Trump’s first hundred days, a Ukraine mineral deal at last, Democrats choose rapists over women (again), employment numbers are up (unexpectedly!), Josh Hawley names and shames PELOSI, Reform UK wins big, Spain blacks out (and not from Sangria), a sneaky local Williamson County election tomorrow, and the return of the Worst Gun of All Time.
After President Trump’s first 100 days, what stands out to me is his straightforward trademark phrase — “promises made, promises kept.”
He was elected on November 5 to transform the country in a completely different direction from the failed presidency of Joe Biden.
And that is precisely what Mr. Trump has done.
He is a disruptor. He is a change agent. He is fighting the entrenched elites and their institutions. He’s not afraid to use shock and awe. He is also a master dealmaker. He is also a man chockful of common sense.
None of this is going to be easy, nor will it come without glitches. But the political reality of his first 100 days is that Mr. Trump has kept his word to the American people.
So, 142 executive orders later, Mr. Trump has secured the border, restored safety, and is making great progress on the deportation of criminal illegal aliens.
For every one new regulation, Mr. Trump is abolishing ten others.
He is cutting taxes across the board to launch a blue-collar boom, while reducing prices with the production of more goods.
He has reopened the energy spigots, and will profitably deploy America’s abundant resources.
He is eliminating federal waste, fraud, and abuse. He is shrinking the size of the federal government.
And he has launched a reciprocal fair-trade initiative.
So, pulling all of this together, in his first 100 days Mr. Trump has fundamentally restored hope for faster growth and greater affordability.
And, as tough as it may be, he is working to restore peace in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran.
Culturally, he has stopped the Democratic woke march to DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion.
He has fought hard for religious freedom, an end to government censorship, and has stopped the weaponization of justice.
Mr. Trump has gone after the elite universities for their failure to stop antisemitism.
And, indeed, for all of Mr. Trump’s pro-growth economic initiatives, and his ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy, his determination to restore a more traditional, cultural, and spiritual country is one of his greatest accomplishments in the first 100 days.
#Winning.
Finally: “U.S., Ukraine Sign Minerals Deal in Major Breakthrough for Peace Talks.”
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have signed a long-anticipated deal that gives the U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in exchange for a promised security guarantee to protect Kyiv from future Russian aggression, signaling President Donald Trump’s commitment to ending the war.
The deal was signed Wednesday afternoon on Trump’s 100th day in office by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, as the latter visited Washington, D.C., to finalize the details. The Treasury Department confirmed the signed deal, called the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.
“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term. President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine,” Bessent said in a statement. “And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
The minerals deal grants the U.S. access to Ukraine’s natural resources, including aluminum, graphite, oil, and natural gas, according to Bloomberg. It also lays out details about the economic partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine.
With that deal finally done, Trump finally has the excuse he needs to keep supporting Ukraine, especially if Russia refuses Trump’s demands to come to the negotiating table.
More proof that the Democrat Party is objectively pro-rape: ‘California Dems Vote To Keep Male Sex Offenders In Female Prisons.”
Democrats on the California Senate Public Safety Committee shot down a bill on Tuesday that would have kept male sex criminals out of female prisons.
The committee, which includes far-Left Senator Scott Wiener, voted down a proposal from Republican Senator Shannon Grove to protect women from males who are registered sex offenders from being able to be housed in women’s prisons. The bill also would have given women privacy in sleeping arrangements and showers, meaning that they would be protected from males who have taken advantage of California’s lax laws that allow men to be placed in women’s prisons.
“Today I am here on behalf of incarcerated women in California prisons who are dealing with the unintended consequences of allowing transgender inmates to be housed in women’s correction facilities,” Grove said at the committee hearing. “Everyone agrees that we need to keep inmates safe and provide additional protections.”
She noted that she had received a letter from a female inmate discussing how males were being housed in her prison. The letter included a condom that had been distributed by prison staff.
“Why is the state of California paying for condoms in women’s prisons?” Grove asked the committee.
The only lawmaker to support the bill was Senator Kelly Seyarto, the lone Republican on the committee.
Grove’s bill is seeking to address problems created by SB 132, a bill sponsored by Wiener that said that inmates should be housed according to their “gender identity.” Her legislation would “establish a secure facility at each women’s prison to house transgender women, in order to protect the security needs of biological women at birth in sleeping and other intimate areas” and prohibit male sex offenders from being eligible to be assigned to female prisons.
“SB 132 created a preference for transgender individuals. If you are a woman serving in the women’s prison and a transgender self-identified check-the-box person comes in and goes, ‘I want to house with you,’ the woman in that cell has no recourse. They can’t say no because that’s considered discriminatory,” Grove told The Daily Wire on Monday.
Grove said that she was told before the hearing that the committee planned to kill the bill. She said that the California Democrat supermajority had a “preference for predators versus victims.”
Democrats are at war with biology, reality, and basic human decency.
Along the same lines, Maine Democrats have censured state Republican Rep. Laurel Libby for standing against men in women’s athletics, including stripping her right to vote on bills. Boy, Democrats sure seem unclear on this whole “democracy” thing…
“Trump signs order ending taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS.” Good. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Up until yesterday, Matthew Bruderman was the chairman of Nassau University Medical Center. A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Bruderman announced he was cooperating with the FBI and Department of Justice in an investigation. Specifically, Mr. Bruderman claims that New York state and Long Island have stolen at least $1 billion from the organization.
Bruderman said he believes the officials’ ultimate goal was to financially strangle the public hospital, paving the way for state and local leaders to shut it down, take over the land currently owned by the public-benefit corporation that runs it and have it redeveloped for profit.
Wednesday night, Mr. Bruderman’s house was burglarized. However, the only thing allegedly taken was…documents tied to the investigation.
Bruderman wasn’t home at the time of the robbery and only found out after police called to inform him they had recovered a binder with his name on it in a car driven by an unidentified couple, he said.
“I was confused because that was the binder I had on my desk when I left,” he said.
Bruderman said he later found his backdoor pried wide open.
The binder, he said, contained “sensitive” materials related to the ongoing federal investigation, including documents and records tied to the financial misconduct he claims to have uncovered while reviewing hospital finances and state reimbursements.
Snip.
At the heart of the alleged scheme is a little-known federal program called the Disproportionate Share Hospital Fund — meant to help keep afloat struggling hospitals such as NUMC, which treat large numbers of low-income patients on Medicaid and Medicare.
Under the program, the federal government agrees to give hospitals tens of millions of dollars in funding as long as their state matches the investment.
According to [Bruderman’s] review of internal financial records, previous hospital leadership allegedly “borrowed” what was supposed to be the state’s matching share from an offshore account tied to a Cayman Islands trust, originally set up to cover the medical center’s legal bills.
That money would be temporarily transferred into the hospital’s general fund just long enough to fool the feds into thinking New York had paid its share — unlocking the federal portion of the funding, he claimed.
But once the federal funds cleared, the state’s contribution would allegedly be moved right back offshore.
That would mean those matching funds vanished into the shadows in a conspiracy that could’ve included top officials.
Seems plausible to me. Oh, also: “Mr. Bruderman was fired on Thursday.”
Blue state governance in action: “Washington state now gives $120,000 ‘forgivable loans’ for new homebuyers. But only if they’re not white.”
As part of the covenant homeownership program, the department shall contract with the commission to design, develop, implement and evaluate one or more special purpose credit programs to reduce racial disparities in ownership in the state by providing down payment and closing cost assistance… The contract must authorize the commission to use up to one percent of the contract to provide targeted education, homeownership counseling, and outreach about special purpose credit programs created under this section to black, indigenous, and people of color and other historically marginalized communities in Washington state.
Forgivable means they’re giving your tax dollars to other people to buy a home based on their skin color. I think this violates all sorts of civil rights and equal protection causes, and Pam Bondi’s DOJ should sue.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has reintroduced the “Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments” (PELOSI) Act that would prohibit members of Congress and their families from trading stocks while in office.
The name of the act is a direct nod in the direction of 20 term Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) whose net worth has soared from $160,000 when she was first elected in 1987 to more than $140 million in 2024.
A dozen of the White House’s (WH) newly-published list of 100 of “the worst of the worst criminal illegal immigrants” arrested since President Donald Trump took office in January were apprehended by Texas branches of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In a news release titled “In the First 100 Days, the Trump Administration Has Taken Killers Rapists Off Our Streets,” images of the 100 detainees were listed online in chronological order by the date of their arrests — as well as displayed on the White House lawn — prior to a press conference held by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Border Czar Tom Homan.
Six of the illegal immigrants included in the “worst of the worst” list were arrested by Houston ICE authorities, five by Dallas ICE, and one by Austin ICE.
One of the arrests made by Houston ICE was of a 70-year-old Indian national, Raju Varughese Vayechaparampil, convicted of “aggravated sexual assault of a child” in Harris County. With a similar conviction also in Harris County for “indecency with child sexual contact,” Che Xol Norberto was arrested on March 18. Osvaldo Diaz, a Cuban national, was arrested by the same ICE branch for convictions of “Trespassing and Sexual Assault Child/Battery Child” while in Florida.
Another arrest made by ICE Houston was a 64-year-old citizen of Honduras, Eduardo Garcia-Cortez, convicted of murder in California.
“God bless the men and women of ICE who strap a gun to their hip every day … To not only secure our border and protect our national security but … they’re removing public safety threats and national security threats every day,” Homan said during the presser.
“While you’re all sleeping, at two or three in the morning, there are men and women out there, enforcing the law, making this country safe again. And we’re going to keep doing that, full speed ahead,” he addressed the WH press pool.
ICE Austin’s arrest was of Humberto Ruiz-Zapata, who has convictions of murder and Driving While Intoxicated. He is a citizen of Mexico, with a prior “final removal date” of May 12, 2017.
ICE Dallas arrested Tay Myint, a citizen of Burma, on March 3. Myint was sentenced to prison for 12 years due to “aggravated sexual assault of a child” in the City of Cactus.
ICE Denver officers arrested Joel Matos-Nieto, 23, a criminal alien from Venezuela and member of the international gang Tren de Aragua with a final order of removal April 23. Matos has convictions for motor vehicle theft, obstructing a police officer and criminal mischief. pic.twitter.com/ZcaavP8A72
As Michael Shellenberger writes at PUBLIC, this wasn’t just a Spanish blackout. It shook the entire European grid.
…none of this should have been a surprise. The underlying physics had been understood for years, and the specific vulnerabilities had been spelled out repeatedly in technical warnings that policymakers ignored.
…
As countries replaced heavy, spinning plants with lightweight, inverter-based generation, the grid became faster, lighter, and far more sensitive to disruptions. That basic physical reality was spelled out in public warnings as far back as 2017.
…
Although political leaders promised that renewable energy would provide stable, affordable power, in practice, Spain grew more reliant on the remaining nuclear and natural gas plants to sustain inertia — even as the government pushes them to close.
…
Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.
Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired.
On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.
The system was being pushed to the limit.
And today, at 12:35 pm, it broke.
…
Spain’s blackout wasn’t just a technical failure. It was a political and strategic failure.
…
Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse.
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party racked up big gains in UK local elections.
It has won over 630 council seats from around 1,500 declared so far, with results from a further 100 or so still to come in.
Reform has seized control of six authorities from the Conservatives after elections on Thursday, including Tory heartlands such as Kent and Staffordshire.
The party has also won control of Doncaster council from Labour, and taken control in Durham, where Labour was the largest party.
At least the UK isn’t trying to ban a suddenly popular, outsider party. Unlike Germany. ” Germany’s Intel Agency Designates AfD Party as ‘Extremist,’ Paves Way for Possible Ban. AfD officials made “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim statements,” spy agency cites as reason for the ‘extremist’ designation.” Eveidently the powers that be in Germany feel that notcing the baleful effects of unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration is “extremism.”
Germany has designated the country’s leading opposition party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), as ‘extremist,’ paving the way for a possible ban. The decision to classify the party was taken by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency Verfassungschutz, which operates under the country’s Interior Ministry.
“Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated the Alternative for Germany, the country’s second-largest political party, as a right-wing extremist group, a controversial step that could lead to the organisation being banned altogether,” the Belgian news website Euroactiv reported.
Good thing Germany banning political parties has never had any negative effects in the past…
Palmdale to Gilroy is about 300 miles. In 20 years. Or about 15 miles of track a year. Or, counting 260 work days a year, that’s an astonishing .0587 miles of track a day, or a whopping 300 feet a day. By the way, the 1,911 mile transcontinental railroad was built in six years, largely by hand. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
This was unexpected: “Donald Trump Endorses Speaker Dustin Burrows, All Pro-School Choice Texas House Republicans
The endorsement was relayed by Abbott in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.”
