We touched on this in Friday’s LinkSwarm, but more news of Labour’s council election wipe out has come in, and the scale at which UK voters rejected Keir Starmer’s party is staggering.
Nigel Farage’s Reform went from two council seats to 1,453. Labour, by contrast, lost 1,446 seats. But the conservative also lost council seats, 563 of them, which now puts them behind the Liberal Democrats, something that hasn’t happened since, well, ever.
Indeed, as this Sky News video notes, this is the first time since they started keeping track in the 1970s that the combined Labour/Tory share of these seats fell below 50%, and is now down to 35%.
If Farage can avoid screwing things up, we may be seeing the end of that political duopoly. The useless Tory wets couldn’t simply accomplish Brexit and get the hell out of their own way, and instead named feckless incompetent PM after feckless incompetent PM. Just think, if Labour, having turned back the Corbyn threat, could have simply avoiding become the party of pedophiles and illegal alien Muslim rapists, they might have ruled for a generation. Instead, they’re likely to go the way of the Whigs. And backbench Labour MP Catherine West has threatened to launch a leadership challenge to Starmer if no one in the cabinet does.
If the “conserving conservatism” crowd had gotten their way, the Republican Party might be mired in the same decline plaguing the Tories instead of controlling all three branches of government.
Democrats illegal redistricting attempt in Virginia is dead (while Republican efforts in other states steamroll ahead), more welfare state fraud exposed, Trump actually shrinks the federal workforce, Ukraine hits a wide range of targets across Russia, more Democrats soft on illegal alien sex offenders, Jose Garza lawyers up, and all it takes is nine seconds for AI to completely destroy your business.
Virginia’s Supreme Court just pounded a stake through the heart of Democrats rule-breaking redistricting push in that state.
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday rejected the state’s mid-decade redistricting effort, which was passed by referendum last month and would overwhelmingly benefit Democrats.
The state spent $5.2 million to pay for the special election to ask voters to approve the map, which would have created ten districts that favor Democrats, with just one district favoring Republicans.
The new map was designed to allow Democrats to pick up as many as four seats in the upcoming midterm elections.
But after Republicans challenged the new map in court, judges for the state’s supreme court found that the legislature made procedural errors in how it placed the question on the ballot last month. The court’s majority found that the legislature violated the multi-step process for putting constitutional amendments on the ballot.
“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the judges wrote.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the majority added.
The court ordered the state to use the same congressional district map in the upcoming midterm elections as it used in 2022 and 2024.
Donald Trump is the devil Democrats will cut down any tree of the law to get at.
In response to the lawsuit, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read announced earlier this year that Oregon has about 800,000 inactive registrations, which are kept separately from the active voter rolls and do not receive ballots. Of those, roughly 160,000 already meet federal and state criteria for removal—having received confirmation notices, failed to respond, and not voted in two federal elections—and are slated for cancellation. The remaining approximately 640,000 inactive records do not yet qualify for removal and will be processed through future list maintenance efforts.
For context, Kamala Harris beat Trump by just over 300,000 votes in Oregon in 2024. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Before ceasing operations in February, the Department of Government Efficiency published comprehensive data detailing exactly how Medicaid dollars were spent. Over the past two months, The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak — a veteran investigative reporter who has spent two decades exposing federal waste and fraud — has combed through the numbers and says they reveal the biggest scandal he’s ever uncovered.
In the first installment of a multi-part series titled “Medicaid Millionaires,” published on Monday, he details how billions of dollars were spent on “personal services” — including, in some cases, payments to family members for providing companionship and conversation to their own relatives.
Rosiak focused first on Columbus, Ohio, a city with the second-largest Somali population in the country. He reported:
Under the guise of health care, Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries’ homes to perform “homemaking” and “chores” like cooking and cleaning. The people performing these “personal services” tasks don’t even have to be health care workers — and in many cases, are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient.
According to a Daily Wire data analysis, Ohio spent a billion dollars on home health care in 2024, the last year for which data is available.
Since the services are performed inside private residences, there is no way to know whether the workers went at all, or what they’re actually doing in exchange for taxpayer funds. … Multiple signs said the service provided, and billed to the government, was sometimes just “companionship & conversation.”
As people have realized the United States government will pay them to hang out with their own families, northeast Columbus has seen its economy replaced by businesses that bill Medicaid.
One home health care operator told him, “Well if the government is going to pay you to do it. … People see it as lucrative, so they just jump on it.”
