week by Accuracy in Media.
In the video, Paige Falco, a field education coordinator in social work at UNT’s College of Public Affairs and Health Sciences, told an investigator with a hidden camera that DEI is “definitely still a focus” at the institution.
Falco told the investigator that she removed DEI keyphrases from course titles and descriptions, while continuing to teach the concepts.
Later in the video, Falco discussed how “antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion” is a competency for the Council on Social Work Education, which accredits the school. The Steve Hicks School of Social Work at UT-Austin also requires so-called “antiracism” training as part of its accreditation with this organization.
Senate Bill 17, a law state lawmakers passed in 2023, prohibits DEI in university human resource policies. SB 17 contains explicit exemptions for accreditation and course content.
The Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG), alongside the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), announced a settlement with three prominent advertising companies over alleged violations of antitrust laws.
The settlement comes after a multi-state complaint was filed to “combat unlawful media censorship.” The three companies involved are Dentsu US, Inc.; GroupM Worldwide LLC, now known as WPP Media; and Publicis, Inc.
The multi-state complaint also saw participation from Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia. The complaint alleges the companies violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, and calls the companies’ conduct “anticompetitive.”
The complaint alleges that the ad agencies, working through the World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Alliance for Responsible Media and the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Advertiser Protection Bureau, blocked certain websites from being eligible for advertising revenue because they were labeled “misinformation.” The companies allegedly created “brand-safety” rules that made these “misinformation” websites ineligible for business.
The OAG’s announcement stated that the increase in online media coverage has led to large corporations “conspiring ways to suppress certain viewpoints,” favoring particular perspectives and “suppressing disfavored opinions as ‘misinformation.’”
The FTC stated that the defendants’ unlawful collusion “to impose common ‘brand safety’” standards across the industry weakened competitive behavior.
According to the FTC, upon approval by a federal judge, the order will prevent “the biggest U.S. advertising agencies” from restricting advertising based on ideological or political differences.
Although the settlement is subject to court approval, the advertising companies have agreed to several arrangements. The companies reportedly agreed to not enforce limitations on advertising spending based on ideological positions or diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments. They also agreed to not restrict business with any company based on “its news and political or social commentary content.”
Reading between the lines, this was part of the Democrat Media Complex’s attempt to keep anyone from advertising with any conservative media.
Ma Xingrui, a former high-flying technocrat and Xinjiang party secretary, is officially under investigation for corruption charges. That makes him the third member of the current Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo to fall amid President Xi Jinping’s latest purge, as well as the first civilian member.
There are two likely reasons for Ma’s targeting. The first is that Ma was exceptionally capable. He handled politically sensitive assignments in Xinjiang and earlier in Guangdong and the city of Shenzhen with skill and ruthlessness. As I noted in last week’s China Brief, Xi tends to find that kind of talent and ambition threatening.
Second, it’s possible that Ma’s background leading China’s space agencies connected him to the corruption being probed within the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force. However, Ma left the aerospace sector in 2013, before the Second Artillery Corps was reorganized into the Rocket Force and received the surge of funding and authority that enabled such corruption.
Ma’s time in Xinjiang certainly offered opportunities for large-scale graft, from the expropriation of Uyghur property and businesses to the notoriously corrupt paramilitary organization that runs much of the region’s industry, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.
This purges are sort of an under-reported story, and Xi has purged at least two other Politburo members in the last year.
“Wisconsin sheriff sues Pakistani-American woman who said ICE detained her for two days when she was actually at hotel spa.”
US citizen Sundas ‘Sunny’ Naqvi, 28, gained national attention last month when she and a band of supporters – including Cook County, Ill., Commissioner Kevin Morrison — publicly insisted she was unlawfully detained by ICE officers for roughly 43 hours.
Keep Morrison in mind, because we’re going to get back to him in a sec.
Naqvi claimed that after landing back in the US from a work trip to Turkey on the morning of March 5, she was detained for nearly 30 hours at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, then transferred to another ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., before winding up at Dodge County Jail in Wisconsin.
Snip.
Now Naqvi and Morrison are the subjects of a federal defamation lawsuit filed by Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt on Friday — as his office released new details of Naqvi’s actual actions during the alleged hoax period.
‘She checked into the Hampton Inn and Suites in Rosemont, Ill., for the entire duration of this alleged event,’ Schmidt said during a press conference, where he presented a hotel bill and text receipts to illustrate Naqvi’s time there.
The folio shows Naqvi checked in at the Hampton Inn — just a 10-minute drive from the airport — at 1:17 p.m. March 5, while text messages with an unidentified witness over the following days show she enjoyed free food, spa services, and trips to the gym.
Bonus: “Naqvi was previously convicted of making a false report in Cook County, Illinois, and was sentenced to probation.” Also, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that Kevin Morrison is a Democrat…
Former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife before turning the gun on himself early Thursday in what the Fairfax County Police Department is calling a murder-suicide.
Police believe Fairfax shot his wife in the basement of their Annandale home, ran upstairs, and shot himself. The couple’s children were in the home at the time of the murders and called 911, according to Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis.
“This has been an ongoing domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce,” Davis said. “I don’t think it’s a secret that there’s been a divorce proceedings that have been ongoing. From what I understand in this early stage, former Lieutenant Governor Fairfax was recently served some paperwork associated with an upcoming court proceeding that apparently led to this incident last night.”
The couple had been married 20 years, but was currently separated and still living together, according to authorities.
“Separated and still living together” seems like an oxymoron.
Cerina Fairfax filed for divorce in July, according to court records.
Fairfax served as the lieutenant governor under former Democratic Governor Ralph Northam from 2018 to 2022. While in office, the lieutenant governor was accused of sexually assaulting two women years earlier. He maintained the sexual encounters, one of which took place in 2000 and another in 2004, were consensual. He then launched an unsuccessful bid for Virginia governor in 2021, coming in fourth in the Democratic primary. Prior to his tenure as lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax served as a federal prosecutor.
Funny how many Democrats hyped as “the next big thing” (Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum) turned out to have dark secrets, though none quite as dark as a murder-suicide.
Phil Collins has been elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Oasis, Billy Idol, Wu-Tang Clan, Luther Vandross, Sade, Joy Division/New Order and Iron Maiden. You can argue that Collins is more pop than rock in his solo career, but he’s certainly more rock than Vandross, Sade, and a lot of already-inducted artists.
Happy Good Friday! More Democrat voting fraud, Iran manages to shoot down a couple of planes, more California fraud under Governor Hairgel, Commies gonna commie, Microsoft behaving (and performing) badly, Pakistan’s nefarious actions backfire (yet again), the best rifle for a militia, and a list of bad actors in the job market.
This is Democrat Joel Caldwell of the “Coalition for the People’s Agenda,” a Fulton County ballot-harvesting NGO chief—caught on tape admitting it all.
Democrats are stuffing ballot drop boxes with fraudulent votes, and it’s all caught on videotape. He also admits this is how they rigged the 2020 election and why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID.
• They pay people to illegally ballot-harvest.
• They bribe ballot counters and election officials.
• They forge and falsify ballots.
And the Atlanta mayor straight-up stole the election.
He says it all himself—on tape.
Joel Caldwell:
“That’s what happened in 2020, ’cause that’s when the ballots—they started stuffing them ballots and people stuffing them ballots, and they got videotape of them, but nobody talks about it. That’s why Trump was making that big deal about it, because you see it on videotape. It’s like, come on. We see the man pull up and put a hundred ballots in this box. You know? You can’t do that sh*t.
So groups were paying people to do just that—drop off ballots.”
He continues: That’s why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID laws.
Joel Caldwell:
“That’s why the Republicans are always trying to fight the ballot—you know, that’s the whole argument, because Republicans are the ones who put out that kind of stuff, so they want voter IDs and stuff. Democrats are fighting voter ID laws. It’s a two-sided thing. That’s what they’re fighting over. Republicans are trying to say, ‘Hey, look, we got proof of this sh*t.’
And the Democrats are like, well, we don’t want voter ID laws, and we want to make it where you can just drop your ballot off—online voting and different things they try to come up with.”
Iran manages to shoot down both an F-15 and an A-10 on the same day. Two of the three downed airmen have already been rescued. It’s worth noting that neither of those planes are remotely stealthy.