President Donald Trump has endorsed Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) and every House Republican who voted for education savings account legislation earlier this month, according to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Abbott relayed the news to a meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday morning before the chamber gaveled in for the day’s business, The Texan reported.
The endorsement goes to the 86 House Republicans who voted for Senate Bill (SB) 2 on April 16. It comes for the 2026 midterms, and for Burrows himself, it’s also an endorsement for re-election as speaker. Trump told the caucus the morning of April 16 in a closed-door meeting that he would endorse them if they voted for SB 2. All but two Republicans, former Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) and state Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston), voted for it.
Passing school choice was indeed an accomplishment, but Burrows is still the latest in the Straus-Bonnin-Phelan cabal who have kept Democrats in a power-sharing agreement and thwarted conservative priorities for over a decade. burrows himself has presided over a House that has slow-walked conservative bills long after they sailed through the senate. This may be case of President Trump seeing things at a very high level and not being aware of the details. And speaking of Republican dissatisfaction with the Burrows Speakership…
With just over a month remaining in the 2025 legislative session, a group of conservative Texas House members gathered for a press conference to issue a stark warning to their leadership: time is almost up to deliver on Republican priorities.
“Today is day 107 of our 140-day legislative session,” said State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R–Arlington). “In 12 days, every House bill that is going to pass must be reported by its committee. The clock is ticking, and our Republican voters are looking for the Republican majority they elected to the Texas House to deliver.”
Immigration and Border Security
State Rep. Mike Olcott (R–Aledo) said border security remains the number one priority for both the Texas GOP and voters across the state. He outlined four key policy targets: mandatory use of E-Verify, ending in-state tuition for illegal aliens, requiring local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, and addressing Colony Ridge.
On E-Verify, Olcott noted that “Senate Bill 324 was approved on second reading just yesterday, and we anticipate it will pass over to the House this week.” But in the House, he warned, progress has been sluggish.
“So far in the Texas House, the only legislation that’s been heard in committee on E-Verify is House Bill 323 … which only requires E-Verify for new local government employees, which is noble, but does not come close to turning off the employment magnet driving illegal immigration into this state.”
Snip.
Banning Social Transitioning of Minors
State Rep. Steve Toth (R–Conroe) focused on protecting children from social transitioning in schools. He said that while Texas banned gender mutilation surgeries in the last session, the House still hasn’t acted on legislation to prevent social transitioning.
“The good news is that we now have a great bill, House Bill 2258, to protect these kids,” Toth said. “Even better news is, it’s on its way to the governor’s desk … Bad news is, it’s not the governor of Texas. It’s the governor of Arkansas.”
Despite support from some members in the State Affairs Committee, the bill remains stuck.
“Chairman King won’t give it a hearing,” Toth said. “Texans will not forgive our massive Republican majority if we fail to protect children from groomers.”
Williamson County has local elections tomorrow. I’m not in a locale that’s having an election, but Michelle Evans of the Wilco GOP wrote to say they’re endorsing Mike Snyder for Hutto Mayor, Shannon Quicksall for Taylor City Council District 4, Cyndi Hauser for Liberty Hill ISD Trustee Place 7 and Ben Butler for Georgetown City Council District 3.
I hope your taxes are finished, or at least in the home stretch. Mine are done but not mailed out yet. I made so little last year that I’m getting every cent I sent in back, pitiful though it is.
This week: The Supreme Court hands Trump two victories, more progress in the war against illegal aliens, a trade war reprieve for everyone but China, Jasmine Crockett seems to think illegal aliens pick cotton, Tim Walz proves he’s still a putz, and after 72 years, police finally arrest an infamous Mexican bandit!
The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to fire thousands of probationary federal employees, overturning a lower court order preventing the terminations.
The Supreme Court lifted an injunction Tuesday from a California federal court barring the Trump administration from firing employees across six federal agencies. The lower court order came last month following a lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees, a powerful public sector union.
“The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the justices said in an unsigned ruling.
Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s order. Sotomayor did not explain her reasoning, while Jackson said the Trump administration failed to demonstrate the urgency of the issue.
Nearly two months after a top Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) official and support team arrived at IRS headquarters to investigate waste and fraud—aiming to streamline a bloated and corrupt federal bureaucracy—the Trump administration has begun a sizeable workforce reduction across the federal agency.
Fox News reported late Friday evening that the IRS will begin laying off about 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce — on Friday and through next week.
Most job cuts will center around the IRS Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which protects taxpayers from discrimination, audits, and investigations.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News, “In a stark contrast to the previous administration’s wildly unpopular plan to hire thousands of additional IRS agents, President Trump is focused on saving tax dollars, eliminating bloat, axing useless DEI offices, and increasing the agency’s efficiency.”
Here’s more from Fox:
In addition to the layoffs, the agency said in a letter to employees that it is eliminating its Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which is responsible for protecting taxpayers from discrimination, audits and investigations.
. . .
“This action is being taken to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the IRS in accordance with agency priorities and the Workforce Optimization Initiative outlined in a recent Executive Order,” the letter states, referring to President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the Department of Government Efficiency to get rid of wasteful spending.
The agency said it was approved to offer Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP). Information about those programs will be shared with employees at a later date, the message said.
“This calendar year to date, approximately 5% of this office left through the Deferred Resignation Program and attrition,” the message said. “An additional 75% of the office will be reduced through a RIF (Reduction in Force).”
A Treasury Department spokesperson told Fox News, “The rollback of wasteful Biden-era hiring surges and consolidation of critical support functions are vital to improving both efficiency and quality of service. ” The spokesperson added, “The Secretary is committed to ensuring that efficiency is realized while providing the collections, privacy, and customer service the American people deserve.”
An official with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said that millions of migrants are currently receiving taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits while thousands are on voter rolls across the country and are illegally voting in American elections.
DOGE official and equity firm CEO Antonio Gracias said that migrants have obtained Social Security cards after being released into the interior of the country with a notice to appear in immigration court, with court dates scheduled an average of six years after their release.
“So now you’re in the country with some quasi-legal status, you’re waiting for your court date … you can fill out an asylum application,” Gracias explained during a recent appearance on the “All In” podcast, which featured Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro. “Once that application is in, you can file another form, a 765 to get work authorization, once you get that, you get a 766, which is the authorization and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail.”
With access to Social Security cards, Gracias says, over a million migrants have been able to receive Medicaid benefits. “We mapped this through the benefit programs, we found every benefits program that is being accessed by these people, 1.3 million are on Medicaid right now, today,” Gracias said.
He went on to explain that thousands of migrants have been found on voter rolls as well, also asserting that the Democratic Party opened the border in order to import new voters.
“We looked at voter rolls and we found that thousands are registered to vote in friendly states. And we looked even further in those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us,” Gracias explained. “I think this was a move to import voters.”
“This doesn’t include the 7.8 million that ICE has that have come in illegally that we know are here and all the people who are here illegally who we don’t know are here,” he explained.
DOGE is uncovering illegal aliens and massive fraud. It’s easy to see why Democrats are upset…
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order that once blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador.
In a 5–4 majority opinion, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory against legal challenges regarding his mass deportation agenda. The decision allows Trump to continue invoking the Alien Enemies Act to accelerate the removal of illegal immigrants believed to be in Tren de Aragua.
The nation’s highest court, however, noted that the administration should give immigrants it seeks to deport “reasonable time” to challenge their removal from the U.S. in court. Those legal challenges must take place in Texas, where the detainees are held, and not Washington, D.C., the conservative majority ruled.
“The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the ruling states. “The detainees subject to removal orders under the [Alien Enemies Act] are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration is finalizing plans to withhold all federal funding for sanctuary cities and states that provide safe harbor to illegal aliens.
“No more Sanctuary Cities! They protect the Criminals, not the Victims,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World.”
On his first day in office, Trump signed the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order laying out a framework to strictly enforce the nation’s immigration laws and “prioritize the safety, security, and financial and economic well-being of Americans.”
In the E/O, Trump authorized the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “evaluate and undertake any lawful actions” needed to ensure sanctuary jurisdictions across the U.S. are not receiving federal funds.
Now, it appears Trump is ready to drop the hammer on these Democrat strongholds.
“Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist,” the president said in his post.
Sanctuary jurisdictions are states, counties, or cities that refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies seeking to deport criminal illegal aliens.
There are about a dozen states and hundreds of cities across the US that consider themselves “sanctuaries” for illegals.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement held a hearing Wednesday to address the issue, titled “Sanctuary Jurisdictions: Magnet for Migrants, Cover for Criminals.”
Republicans contended that sanctuary cities have been an impediment to the mass deportations the Trump administration has prioritized in its first 100 days of office.
But Democrats defended Sanctuary Cities, arguing that trust between local law enforcement and the community erodes when the police comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In his opening statement, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) argued that the strong measures were necessary after Democrats deliberately trafficked over eight million unvetted illegal aliens into the country, “including some of the most dangerous, vicious criminals and cartel members in the world.”
“Congress must enact stronger laws that will prevent a future Joe Biden from ever again placing our families at risk, and that will stop today’s Democratic politicians from impeding the enforcement of our immigration and public safety laws,” said McClintock stated.
The usual talking heads said that Trump was going to trigger higher inflation (higher, that is, than the Biden inflation they’d been taking such pains to hide). Reality: Not so much. “CPI Shows 12 Month Inflation Rate at 2.4%; Lowest Core in 4 Years.”
ICE deport criminal illegal alien for the 40th time. “Julian Estrada-Garcia, 36, has four convictions for illegal entry and convictions for driving while intoxicated, possession of illicit narcotics, and fraud.” Just the sort of people Democrats are working so hard to keep us from deporting…
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX-21) Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
The SAVE Act would require states to verify U.S. citizenship and identity through documentary proof in-person when an individual registers to vote in federal elections, regardless of the registration method. Additionally, it requires states to remove “non-citizens” from voter rolls.
“The American people have spoken very clearly that they believe only American citizens should vote in American elections. There’s nothing controversial about that,” Roy said on the floor before the vote.
“This legislation is designed to restore that faith, to save our elections, to save election integrity,” he added.
The U.S. House passed the SAVE Act 220 to 208, with four Democratic members voting in favor of the legislation — one of them being Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28). No Republicans voted against the bill.
A Gallup poll from October 2024 found that 84 percent of respondents are in favor of requiring voters to provide photo identification at voting locations, and 83 percent favor requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
What do you know, another 80/20 issue Democrats are on the wrong side of. Of course, they’re lying about the SAVE Act, so if you see misinformation about it on facebook, ask them where in the ext of the bill itself do they see the nonsense they’re peddling.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is implementing a 90-day pause on retaliatory tariffs for countries that have come to the negotiating table, while raising tariffs on China to 125 percent following Beijing’s latest retaliatory levies.
Trump stated on Truth Social that he is lowering the retaliatory tariffs he unveiled earlier this week for the “worst offenders” to the baseline rate of 10 percent after more than 75 nations expressed a willingness to negotiate new trade deals with the U.S. He vowed not to raise rates on those countries for 90 days while negotiations proceed.
“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump posted.
“Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump added.
Stocks immediately surged upon Trump’s announcement with each of the three major indexes jumping by over 7 percent. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 saw their biggest gains in five years, and the tech-oriented Nasdaq jumped over 10 percent. Wall Street had been reeling since last week when Trump announced a dramatic global tariff package consisting of a 10 percent minimum tariff and much higher tariff rates for many countries worldwide.
Golly, It’s almost like Trump knew what he was doing and planned something like this all along, integrating both carrot and stick in his negotiating strategy. And it’s almost like China is on the outside looking in as Trump wins lower rates for American goods, accomplishing the decoupling of America from China and more firmly cementing other nations in America’s sphere of influence rather than China’s.
A whole lot of promising return for one week of work…
This week, President Trump instituted a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for the nations that are clearly interested in coming to the negotiating table to make deals more fair to the United States. The reality is brutally simple: America holds all the cards.
“What’s the largest consumer market on Earth? The United States,” Kevin O’Leary noted this week. “Almost 40% of all goods consumed worldwide. What’s the largest GDP? 25 or 26% of the world? The United States of America. China needs the United States.”
Even our top competitor in the global market, China, needs us more than we need them.
During a recent appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” investor Chamath Palihapitiya laid out a stark picture of China’s economic fragility, arguing that the ongoing tariff standoff gives the United States far more leverage than Beijing wants to admit.
“Even the Chinese economists are admitting that the tariffs are gonna hurt China a lot more than the United States,” Ingraham said, pointing to growing concern within China itself. She quoted one Chinese economist who conceded, “The impact on China is mainly that Chinese products have nowhere to go. These companies will be hit very hard.”