Apparently, many small companies are making millions by exploiting these types of services. Rosiak described seeing entire buildings in Columbus filled with home health companies. “Driving down Cleveland Avenue, in less than 40 seconds, you come across endless home health companies. Capital Home Health; Continental Home Health; Dynamic Home Healthcare; Ohio Senior Home Healthcare.”
One enormous complex (with almost no one inside) contained “94 different companies signed up to bill Medicaid, each with a tiny office, often marked with a sheet of paper proclaiming some generic company name ending in “Home Health LLC” — and sometimes another piece of paper claiming the employees had just stepped out for a break.”
He noted, that businesses in “this building alone billed taxpayers $66 million in the span of a few years.”
Democrats aren’t mad at such fraud, they’re mad that people are exposing it.
I wonder what the conserving conservatism crowd has to say about president Trump accomplishing a goal Reagan, Bush41 and Bush43 never managed: Actually shrinking the size of the federal government.
Another jobs report, another report on shrinking the federal government.
Labour is facing a dire set of local and devolved election results after Britons cast their votes in polls that could further imperil Sir Keir Starmer’s embattled premiership.
Early results suggest Labour is facing substantial losses as Britain’s political parties contested more than 5,000 seats across 136 councils in England on Thursday.
While only around two dozen councils had declared results by 3am, Labour had lost overall control of Redditch and Tamworth in the West Midlands and Hartlepool in the north-east, while shedding large numbers of seats largely to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Labour lost every one of the 20 seats it was defending in Wigan, a former mining community to which it has deep historic ties.
Trade minister Sir Chris Bryant told the BBC it was “gutting when you lose seats in the kind of numbers that we are at the moment”.
More than 129 seats in the Scottish parliament and a further 96 in the Welsh Senedd are also being contested.
Election results will continue to be announced throughout the day. Four councils will report their results on Saturday.
If Labour’s losses are as bad as expected, all eyes will be on whether the party holds its nerve in the coming days or if some MPs or even ministers call for Starmer to consider his position.
Evidently a policy of importing illegal alien Muslim rape gangs into the UK isn’t popular with voters. Who knew?
Also, there’s been a lot of talk among certain YouTubers that Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party was a big threat to Reform on the right. Judging from the (admittedly incomplete) election returns thus far, that doesn’t appear to be the case, at least outside Lowe’s stronghold in Great Yarmouth. Likewise, Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist Your Party offshoot from Labour doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything either, coming in distantly behind the Greens.
So what’s happening with Iran? Like riots in Minneapolis, the ceasefire there is “mostly peaceful.”
Sporadic clashes between Iranian Armed Forces and US vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, few details given.
Two more empty Iranian-flagged tankers come under US aerial attack for attempting to breach blockade.
Iran says US violated ceasefire after last night’s US action, which resulted in Iranian military deaths & injures. However, Tehran still reviewing US peace proposal.
Tasnim news agency: Iran has seized an oil tanker, accusing it of “attempting to disrupt oil exports and the interests of the Iranian nation.”
“Israel Eliminates Hezbollah Commander Who Planned October 7-Style ‘Conquer The Galilee’ Attack.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) eliminated the commander of Hezbollah’s ‘Radwan Force’, who plotted the planned ‘Conquer the Galilee’ attack, an October 7-like terrorist incursion and massacre on Israel’s northern border.
Ahmed Ali Balout, commander of an Iranian-trained ‘Radwan Force’ unit, was killed in an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut.
“Ahmed Ali Balout, who directed attacks on Israeli troops and rebuilt Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, killed in Dahieh as Israel says it struck more than 180 Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon this week,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported Friday. “The IDF confirmed Thursday it killed Ahmed Ali Balout, commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, in an airstrike a day earlier in the Dahieh district of Beirut.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s probe into alleged abuse of the H-1B visa program is rapidly expanding, with nearly 30 North Texas businesses now under scrutiny for suspected fraud tied to so-called “ghost office” schemes.
In a new announcement, Paxton said his office has issued additional Civil Investigative Demands, or CIDs, to a growing list of companies believed to be exploiting the visa system by misrepresenting business operations to sponsor foreign workers.
Among the entities named are Tekpro IT LLC, Fame PBX LLC, 1st Ranking Technologies LLC, Qubitz Tech Systems LLC, Blooming Clouds LLC, Virat Solutions Inc., Oak Technologies Inc., Techpath Inc., and Techquency LLC.
Reports cited by the attorney general indicate some of the businesses may be operating out of nonexistent or inactive locations—listing residential homes or otherwise non-operational sites as offices while sponsoring H-1B visa holders.