Earlier this week, Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant whom the Biden administration caught and released at the border, murdered Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman. Medina-Medina had previously been arrested at least twice in Chicago, yet was released by local authorities, thanks to their sanctuary policies. According to reports, he approached her, raised a gun, and opened fire as she tried to flee. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Democratic Party’s response has been nothing short of horrific.
Snip.
The reaction from Democrats to Gorman’s death has been so despicable that Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) unloaded on his own party over it.
“Why can’t we just talk about that life lost?” Fetterman told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer. “Why can’t we just acknowledge that this is serious, serious failure?”
Fetterman also invoked the Laken Riley Act, the legislation requiring the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants who commit crimes. Fetterman was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote for it — a fact he’s clearly not going to let his colleagues forget.
“I think only seven or eight Democrats even voted for [the] Laken Riley [Act],” he said. “Why can’t you just agree that if you’re breaking the law and you’re already here illegally, deport them? I just don’t understand.”
He continued, “Tragedies like what happened to that young woman, they are gonna continue to happen,” he said. “That’s beyond common sense.”
Hemmer pressed him on why Democrats can’t seem to get there, and Fetterman gave an honest, if uncomfortable, answer.
A Just the News investigation has detailed how a wealthy Marxist activist best known for the funding of a global financial network both inside the U.S. and around the world has extensive ties to Chinese Communist Party-linked organizations inside of China.
China-based entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham lives and works in Shanghai, — which the American businessman now calls home — where he runs his network of pro-CCP news sites and other China-linked endeavors. Singham, who sold his ThoughtWorks tech company in 2017, has used the money to fund openly communist endeavors worldwide. Just the News can show that inside of China, Singham and his network collaborate with an array of Chinese propaganda sites, Chinese universities, and other Chinese groups committed to advancing the CCP.
Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Singham admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China. This report and the conference where it was introduced helped expose the extensive CCP-linked network in which Singham is ensconced within China.
Just the News reviewed hundreds of pages of Chinese business documents and U.S. tax records, English and Chinese language news sites, Chinese government websites, and more in an effort to provide the most comprehensive look yet at Singham’s operations from his perch in Shanghai.
Also: “Singham colludes with CCP to rewrite history of WWII to advance Xi Jinping’s ‘new world order.'”
The wealthy Marxist businessman behind a sprawling far-left network is collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party to denigrate the Allied actions in World War II in an effort to upend the U.S.-led international system and to advance Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “new world order.”
China-based businessman Neville Roy Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the release of a report that denigrates U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Singham directly admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China.
The wealthy communist activist summed up the crux of his WWII argument thusly: “As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War (WAFW), the Western powers spin their familiar tale: U.S. industrial might and British resolve saved the world from fascism. This is a lie. The truth burns in the numbers: while the Western powers calculated their economic advantage, the Soviet and Chinese peoples paid in blood. Fascism was defeated not by Anglo-American capital but by socialist leadership and mass heroism – a brilliant strategy from Moscow and Yan’an, unbreakable resilience from workers and peasants who refused to surrender, and a sacrifice that saved humanity from slavery.”
Multiple senior HHS officials estimate that, under Gavin Newsom, California’s state Medicaid program has lost 25 percent of its budget to fraud. This would mean it is currently losing $50 billion a year to scammers, fraudsters, and organized crime rings.
Snip.
We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.
In this firehose torrent of news, less attention than is proper has been paid to the fact that we’re finally going back to the moon. Or, technically, around it, since they’re doing the figure flyby of the dark side. They’re already halfway there…
Though the mainstream media will undoubtedly portray them as “mostly peaceful,” much of what we saw at the “No Kings” protests Saturday was anything but, whether through actions or symbols used during the demonstrations.
We’ll start off with New York City, where the Communist flags were in full effect:
BREAKING: Leftists in NYC chant “There is only one solution, Communist revolution” at the No Kings rally.
Communist flags at the NYC ‘No Kings’ protest pic.twitter.com/bIh2UiwkDI
— NJEG Media (@NJEGmedia) March 28, 2026
Snip.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz (D) was pledging solidarity with the Somali community:
“We will never leave the side of our Somali Minnesotans. Here’s our pledge to you, our Somali Minnesotans, your grandchildren will still be here when that orange clown is in the dustbin of history.”
I guess its too much to ask a Democrat governor to stand with actual Americans. Plus rioting in Denver.
Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case challenging a Mississippi statute allowing mail-in ballot received up to five days after Election Day to be counted.
The law appears to defy three federal laws that require that federal elections be held the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The question is what did Congress mean by Election Day. Was it a day, five days later, a month later. Does Election Day mean election season.
The 5th Circuit ruled against Mississippi, which brought the case to SCOTUS. It could have profound impact on Democrats’ mail-in ballot strategy if ballots must be received by election official by Election Day.
I discussed the case and oral argument, plus redistricting and the Equal Protection Projects challenge to discriminatory NY State education practices, with Jesse Kelly, who tweeted out the portion regarding NY State: “It appears Kathy Hochul is defying the Supreme Court.”
Pam Bondi is out as attorney general, President Trump announced Thursday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”
“We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,” he added.
The announcement came just one day after Bondi was at the White House to attend Trump’s address to the nation on the Iran war. She had also accompanied Trump to the Supreme Court to watch oral arguments in a birthright citizenship case.
The handling of the Epstein files and the lack of progress on indicting anti-Trump conspirators like James Comey were suggested as reasons for Trump letting her go.
Target has gone from pushing the radical transsexual agenda to being boycotted by Randi Weingarten for not condemning ICE. I haven’t shopped there once since they started boosting the tranny agenda, but maybe it’s time to go back again…
Pakistani is enjoying a nice, rich dinner of blowback.
For decades, the Islamabad establishment has played a dangerous game, nurturing the Taliban as a strategic depth agent against India. Today, this plan backfires, and the resulting explosion of violence threatens to send a fresh wave of illegal immigration toward the already strained borders of the European Union.
The “open war” declared by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif marks the end of a thirty-year illusion. The apprentice has not only left the master. He has now turned openly against him. The March 16 strike on Kabul was the moment masks fell. When Pakistani warplanes hammered a rehabilitation centre in the heart of the Afghan capital, the “Islamic brotherhood” of the two neighbours officially ceased to be.
Islamabad claims it is hunting the TTP — the Pakistani Taliban who find sanctuary under the wings of their Afghan cousins. Kabul denies it. The result is a cycle of diplomacy-in-name-only, where the only language spoken is the language of the air strike, the AK-47 and the suicide vest. This is the reality of the post-American vacuum.
Critics of the Biden presidency, watching from America and Europe, see the vindication of their most cynical instincts. They warned that the vacuum left by the 2021 withdrawal would be filled by chaos. They were right. Just look at Bagram Airfield. It once was the crown jewel of American power. It has now become a trophy in a war between two states the West can no longer control.
While the world’s eyes are fixed on the Iranian plateau, South Asia is burning. The region’s most volatile border is no longer Kashmir. It is the frontier where the Taliban’s jihadist agenda meets Pakistani nuclear-armed desperation. How safe is the world when a nuclear power goes to war with a ghost? The answer is terrifying. Pakistan’s military capacity dwarfs that of the Taliban, yet the Taliban have time, resolve and a complete lack of accountability.
While the Pakistani economy teeters and its domestic security implodes with a second insurgency front up against Baloch separatists in the south, the Afghan Taliban are playing the long game. They see a Pakistan that is overextended and a West that is exhausted. They are not interested in ceasefires brokered by Qatar or Turkey. They are interested in survival and the expansion of their ideological reach.
Almost nobody talks about it, but we are witnessing the “Gaza-fication” of the Durand Line. The same knowhow of displacement and grazing the land is being applied to the tribal areas. Millions of thousands of people have already been displaced. But the humanitarian cost is only a footnote in a larger, more brutal calculation.
For Islamabad, this is an existential fight against the TTP thorn in its side. For Kabul, it is about defending the sovereignty they fought for twenty years to reclaim. Neither side can afford to blink. The light of the old order is fading. The era where the Pakistani military could manage Afghanistan like a colonial fiefdom is over. The trust is dead.
Trump’s “America First” doctrine means that if Pakistan wants to fight this war, it will do so without a blank check from the Pentagon. The bitter truth for the region is that old security guarantees are gone. We are entering an era of fluidity, where borders are written in fire. The “special relationship” between Islamabad and Kabul has become hatred. The Taliban have proven they can survive an American occupation. Surviving Pakistan’s aggression should not be that hard.