Palihapitiya agreed, saying Americans routinely underestimate just how dire China’s economic outlook has become. “Together, America and China represent almost half of world GDP,” he explained, “but underneath the covers, what we keep forgetting time and again is America is the market that matters.”
He pointed to a series of structural problems dragging China down, including its rapidly aging population, tightening restrictions on foreign investment, and unreliable intellectual property protections. “Foreign investment in China has fallen off of a cliff,” Palihapitiya noted, painting a picture of a nation increasingly isolated and economically vulnerable.
This tariff cliff is precisely what America needs to force real change.
China’s economic trajectory, he warned, is far from sustainable. “They have a very difficult economic forecast if they shrink,” he said. “When you look at the China case, they’re in a worse position than we are, which is why they have to sort of come to the negotiating table now and figure out some reasonable thing.”
Palihapitiya added that President Trump understands this imbalance well. “I think this is what President Trump was alluding to when he said, ‘They want to come to the table, and they don’t quite know how.’”
With China’s economy teetering on the brink, the United States is in a far stronger position than most so-called experts ever imagined—and President Trump is wasting no time seizing the advantage.
“Our investigation of MECA has yielded evidence suggesting it holds fiscal and personnel ties to US designated foreign terrorist organizations, chiefly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), alongside a host of extremist anti-government actors based in the United States,” reads the report by the NCRI, released on Monday.
MECA states on its website that it has sent more than $31 million in aid to children in “Palestine,” Iraq, and Lebanon since 1988. The nonprofit further purports to provide financial and professional assistance to community organizations in the West Bank and Gaza, fund university scholarships for Palestinians, and develop educational programs about the Middle East. MECA states that its “founding advisors” include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Edward Said, and Maxine Waters.
The supposedly humanitarian organization has expressed its support for violence against Israel. The day after October 7, MECA declared its support on social media for the attack: “We are witnessing the people of Gaza rising up to respond to decades of Israeli settler colonial violence. The US [government] bears responsibility for its political, economic & military support of this brutal apartheid regime. Join us to stand in solidarity with Palestine.”
The NCRI report identifies deeper relationships between MECA and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997 and participated in the October 7 attack on Israel.
MECA’s current director of Gaza projects, Dr. Mona El-Farra, previously served as the deputy director of the Union of Health Work Committees, which was recognized as the “health organization” of the PFLP in a 1993 USAID report. In 2014, El-Farra was reportedly denied an exit visa by Israel for “security reasons.” El-Farra and Barbara Lubin, MECA’s founder and current executive director, have both met with Leila Khaled, who joined the PFLP when it was founded in 1967 and became the first woman to hijack a plane.
A media advisory released by MECA in 2011 listed Leena Al-Arian as its communications coordinator. Al-Arian is the daughter of Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who was sentenced to 57 months in prison for “conspiring to violate a federal law that prohibits making or receiving contributions of funds, goods or services to, or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).”
I think it’s far safer to assume that every middle eastern or Islamic charity raising money for “the children” is actually buying weapons for terrorists or lining the pockets of jihadis. But I’m cynical that way…
“Journalist Matt Taibbi is suing Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove for libel, after the California Democrat claimed during her opening remarks in a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday that he’s a ‘serial sexual harasser.'” Juding from that picture, I can only assume that Kamlager-Dove has never been on the receiving end of sexual harassment…
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-ranged) evidently thinks that illegal aliens pick cotton. Eli Whitney died in vain. (Though it wasn’t until John Rust invented an improved picker that manual cotton picking finally died out after World War II.)
Follow-up: “Collin County Residents Reject Planned Islamic ‘City‘. County Judge Chris Hill said he ‘cannot support’ the proposed EPIC City project.” (Previously.)
Tim Walz gets a savage heckling from veterans at the Minnesota state capital. Say what you want about Hillary’s losing Veep pick Tim Kaine, but he wasn’t a weirdo who didn’t know when to get off the stage and slink back into relative obscurity.
Evidently made jealous by Amazon ruining J.R.R. Tolkien, Netflix decided to ruin C. S. Lewis. “Netflix offered Meryl Streep the role of Aslan in new ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ movie.”
Hoovie makes a six figure error calculating the capital gains costs of trading in a Lamborghini Countach for a lease-to-buy Bugatti Veyron. Offered here as a public service for all my viewers leasing a Bugatti Veyron…
Never underestimate the lure of getting money without having to work for it. From inherent laziness to multi-generational welfare dependents to the working stiff who gets laid off one too many times and decides “Screw it, I’ll just collect disability and play video games,” there’s no shortage of people willing to take money from the government without working for a living.
And Democrats will always be there to help them do just that. In this case, activist judges are there to rubberstamp claims.
Dozens of administrative law judges grant disability payments to almost everyone who appears before them, overriding Social Security staff who determined the people were not entitled to payments, a Daily Wire analysis found.
One of the Social Security Administration’s “regional chief administrative law judges,” Jennifer M. Horne, who leads the San Francisco hearing office, ruled in every case she heard last year that the claimant should be granted disability payments, even though in each case, two previous examinations had found the claimant should be denied. Ronald Herman, hearing cases outside of Detroit, green lit payments in 95% of the 1,268 cases he heard. Jan Leventer, hearing cases in Queens and Detroit, approved 94% of 2,159 cases, potentially amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Such rulings have steered billions of dollars in payments to people who may not deserve them, adding to the impression that disability is sometimes abused as a shadow welfare program. Targeting abuse in Social Security’s disability program, which has a history of fraud, provides an opportunity for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut waste from the “non-discretionary” funding that comprises the bulk of the federal budget.
“It’s all a political bent,” a lawyer who represents disability-seekers at the hearings, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Wire. “If [the judge is] a person that says ‘this is a social contract that we make with people,’ if [the claimant says] they’re disabled, then they are. If they’re a person who believes everyone’s a liar and a cheat, then it’s single digits.”
“I don’t think there’s any real lawyering to it. The game is to get as many hearings as I can because 50% are getting approved no matter what if I just show up,” he added. “I’ve had people with cancer not get approved, and people with skin rashes get approved. I can’t predict it anymore.”
One Washington, D.C.-area administrative law judge, who is a white Bernie Sanders supporter, was overheard complaining that many of his peers viewed their job as a way to steer government checks to minorities, regardless of the facts.
Social Security staff determine whether someone is entitled to disability payments, and claimants can appeal to staff for a “redetermination” if they are rejected. If that panel also concludes that they are not disabled, they can appeal again to an administrative law judge.
Outcomes in those proceedings largely depend on which judge the applicant gets. Even though one might assume that they would defer to the judgement of Social Security experts, 85 judges overturned Social Security rulings that a person was not disabled more than 80% of the time.
Far fewer judges erred on the side of stinginess. Only 16 judges upheld the staff’s determination more than 80% of the time, according to 2024 data. In all, administrative law judges heard 2.2 million disability cases in 2024, and overturned the non-disabled ruling in 58% of them. In October, 26 administrative law judges, hearing 197 cases between them, ruled favorably to the disability-seeker in every single case.
Democrats will never stop finding reasons to take taxpayer money to give it to “the poor,” “the disadvantaged,” “migrants,” or any other designated victim group, either from their desire to charge the vigorish on robbing Peter to pay Paul, or in order to actively bankrupt America to “fight capitalism.”
Another day, another leftwing scam discovered by DOGE. But this one is a two-fer: The get to use it for both raking off graft and committing voting fraud.
One day after Elon Musk and Antonio Gracias—founder and CEO of the Chicago-based investment firm Valor Equity Partners, and now a DOGE official—unveiled a “mind-blowing” chart showing a surge in Social Security numbers issued to illegal aliens over the Biden-Harris administration’s first term during an America PAC town hall in Wisconsin on Sunday, Musk’s America PAC hosted an online tele-town hall with Wisconsin voters on Monday night, where he provided more color on the SSN fraud.
During the tele-town hall, one Wisconsin voter asked Musk: “You found a lot of fraud in Social Security. Do you know whether the Attorney General will investigate and prosecute that fraud?”
Musk responded: “I believe someone is going to be arrested tomorrow, because there’s someone who actually stole 400,000 Social Security numbers and personal information from the Social Security database… And was selling Social Security numbers and all the identification information in order for people to basically steal money from Social Security.”
“This is a particular avenue of fraud for illegal immigrants and voter fraud – because the main way identification is established in the US is via Social Security. If you comprise the Social Security system, you can basically get people to get defacto registered to vote – even if they’re not citizens – and get a bunch of benefits and to milk the system – this is pretty insane,” Musk said.
Ahead of Tuesday’s pivotal election in Wisconsin—which will determine whether conservatives or liberals control the state’s Supreme Court—Elon Musk’s America PAC hosted a town hall to rally support for conservative candidate Brad Schimel. The event covered several topics, including an update on DOGE-related efforts in the corrupt DC Swamp.
Forty-two minutes into the online town hall—streamed on X and other social media platforms—Musk welcomed Antonio Gracias, founder and CEO of the Chicago-based growth equity firm Valor Equity Partners. Gracias has been leading DOGE efforts to uncover fraud and waste in Social Security.
Musk told the audience with Gracias on stage that DOGE found “20 million dead people marked as alive… Social Security database, this is too crazy, and then you’ll notice there’s a strange trend here.”
At that moment, Musk and Gracias turned their backs to the audience to explain a graph projected on the wall titled “New Non-Citizen Social Security Numbers Issued. ”
Gracias told the audience, “We started at the top of the system—mapping the whole system of Social Security to understand where all the fraud was—and there were a lot of great people there who showed us, um, really a lot of waste, and so that came with a big list of stuff. But this is what jumped out at us. When we saw these numbers … we were like, what is this? In 2021, you see 270,000 people go all the way to 2.1 million in 2024. These are non-citizens that are getting Social Security numbers.”
Musk said this chart “was mind-blowing …”
Gracias followed that up with: “This literally blew us away. Like we went there to find fraud, and we found this by accident – and this isn’t political, by the way – my parents are immigrants – uh yeah, this country has been great to us. My brothers and sister were all born in Spain. I’m pro legal immigration. This is not political. This is about America and the future of America, and there are a lot of good people in the system who pointed us in this direction. I want to honor them right now who work in the government today, who took risks to show us these numbers and tell us what’s going on. I want to stop for a minute. I want to honor those people today – very good people. I have been from DC to Social Security offices and to the border to track this down, and very good people have helped us along the way. I want to thank them.”
He explained, “This number – what is when you come in the country if you’re an illegal, uh there’s a couple ways come in – you can go through a Port of Entry and you can tell them you’re afraid and you’ll get an asylum case and you’ll get an interview then you get in – that’s one way to do it. Another way to do it is to go to the border – literally, this happened. I talked to the border patrol myself. Elon was there too. I went to Laredo, and you walked up to a border portal officer and told them you wanted to come. They have a couple of choices. They could charge you with a misdemeanor or a felony under 1325 or they can make an administrative offense like a parking ticket basically, they were told to do that make an administrative offense under the last Administration and then you go walk across the border they uh do what’s called a release from your own recognizance and they give you an NTA (notice to appear) which to appear at a judge the weight times on judges are like average six years -look at Grok-you’ll see it on immigration judges – there’s only 700 of them this is 5.5 million people.”
“Next, once you’re in the country and you got asylum through one of these pathways we mapped the whole thing out – you can apply for a work document – you file a 765 – it’s the work form – you get this form called the 766 – that’s the authorization – and then Social Security Administration automatically sends you in the mail your social security number – no interview no ID,” Gracias explained further.
Musk chimed in: “Just reiterating, sometimes people think that Biden was asleep at the switch. But this was a massive large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people and make it a permanent deep blue one-party state, from which there would be no escape.”
Gracias emphasized that “defaults in the system from Social Security to all of the benefit programs have been set to Max inclusion – max pay – for these people and Minimum Collection – that’s what’s happening. We found that 1.3 million of them are already on Medicaid. And the 5 million of them on benefit programs.”
Wait, you can set a program to “Minimum Collection”? I rather doubt this was authorized by congress.
“What was really disturbing us was why. We’re asking ourselves why, and so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote in this population – yes – and we found some by sampling some that did vote. And we have referred them to prosecution at the homeland security investigation,” Gracias said, adding, “Truly disturbing thing to me and the darkest thing about this to me uh the voter fraud is terrible but the human tragedy this created is extraordinary. Americans need to know – that’s why I’m here – that human traffickers made 13 to 15 billion dollar off of this – that’s the money that’s going around the world moving people around the world to our borders because of these incentives.”
No wonder Democrats are trying so hard to push the lie “Elon Musk wants to cut your Social Security!” Social Security fraud like this is not a two-fer, it’s a trifecta of graft: They make money off selling stolen Social Security numbers to illegal aliens, they make money staffing the bloated government agencies providing welfare state benefits to illegal aliens, and they get more Democrats elected though illegal aliens illegally voting.