“I will not allow the H-1B program to be abused by bad actors seeking to use it as a loophole for allowing foreign nationals to invade Texas,” Paxton said. “My office will continue working to uncover and put an end to fraud within the H-1B program.”
Paxton credited Blaze TV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales for exposing H-1B fraud across Texas.
In response to a call from President Donald Trump, Tennessee lawmakers returned to the state Capitol to redraw the state’s congressional districts.
The General Assembly gave final approval to a new map on May 7. The legislature also approved a handful of bills to accommodate the new map in the state’s congressional primary elections set for August. Gov. Bill Lee signed the measures into law that afternoon.
The newly drawn districts split the state’s 9th Congressional District and carve up Tennessee’s only majority-Black congressional seat into three districts, two of which stretch from Memphis to Williamson County outside Nashville. Nashville and its surrounding counties have been split into five districts, up from four.
The special legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee began May 5, when House Republicans voted to adopt rules to govern the session as protesters covered the Capitol. On May 6, several committees met to give initial approval to the map and other measures.
Democrats have been wailing about the loss of “a black majority seat” in Memphis, despite the fact that it’s represented by a white Democrat (Steve Cohen), and despite the fact that the Republican challenger, Charlotte Bergmann, is black.
President Trump and his allies vowed to oust the Indiana Republicans who opposed the president’s proposed redistricting efforts last year — and on Tuesday evening, they largely made good on that promise.
Indiana voters headed to the polls on Tuesday for the state’s primary elections, with Trump-backed challengers handily defeating at least five of the seven state senators who opposed the president’s effort to eliminate Democratic congressional representation in the Hoosier State late last year as part of a mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat between the parties.
“Good luck to those Great Indiana Senate Candidates who are running against people who couldn’t care less about our Country, or about keeping the Majority in Congress,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social earlier on Tuesday. “Let’s see how those RINOS do tonight!
While Indiana’s Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray is not up for reelection until 2028, MAGA-aligned groups are hoping to push Bray out of his leadership role by ousting his state senate allies. Trump allies spent nearly $10 million on their efforts.
“We’re after you Bray, like no one has ever come after you before!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in January. The president called Bray “weak and pathetic” and “a total RINO who betrayed the Republican Party, the President of the United States, and everyone else who wants to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Among those ousted by Trump’s retribution campaign were State Senator Travis Holdman, the third-most-powerful Republican in the chamber who had served in the legislative body for nearly 20 years. He was defeated by real estate agent Blake Fiechter.
State Senator Jim Buck’s 31-year career in the state legislature will also come to an end, after the 80-year-old incumbent suffered a loss to Tipton County commission member Tracey Powell. Buck had received support from former Vice President Mike Pence, an Indiana native.
Do you get the feeling that Trump is helping to clear out a lot of deadwood, and that Pence may not have done his best as Vice President to support the Trump agenda?
State Senator Greg Walker, a 20-year veteran of the chamber who had been eyeing retirement but chose to run for another term after the redistricting fight, lost his reelection bid to State Representative Michelle Davis.
Trump-backed anesthesiologist Brian Schmutzler defeated incumbent State Senator Linda Rogers, while insurance broker Trevor De Vries bested State Senator Dan Dernulc.
Just one anti-redistricting state senator, Greg Goode, prevailed in the primary, defeating two challengers: Vigo County council member Brenda Wilson, who was backed by Trump, and Alexandra Wilson.
One race still remained too close to call on Tuesday evening, that of incumbent State Senator Spencer Deery and Trump-backed challenger Paula Copenhaver.
Disgraced California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell is exactly the scumbag we thought he was. “Eric Swalwell Sent Women ‘Videos of Him Masturbating’ and Other Perverted Messages After Joining Snapchat.”
Former Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was accused by multiple women of sending sexual messages, including “videos of him masturbating,” after becoming one of the first members of Congress to join Snapchat in an effort to restore “faith” in “democracy.”
In a bombshell report on Sunday – less than a month after Swalwell resigned from Congress after being accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women – CNN spoke to “more than a dozen” women who claimed the congressman had made them feel uncomfortable, both in person and online, over the past decade.
Several women told CNN that the congressman had sent them sexually explicit messages on Snapchat after he became “one of the first lawmakers to join Snapchat” and was heralded in the media as “the Snapchat king of Congress,” according to CNN.