And then there are all of those “refugees” Euroelites seem bound and determined to import. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The attack involved a sophisticated mix of long-range unmanned systems, likely between eight and fifteen primary strike drones supported by smaller decoys designed to saturate Russian air defenses. These drones traveled approximately one thousand kilometers from Ukrainian territory, penetrating deep into Russian airspace and reaching the Gulf of Finland near the Estonian border. Evidence suggests the use of fixed-wing kamikaze drones optimized for endurance and precision. Ukrainians also utilized small prop-planes modified to fly as unmanned aircraft, mounting droppable Fab bombs on the bottom, which could be dropped on target, in addition to the craft being used as a kamikaze platform.
Also:
Ukraine has delivered a decisive strategic blow just as Russia expected to capitalize on soaring oil prices driven by the Iran war, but got its export system crippled instead. With unimaginable 40% of its oil export capacity wiped out, ports burning for days, and follow-up strikes continuing, the question is no longer whether Russia can recover quickly, but whether Ukraine will strike again before Russia has the chance to do so.
After over four years of war, Ukraine’s military says it’s testing an exoskeleton in the field that can help soldiers more easily load artillery and run at speeds of up to 12 mph over sustained periods. The tests would mark one of the first known examples of exoskeletons used on the front lines of an active military operation.
A Facebook video shared late last week by Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps shows a handful of soldiers putting on the device while inside of a muddy artillery trench. The device itself wraps around a soldier’s waist and legs and is supported by a back brace. The military claims that it can reduce overall load on leg muscles by 30 percent. In practice, that means the devices should make it easier for soldiers to pick up and load heavy artillery rounds. Each round can weigh upwards of 100 pounds, depending on the particular caliber used. Since a soldier on the battlefield may load several dozen of those runs every day, all of that weight adds up and can increase the odds of injury or fatigue.
Not quite Heinlein’s powered armor, but we’re getting there…
Paxton’s office has now proposed detailed rules to implement the statute. The proposal was submitted to the Secretary of State on March 16 and published in the Texas Register on March 27, triggering a public comment period before the rules can be finalized.
The draft rules flesh out how SB 17 will work in practice, with the Office of the Attorney General as the central enforcement hub for the ban.
One of the most significant features is a new duty to report suspected violations.
Under the proposal, anyone involved in facilitating a real estate transaction—such as mortgage lenders, title insurance companies, property insurers, appraisers, and licensed real estate professionals—would be required to report any suspected SB 17 violations to the attorney general.
Complaints would have to be submitted either through an online complaint form on the OAG’s website or by mail to a designated address. Failure to report may subject entities to enforcement action once the rules are in place, potentially deputizing the real estate industry to help police foreign adversary land deals.
The rules would also place a tight lid on information that reaches Paxton’s office.
All complaints, civil investigative demands, and related materials submitted to or issued by the OAG would be treated as confidential and not subject to public disclosure, except when disclosure is required by law. That means Texans may see enforcement actions and lawsuits, but not necessarily the complaints and background investigation files that triggered them.
Wither Canada? “The 177,000 signature threshold has now been passed, officially clearing the requirement for an Alberta independence referendum on October 19th.”
John Cleese: “The British do not like the kind of diversity that intends to take over Britain and kill any infidel who does not convert to Islam.”
Weirdly, Microsoft is also saying that “Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use — firm pushing AI hard to consumers and businesses tells users not to rely on it for important advice.” Which is ironic, since right now its website touts Copilot as “AI built for work.”
Stephen Green: And the first piece of software to break on the moon mission? Microsoft Outlook.
And speaking of Microsoft woes, “Microsoft closes worst quarter on Wall Street since 2008 on AI concerns.”
Speaking of bad actors in the job market: “Outrage as Oracle makes thousands of foreign-worker requests amid layoff bloodbath.”
As thousands of Oracle employees awoke on Tuesday to an email informing them they were being laid off, the workers likely didn’t know the tech company had been busy trying to hire foreign staff.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, Oracle filed for roughly 3,126 petitions to employ H-1B workers in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Employers must submit the paperwork when seeking to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations like technology. Some 436 of those petitions were filed this year alone.
Amazon, which in January said it would axe 16,000 corporate employees, has filed for some 2,675 H-1B petitions during the same two-year fiscal period. That came on top of news in October that the retail giant was axing 14,000 corporate workers.
What’s the best gun for a militia? No surprise that three different gun experts (including Ian McCollum) all pick the AK-47.
Critical Drinker finally watches Mr. Inbetween, and really likes it. It’s been on my radar for a while, but there doesn’t seem to be a US DVD or Blu-Ray release of it, and I don’t have any streaming service.
More proof of widespread Biden Administration abuse and fraud uncovered, more news from the Iran war, the Trump Administration fights welfare fraud, LA displays both welfare and voting fraud, more lefty sorts stealing funds to feather their own nests, Muslim EPIC City development runs into more roadblocks, and some weird video game news.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Thanks for everyone who contributed to the Pay For Buddy’s Vet Bill Fund. He’s already doing so much better that you can’t tell he was hurt, though some of that is probably the pain pills.
Newly released records in the Senate investigation into the weaponization of government raise questions about whether the FBI went on a fishing expedition targeting Trump advisors who were never charged with crimes and whether Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prior testimony to Congress was truthful.
The documents were made public by Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, before a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing into alleged abuses by the Biden-era FBI and Justice Department in their investigations into then ex-president Donald Trump before and during the 2024 presidential election during its probe code-named “Arctic Frost.” Just the News previously reported that Biden’s FBI paid anti-Trump ‘Sedition Hunters’ as informants in the Arctic Frost probes.
“If Watergate taught us anything, it is that even a single abuse of power carried out by a handful of individuals can shake the foundations of our Republic,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
“What we confront today, the Biden administration’s Arctic Frost scheme, is not a single act,” he continued in his opening remarks. “It is a modern Watergate trading a break-in at one office for a digital sweep into approximately 100,000 private communications, more than a dozen senators and 1000s of individuals lives.”
Cruz said that ultimately, “just like Watergate,” the judges, FBI and Justice Department officials involved should be “investigated, tried, impeached, and brought to justice.”
The scope of Smith’s probe, which centered on Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results and the events of January 6, 2021, was truly expansive. Grassley previously released records showing that Smith’s office issued nearly 200 subpoenas in his sweeping Arctic Frost-linked case, secretly seeking records on more than 400 Republican personalities and groups. This included more than 160 Republicans–many closely connected to Trump.
The Arctic Frost was one of four separate probes that targeted Trump and his allies stretching from summer 2016 to January 2025. The other probes were code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, and Plasmic Echo, Just the News reported earlier this month.
As FBI Director, Patel has personally led the effort to review those probes, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet that in some cases may have been predicated on false, misleading or uncorroborated justifications, officials previously told Just the News.
The newly-disclosed records show that the FBI ordered two sweeping subpoenas of FBI Director Kash Patel’s phone records, while he was a private citizen in Trump’s orbit. Each subpoena covered an approximately two-year time frame.
The FBI’s requests for information included demands for highly personal data of Patel’s, including Patel’s addresses (“mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses”), a “call detail record” which lists inbound and outbound calls, text messages and voicemail messages, as well as sources of payment for the phone service, including credit card and bank account numbers. The FBI also demanded expansive internet session data including exact IP addresses, the document shows.
The FBI also sought–and was granted–non-disclosure orders (NDOs) from federal judges, shielding the existence of the subpoenas from Patel and his lawyers on the grounds that revealing them could result in his “flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s then campaign manager and future chief of staff, was also targeted in the probe. The Biden-era FBI reportedly even went so far as to record a private phone call between Wiles and her lawyer in 2023 while she was actively managing the campaign of President Joe Biden’s chief political rival, according to Reuters.
U.S. intelligence intercepted Ukrainian government communications discussing a plot to route hundreds of millions of American tax dollars earmarked for clean energy in the war-torn country and move them to the United States to enrich then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to a declassified intelligence report summarizing the intercepts that was obtained by Just the News….
‘The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,’ the declassified summary of the intercepts stated.
Every American involved in the scheme should be prosecuted. Still doesn’t justify taking Russia’s side in their illegal war of territorial aggression.
Long overdue: “Trump Administration Launches Whole-of-Government Effort to Fight Welfare Fraud.”
Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Chairman Andrew Ferguson convened members of the administration’s newly created anti-fraud task force on Friday to lay out the administration’s hopes for rooting out fraud in public programs across the country.
Established by President Trump via executive order earlier this month, the task force includes newly confirmed fraud-focused Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald and spans multiple government agencies tasked with implementing new fraud detection and reporting protocols, investigating Biden-era policies regarding fraud prevention, proposing new legislative and regulatory tools to combat fraud, and prosecuting illegal behavior when necessary to recover as much in improperly obtained funds as possible.
According to a task force memo authored by Vance and Ferguson and shared with National Review, the White House will focus primarily on high-spend, low-verification programs that “pay out large sums of money with low confidence or limited information about the ultimate recipients and uses of those funds.” Key programs that fall into this category include benefits administered through Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Small Business Administration loans.
The task force divides fraud into four main categories, according to the memo. The first category is so-called “ghost” billing where there is no real beneficiary and no real service provided, a prime example being a fake business that applied for Paycheck Protection Program relief during the Covid-19 pandemic. The second category are low-quality services provided to real beneficiaries, such as substandard medical care provided to elderly patients at nursing homes or memory-care facilities.
The third category is “upcoding” or “overbilling,” where fraudsters hand patients manipulated bills. “When hospitals commit fraud, for example, there are often real patients receiving necessary hospitalizations but with exaggerated diagnoses purporting to justify more expensive services than the patient actually needed or received,” the memo reads.
And the final category outlined by the task force is “necessity” fraud, where a real service is provided to an unqualified beneficiary. “Medicare fraud, for example, often involves real doctors giving real people treatments they don’t need, such as a person who can walk getting a wheelchair or a patient getting a lab test they don’t need,” the memo adds.
During a brief news conference on Friday, the vice president spotlighted egregious practices by autism daycare programs in Minnesota, where earlier this month one defendant, a Somali man named Abdinajib Yussuf, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a $6 million Medicaid reimbursement scheme.
“The first tragedy is that you have people who pay into the federal government, who pay into the IRS, who pay their taxes, expecting that those taxes will go to help their fellow citizens, and it’s not going to. It’s going to help fraudsters,” Vance said in remarks to the press before leading a closed-door strategy meeting with cabinet members and other senior administration officials working on the effort.
And the more important tragedy is that you have families who need these services who are unable to get them because people are getting rich off of fraud schemes, instead of making sure that autistic children and their families get access to these resources,” he added.
The task force has already cracked down on blue states and cities like Los Angeles, where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid recently suspended 70 home-health providers and hospice centers identified as high-risk fraudulent medical programs.
Another target is also Minnesota, where federally funded nutrition-assistance fraud and state-agency-related mismanagement ran rampant during Democratic Governor Tim Walz’s tenure while somehow failing to disqualify him from Vice President Kamala Harris’s running-mate shortlist. The White House paused $259 million in federal Medicaid payments to Minnesota earlier this month as part of the administration’s response to the state’s baffling degree of fraud.
Over the coming months, task force members are also looking to highlight lax verification protocols at the state level that amplify this problem, particularly in states run by Democrats.
“I think that most citizens probably assume that there’s some verification process that takes place for the receipt of most federal benefits,” said White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller. “The reality is that there is not. This is particularly true in blue states — willfully true in blue states in which all of these programs are operating entirely on the honor system, no verification takes place before individuals are enrolled in or receive these benefits.”
“Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force Suspends 70 Hospices in Los Angeles. The Senate also confirmed federal prosecutor Colin McDonald to lead the DOJ’s anti-fraud division.”
Yesterday the Telegraph told us about a “sinister new power” pulling the strings in Iran: “Ahmad Vahidi is the key cog in the regime’s chain of command.”
Unlike [Mohammad Bagher] Ghalibaf, Vahidi has remained in the shadows since the war. This is not without reason: our analysis suggests he is likely to be operating as the key cog in the regime’s chain of command and his survival is essential to its continuity. Long before the war, Ali Khamenei had entrusted Vahidi to draw up plans to further militarise the regime. If he outlasts this conflict and the regime survives, he will finally be able to implement this vision – a design that will produce a far more radical and extremist Islamic Republic.
Vahidi has unmatched experience and influence across the regime’s military, intelligence, and bureaucracy. His career began in the 1980s in the IRGC’s Intelligence Bureau, made up of the regime’s most ideologically loyal operatives. As the IRGC’s deputy for intelligence, he was hand-picked to join a secretive cohort to accompany Khamenei to visit North Korea – a trip designed to acquire missile and nuclear technology.
During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Vahidi was also one of the original members of the Ramadan Headquarters, a unit within the IRGC created to form Islamist terrorist groups globally and overseen by Khamenei.
Upon assuming the supreme leadership in 1989, Khamenei created the notorious Quds Force – the IRGC’s extraterritorial terror branch – and appointed Vahidi as its first commander. It was a testament to his loyalty. Vahidi demonstrated in that role that his vision to export terrorism was far more global than his notorious successor Qasem Soleimani.
Under Vahidi’s command, the IRGC orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Argentina in 1994, the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, and secretly dispatched operatives to Europe to train Islamist Mujahideen – including members of al-Qaeda – during the Bosnian war. This résumé would earn him a spot on Interpol’s wanted list in 2007.
Today:
🚨🇮🇷BREAKING: General Ahmad Vahidi who was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on March 1, 2026, reporadaly has been ELIMINATED in U. S. & Israel strikes. pic.twitter.com/7wuxWVRV6X
US signals to allies no ground invasion coming, with thousands of troops still en route: Iran denies requesting Donald Trump’s 10-day halt; Israel attacks steel & industrial sites. Also, Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor, part of the Arak Nuclear Complex, targeted. Yellow Cake factory in Yazd province hit.
Escalation on all fronts: IRGC HQ targeted by US-Israsel; Iran signals expansion by naming UAE targets, hitting Kuwait ports and sending drones on Riyadh. Iran newly warning it will hit Gulf industry.
Rubio tells G7 foreign ministers war will continue for another 2-4 weeks.
Israel doubles down amid reports of manpower strain: IDF chief warns of manpower pressure even as Defense Minister Katz vows to “intensify and expand” strikes.
Risk rises that Iran is holding back more advanced missiles for a prolonged war: WSJ writes “The US and Israel are pounding Iran’s missile-launching sites… But Tehran’s missiles keep flying.”
The last seems tinged with ZeroHedge’s usual Iran war pessimism. Ever fewer missiles have been flying as time goes on, and the places they’re manufactured have been hammered.
“Iranian Atomic Energy Organization: US and Israeli airstrikes target uranium processing plant.” Good. Bomb every nuclear-related facility twice-over, then make the rubble bounce.
A special House Ethics Committee found Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 total ethics violations, after a three-year investigation into allegations that the Florida Democrat stole millions in federal relief funds.
Following a seven-hour televised trial, members deliberated through the night before voting, finding Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of almost all the charges against her — 25 of the 27.
“I’m as pure as the driven snow!” denials snipped.
In November, a federal grand jury indicted Cherfilus-McCormick, alleging she stole $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cherfilus-McCormick’s family operates a health care company, Trinity Healthcare Services, and received FEMA funds for a Covid vaccination contract.
According to the DOJ, the $5 million payment was an overpayment, and the congresswoman and her brother never paid back the funds to the government. Rather, the pair funneled the funds through various accounts and used the money to back Cherfilus-McCormick’s 2022 special election campaign, which she ultimately won.
Snip.
Cherfilus-McCormick and her siblings “funneled more than $500,000 originating from Trinity into various outside organizations that made expenditures on behalf of the campaign,” Sydney Bellwoar, the committee’s lawyer, said.
Further, Bellwoar said “the most egregious example” was when Cherfilus-McCormick received $2 million directly from Trinity Health into her campaign in July 2021, to forge the appearance of a robust campaign infrastructure.
Seize everything she owns to pay back and sentence her to extended prison time.
Sen Rand Paul offers up a simple, elegant solution that Democrats will fight tooth and claw against:
DataRepublican says that John Thune is trying to pull a sneaky maneuver to kill the SAVE Act.
Hello Senator Thune,
Let’s expose what you’re really doing with “reconciliation.”
You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You’re not trying to pass this bill. You’re trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process.
Here’s how we know:
Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are “budgetary.” Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you’ll shrug and say “we tried.” We see through you.