If you’re a leftwing crook, it’s a Win-Win-Win.
Note: I could have sworn I hit publish on this April 1st, but evidently not…
It’s hard to keep up with all the waste and fraud allegations coming out of the DOGE deep-dives into the labyrinth depths of federal funding swamps. Musk just went on Ted Cruz’s Verdict podcast and revealed some new twists.
Musk estimates that there is an 80/20 ratio of waste to fraud in the federal budget and says $1 trillion in annual savings is not outside the realm of possibility.
“You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes, okay? It’s very obvious, basic stuff. In every government department, and I say ‘every’ because we’ve not yet found a single exception, there are far too many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department. Like, an agency with 15,000 people might have 30,000 licenses,” Musk said. “We found entire situations of software licenses or media subscriptions where there were zero logins. And yet we were paying for it. Yes, the government was paying for thousands of licenses of software or media subscriptions, and no one had ever logged in even once. Or, like credit cards—you found the same thing with government credit cards. We found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans.”
“I still don’t have a good explanation for why this is the case. And these are $10,000-limit cards, so it’s a lot of money.”
“It’s like 80% waste, 20% fraud but you do have sort of gray areas. We saw a lot of payments going out of treasury that had no payment code, no explanation to the payment,” Musk said. “Like a contract was supposed to be shut off, but someone forgot to shut it off, so the company kept getting money. is that waste or fraud? Both.”
“One of the biggest scam/fraud hauls we’ve uncovered -which is crazy- is that the government can give money to a so-called ‘non-profit’ with very few controls and there’s no auditing subsequently of that non-profit,” Musk said. “They then give themselves lavish insane salaries, expense everything to the non-profit, buying jets and homes and all sorts of things.”
“This is happening at scale,” Musk said. “This is not just one or two, we’re seeing this everywhere. It’s insane.”
“You may think that these government computers all talk to each other—they synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere, and it’s coherent, that the numbers you’re presented as a senator are actually the real numbers,” Musk offered. “They’re not.”
“I mean, they’re not totally wrong, but they’re probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases.”
“So, I call it a ‘magic money computer,’ any computer which can just make money out of thin air,” he said. “It just issues payments. And you said there’s something like 11 of these computers at the Treasury that are sending out trillions in payments? They’re mostly at the Treasury. Some are at HHS, some—there’s one or two at State. There’s some at DOD. I think we’ve found now 14 magic money computers. They just send money out of nothing.”
“The government is run by computers. So, you’ve got essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government,” Musk said. “So, when somebody, even when the President, issues an executive order, that’s going to go through a whole bunch of people until, ultimately, it is implemented at a computer somewhere. If you want to know what the situation is with accounting, and you’re trying to reconcile accounting and get rid of waste and fraud, you must be able to analyze the computer databases. Otherwise, you can’t figure it out—because what you’re doing is asking a human, who will then ask another human, ask another human, and finally usually ask some contractor, who will ask another contractor to do a query on the computer.”
How many of those “magic money computers” were directly transferring money to Democratic pockets?
It seems like it’s graft, fraud and corruption all the way down.
Government leftists at USAID call to break the law to cover their tracks, DOGE uncovers still more outrageous examples of government waste, Democratic bagman john Podesta showered billions on newly created NGOs, billions in LA homeless funds are unaccounted for, Syrian jihadis slaughter civilians, more pedo teachers get caught, lobbyists rake in big bucks, and the heart-stopping thrills of a man…baking.
A senior USAID official on Tuesday ordered the agency’s remaining staff to report to their now-former headquarters in Washington DC for an “all day” group effort to destroy documents, many of which contain sensitive information, Politico reports.
The materials marked for destruction include “classified safes and personnel documents” at the Ronald Reagan Building, according to an email sent by USAID’s acting executive director, Erica Carr.
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” read the email instructing staff to label the burn bags with “SECRET” and “USAID/B/IO” (which stands for “bureau or independent office”) in dark sharpie.
Again, how is this not breaking the The Federal Records Act and other laws against destroying evidence?
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that late last year, Brent Efron, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) special advisor implementing Biden’s climate agenda, made many controversial statements during an undercover video about the agency’s actions in anticipation of a potential Trump administration.
Efron reportedly told Project Veritas that the EPA was rapidly distributing billions of dollars in grants to nonprofits as an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. He described the situation as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” referring to the urgency with which the agency allocates funds.
Now the Trump Administration has followed those gold bars. An exclusive report by the New York Post indicates the trail of those bars led back to Deep State Obama/Biden minion, John Podesta.
The story began in September 2022, when Biden named Podesta to helm the $375 billion climate fund, which resulted from the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that was basically “Green New Deal” poison hidden beneath a wrapper of sweet economic promises.
Here is how The New York Times announced the 2022 fund creation:
As a senior adviser to Mr. Biden on clean energy innovation, Mr. Podesta will shape how the government disburses billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives to industries that are developing wind and solar energy, as well as to consumers who want to install solar panels, heat and cool their homes with electric heat pumps or buy electric vehicles.
..In an interview, Mr. Podesta described his new job as “throwing the weight of federal government policy behind a cycle of investment and innovation that we haven’t seen before in the United States, and that is almost unique in the world.”
There was absolutely no questioning by The New York Times as to where these monies would go, or how the funds would be used to help either our climate or energy industry.
On the other hand, the New York Post has a map of the gold bar trail. Apparently, billions went to “Non-Governmental Organizations” that were founded after the fund was created.
The Biden administration funneled at least $20 billion dollars into environmental groups, most of which had only recently been founded, The Post has discovered.
In one case, former Vice President Kamala Harris handed over a check for nearly $7 billion to Bethesda, Maryland, based group Climate United Fund, which does not appear in the IRS’s charities database, and has no federal filings.
The non-profit fund had only been incorporated in Delaware on November 30, 2023, according to public records, five months before Harris handed over the cash in April 2024.
The Climate United Fund then announced “the historic investment” in a press release, noting the group’s work “delivers benefits like cleaner air…and increased energy security.”’
However, because the company is so new, there is no publicly published accounting of how it plans to spend the $7 billion.
Climate Fund, which received nearly $7 billion in Biden Climate Gold, was just one of eight similarly set-up entities. Others are:
Coalition for Green Capital: Received $5 billion
Power Forward Communities: Received $2 billion
Opportunity Finance Network: Received $2.29 billion
Inclusiv: Received $1.87 billion
Justice Climate Fund: Received $940 million
Appalachian Community Capital: Received $500 million
“Exposed: Secret Pact Between 14 Blue States, Left-Wing Groups, and NYC Law Firms.”
Well, well, well. It’s hardly a surprise to discover that the wave of lawsuits against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is no coincidence. The Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation has obtained a copy of a secret agreement outlining a coordinated legal offensive—an alliance between 14 blue states, left-wing activist groups, and prominent NYC law firms—all targeting DOGE and Musk himself.
What is surprising, however, is that they actually formalized their nefarious intentions.
Signed less than a month after DOGE began operations, this agreement is yet another example of the Democrats’ “whatever it takes” brand of political warfare.
The document begins:
This Common Interest Agreement (“Agreement) is made and entered into by and between the States of New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, Califomia [sic], Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington and State Democracy Defenders Fund (the “Parties”). The Parties have agreed that they have a common interest in developing legal strategies to challenge the creation and actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE) and the actions of Elon Musk as a special government employee and a common interest in existing or future investigative, regulatory, administrative, and judicial actions or inactions, including but not limited to any administrative or judicial proceedings related to or arising from those legal strategies (“Matters of Common Interest”).
“The Democrats are on the wrong end of an 80-20 issue, fighting tooth and nail to block a federal government audit that has already uncovered more than $105 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse. A recent Harvard/Harris poll shows that 76% of voters support DOGE’s efforts, yet Democrats—whose job is to represent the interests of their constituents—have gone to extraordinary lengths to obstruct it, even putting their opposition in writing.”
1. Billions in “Dark Money” Outpacing Political Parties
Arabella’s network raised $2.4 billion in the 2020 election cycle, dwarfing the combined fundraising of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. This tax-exempt cash, hidden from public scrutiny, fueled anti-Trump campaigns and progressive agendas, all while average Americans had no clue their tax system enabled it. It’s a shadow operation that makes traditional political spending look like pocket change.
2. Fake Grassroots “Pop-Ups” Everywhere
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, an Arabella spoke, spins up temporary “pop-up” groups like Floridians for a Fair Shake or Opportunity Wisconsin, which vanish after their mission—say, attacking a senator or pushing a ballot measure—is done. These tax-exempt fronts, funded by anonymous donors, masquerade as local movements while redirecting millions to sway elections, leaving taxpayers blind to the manipulation. It’s a conveyor belt of synthetic activism, exploiting 501(c) loopholes.
3. Funding Supreme Court Protests
Demand Justice, birthed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, spent millions opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, complete with costumed activists and aggressive ad blitzes. This tax-exempt war chest didn’t just influence public opinion—it tried to bully the judiciary, all subsidized by a tax code Americans fund. Most folks never connected the dots to Arabella’s puppet strings behind the chaos.
4. Zuck Bucks’ Election Meddling
Arabella’s New Venture Fund funneled $25 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which then got $350 million from Mark Zuckerberg to “administer” 2020 elections—read: juice Democratic turnout in swing states. Tax-exempt dollars turned local election offices into partisan tools, and the public was none the wiser about this backdoor power grab. It’s a masterclass in using charity status to rig the game.
5. Foreign Billionaires Pulling Levers
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has pumped at least $208 million into the Sixteen Thirty Fund since 2016, exploiting tax laws that let foreigners bankroll U.S. political causes through “dark pools.” This foreign cash—untouchable by direct campaign finance rules—shapes American policy, yet taxpayers footing the system’s bill don’t even know his name. It’s a loophole so big you could drive a Swiss bank vault through it.
he report painted a grim picture of Los Angeles’ homeless program managed by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which was established in 1993.
“Repetitive information gaps, coupled with a lack of accurate and complete data and documentation, posed significant obstacles to this assessment,” the report states.
“Insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs. Fragmented data systems across LAHSA, the City, and the County and inconsistent reporting formats made it challenging to verify spending and the number of beds or units reported by the City and LAHSA, track participant outcomes, and align financial data with performance metrics.”
The report also cites a paucity of uniform data standards and real-time oversight, which limited the ability of the auditor to fully assess the true impact of homeless programs and raised concerns of resource misallocation.
A&M found that key stakeholders failed to monitor homelessness programs, and that LAHSA was unable to identify relevant service provider contracts and expenses. It also found gaps in documentation.
Of course there are gaps in documentation. That’s to hide the graft disappearing into leftwing pockets…
Crimea, Sevastopol, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk — these are regions of Russia. They are written into the constitution. This is a given fact,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. That amounts to one-fifth of Ukraine’s legitimate, internationally recognized pre-war territory. Putin demands that Ukraine permanently renounce any claim to these territories.
Ukraine must disarm itself of any NATO weapons. Of course, the top suppliers of the Ukrainian military are the United States with $69.7 billion worth of weapons systems and ammunition since the start of the war, Germany with $13.7 billion worth, the United Kingdom at $10.8 billion worth, Denmark at $8.1 billion worth, Sweden at $5.1 billion worth, Poland at $3.9 billion worth, France at $3.8 billion worth, and Canada at $2.8 billion worth. (All figures from the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine support tracker, converted from Euros to dollars, and as of December 31, 2024.) All those countries are NATO members, and thus, under the Russian demands, Ukraine would have to give up all weapons systems received from those countries. This amounts to a unilateral disarming of the Ukrainian military, in exchange for a promise from a former KGB lieutenant colonel that he will not start the war again.
Putin also demanded that Ukraine cap its military size. Previously, Putin had demanded Ukraine limit the size of its army to 50,000 troops. As of January, the Ukrainian army is 880,000 troops, meaning that Russia wants the Ukrainian army to be reduced to less than 6 percent of its current size.
According to CNN, “Putin also suggested that Ukraine halt mobilization and any training of its troops, and that other nations stop supplying weapons to Kyiv during the ceasefire.” Halt any training of troops.
Putin insisted no foreign peacekeepers can enter Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine must abandon the idea of NATO membership. While the Trump administration had already made this concession before negotiations began, note that Putin is establishing a system where he gets a veto over which countries NATO can accept.
The U.S. must return six diplomatic compounds that Russia contends were seized illegally by the United States between 2016 and 2018.
All Western economic sanctions upon Russia are illegal and must be lifted.