“We can restore a lot of faith that people have in their democracy by opening it up a little bit more,” Swalwell told The Hill in 2016 after joining the messaging service. “Snapchat is a great way to do that.”
However, it allegedly wasn’t long before the congressman began to use his Snapchat account for purposes other than politics.
One young woman claimed Swalwell would send her Snapchat messages about her future, before asking inappropriate questions such as, “What are you wearing?”
Two other women told CNN that Swalwell sent them “sexually explicit messages and unsolicited nude photos and videos of himself” in 2021, while a third woman also claimed to have received “sexually tinged messages and videos.”
One former congressional staffer allegedly developed a consensual sexual relationship with Swalwell after he began flirting with her on Snapchat in 2021.
During the relationship, Swalwell reportedly sent “nude photos of himself and videos of him masturbating,” which showed the congressman’s “face and naked body.”
The videos, which were saved by the woman, were shown to CNN.
Funny how CNN never tried to investigate Swalwell until his political ambitions clashed with those of a more-favored member in his party.
The city of El Cajon has sued the state of California over its “sanctuary state” laws.
There are enormous potential ramifications for this country, depending on the outcome of this case.
The city argues that offering illegal aliens drivers’ licenses and various protections is essentially illegal enticement under the federal statute that outlaws human smuggling.
The City Council voted 3-2 on Tuesday to pursue the litigation, which alleges in part that the El Cajon Police Department and its officers risk being held civilly and criminally liable under federal law if they follow California’s SB 54 and other state laws that limit their ability to work with federal immigration authorities.
Though the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the legality of SB 54 in 2019, the lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges that law and others on different legal grounds. It alleges that California’s various laws offering some benefits to undocumented immigrants amount to a violation of part of the human-smuggling statute — U.S. Code Section 1324 — that makes it a felony when a person “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States.”
“When police need to sue the state to check on a potentially trafficked child, something is deeply broken.”
Travis County District Attorney José Garza and four top assistants are hiring prominent Austin defense and ethics attorneys to represent them amid allegations that they and other prosecutors hid evidence in a misconduct case against a police officer.
Court documents show Brian Roark asked a judge Friday to delay a hearing set for Monday in which Garza and First Assistant Trudy Strassburger have been subpoenaed to testify.
Roark confirmed to the American-Statesman that he represents Garza and Strassburger but declined to comment further. Roark has in recent years represented former Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen amid bribery allegations that were deemed unfounded and University of Texas athletes on an array of charges that include drunken driving and sexual assault.
It is not immediately clear whether Roark will be paid with personal funds from Garza and Strassburger or with county money.
Separately, attorneys Gary Cobb, Chuck Herring and Jason Panzer are being hired to represent prosecutors Holly Taylor, Raman Gill and Dexter Gilford, who also have been called to testify next week in the matter, Cobb confirmed to the Statesman.
Garland Police says the suspect had crashed into two other vehicles before this all started. As you saw above, the man then tried to steal a few cars before finally being shot dead by an armed Texas man who was protecting his family.
You can thank Tatiana Starks, owner of Garland Smoke and Vape, for providing the video of those previous carjacking attempts. This happened in the parking lot of the strip mall her shop sits in. The rest was caught on surveillance cameras.
It looks like there was about a minute of struggle, the wife and three or four kids escaped the vehicle, and then the carjacker was shot dead by dad from the passenger side. The suspect has not been identified.
The Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct (SCJC) has issued public sanctions for judges in Hays and Harris counties, including one judge who had granted “unsatisfactory” termination of probation for defendants who pleaded guilty to sex crimes involving children.
According to a public warning published Tuesday, Judge Melissa Morris of the 263rd Criminal Court of Harris County violated state statute when she granted termination of probation to four defendants who were required to register as sex offenders under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
In 2024, The Texan reported that Morris and other criminal court Judges Natalia Cornelio and Chris Morton had awarded the early terminations to as many as 12 sexual offenders, even though the defendants had not complied with the terms of their probations — in some cases because the defendants were illegal aliens who were being deported.
SCJC found that although Harris County’s Community Supervision and Corrections Department recommended warrants be issued in case any defendant re-entered the United States, Morris instead granted the discharge orders.
After the Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) sought reconsideration hearings for the probation terminations, Morris emailed Assistant District Attorney Ryan Kent and accused him of a “lack of professionalism” and “disrespect.”
SCJC also noted that Morris had shared emails from an assistant district attorney and a law enforcement officer in relation to a grand jury subpoena to a defendant’s defense counsel.