Meanwhile, you WON’T use the tools that actually work:
Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as “complicated.” Because if you tried and succeeded, you’d have to actually pass the bill.
Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results.
Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess.
Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate.
You have 53 seats. You’ve changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months.
Now let’s talk donors:
• Goldman Sachs: $150K to you – top H-1B user
• Google: $75K – lobbies against E-Verify
• Meta: $72.5K – Zuckerberg’s FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration
• Wells Fargo: $90K – banks undocumented immigrants
Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for “Fly Out Days” which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act “will ultimately fail.”
Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable.
We see the loop.
You called grassroots anger a “paid influencer ecosystem.” YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won’t bend the rules to get anything passed.
What we want:
1. Force a real talking filibuster.
2. Stop hiding behind process.
3. Pass the SAVE America Act.
YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You’re living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents.
You are not “moderate.” The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time.
Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.
Paid activists in Los Angeles, California, have been caught on hidden camera paying homeless people on skid row to forge signatures of registered voters on ballot initiatives.
O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) released part Two of its undercover investigation into the Democrats’ blatant election fraud operation in L.A. on Tuesday.
California’s Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Steve Hilton commented on X: “They paid homeless people cash and drugs on Skid Row to forge your signature. Your name. Your vote. Stolen by a crackhead with a clipboard — while Gavin Newsom looked the other way.”
Hilton added: “This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s on tape. And not one Democrat is outraged. That’s because THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE.”
Part One showed petitioners offering cash to homeless people and drug addicts for their signatures. The shocking new video shows the activists, armed with printed lists of voter names and addresses, taking the scheme to another level.
“Fraudulent petitioners on Skid Row are now paying the homeless people to forge names, forge addresses and forge signatures of registered voters,” O’Keefe says at the beginning of Part Two.
Rather than registering the Skid Row denizens to vote, activists gave them $2–$3 in cash to commit forgery and election fraud in what OMG called “a coordinated system.”
O’Keefe stated that the operation was observed on nearly every street corner in downtown Los Angeles.
“The scheme appeared to be present in whatever direction we walked,” he noted.
The goal of the operation, according to OMG, is to “ensure the information matches official records so he signature passes verification.”
The workers handed out post-it notes with the names of a single voter written on them to each of the homeless dupes.
Lots of “activists” need to go to prison.
“‘Not a done deal‘: Democrats start to sweat over Virginia’s redistricting referendum. The unique nature of the April special election and the state’s recent redistricting history have presented challenges for Democrats, even as they hold a financial edge in the race.” “Some supporters of the Virginia referendum acknowledge the challenge of convincing voters to back a gerrymandered map when Democrats, who several years ago backed the formation of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, have criticized Republicans for similar moves.” Ya think? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Democrats have been hyping their wins in very specialized races. And the Left has been declaring that it’s going to finish devouring and digesting the Democrats.
On paper, it should be looking good. The public is dissatisfied. The Left’s program of socialism disguised as economic populism and antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism should be selling. Except the Illinois wipeout suggests it’s not.
Again, on paper Obamaville, where the dead vote and the unions run everything, should have been a good choice. Plenty of leftists have been elected here. And the Democrat primaries in many urban areas are virtually owned by the Left.
But 6 potential Squaddies, including two Muslim candidates, lost Democrat congressional primary races.
The media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are blaming AIPAC and the newly combative pro-Israel lobby, which sees itself being NRA’d out of the Democrats, is happy to take credit, but its results were mostly mixed.
So what does explain the Left taking a beating in primaries it should have been able to dominate?
Despite all the anti-ICE hysteria, radicalism fatigue may be setting in. Enough Democrat primary voters showed no interest in voting for the ‘podcast class’, the Bernie Brats, Hamas fan girls and the rest of the radicals.
The Left was hoping that Mamdani’s victory was a bellwether, but just like Obama’s win what it really showed was that a smooth radical isn’t supposed to sound like one. Democrats didn’t want. The Bernie people, the Justice Dems and that ilk lost badly in Illinois because maybe radicalism isn’t what the Democrat voter wants right now.
They also hit the Ust-Luga oil terminal in the same general area, and it was still burning 24 hours later. They also hit two oil tankers in the same strike.
But that’s not all! They hit the same Ust-Luga oil terminal again less than a day later. “Russia has lost 40% of its oil export capacity.”
One of Russia’s newest warships, a Project 23550 icebreaker, is now damaged and listing heavily after drone strike.
“U. North Texas Cutting up to 70 Programs in Effort to Trim Deficit” including “women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, Mexican American studies, Africana studies, Asian studies as well as dance, geology and special education.” Most of those sound like they should be killed, and the rest are unnecessary luxuries if no one is taking them.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has obtained a court order halting actions by an EPIC City-linked municipal utility district.
The case centers on allegations that the Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A has been used to advance a controversial development project organized by the East Plano Islamic Center by skirting state oversight and standard MUD-creation procedures. The project, originally known as EPIC City, has been rebranded as the Meadow.
Judge Christine Nowak’s order blocks the district and its board from taking further steps to support the development while the litigation continues.
The state’s lawsuit focuses on a 2025 special meeting where the Double R MUD board allegedly resigned en masse, installed new directors at a remote roadside location identified only by GPS coordinates, and then quickly voted to annex more than 400 acres tied to the EPIC project.
State lawyers say that maneuver effectively transformed the MUD into a vehicle for EPIC City’s backers, allowing them to expand taxing authority and infrastructure support without going through the process of forming a new district.
After the annexation, regulators requested documents to confirm that the new board members met legal requirements to hold public office and levy taxes on residents inside the district.
According to the suit, records submitted by Double R MUD showed the individuals did not meet statutory qualifications—a finding the attorney general’s office said casts doubt on every action the board took, including the EPIC City annexation.
The state is asking the court to remove the disputed board members, unwind the 402.5-acre annexation tied to EPIC City, and restore what Paxton describes as lawful governance of the utility district.
More: “Hunt County Rejects Plans for Controversial EPIC City. Commissioners disapproved the Islamic development based on deficiencies in the plat application.”
“Monica Cannon-Grant, a Black Lives Matter activist who was named ‘Bostonian of the Year’ by the Boston Globe, was ordered to pay back every dime she stole from her nonprofit, unemployment benefits, and other fraudulent practices, amounting to almost $225,000. U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley sentenced Cannon-Grant to four years’ probation, six months of home detention, and 100 hours of community service. Federal prosecutors, however, recommended 18 months in prison. Although Cannon-Grant dodged time behind bars, she must return all of the money she managed to bilk from her nonprofit.” Kelley was appointed by Biden, and I bet if Cannon-Grant hadn’t been a leftwing political activist, she would have received prison time.
Important tip: “Ultra-pure copper” bought from China shouldn’t stick to a magnet. Plus, make sure the Chinese companies you’re buying materials from actually exists…
Just hours after Irish rappers Kneecap blasted the amps and turned a Havana concert into a rave for Code Pink activists chanting anti-blockade slogans, reports claim local hospital went dark and ventilator patients died.
Meanwhile, members of the communist flotilla stayed in 5-star hotels with the lights blazing and AC running.
No one cashes in on capitalism faster than the clowns preaching communism.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker with illegally diverting billions of dollars in Nvidia-powered servers to China.
The U.S. government has been trying to figure out how high-powered chips have reached China without authorization, as American artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI face challenges from DeepSeek and other Chinese rivals.
In an indictment unsealed Thursday, the U.S. government alleged that Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, Ruei-Tsan “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun worked together to violate the Export Control Reform Act.
The server company’s products containing Nvidia chips “are subject to strict U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license,” the plaintiff said in the indictment. “Those controls are in place to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, among other things.”
Artificial intelligence may well be the most important technological development of the coming decade-and that is exactly why the current capital surge around it warrants skepticism. History is littered with transformative innovations that were nonetheless disastrously overbuilt and mispriced in their early phases. Austrian Business Cycle Theory was never a children’s story in which every boom ends with clowns, ashes, and worthless machinery; its real claim is subtler and nastier. When the price of time is falsified-when interest rates are pushed below their natural rate-often proxied, however imperfectly, by modern estimates of the neutral rate-entrepreneurs are encouraged to undertake projects that are more roundabout, more capital-intensive, and more time-sensitive than underlying saving and final demand can actually support. The neutral rate is a policy construct; the natural rate is an economic reality. Some of those projects may still embody genuine innovation.