Bob [Robert B.] Laughlin, who’s a physics professor at Stanford, he got a Nobel Prize in Physics 1998. And he suffered from the extreme delusion that once he got a Nobel Prize in Physics, he’d be free to look at anything he wanted to. And the area of science that he went after was: he was convinced that most scientists, even at a place like Stanford, weren’t really doing very much work, weren’t doing very much science, were stealing money from taxpayers…This was a more this was a more taboo question, more taboo topic, than just going narrowly after climate science, or, you know, or any of these things. And obviously, he got promptly defunded and his grad students couldn’t get PhDs anymore. [My] sort of hermeneutic of suspicion is that if there’s a topic you can’t discuss, if there ideas you aren’t allowed to articulate, my shortcut is they’re just true.
Remember all the way back in 1986, when the New York Times blithely asserted as fact that evangelicals are “more easily led than other kinds of voters?” Well, just last we they asserted that “a majority of gun owners are white, conservative, male and from rural areas.” The first three are probably true, and the fourth definitely not, and no one who was even passingly familiar with gun culture would make that mistake…
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz pinned the massacre on the country’s new leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, which was an offshoot of Al-Qaeda and was close to ISIS.
“Al-Julani took off his [robe], put on a suit, and presented a moderate facade,” Katz wrote in a post on X that included a video of scores of people who had been massacred. “Now, he has removed the mask, revealing his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the Al-Qaeda school, committing atrocities against the Alawite civilian population.”
Murdering members of other religions is never far from the average jihadi mind.
Just a day after the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized Damascus, and Bashar Assad had fled to Moscow, Assad’s army crumbled into dust, with soldiers ripping off their uniforms so as to avoid being killed by vengeful, and now triumphant, rebels. Those soldiers left largely unattended huge quantities of weaponry. The IDF seized the occasion to improve its defensive posture against Syria. There was a brief window of just a few days, between the fall of Assad and the regime in Damascus stabilizing and taking control of those abandoned weapons, during which the IDF did two things. First, it moved Israeli soldiers into Syria, where they established two new military outposts, one on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon, and one extending further into Syria from the pre-existing buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan. Now the IDF controls the commanding heights that extend into Syria; the Israelis have a clear unimpeded view of Damascus — now literally in their sights — far below.
The second undertaking, which began just as soon as Assad had left for Russia, was the IDF’s systematic destruction of the Syrian army’s weaponry. The Israelis knew exactly where the weapons were located; they had long been preparing for a possible war against Assad, and had their target bank ready.
The IDF announced on December 10 that its air force and navy had conducted over 480 strikes in Syria in the span of 48 hours, 350 of which targeted airfields, anti-aircraft batteries, missiles, drones, fighter jets, tanks, and weapon production sites, destroying between 70% and 80% of Syria’s strategic weapons. It also sank Syria’s navy. And there was nothing that Ahmed al-Sharaa and the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham could do about it. Now Israel has not only made itself much safer, having removed Syria as a viable military threat to the Jewish state, but also has “demilitarized” the Jihadists in Damascus.
We have just seen that after al-Sharaa’s repeated promise that Syria’s minorities had nothing to worry about, decently, the jihadist “security services” — as they call themselves — entered Latakia to capture or kill Alawite members of Assad’s army. They were apparently ambushed by Alawite veterans of Assad’s army, and suffered a loss of 125 men. At that point, they decided to take revenge on the civilian population, killing more than 1,000 Alawite civilians — some reports claim up to 4,000 civilians have now been killed, and they also have been killing Christians — mostly Greek Orthodox but including some Melkites — because, of course, that’s what jihadists like to do. More than a thousand civilians, possibly as many as 4,000 according to some Alawite sources, have been killed in the space of two days.
The Texas Association of School Boards is a lobbying organization that is funded almost exclusively by Texas taxpayer dollars through school district dues.
According to TASB’s most recent 990 form, at least 16 of its employees make more than the governor of Texas, who earns just over $153,000 each year.
TASB paid a combined total of $927,644 to just two of its employees during fiscal year 2023.
Executive Director Dan Troxell was paid $412,101 in direct compensation by TASB. Another $64,154 is listed as “other compensation from the organization and related organizations.”
Similarly, TASB paid First Public Managing Director William Mastrodicasa $351,224 in direct reportable income. He was also paid an additional $100,165.
Nice work, if you can get it…
Mess with the bull, get the horns. “Trump admin cancels $400 million in grants to Columbia University.” How’s that pro-Hamas antisemitism working out for you?
“US House Members Push for Ban on Student Visas for Chinese Nationals.” “U.S. Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) is spearheading the push to secure higher education institutions against espionage and intellectual theft.” I’m sure universities will panic over having to give up all that sweet commie dough…
“X Takes Down Network Of Chinese Accounts Amplifying NYT Attacks On Dissident Arts Group. The accounts, which exhibited inauthentic activity, had been used to boost articles published by The New York Times that targeted a religious group persecuted in China. One of the articles, a Chinese-language version of an attack piece on Shen Yun Performing Arts, was boosted so much it became the most shared New York Times article on X in more than a year, according to data from BuzzSumo, a social media analytics tool.” The question is, why was the NYT so eager to carry the CCP’s water attacking Falun Gong?
“Texas Awards SpaceX Over $17 Million Grant for Semiconductor R&D.” My opposition to the CHIPS Act has been noted before, but this may be already allocated money that the state is contractually obligated to award. Why would SpaceX need semiconductor research? My guess would be for advances in space radiation hardened (“rad hard”) chips. This was traditionally property of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) rather than silicon-based chips. GaAs chips are generally orders of magnitude more radiation resistant than consumer grade chips, but GaAs is extremely brittle and difficult to work with, so much so that 6″ (150mm) wafers are the largest size for GaAs, and there still a number of older 4″ (100m) fab lines running GaAs out there. GaAs is such a pain that a lot of different substrates have been explored over the years, but I’m not sure any match GaAs’ extreme rad hard properties.
During a tornado warning, a Florida news station broadcasting the warning is hit by a tornado.
Critical Drinker didn’t care for Micky 17. “We’ll just make it dumb as fuck and hammer home the messaging with as much subtlety as a dump truck full of retarded sledgehammers.”
The Supreme Court lands on both sides of the same case, more fraud uncovered by DOGE, the Russo-Ukrainian War continues despite the White House dustup, Mark Steyn catches a break, and strange cell(block) fellows.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Supreme Court giveth: “Supreme Court pumps brakes on order forcing Trump to shell out $2B in foreign aid.”
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts pumped the brakes on a lower court order that gave the Trump administration a midnight deadline Wednesday into Thursday to unfreeze $2 billion worth of foreign aid.
Roberts paused the order Wednesday until further notice and gave plaintiffs suing the Trump administration until noon Friday to respond, marking the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a case involving the president’s push to overhaul the federal government.
The question at hand is the Trump administration’s 90-day freeze on US Agency for International Development spending amid a review to ensure the outlays were aligned with the president’s policies.
District Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, temporarily mandated that the funds continue flowing while considering the case.
Plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration did not properly unfreeze all of the money, which led to Ali giving the Trump administration a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday to fully comply.
And the Supreme Court taketh away. “The Supreme Court has *upheld* a lower court’s order forcing USAID/State to immediately pay ~$2 billion owed to contractors for work they’ve already performed….The court in a 5-4 decision upheld Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order that had called on the administration to promptly release funding to contractors and recipients of grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department for their past work.”
The US Justice Department revealed Thursday evening that Mexico has begun extraditing dozens of high-level cartel leaders to the US, as President Trump reiterated that 25% tariffs on Mexican goods will take effect next Tuesday.
“The defendants taken into US custody today include leaders and managers of drug cartels recently designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” the DoJ wrote in a statement, adding these terrorists are facing charges including racketeering, drug-trafficking, murder, illegal use of firearms, money laundering, and other crimes.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection released this statement: “This morning, 29 people who were deprived of their liberty in different penitentiary centers in the country were transferred to the United States of America, which were required due to their links with criminal organizations for drug trafficking, among other crimes.”
The tariffs are currently on hold. CNN has a list of who was exchanged, including Rafael Caro Quintero, Alder Marin-Sotelo, Andrew Clark, José Ángel Canobbio Inzunza, Norberto Valencia González, José Alberto García Vilano, Evaristo Cruz Sánchez, Miguel and Omar Treviño Morales.
We touched on this in a previous LinkSwarm, but here’s more details on Stacey Abrams EPA-backed multi-billion dollar slush fund.
Three short weeks ago, a newly confirmed Lee Zeldin got to his office at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and hit the broom closet to start sweeping.
Thanks to the previous braggadocious occupants and their already well-documented pre-exit shoveling of cash and grants out the door, he had an inkling there might be plenty of questionable transactions to uncover that hadn’t exactly been notated ‘on the books’ or done ‘by the book’ either.
I mean, what were the odds?
It didn’t take long for Zeldin to find himself a whopper of a honeypot hidden away that made quite a splash when he announced it, particularly as it was tied to an infamous Project Veritas video from December boasting about its very surreptitious creation.
David covered the reveal.
Project Veritas dropped a shocker of a video back in December, in which an EPA manager was bragging that the Biden administration was metaphorically ‘dropping gold bars off the Titanic.’ They were shoving every dime they could out to their NGO buddies so they could harass the Trump administration and continue to suck off the taxpayers’ teat for years to come.
We all know such things happen, but to have it so vividly described was revealing.
Well, Lee Zeldin is retrieving those gold bars, and it turns out to be a lot of them. $20 billion, all sitting in the equivalent of a bank vault.
The massive scale of this scam–which as with so many things is SOP at government agencies–blows your mind. Pushing $20 billion out the door to friends of the administration with little to no financial controls, zero accountability, and lots of malice aforethought is only different in scale and not in kind.
Snip.
…It’s a green slush fund. $20B parked at an outside bank towards the end of the Biden administration, given to just eight NGOs…These NGOs were created for the first time, many of them just to get this money. And their pass-throughs…So the EPA entered into this account control agreement with these entities, Treasury enters into a financial agent agreement with the bank, and they design it to tie the EPA’s hands behind their back -to tie the federal government’s hands behind its back. So when the money goes through the NGOs to subgrantees, many of them also pass-throughs, we don’t know where it’s going. We don’t have the proper amount of oversight. And, as you pointed out, it’s going to people in the Obama and Biden administrations, it’s going to donors. It’s not going directly…to remediate that environmental issue…deliver that clean air…’
This is just some stunning stuff. As Zeldin told the NY Post:
…As Zeldin told The Post: “Of the eight pass-through entities that received funding from the pot of $20 billion in tax dollars, various recipients have shown very little qualification to handle a single dollar, let alone several billions of dollars.”
He’s called for the EPA’s inspector general to investigate; who knows what other rank misuse that might turn up.
Bondi and Patel are already on the case, and I hope someone from Scott Bessent’s Treasury IG thinks they should be as well.
Crawl up their collective butts, the lot of them.
No wonder Democrats continued to treat Abrams like a rock star despite high profile electoral flameouts. She’s evidently a vitally important nexus in their graft distribution schemes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
At some point, some president was going to have to stop the unsustainable spending and borrowing.
To have any country left, some president would eventually have had to restore a nonexistent border and stop the influx of 3 million illegal aliens a year.
Some commander-in-chief finally would have to try to stop the theater wars abroad.
But any president who dared to do any of that would be damned for curbing the madness that his predecessors fueled.
And so none did—until now.
Not since Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid and mass implementation of the New Deal administrative state have Americans seen such radical changes so quickly as now in Trump’s first month of governance.
Americans are watching a long-awaited counter-revolution to bring the country out of its madness by restoring the common sense of the recent past.
It is easy to run up massive debts and hard to pay them back. Politicians profit by handing out grants and hiring thousands with someone else’s money or creating new programs by growing the debt.
Yet it is unpopular and considered “mean” to spend only what you have and to create a lean, competent workforce.
1776, not 1619, is the foundational date of America.
Biological men should not manipulate their greater size and strength to undermine the hard-won accomplishment of women athletes.
Affordable fossil fuels, when used wisely, are still essential to modern prosperity.
American education must remain empirical and inductive, not regress into indoctrination and deduction. If college campuses no longer abide by the Bill of Rights, then perhaps they should pay taxes on income from their endowments and guarantee their own student loans.
If American citizens are arrested and arraigned for violent assaults, destroying property, and resisting arrest, then surely foreign students who break the laws of their hosts should be held to the same account—and if guilty, go home.
Tribalism and racialism, and government spoils allotted by superficial appearances, are the marks of a pre-civilized society. Such racialism leads only to endless factions and discord.
It is easy to destroy a border, and hard to reconstruct it. And it was not Trump who invited in 12 million unaudited illegal aliens, a half million of them criminals.
Who is the real culprit in the Defense Department—the new secretary with the hard task of restoring the idea among depleted ranks that our race, religion, and gender are incidental, not essential, to defeating the enemy and ensuring our national security?
Is it really wise to divert money from needed combat units and weapons to indoctrinate recruits with social and cultural agendas that do not enhance, but likely undermine, our national defenses?
Who is the real callous actor—Elon Musk, who is trying to prevent the country from insolvency by eliminating fraud and waste, or those who bloated the bureaucracy in the first place with jobs and subsidies for their constituents, friends, clients, and fellow ideologues?
No one likes to fire FBI agents.
That certainly is an unpleasant job for the new FBI Director, Kash Patel.
But again, who are the true culprits who so cavalierly turned a hallowed agenda into a weaponized tool to warp elections, harass political enemies, lie under oath, surveil parents at school board meetings, doctor court documents, and protect insider friends?
Massive borrowing is an opiate addiction that needs shock treatment, not more deficits to break the habit. An unchecked administrative state becomes an organic organism that exists only to grow larger, more powerful, and more resistant to any who seek to curb it.
“DOGE reveals most savings at Dept. of Education with nearly $1B cut. DOGE claims to have saved the most money at the U.S. Department of Education out of any government agency through cuts in wasteful spending. DOGE launched an ‘Agency Efficiency Leaderboard’ that ranks government agencies based on how much wasteful funding has been cut, and the Dept. of Education is ranked in first place.”
Campus Reform reported that DOGE has canceled nearly $900 million in contracts and training grants at the Department of Education.
This includes “over $600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies” such as critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), according to a press release from the department.
“Diversity” had already been around for many years, its hustler scratching at the university door. Not actual diversity, mind you, but the skin-deep diversity of noxious racialism tarted-up with fake Enlightenment discourse. This concept of “diversity, equity, inclusion” quickly metastasized until it was everywhere, and this was no accident. It was a bureaucratic initiative designed to anchor a new raft of social justice programs as an inescapable presence on the campus.
It was no accident that it was violence and the threat of violence that opened the door for this effervescence of DEI. It sounded absurd. I knew it was absurd; I knew it was a con. Most people likely knew it was a con but then most people on the campuses also knew to keep their mouths shut in a time of hair-trigger tempers and performative chaos unleashed by well-funded activist groups. No college administration wanted the summer violence of 2020 overflowing onto the campuses. And so they opened the university to barbarian ideas rather than the barbarians themselves.
This was the madness of crowds brought en masse onto the campuses, and it was wildly successful. It achieved this success with a superb combination of psychological factors—relentless hustling, a primitive ideology suffused with mysticism and “indigenous knowledges,” and the barely concealed violent urges of quasi-communist and terroristic revolutionaries. All of this shielded from criticism and even the mildest of questioning.
You knew something was terribly wrong with it.
Anyone on a college campus subjected to the mediocrity of a DEI hustler knew there was something wrong with it.
It was not noble. It was not idealistic. It was not the many wonderful things its proponents said. It was one thing to the public, and it was another altogether when enacted on the campuses. It was weird and alien and hateful at its core, but the public is rarely exposed to any of this. It was the classic Potemkin village offering, with a façade masking a brute, racialist substance.
In other words, it was a con. In fact, it was the biggest Con Story of the 21st century, with America’s universities the biggest suckers imaginable. And the crowning achievement of Western civilization—the modern university—tottered under the assault of mediocrity, racialism, and pseudoscience.
I suppose that folks duped by the big cons will eventually retreat in their embarrassment at having been fooled by one of the shadiest Con Stories ever deployed. Even now, DEI is in retreat. As it plays out in its final act, I assure you that it will dissipate in a flurry of new acronyms and new labels designed to hide its failure.
Its proponents will roll out new slogans to replace the vapid “Diversity is our strength.” Already, “inclusive excellence” is supplanting DEI as this trusty acronym becomes freighted with failure. The Con Story will morph and adapt. Reluctantly. Buzzwords will change, new slogans will be coined, but the underlying ideology will remain the same as it always has. It must serve yeoman’s duty for the Big Con.
A bill came up in the senate to block men from women’s sports and every Democrat voted against it. The social justice hive mind is still controlling the Democrat party.
California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, however, has broke ranks on men playing women’s sports. Sort of. Kinda. “Notice that at no point does Newsom add, ‘And thus, I will be pushing to repeal the 2013 law that gave students the right to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities based on their self-identification and regardless of their birth gender.’ He feels that those born male participating in women’s sports is unfair, but not quite strongly enough to do anything about it.”
Guaranteed Income scheme once again fails to improve lives of recipients. “Receiving guaranteed income had no impact on the labor supply of full-time workers, but part-time workers had a lower labor market participation by 13 percentage points.” And recipients smoked more. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The first and most important question is whether Russia has lost the war. Wars are fought with an intent formed by an imperative. A prudent leader has to take steps to avoid the worst possible outcome, and Putin, as a prudent leader, prepared for the possibility that NATO would choose to attack Russia. He expressed this fear publicly so the only question was how to block an attack if it occurred. He needed a buffer zone to significantly impede a possible assault.
That buffer was Ukraine, and he on several occasions expressed regret that Ukraine had separated from Russia. The distance from the Ukraine border to Moscow, on highway M3, is only about 300 miles (480 kilometers). Russia’s nightmare was that Germany could surge its way to Moscow. Three hundred miles by a massive force staging a surprise attack is not a huge distance. He rationally needed Ukraine to widen the gap.
I predicted years before the war that Russia would invade Ukraine to regain its buffers. That Russia wanted to take the whole of Ukraine is confirmed in its first forays into the country. The initial assault was a four-pronged attack, one thrust from the east, two from the north and one from the south via Crimea. The two northern prongs were directed at the center of Ukraine and its capital, Kyiv.
Details of the failure of that plan snipped since I covered that as it was happening.
It is clear that the Russians intended to take all of Ukraine. They made minor gains in the east, but their northern penetration failed, as did any attempts to turn westward. It is true that they have gained territory in Ukraine, but it is far from what their initial war plan was designed for. Now their argument is that they never wanted more territory in other parts of the country.
To call this a Russian success is false, and to call a failed war plan a defeat is reasonable. The war was meant to gain a buffer against NATO, and in that, Moscow failed. But it was also intended to be a demonstration that Russia was still a great power. After three years, a major commitment and, by most reports, close to a million dead Russian soldiers, Russia has little more than 20 percent of Ukraine. It also failed to demonstrate the power of the Russian army. Therefore, except for its nuclear capabilities, it is not a military threat or a great power.
The issue now is whether Russia, assuming it agrees to some kind of negotiated settlement, can launch another war. Here it’s important to note that while Putin is powerful, he is not an absolute ruler. He cannot govern Russia the way, say, Stalin did. Under Stalin, Moscow ruled Russia down to the smallest homes in the smallest villages. He ruled not only through military and law enforcement but also through the rank-and-file members of the Communist Party who drew benefits from their membership in return for vigilance. They reported misdeeds, real and imagined, to the internal police, which was controlled by the party, which was controlled by the Politburo, which was controlled by Stalin. Later iterations would be slightly less deadly, but the instruments of oppression were always there.
The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the collapse of the Communist Party. The structure of terror no longer functioned.
Putin’s goal was to resurrect Russia. But with the Communist Party gone, the state structure was also gone. Putin had to find a new base. He had only one source of power: the oligarchs. Between Mikhail Gorbachev and Putin, the party’s assets were sold off to private citizens on the basis of their relationship with the government. The agreement was simple: Putin and his subordinates distributed vast industries and other things of value to the new oligarchs, who pledged to support the regime with money and deference, as well as a network of political and economic relationships that gave them significant influence.
Putin handled the politics — and apparently was well paid. The oligarchs became fabulously wealthy, and for most Russians life improved, as the new arrangement ended the terror and created employment. Disagreement was no longer a capital offense, and the media was comparatively independent and reliable. It was not long before the new private enterprises started entering the global market.
Putin was in charge at first, but in short order power was transferred to the oligarchs who underwrote the regime. They depended on access to European markets for their revenue, and many lived outside of Russia and expected Putin to facilitate trade. But when Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 failed, many of the most lucrative markets closed their doors to the oligarchs and Western investment cratered. Putin ordered the oligarchs to return to Russia, which many did. However, some of the oligarchs were not happy with their former patron and left Russia permanently, or until the political and economic environment would shift. That this has gone on for three years has created serious problems for them. They wanted the war over and a settlement reached long ago.
Snip.
Putin must end the war and hope for the best. The best way to end a failed war is to declare victory and go home. Putin is declaring victory by saying he got all he wanted. But only Americans believe that. The Russians know they lost. The question is not how Putin will suppress dissent. It is how he will deal with the devils he created, and how the country responds if he doesn’t. A reign of terror might help, but there is no mechanism to carry it out now, and later is too late.
U.S. President Donald Trump knows the game that is playing out. The one who blinks loses. It won’t be Trump. He will take every bit of power and every cent he can from Putin’s weakness. Like a good hedge fund manager, one moment he says he is Putin’s friend, the next moment he will walk away from the deal. Then, after the borrower really starts sweating, he will come back. Trump holds the cards in this business. And he wants some of Putin’s economic and geopolitical power.
What SpaceX is building is more than just a rocket. Starship is a strategic weapon, not as a one-off but as a fleet. A fully reusable heavy-lift system capable of hauling 200 tons per launch per rocket is not just an engineering marvel: it’s a military revolution.
Why? Because a fleet of Starships could land an entire armored division anywhere on Earth in under an hour and keep it supplied in the field.
Just as the speed of tanks revolutionized warfare between the World Wars, this development changes everything. Forget C-17s and cargo ships: you might as well use horses and wagons. A fleet of Starships is not just an incremental improvement in logistics: it’s a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare. The ability to almost instantaneously create and reinforce a whole combat theater anywhere on Earth will give the United States overwhelming power, unlike anything heretofore seen outside of science fiction.
And let me stress: we’re not just talking about the initial deployment. The bigger deal is the resupply. It took six months in 1990-91 for the United States to get its forces in position to invade Kuwait. Maintaining them in the field required a constant stream of slow-moving cargo ships from U.S. ports halfway around the world. A decade later, and for 20 years thereafter, a similar supply chain ran through Karachi, Pakistan, up a rail line, then on truck convoys over the Khyber Pass. Since that was often impractical (there were these pesky Taliban guys about), the military frequently had to rely on the only available alternative, a grueling 36 hours on a C-17 (including layovers). All of this depended on deals with shady, unfriendly countries, subsidies (bribes), and endless risk of attacks on our personnel.
What if you could ship everything you wanted anywhere in the world straight from Texas? Or Florida? Or anywhere else? In under an hour?
Wars are often won by those who can move the fastest, supply the best, and sustain their forces longest. A conflict in Taiwan or the Baltics could see adversaries complete their objectives before the U.S. military can even begin meaningful counter-operations.
Starship negates all these timelines. Instead of waiting days or weeks for military assets to arrive by conventional means, forces could be on the ground on the same day as an invasion. No need for prepositioned stockpiles, forward operating bases, or painfully slow sealift capabilities. Those days are over.
In a Taiwan crisis, Starship could land American armor and mechanized infantry before the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) finishes crossing the Strait. It would change the strategic calculus entirely. Every U.S. war game predicting Taiwan’s fall under a rapid Chinese assault assumes conventional response times. Starship forces a complete rethink, for both sides. It will allow American forces to arrive in time to fight the decisive battle, not the delayed counter-offensive.
I think the Starship assembly timeline is a bit optimistic, but point-to-point global logistics really is a game-changer. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
California is getting the energy policy it deserves, good and hard.
Back when I served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010, California ranked 7th or 8th in the nation for electricity costs. At the time, the Democratic majority in Sacramento was pushing bill after bill mandating greater reliance on renewable energy, assuring everyone that these policies would make us look like “geniuses” when the price of fossil fuels inevitably soared.
I warned that these laws, regulations and subsidies would instead drive up electricity costs for Californians, making the grid less reliable and California’s economy less competitive.
Now, two decades later, the results are in. In 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that California had the second-highest electricity prices in the nation for the second year running, behind only Hawaii. The Golden State’s misguided energy policies have steadily increased the price of electricity as green energy mandates, grid instability and regulatory burdens have taken their toll. Meanwhile, states with more balanced energy policies — natural gas, coal and nuclear power — have fared far better.
What’s worse, California’s natural advantage in AI will be lost to Texas and other low-cost energy states. California’s industrial electricity prices averaged 21.98 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023 vs. 6.26 in Texas, a whopping 251% price premium that no electricity-hungry AI installation or server farm operator is going to pay.