The problem is not that AI must be fake; it is that a very real technological advance can be financed, priced, and physically built in ways that are wildly uneconomic.
That distinction matters because AI is about as roundabout as modern capitalism gets. This is not a boom in apps and slogans alone; it is a boom in data centers, power, cooling, transformers, specialized semiconductors, fiber, land, and the commodities and construction needed to house and feed all of it. Reuters reports that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are expected to spend more than $630 billion combined on AI-related infrastructure in 2026, up sharply from 2025, while separate Reuters reporting says Amazon alone projects roughly $200 billion of 2026 capex. Analysts also expect the hyperscalers’ debt issuance to keep climbing, with BofA lifting its 2026 forecast to $175 billion after Amazon’s jumbo deal and Reuters noting that these firms issued $121 billion in bonds in 2025 versus a 2020–2024 annual average of just $28 billion. In Austrian terms, this is not consumption drunkenness; it is higher-order production marching deep into the structure of capital with a flamethrower and an Excel model.
Snip.
The most charitable case is that AI is a genuine general-purpose technology whose economics are merely messy in the early innings. OpenAI says ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly users as of late February, and Bloomberg reports OpenAI’s annualized revenue topped $20 billion in 2025 while Anthropic is tracking near that level as well. There are also signs of real productivity gains in narrow use cases, especially coding and selected support tasks. But the bill is arriving much faster than the profits: Bain estimated the industry would need roughly $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 to support projected compute demand, yet expected a gap of about $800 billion. That is not a business model; that is a promissory note written in GPU ink.
The more worrying Austrian angle is not simply overvaluation in public equities, but miscoordination in the capital structure. If chips depreciate economically faster than accountants admit, if grid interconnections lag by years, if open models compress pricing power, and if customers love AI demos more than they love paying enterprise invoices, then the industry has a classic ABCT problem: complementary capital arrives in the wrong proportions and at the wrong times. And though not easily captured in formal models, technological history is clear: infrastructure-heavy systems rarely stay that way for long, and early capital often pays the price. The New York Fed warns that r-star is an estimate, not an oracle, but the larger point survives that caveat: if market rates were held too low relative to the economy’s true intertemporal balance, then the resulting investment pattern will look profitable only until bottlenecks, replacement cycles, and cost of capital reassert themselves. Bloomberg reports OpenAI has discussed infrastructure commitments above $1.4 trillion, while Anthropic has announced a $50 billion U.S. data-center push; meanwhile, the IEA has warned of grid-connection queues, transformer shortages, and permitting delays for the power build-out data centers require. A boom can survive many indignities, but not all of them at once.
So: does AI constitute malinvestment? The best answer is that AI almost certainly contains both real innovation and a large malinvestment component.
Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB), a major U.S. strategic bomber installation in northwest Louisiana, has just experienced an unusually serious series of unauthorized drone incursions over its most sensitive areas.
More than a dozen unsanctioned drones repeatedly swarmed a US Air Force base that is home to a nuclear bomber fleet — and were able to resist efforts to bring them down via jamming technology, according to military officials.
The restricted airspace of Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, was infiltrated by “multiple unauthorized drones” between March 9 and March 15, a base spokesperson told The Post.
The 22-acre installation located east of Shreveport, hosts a fleet of B-52 bombers which can carry out nuclear strikes with “worldwide precision,” according to the Air Force.
As an Air Force Global Strike Command base, Barksdale also plays a crucial role in the Air Force’s nuclear defense capabilities…
Military officials report that more than 12 to 15 unauthorized drones swarmed the base, which hosts the U.S. nuclear B-52 bomber fleet.
The drones resisted jamming efforts, with multiple waves detected.
Snip.
The briefing includes a determination that the drones were different than what the typical consumer could purchase off the shelf. They appeared to be custom built and required “advanced knowledge” of signal operations.
The analysts said “with high confidence” they expected unauthorized drones to continue to operate in and around Barksdale Air Force Base in the immediate future.
“The drone incursions at BAFB pose a significant threat to public safety and national security since they require the flight line to be shut down while also putting manned aircrafts already inflight in the area at risk,” the document said.
Maybe his hatred for the police will finally be his undoing. “Resignation Demands Mount for Travis County DA Garza over Prosecutorial Misconduct Allegations.”
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza is facing calls for his resignation over accusations that he withheld evidence in prosecuting a police officer for actions taken during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Austin.
“Jose Garza’s habitual misconduct and his lack of prosecutorial experience puts our entire community at risk,” said Austin Police Retired Officers Association (APROA) President Dennis Farris in a statement.
“Felony cases, when properly handled, present opportunities for the innocent to be absolved of serious allegations, for the guilty to be held accountable and for the residents of Travis County to have confidence in the judicial system. In order for these principles to be upheld, Travis County needs a new district attorney.”
Farris was responding to recent revelations about Garza’s prosecution of Austin police officer Chance Bretches.
In 2022, Garza charged Bretches with Aggravated Assault, two years after an anti-police demonstration spurred by the death of George Floyd. During the protest, Bretches fired a “less lethal” bean bag round, resulting in severe injury to a woman who said she was a volunteer providing medical assistance to protestors.
In 2024, Garza brought additional charges against Bretches for Aggravated Assault by a Public Servant, Deadly Conduct, and Assault.
Although prosecutors are required to provide the defense with exculpatory evidence in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland and Texas’ Michael Morton Act, Garza did not disclose alleged “secret” meetings in 2023 with city officials to discuss the possibility of charging the City of Austin.
Last week, attorney Doug O’Connell asked Travis County District Court Judge Karen Sage to dismiss the case on the grounds that Garza violated Bretches’ constitutional due process rights and violated the law by not disclosing the meetings or related communications. O’Connell also argued that Garza’s actions are part of a pattern of misconduct.
“This goes to the issue of why dismissing the case is the only solution, because how will the judge ever know whether they turned over all the evidence,” O’Connell told The Texan.
Courts previously sanctioned Garza for withholding evidence in the manslaughter prosecution of two Williamson County Sheriff’s deputies, and an investigator also accused the DA of hiding evidence in the trial of Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted in 2023 of murdering Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster. Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry in 2024.
In addition to APROA, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) has also called for Garza’s resignation, and the incoming president of the nonprofit Central Texas Public Safety Commission, Jennifer Stevens, told CBS Austin that Garza’s prosecution of police officers instead of criminal defendants is contributing to division between the Travis County District Attorney’s Office (TCDAO) and law enforcement.
“There can be no worse violation of the oath taken by a district attorney than to intentionally deny a defendant a fair trial. It is a direct violation of their constitutional rights,” said CLEAT Executive Director Robert Leonard in a statement.
In December, a Texas appeals court overturned the conviction of Austin police officer Christopher Taylor, who had been prosecuted by Garza over the 2019 shooting death of Mauris DeSilva.
Abbott responded to the new allegations against Garza in a social media post.
“All of this will be taken into consideration when I have the final say on the fate of the police officer. This DA’s failure to prosecute murderers & repeatedly letting dangerous criminals go free, while prioritizing prosecuting police, will have consequences,” wrote Abbott.
The sooner Garza is gone, the sooner citizens can stop dying because he let criminal scumbags back on the street.
“Dallas and Williamson County GOPs to Return to Countywide Voting After Primary Election Day Confusion. At least 13,000 Dallas residents reportedly showed up to the wrong polling place on March 3.”
America’s most prolific serial killers now burns in hell. Kermit Gosnell dies in prison at 85.
A Philadelphia grand jury, in its investigation of Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion center, labeled it a ‘house of horrors’ and initially sought charges for hundreds of murders of babies born alive and then killed.
Charges were ultimately limited to seven murder counts ‘after pressure from senior political and law enforcement officials,’ according to accounts from those covering the case.
The facility functioned as a ‘pill mill by day and an ‘abortion mill’ by night,’ federal authorities noted….
Witnesses described shocking details: Baby A was large enough that employees took photos after the killing, with Gosnell joking the baby was ‘big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.’
Other infants showed signs of life, including breathing and movement, before being killed.
Gosnell was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of 41-year-old patient Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee who died from an overdose of anesthesia during a botched abortion.
He faced more than 200 additional counts and was found guilty on most, including 21 felony counts of performing illegal abortions beyond Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit and violations of the state’s 24-hour informed-consent law.