The core issue is simple: California’s policymakers prioritized renewable energy mandates over affordability and reliability. Over the years, they have forced utilities to integrate ever-growing amounts of wind and solar power while discouraging natural gas, nuclear and large-scale hydroelectric projects. These decisions ignored the reality that intermittent renewables require extensive grid upgrades, costly backup power sources and expensive storage solutions — all of which drive up costs for consumers and industry.
California’s high electricity prices are not an accident; they are a direct consequence of these policies. The state’s cap-and-trade system, restrictive permitting laws and mandates like the Renewable Portfolio Standard (which requires utilities to generate 60% of their electricity from renewables by 2030) have all contributed to rising rates.
At the same time, bureaucratic obstacles have made it nearly impossible to build new natural gas plants or modernize existing infrastructure. From 2014 to 2024, California approved or built only five natural gas plants, four of which replaced older facilities for a total output of up to 4 gigawatts. By comparison, in the prior 10 years, California commissioned dozens of plants totaling more than 20 gigawatts of nameplate capacity.
Follow-up: Remember the guy who opened fire at a band competition before being tackled by four band parents? He died in the hospital.
“Honors student sues Connecticut school district for not teaching her to read and write. Meet Aleysha Ortiz, a 19-year-old who graduated with honors from Hartford Public High School in Connecticut. It would seem congratulations are in order … except she says she’s functionally illiterate.”
Pinkslipapalooza in BureaucratLand, more DOGE savings, the deportation machine gets cranked up, Apple invests in America. Plus some depths of human depravity.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Federal Judge Rules In Favor Of Trump Government Layoffs.” “U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by Barack Obama, ruled that the labor unions which filed the lawsuit against the government layoffs had to take their case before the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) rather than a federal court.”
The now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development has funneled at least $122 million in approved grants to terror-tied aid charities, including an evangelical Christian group that in 2014 facilitated a $125,000 sub-grant to a Sudanese terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden.
USAID has long been complicit in funding humanitarian aid groups associated with designated terrorists, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. This is just one egregious example of the waste, fraud, and abuse within USAID that the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency are working to uncover.
“There’s a fox loose in the henhouse of our foreign aid system—a system intended to uplift lives abroad that instead has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to radical and terrorist-linked organizations,” Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, said in his testimony before House Oversight’s DOGE Subcommittee on Wednesday.
The Middle East Forum published these findings in a years-long study earlier this month, as DOGE head Elon Musk started targeting USAID and its wasteful, often ideologically-driven spending.
One organization, World Vision, was given $200,000 in taxpayer funding to direct toward the Islamic Relief Agency a decade ago. Of those funds, a $125,000 sub-grant was approved by the Obama administration. A whistleblower came forward to reveal the improper relationship between the two groups.
The evangelical non-governmental organization claimed in 2018 it had no knowledge of the al-Qaeda affiliate’s terrorism ties. In 2010, two members of Islamic Relief’s U.S. branch pleaded guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and other charges. Six years earlier, the Treasury Department designated Islamic Relief as a terror-financing organization.
Despite the scandal, World Vision obtained $200 million in approved grants from USAID last year. It has received an estimated $2 billion since 2008.
Additionally, Helping Hand for Relief and Development received a $78,000 USAID grant in 2023 even after USAID’s inspector general launched an investigation into a prior grant. The group held ties to Pakistan’s Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a designated terrorist organization that played a role in the 2008 Mumbai massacre.
Helping Hand is partnered with the Unlimited Friends Association, a charity affiliated with Hamas and known for promoting violent antisemitism.
Another Hamas-tied group, Bayader Association for Environment and Development, received its last USAID grant on October 1, 2023, just before the October 7 terror attack on Israel. Bayader previously featured senior Hamas officials, including the son of the late Ismail Haniyeh, who orchestrated the October 7 massacre.
Other examples of aid groups involved in funding terrorists, sometimes knowingly, include the American Near East Refugee Agency, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and Tides Foundation.
Is there no evil in the world George Soros doesn’t have his fingerprints on?
Surprise! Trump’s policies are hugely popular…even among Democrats.
81% of Americans, including 70% of Democrats and 80% of Independents, support deporting illegal aliens who have committed crimes.
76% of Americans support a “full-scale effort” to eliminate government fraud and waste.
76% of Americans want to close the border and add extra security.
69% of Americans, including half of all Democrats, want to ban men from women’s sports – and a similar number want the government to declare that there are only two sexes.
And yet the Left has spent the last month railing against ICE arrests and DOGE audits while stumping for the right to castrate kids and let boys in girls’ restrooms.
Some more key findings:
70% of Americans said government should hire people “strictly on the basis of merit and objective evaluations.”
79% of Americans said the government should make sure that categories “like race, gender, and religion” are not used to discriminate against applicants.
66% of Americans, including more than a third of Democrats, think Democrats shouldn’t oppose everything Trump is doing out of the gate and help Trump eliminate government waste.
58% of Americans say Trump is doing a better job than Biden.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Morning Wire that the Senate GOP “has not let up the pressure at all” on Democrats as Republicans ram President Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments through their confirmations.
Senate Republicans, with their 53-47 majority, have cleared nearly all of the president’s most controversial picks after Kash Patel was confirmed to be the next FBI director in a 51-49 vote on Thursday. Mullin, who has gone to bat for each of Trump’s cabinet picks, told Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley that the confirmation process had gone smoothly thanks to Republican leadership that is laser-focused on supporting Trump’s agenda.
“What you’ve seen is a new leader in the Senate with Leader [John] Thune. He is just 100 percent grinding the Democrats down from the get-go,” Mullin told Morning Wire.
“And so once the president got confirmed and sworn into office on the 20th, what we did is we immediately started the clock on these nominees, and [we] haven’t stopped,” he added.
The Republican senator from Oklahoma explained that the party didn’t wait for Trump to be sworn in on January 20 to push his nominees through the confirmation process. Since the new Republican-controlled Senate began on January 3, the GOP immediately went to work putting pressure on Democrats to speed up confirmations.
Mullin said that Thune “has literally kept that clock running 24/7, seven days a week” on cabinet confirmations.
After a cabinet nominee gets reported out of committee, “there’s a 24-hour soak,” followed by a 30-hour debate, he explained, adding, “On directors, like Kash Patel, when you invoke cloture on them, you have a two-hour debate. So while you still have a 24-hour soak, you only have two hours of debate on that person. So you can move those faster.”
“Even when we’re not here, the Democrats will negotiate and say, ‘If you don’t make us stay over on the weekend, we’ll allow the clocks to run consecutively, even though we’re not here.’ So we’ll go ahead and invoke cloture on the next person,” Mullin told Morning Wire. “So when we get back here on Monday, we can confirm two people at once. That’s why we’re so far ahead — because Leader Thune has not let up the pressure at all, not one bit on the Democrats.”
Sounds like Thune is a vast improvement over Cocaine Mitch…
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working with the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cancel over $67 million in grants that had been issued by the Biden Administration.
According to Fox News, the EPA is focusing on $77.1 million in spending that was earmarked by the Biden-era EPA for “environmental justice” grants, distributed to 20 different recipients. Although approximately $10 million has already been spent and is irretrievable, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency was able to successfully cancel $67.4 million in planned funding.
“We will make sure every penny spent by EPA goes towards protecting human health and the environment, and Powering the Great American Comeback,” said Zeldin. “I am proud to partner with DOGE to restore fiscal responsibility and accountability in our government.”
In response, the official X account for DOGE lauded the EPA cuts as “good work.”
Among the canceled grants was a $4.2 million grant to San Diego State University Foundation, which planned to use the money to bring “environmental justice” to “tribal, indigenous, and Pacific Island communities.”
Under Zeldin, the EPA has revealed that the previous administration’s EPA was freely giving at least $20 billion in taxpayer dollars, with the spending being determined solely by eight agency entities “at their discretion.” Among this spending was a $2 billion grant sent to Power Forward Communities, a far-left non-profit with ties to failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
We’re very fortunate that those on the left were too greedy and incompetent to keep rigging elections…
Tiffany Henyard, the crooked, free-spending mayor of Dolton, Illinois, got slaughtered in a Democratic primary this week. “[Jason] House won the primary with 3,896 votes (87.91%), compared to Henyard’s 536 votes (12.09%).”
Christopher Rufo: Tell me about this culture and how it’s been spreading through the NSA. And talk to me about what it was like, even a year ago or a few months ago, before Trump reentered the White House.
NSA Whistleblower: About ten years ago, they started doing the “employee resource groups”: African-American, veterans, Pride. It was just a meeting here and there, almost like a potluck—culture, food, a speech. Then it started to get more and more. Instead of just one day a month, it was one week a month, or the whole month. You could be hired as a mathematician, a staff officer, or system engineer, but you would spend your time going to these events and having meetings all day about it. They got themselves into position to help craft policy and started pushing the idea that if you want to get promoted, you have to participate in these events.
And then everything became Pride. You would go to a training, and it would be about “privilege” and “how to be a better ally.” A lady would give classes on how to talk “gender-neutral” to people. You had analysts that didn’t want to do the reporting they were supposed to be doing because they were going to have to report on somebody’s “dead name.” They were having this crisis of conscience about reporting the adversary’s actual name because they thought it was their “dead name,” and they didn’t want to disrespect the person. It was like a cult that was hellbent on pushing gender ideology.
Rufo: It seems like this is a clique of very activist male-to-female transgender agents. Tell me about this community.
Whistleblower: There is a very small number of them, but they wield an enormous amount of power. And outside of the sick stuff, you also see a prevalent Marxist philosophy going on with these people in their chat rooms. They hate capitalism. They hate Christians. They’re always espousing socialist and Marxist beliefs.
I know several people at the agency brought that up, like, “Hey, we’re here to fight for the U.S.A. and go after the adversaries.” And they just got hammered. They would just start coming out with “transphobe” and “homophobe” right away or calling you a “racist.” And that’s why a lot of folks are still hesitant to say anything, because you still have people at these agencies in those key spots. It infected everything.
If this is true, intelligence head Tulsi Gabbard needs to purge the Puzzle Palace of all transculters and commies with a pink slip machine gun. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ. )
Bill Clinton advisors saying Democrats are screwed is nothing new, but this time it’s not James Carville.
“It’s very hard to be optimistic about the Democrats,” the advisor to President Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, Douglas Schoen, tells The New York Sun. The party is “totally off base.” Lacking a message, strategy, or leader, the pollster says President Trump may defy expectations in next year’s midterms.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Schoen likened Mr. Trump to the boxing legend, Mohammed Ali, at his peak. He’s “moving so quickly, he has the Democrats totally unnerved,” he said. “They can’t hit him. They can’t find him. He’s way ahead of them.”
Mr. Schoen, “exaggerating” for illustration, said the Ukraine War “could be settled and resolved before the Democrats develop a coherent position.” They’re “MIA,” with “no interesting voice.” He suggests governors take the lead, rather than Senator Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“There is nobody making policy,” Mr. Schoen said. “There is nobody with an overarching strategy.” That weakness is reflected in his Schoen Cooperman Research surveys. It “sort of tells you how off base the Democrats are” that their favorability is 31 percent versus Mr. Trump’s 53 percent.
“The Democrats spent $2 billion on Kamala Harris,” Mr. Schoen said, “and her percentage was lower than where she started. It’s an inescapable conclusion that $2 billion bought Democrats nothing at all.” Mr. Trump dodged every uppercut, jab, and haymaker.
Mr. Schoen said that Mr. Trump “gets the public mood” that “people are frustrated with government and angry about immigration.” The president also gets that Americans “want plain speaking and somebody outside the system.”
Democrats, in Mr. Schoen’s view, aren’t counterpunching against these strengths. He sees them as “off-putting and scolding,” whereas on the other side, “people love” Mr. Trump. “His rallies and his approach were entertaining — and, in their own way, positive.”
Mr. Schoen cites as another misfire the way Democrats went after Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees on “personal stuff rather than policy.” He adds: “It wasn’t, ‘We disagree with you on this,’ etc. It was all, ‘You had an affair, you were drunk, etc.’”
In a flip from Mr. Schoen’s time in the Clinton White House, voters now judge Democrats, not Republicans, as focusing too much on “social issues” and personal lives. “Abortion,” Mr. Schoen said, “may be good in a midterm. It’s not going to win a presidential election.”
Even modest gains next year could give Democrats control of one or both chambers of Congress, but Mr. Schoen has doubts. “I worry about 2026,” he said, “because I don’t see a message, a strategy at all — and the Republicans have a message and a strategy.”
“Apocalyptic environmentalism by Maryland’s far-left Democratic leadership in Annapolis has plunged the state into a severe energy crisis, with power bills doubling in some cases and 20% of households in Central Maryland now behind on payments.”
Soros DAs seem to love illegal alien criminals a whole lot more than they hate “gun violence.” “Two men arrested in a Feb. 5 gun and drug raid at a New York City auto repair shop were later released on reduced charges that may not lead to prosecution, according to police and court records – despite being suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang, which has been spreading violence across the country. Jose Tamaronis-Caldera, 27, and Richard Garcia, 33, were taken into custody after authorities seized a Glock handgun, two imitation pistols, and a significant amount of drugs.”
A new disclosure by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to the House Judiciary Committee reveals that, under the Biden administration, the IRS leaked the taxpayer information of more than 405,000 Americans–including President Trump.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, began an inquiry into the leaks last year and with this latest disclosure has found that the scope of the leak was much larger than the Biden administration initially led the public to believe.
The scandal began in late 2019 when an IRS contract worker named Charles (Chaz) Littlejohn, illegally accessed and stole tax returns and return information for President Trump and other wealthy Americans and then leaked that information to news outlets.
Littlejohn pled guilty to the unauthorized disclosure in Oct 2023 and was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
In April 2024, the IRS issued letters of notification to victims whose data had been leaked but the notifications prompted deeper questions into how many people’s data may have actually been disclosed.
One month later, an IRS spokesman stated that “more than 70,000” taxpayers had been affected by the leak.
Turns out that when you put warfighters in charge of the Pentagon rather than social justice weasels, recruiting problems disappear.
After years of struggling recruitment numbers — in 2022, the Army faced a shortfall of 15,000 recruits — the service celebrated record-breaking enlistment in December 2024 with nearly 5,877 recruits joining up.
“@USArmy: @USAREC had their most productive December in 15 years by enlisting 346 Soldiers daily into the World’s greatest #USArmy!” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote in a post on X.
A Navy spokesperson tells National Review the service has contracted 4,000 more sailors and shipped 5,000 more sailors to boot camp at this point in the fiscal year, which began in October, than the year prior. (Navy officials said last month it will take three years of meeting recruiting goals to recover from the Navy’s current 20,000 operational gaps at sea.)
Hegseth and Senator Tom Cotton praised the “Trump effect” for the rise in recruiting numbers, though the trend does pre-date Trump’s election.
“Army’s recruiting started getting better much earlier. We really started seeing the numbers, the monthly numbers, go up in February of 2024,” former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Fox News. “We were seeing sort of in the high 5000 contracts per month, and that accelerated, you know, into the spring all the way into August, when the Army really hit a peak.”
Still, the record-setting December is nothing to sneeze at, and regardless of who would go on to win the 2024 election, the boost began as Biden prepared to exit the White House.
Veterans tell National Review they feel confident the recruitment wave is here to stay, with prospective service members feeling more confident in our current commander in chief.
The Department of Defense is giving the military branches 30 days to identify service members who identify as transgender in order to remove them from the armed forces.
Pentagon senior leadership were notified in a Wednesday memo that they must begin setting up mechanisms for finding troops with gender dysphoria by March 26th to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender-identifying people from the military.
“The medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service,” defense undersecretary for personnel Darin Selnick said in the memo…
The Department of Defense recognizes the two sexes, male and female, and will only allow service members to be subject to standards based on their biological sex. Pronoun usage and access to facilities will be determined by biological sex, ensuring that males will not be allowed into female spaces for sleeping, changing, or bathing, the memo clarifies.
Were it not for social justice madness, these essential truths wouldn’t even need to be explicated…
When immigration agents were first ordered to deport Ivan Oramas and Santos Maradiaga-Villalta, President George W. Bush was in the White House and the iPhone was a distant dream.
That was over two decades ago—yet both men were arrested this week, according to federal data reviewed by DailyMail.com.
They were among over 50,000 illegal immigrants removed so far, a Department of Homeland Security official revealed to DailyMail.com.
News of their arrest was circulated Thursday in an internal immigration memo noting recent enforcement actions made by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Oramas, 61, is a citizen of Cuba with a rap sheet including convictions for sexual battery and aggravated assault.
His sexual battery case caused serious injury, according to his charges in the file.
ICE Houston nabbed Oramas this week, enforcing a deportation order first handed down in October 2003—21 years overdue.
Maradiaga-Villalta, a 40-year-old alien from Honduras, has convictions for smuggling aliens into the U.S. He was arrested recently by ICE in Phoenix. His first deportation order dates back to January 2006, a 19-year lapse in action.
A new study from the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness reveals the devastating consequences of Seattle’s failed policies, which have not only failed to address homelessness but have actively worsened the crisis, according to 770 KTTH.
Driven by progressive ideology rather than practical solutions, city leaders have fostered a system that attracts homeless individuals from outside the region while keeping them trapped in cycles of addiction, crime, and dependency.
Rather than tackling the root causes, these policies have invited more homelessness, turning the issue into a manufactured disaster rather than a problem to be solved.
The study reveals that nearly half of the city’s homeless population became homeless outside of Seattle or King County, drawn in by the city’s permissive policies—free tents, open-air drug use, and a refusal to enforce encampment laws. An overwhelming 86.6% were born elsewhere, and 80.2% didn’t even attend high school in the area.
As in Austin, homeless programs in Seattle are not designed to solve the homeless problem, they’re designed to provide conduits of graft to the far left.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with a coalition of 22 states and several industry groups, has initiated legal action against New York over its Climate Change Superfund Act.
“New York’s law is nothing more than an unconstitutional shakedown of vital American energy industries that form the bedrock of our national economic independence,” said Paxton.
The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the act, which seeks to impose significant financial burdens on energy producers for past greenhouse gas emissions.
New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, signed into law in December 2024, aims to collect approximately $75 billion over the next 25 years from oil and gas companies to fund “climate change adaptation” and infrastructure projects within the state. It retroactively holds energy producers accountable for emissions dating back to 2000, regardless of whether the companies operate within New York.
New York is quite ambitiously stupid to cram two different unconstitutional provisions into a single law, adding a lack of jurisdiction cherry on top of an ex post facto sundae…
Transsexual madness is alive and well in the Democratic Party. “Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers introduces budget recommendation that replaces ‘mother’ with ‘inseminated person.'”
Jeff Bezos made liberal heads explode with an editorial shift at the Waswhington Post.
Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is overhauling the paper’s opinion section and shifting its editorial stance towards defending personal freedom and free markets.
Bezos emailed Washington Post employees Wednesday morning to inform them of the dramatic change and told them contrary opinions could be found elsewhere.
“I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages,” Bezos wrote. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars can be left to be published by others,” Bezos added.
“There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”
Bezos’s announcement, which he posted on X after emailing it to Post staffers, also revealed that opinion editor David Shipley opted against staying on in the role given the section’s new direction.
I think Bezos has figured out that WaPo has a bad infestation of social justice, and the cheapest way to get rid of it is to publically announce policy changes that encourage the SJW termite to quit…
The latest onshoring trend, spurred by President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports, has led to a major announcement from Apple. The company has embraced “Make America Great Again” with plans to hire 20,000 US workers to manufacture high-tech AI servers in the Heartland and invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new factories.
Bloomberg reports Apple plans to unleash a tsunami of investments in the US, upwards of $500 billion over the next four years, including a new AI server manufacturing plant in Houston, Texas, and a supplier academy in Michigan.
This disclosure comes just days after President Trump announced that Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to relocate manufacturing operations from Mexico to the US.
He’s investing hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said after his meeting with Cook at the end of last week, adding that the executive is ramping up US investments because he wants to avoid tariffs.
Earlier this month, Trump imposed a 10% US levy on Chinese imports, where Apple manufactures most of its iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other products. In a tit-for-tat effort, Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs on US goods shortly after.
Apple’s $500 billion investment and promise to add 20,000 new US jobs over Trump’s second term is more evidence that corporate America is more willing to participate in onshoring efforts this time.
I live less than a mile away from Apple’s Austin campus, so it would be nice if they could open some technical writer recs there…
A man accused of cannibalism and murder has been granted conditional release, according to the Connecticut Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB).
The board granted Tyree Smith’s release after a careful review of his clinical progress, officials said.
He’s currently at Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown. Smith is accused of hacking a man to death with an axe in Bridgeport and eating part of the victim’s brain and an eyeball….Smith stood trial for the murder of Angel Gonzalez with an axe and consumed parts of the victim’s brain and eyeball in 2011. He was found not guilty because of insanity in 2013 and ordered confined to Whiting Forensic Hospital for 60 years.
An East Texas teacher and her boyfriend have been arrested on child pornography charges.
Authorities allege the couple had child sexual abuse images and video of her performing a sexual act on a male dog on their phones.
Hillary Danielle Williams, 33, was arrested Saturday in Lufkin and charged with bestiality and possession with intent to promote child pornography.
Her partner, 37-year-old Michael Scott McCary, was charged with possession of child pornography.
Texas public schools seem to have let some real filthy degenerates teach kids…
“New Caney ISD Teacher, Coach Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for Sex With Student. Samantha Cummings had sex with a 17-year-old female student at New Caney High School.”
Liberals are staging a boycott today in a vain attempt to prove they matter, so now would be a good day to buy something from Amazon or Walmart. In fact, today I went to Walmart for the first time in, I don’t know, probably over a year…
What happens when a Detroit water main breaks during a deep freeze? This.
In Avram Davidson and Ward Moore’s novel Joyleg, some modern federal bureaucrats launch an investigation into a possible case of fraud: The titular character is still collecting an $11 a month veteran’s pension…from the Revolutionary War.
Elon Musk was expected to remain offline Sunday night into Monday morning as his xAI team prepared for the highly anticipated debut of “Grok 3,” scheduled for release Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST. However, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with streamlining the federal bureaucracy, returned very excited to his social media platform around midnight, unveiling what “might be the biggest fraud in history.”
Musk posted a spreadsheet of Social Security Administration data showing “numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!”
The data shows that 20.789 million Americans are collecting social security benefits over the age of 100. Drilling down into the age buckets, benefits are still being paid out to folks over 140!
“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk emphasized.
One X user pointed out that 2023 data showed the US population at around 334.9 million. However, Musk’s data (likely from DOGE’s ‘Big Balls’ analyst) shows 394 million names in the Social Security Administration database.
Musk responded: “Yes, there are FAR more “eligible” social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history.”
This doesn't include the potential fraud from fake beneficiaries below age 100 (e.g., people in their 70s/80s/90s). By my math and adjusting for a normalized age distribution, this could bring the total amount of fraud to $793B per year. pic.twitter.com/Wqmab7mOW1
How corrupt is our government that no one looked into this fraud long ago?
At the very least, reporters should be quite keen to interview the one person in the 360-369 age bracket, to ask them about living through The French and Indian War and get their health and longevity tips…
The Department of Homeland Security is going to take action against staffers at the Federal Emergency Management Administration accused of spending $59 million last week to house illegal immigrants in violation of the law.
“As Secretary Noem said yesterday, we must get rid of FEMA the way it exists today. This is yet another egregious example. Individuals who circumvented leadership and unilaterally made this payment will be fired and held accountable,” a DHS official told National Review Monday.
Billionaire Elon Musk, head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, said on X that his team discovered FEMA’s spending and will demand that the agency clawback the funds.
“The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants. Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk posted.
“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds….”
President Trump signed an executive order during the first week of his presidency to create a council to review FEMA operations and root out political bias from within the agency. His order followed a scandal involving a Florida-based former FEMA employee who ordered staff to avoid homes with Trump signage in the wake of Hurricane Milton. The fired employee, Marn’i Washington, later alleged that her order was consistent with FEMA policy and approved by higher ranking officials.
House Republicans held a hearing in November to address Washington’s directive and apparent issues FEMA had with providing relief to parts of North Carolina hit hardest by Hurricane Helene. Lawmakers grilled then-FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell on political bias inside FEMA, an issue she insisted was not widespread beyond Washington’s case, and asked her to address specific issues constituents were having with receiving hurricane relief.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) said during the hearing that a whistleblower came forward with another allegation of political bias against FEMA employees involving the home of Trump supporters in Georgia.
It was obvious that the powers-that-be controlling the Biden Administration were running the vast apparatus of the American welfare state to enrich themselves and further far left political objectives antithetical to the actual will of the American people. The more DOGE looks into federal spending, the more politically motivated waste, graft and abuse it finds. Not only does all the wasteful spending need to stop, the bureaucrats responsible for such spending need to be fired and, where appropriate, charged with fraud.
: jonlajoiecomedy pic.twitter.com/OVFUVohhkY
(@AMAZlNGNATURE) 
(@PuppiesIover) 