Finally. “International Olympic Committee Bans Male Athletes from Women’s Sports.” Pretty soon the only place radical transsexism will still hold sway is among 2028 Democratic Presidential candidates…
The House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight will have over a dozen members, with state Rep. Cody Vasut (R-Angleton) serving as the chair and state Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston) as co-chair.
The other representatives on it will be state Reps. Richard Hayes (R-Denton), Brooks Landgraf (R-Odessa), Mitch Little (R-Lewisville), AJ Louderback (R-Victoria), Christian Manuel (D-Beaumont), Eddie Morales (D-Eagle Pass), Richard Raymond (D-Laredo), Shelby Slawson (R-Stephenville), Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock), Ellen Troxclair (R-Lakeway, and Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood).
“Meta to Pay $375 Million Penalty After Jury Finds Company Endangered Children in Landmark Case.”
A jury in New Mexico determined on Tuesday that Meta misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and put children in harm’s way by failing to protect them from sexual predators.
The jury ordered meta to pay a $375 million penalty, significantly lower than the $2.2 billion that New Mexico sought, based on the total number of violations and a $5,000 fine per violation. Meta was found to have violated New Mexico’s unfair-practices act
Adam Savage reorganizes his storage drawers. I’m not saying everyone should watch all 40 minutes of this, but if you have a workshop full of tiny components you have trouble organizing, you might find his method useful.
Tom Scott returns to YouTube after a two year absence. I’m not necessarily super excited for the particular shows he’s returning with (a tour through all of England’s counties, with something interesting in each), but I’ll probably dip into it because I liked his previous work, where he traveled around the world and explained interesting things.
Some Iran War updates, Russo-Ukrainian War updates, Democrats, Trannies, and Tranny Democrat child sex offenders, a Democrat judge bonds out a would-be jihad mass murderer, Bible discussion turns a bus rider stabby, and gamers come out against AI “assistance.” Plus: Marlene Dietrich, show us your guns!
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Still having the occasional 429 error, but if I wait an hour, they seem to clear.
President Trump weighs boots on the ground options in Iran. In addition to the Marines, the storied 82nd Airborne Division is an option.
IRGC “Brigadier General Ali Mohammad Naeini killed in overnight strike.” “Naeini had been the public face of Iran’s military communications throughout the conflict.” Not anymore…
When co-host David Friedberg asked Fetterman point-blank, “Who do you think leads the Democratic Party today?” the Pennsylvania senator didn’t flinch. “Oh, we don’t have one,” he said. “I think the TDS, that’s the leader right now. You know, right now our party is governed by the TDS.”
Fetterman then described what that governance actually looks like in practice – a kind of loyalty test that runs in reverse. Opposition to Trump has become the organizing principle, the ideological north star. Agree with anything the other side does and you face consequences. “It’s made it virtually impossible, without being punished, as a Democrat, to agree something’s good, or ‘I agree with the other side,'” he said.
He then cited Operation Epic Fury – the U.S. military campaign against Iran – as the latest illustration of the problem. Fetterman said he is “literally the only Democrat […] in Congress, that I’ve come across that’s saying, ‘I think it’s a great thing to break and destroy the Iranian regime.’ I think it’s entirely appropriate to hold them accountable.”
Fetterman correctly pointed out that this is not a fringe or even partisan position, historically. Every Democrat who ran for president in recent memory vowed Iran would never get a nuclear weapon. Now that it’s actually happening, the party’s response has been mostly blind criticism of President Trump for finally taking action.
Fetterman previously accused Democrats of refusing to put “country over party” over the Iran strikes.
“The last two professional candidates for the Democratic Party all agreed that we can never allow Iran to acquire nuclear bombs, and that’s made that possible now. I think we can say, ‘Hey, that’s a great thing. That makes the world more safe, more secure and holds Iran accountable,’” he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity earlier this month, after 53 House Democrats voted against a resolution declaring that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism — something which isn’t remotely in doubt. “That’s almost 25% of Democrats in the House that can’t just call Iran the world’s biggest terrorism underwriter,” Fetterman added.
“Virtually every Democrat that I’m aware of says we can never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb, and they were a significant risk to America,” Fetterman continued. “I know why they [Democrats] don’t say that now because I’m aware that it is very damaging as a Democrat to just happen to agree with the president on anything. But, for me, that’s easy — country over party.”
Deep State functionaries seem unclear on tricky concepts like “chain of command” and “democracy.” “”US intel hid Chinese 2020 election meddling from Trump because they opposed his policies.” “Dr. Barry A. Zulauf, a member of the Senior National Intelligence Service reported that others in the intelligence community said ‘I don’t want my intelligence going to the White House where it will be used by that vulgarian in the Oval Office to support policies against China with which I personally disagree.'”
Analysts inside the U.S. intelligence community sought to conceal evidence of Chinese influence efforts from President Donald Trump during the 2020 election, with analysts saying they didn’t want their intel used by “that vulgarian in the Oval Office” to pursue policies toward China they personally disagreed with.
The revelation is found within a January 2021 report written by — and never before reported upon comments by — analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf, who conducted a review of the spy community’s handling of Russian versus Chinese meddling efforts during the 2020 election. Among his conclusions was that intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump and did not want to support the policies and priorities of the Trump administration toward China with which they “personally disagree.”
Just the News reported this week that the U.S. intelligence community has known since early 2020 that Beijing also gained access to American voter registration data and used that information to conduct opinion analysis related to the presidential election between Trump and then-former Vice President Joe Biden.
This is not the only piece of evidence pointing to Chinese government election influence efforts in the 2020 election. Although much about China’s activities in 2020 remains classified, Just the News conducted a thorough review of publicly-available intelligence assessments, federal indictments, foreign government warnings, and cybersecurity firm analyses.
There is credible evidence that Chinese government-linked cyber hackers and Chinese social media troll farms took aim at the U.S. presidential election in 2020 and sought to undercut Trump during his run against now-former President Biden. There are also indicators that Chinese intelligence and law enforcement agencies — China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and its Ministry of Public Security (MPS) — also played a role in 2020.
Republicans love America. Democrats’ love for America is contingent on a Democrat in the White House.
A man who was shot and killed by police in Dallas was part of Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s security detail, multiple sources reported on Friday.
According to CBS News, the individual in question was “known publicly as Mike King,” although he’d been using various aliases to gain employment.
He was also running a business that placed law enforcement officers in off-duty jobs — and was a figure present near Crockett at numerous campaign stops during her failed bid to gain the party’s Senate nomination, as photographic evidence showed.
King was fatally shot Wednesday after a standoff with a SWAT team in Dallas outside of Children’s Medical Center.
According to DFW Scanner, a site that chronicles crime reports from police scanners in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the suspect “barricaded himself in a vehicle at 1934 Medical District Drive.”
“Officers used tear gas in an effort to get the suspect out of the vehicle. He exited the vehicle armed with a gun, and pointed it at officers,” the report noted. “Officers opened fire and killed the suspect.”
Early reports indicated that he was a fugitive who was known to police and was under investigation for impersonation of a law enforcement officer.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Democrats just have a gift for hiring they best, don’t they?
“Reddit’s biggest trans moderator was just unmasked as convicted child sex abuser.” Branden “Brynn” Dunleavy. “The whistleblower, who waved the red flag, said he thinks this Branden and his crimes were deliberately shielded” by other Reddit moderators. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Monsterous: “Transgender ‘youth advocate’ was just charged with raping a BABY GIRL.” William Kelso Flournoy IV even filmed himself doing it. Hell’s too good for him.
The accusations come from two of the alleged victims themselves, one who was 12 when she said the sexual abuse started. The other alleged victim quoted in the piece was 13 when she says Chavez sexually abused her:
Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him. She walked along a dirt trail, entered the rundown building, passed his secretary and stepped into his office.
He locked the door, as he always did when he called her, and told her how lonely he had been. He brought her onto the yoga mat that he often used in his office for meditation, kissed her and pulled her pants down. “Don’t tell anyone,” he told her afterward. “They’d get jealous.”
The man, Cesar Chavez, one of the most revered figures in the Latino civil rights movement, was 45. She was 13. Ms. Murguia said she was summoned for sexual encounters with him dozens of times over the next four years.
[…]
Ms. Murguia and Ms. [Debra] Rojas, both of whom are now 66, were the daughters of longtime organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Mr. Chavez. He used the privacy of his California office to frequently molest Ms. Murguia, she said. He had known her since she was 8 years old. She became so traumatized that she attempted to end her life multiple times by the age of 15.
How is it so many Democrat “community organizers” and “activists” turn out to be sexual predators? Those movements seem to draw them like flies to an open sewer…
Fallout: “Abbott Blocks Annual Cesar Chavez Observation in Texas.”
Samuel James Hall, a green card holder from Great Britain, appeared in federal court on a misdemeanor charge of voting by an alien. According to his defense attorney, James Alston, Hall has lived in the Houston area for several years but is not a U.S. citizen. Federal prosecutors allege he cast a ballot in Harris County during the 2024 General Election, voting in races for president, vice president, U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives. The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in federal prison. Hall posted bond and is free while his case moves through court.
“Former MD Anderson Researcher Pleads Guilty To Stealing Cancer Research for China.” “Harris County court records show that Yunhai Li pleaded guilty on March 6 to a state jail felony charge of attempted theft of trade secrets. He was recently sentenced to 364 days in the Harris County jail and received credit for 196 days already served, indicating a remaining time in jail of 168 days. Court records indicate Li, 35, is expected to be deported upon release.” (Previously.)
After paying Bari Weiss $150 million for The Free Press and hiring her to run their newsroom, CBS News announced a fresh round of layoffs on Friday which will affect over 60 jobs, or 6% of the news division, according to the NY Times.
“Certain parts of this newsroom need to get smaller in order for us to make room for the things that we need to build to remain competitive in the future,” said Weiss, who entered the scene last October, during a Friday newsroom-wide conference call.
The move follows roughly 100 layoffs last year, while ratings have continued to plummet under Weiss.
Today’s round includes the entirety of CBS News Radio – a century-old division that “served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927,” said network president Tom Cibrowski in a memo.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the average CBS Radio news listener age is around 85…
After decades of relying on Vietnam-era designs, the Army has approved the first offensive hand grenade to enter the service since 1968.
The new M111 Offensive Hand Grenade was approved for full material release this year, the Army announced Tuesday in a statement. The new grenade relies primarily on blast overpressure rather than fragmented inner pieces to incapacitate, making it better suited for close-quarters combat inside of buildings, bunkers and tunnels.
Full material release allows the Army to field the weapon across the force after testing has confirmed that it meets safety and performance requirements. The approval lets the Army move the grenade from development into production.
The Army’s standard M67 fragmentation grenade explodes shrapnel in all directions, making it risky for soldiers to use in tight spaces. Blast overpressure refers to the intense pressure wave created by an explosion.
“One of the key lessons learned from the door-to-door urban fighting in Iraq was the M67 grenade wasn’t always the right tool for the job. The risk of fratricide on the other side of the wall was too high,” said Col. Vince Morris, the Army’s project manager for Close Combat Systems, in the statement. But a weapon utilizing blast overpressure instead of fragmentation, he said, “can clear a room of enemy combatants quickly leaving nowhere to hide while ensuring the safety of friendly forces.”
The M111 is intended to replace the body and fuze of the Mk3A2 grenade series, which has an asbestos body that has restricted its use. Unlike the Mk3A2, the new weapon has a plastic casing that is consumed during detonation.
It also uses the same fuze system as the M67 grenade, allowing the service to streamline manufacturing.
With 310 meters in length and roughly 90 meters at the beam, the 80,000-tonne France Libre will dwarf its predecessor, the 42,000-tonne Charles de Gaulle, which has served as the Marine Nationale‘s sole carrier strike platform since 2001. Power will come from a pair of TechnicAtome K-22 pressurized water reactors, granting the vessel virtually unlimited range and endurance at speeds of up to 27 knots via three shaft lines. Crew complement (including air wing) is set to be about 2,000 sailors.
They’re targeting it to be ready for service in 2038.
Insane story out of Houston: “Armed Man Wearing Tactical Gear Arrested for Attempted Entry to Klein Elementary School.”
A 39-year-old man in tactical gear, armed with a handgun and taser, attempted entry to Zwink Elementary in Klein Independent School District (ISD) on March 10.
Kyle Chris lives four minutes away from the school and was arrested on the evening of March 11, more than 24 hours after the incident. He has a felony charge of unlawfully carrying a weapon in a prohibited place.
District officials say Chris was able to enter an initial set of front doors during a 15-second period after a parent entered and before the doors shut completely. Zwink Elementary’s double-door system kept Chris in the entrance and stopped him from entering the area of the school with access to students.
But the story gets even more insane: “Kyle Chris” turns out to be “Muhi Mohanad Najm” and Democrat Judge Lori Chambers Gray bonded him out for $75K.
Talking about the Bible on a bus in Austin? That’s a stabbing. Boy, Steve Adler’s decision to lure drug addicted transients to Austin, and Jose Garza’s determination to keep violent lunatics on the streets, just keep paying dividends.
Among the numerous things he predicted incorrectly:
In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death [from mass famine].
This was, of course, entirely false. It did not happen. It is hard to overstate how wrong this was. Indeed, after the communist-run Great Leap Forward famine in 1950s-1960s China, major famines have become a vanishing rarity on the global stage
Snip.
Elsewhere, in a comical essay that presented itself as being written from the future, Ehrlich claimed the U.S. population in 1999 would be around 22 million, the result of a famine-induced “Great Die-Off.”
There is a personality type that every institution eventually learns to fear. Not the whistleblower. Not the activist. Not the dissident. Those are legible threats. They want something. They have an agenda. They can be categorized, managed, countered, discredited.
The personality the institution cannot process is the person who corrects errors because they are errors.
Not because the correction serves their interests. Not because they are aligned against the people who made the error. Not because they are building a case or advancing a cause or positioning themselves for advantage. Because the error exists. Because it is wrong. Because someone published a number that is not the right number, and the wrong number is sitting there, propagating, being cited, being absorbed, being built upon, and nobody is fixing it.
This person will spend three hours writing a detailed correction of a statistical claim in a policy document that has nothing to do with their field, their career, their politics, or their life. They will do this for free. They will do it knowing that the correction will make them no friends and several enemies. They will do it on a Saturday. They will do it again the following Tuesday when they find another error in a different document.
If you ask them why, the answer is: because it’s wrong.
That answer is incomprehensible to most institutional actors. And the incomprehension is the beginning of the immune response.
It’s not our job to make sure nVidia’s fucking shit lands. It’s my job to identify when their shit has not landed and has, in fact, remained suspended in mid-air. It’s not a great metaphor. And I guess I say it’s not our job, but that’s not really true; they’re the entire economy. We all work for them, in a literal way. The rational play here is to suck as many dicks as possible, and to suck them on an industrial scale. We might suck a dick here, a dick there, but we need to be thinking about these firm rods like a Henry Ford or a Ray Croc. You better clap to keep this fucking fairy alive or your gramma is gonna have to live in a hedge like a witch.
I saw impressive environmental lighting for sure, but that’s not what punched people in the gut. All people did was respond viscerally to Grace Ashcroft. That’s not who she is. We had an uncanny valley, and now we have… I dunno. An “Eerie Mesa.” We don’t like that either. And when I say we don’t like it, I mean our bones don’t like it. There’s a Eurogamer article on nVidia’s response, which is to say that we don’t know everything and are thinking about it wrong, which is a great pitch. I talked to Gabe a couple years ago about how eventually nVidia would just… do it. Do it all, do the whole shebang. Expound mathemagically on base assets and shim the whole thing. I wish I’d said so at the time! I could link back to it, and simply deploy the Lemmy Face. In the meantime, it’s not clear to me that the developers I’m interested in are gonna feel like jacking this thing off until their game doesn’t look scary.
Speaking of people rejecting scary faces, Meta is closing down it’s virtual realty project after pouring $80 billion on it. Or saying they lost $80 billion so they can rake off the money somewhere else…
Mark Felton has a fun video up covering Marlene Dietrich’s guns she brought back after entertaining U.S. troops in Europe during World War II, including gifts from Omar Bradley and George S. Patton!
Dune Part 3 trailer drops. The difficulty here is that Parts 1 and 2 were made from Dune, which is a great novel, where this is made from Dune Messiah, which isn’t. Indeed, Dune Messiah takes place after Muad’Dib’s jihad has swept the galaxy, and it looks like there will be a lot more jihad in the movie than the book. I’m guessing this is the rare case where the movie may be better than the book.