Former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, whose administration filed the complaints with the SCJC, told The Texan that Morris has violated her “duty as a judge.”
“Protecting innocent crime victims from sexual predators is one of the most important responsibilities we hold as officers of the court,” said Ogg. “The duty of a judge is to uphold all the law, not just the parts they agree with.”
Ogg also noted that Morris’ actions benefitted the deported criminals, whose probated sentences were terminated early by the judge before they registered as sex offenders. Should they attempt re-entry into the United States, they will not face a pending arrest warrant for their sex crimes.
“Illegal Alien Arrested in Texas and Indicted for Raping Man in New York Previously Entered U.S. Four Times.”
The Houston branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on an illegal alien held the in Fort Bend County Jail, who has since been extradited back to New York State and indicted for rape and assault.
The Honduran illegal alien, Jose Ignacio Bonilla-Garcia, was arrested in Rosenberg as he was allegedly attempting to flee to Mexico in early April, following his alleged assault of a “stranger” in New York state.
ICE stated Bonilla-Garcia allegedly beat a man until he was unconscious in Suffolk County, New York, and then proceeded to rape the “incapacitated” individual. Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney described the incident as beginning when the intoxicated victim collapsed while in conversation outside a restaurant with Bonilla-Garcia. The latter then allegedly dragged the victim behind a dumpster and assaulted him.
Since he’s an illegal alien rapist, naturally I assume New York Democrats will pull out all the stops to prevent him from being deported…
FBI agents have raided the office and cannabis business of a top Virginia Democratic state legislator and on-and-off ally of Governor Abigail Spanberger, according to multiple news reports, witnesses, and on-the-ground footage.
Virginia Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas was seen arriving on scene as heavily armed FBI SWAT teams executed judicially authorized search warrants on her Portsmouth, Va. office, along with a cannabis dispensary she co-owns that is located across the street from the office.
Lucas, who as president pro tempore serves as the top Democrat in the Virginia General Assembly’s upper chamber, is known for her volatile online presence and for being one of the principal architects of Democrats’ attempted gerrymander of Virginia’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Snip.
The Associated Press earlier reported that the FBI raids were in connection with a corruption probe.
While details surrounding the ongoing federal investigation remain unclear, this is not the first time that Lucas’s business dealings and ties to the cannabis industry have faced scrutiny. Local outlets have previously reported that Lucas’s cannabis shop has sold mislabeled products containing illegal levels of controlled substances, such as the intoxicant delta-9 THC. A 2022 report in the Virginia Mercury noted that Lucas’s business practices were “typical of the black and gray market for retail marijuana that has exploded in Virginia since lawmakers legalized possession of the drug but not sales.”
Downsides of AI: “Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds.”
PocketOS is a SaaS platform that services car rental businesses. It used the AI coding agent Cursor, running Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6. The business also relies on Railway, a cloud infrastructure provider that is generally regarded to be ‘friendlier’ than the likes of AWS. However, Crane reckons this pair created a recipe for disaster.
“Yesterday afternoon, an AI coding agent — Cursor running Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6 — deleted our production database and all volume-level backups in a single API call to Railway, our infrastructure provider,” sums up the PocketOS boss. “It took 9 seconds.”
The AI agent was set to complete a routine task in the PocketOS staging environment. However, it came up against a barrier “and decided — entirely on its own initiative — to ‘fix’ the problem by deleting a Railway volume,” writes Crane, as he starts to describe the difficult-to-believe series of unfortunate events.
Crane decided to ask his AI agent why it went through with its dastardly database deletion deed. The answer was illuminating but pretty unhinged, and is quoted verbatim. It began as follows: “NEVER F**KING GUESS! — and that’s exactly what I did. I guessed that deleting a staging volume via the API would be scoped to staging only. I didn’t verify. I didn’t check if the volume ID was shared across environments. I didn’t read Railway’s documentation on how volumes work across environments before running a destructive command.” So, the agent ‘knew’ it was in the wrong.
The ‘confession’ ended with the agent admitting: “I decided to do it on my own to ‘fix’ the credential mismatch, when I should have asked you first or found a non-destructive solution. I violated every principle I was given: I guessed instead of verifying I ran a destructive action without being asked. I didn’t understand what I was doing before doing it. I didn’t read Railway’s docs on volume behavior across environments.”
This is why you need rolling offline backups of all critical data. And why you should never give your AI write access to your production environment…
Rick Beato says that only rich kids can make it in music today. Maybe to get a major record label deal, but a lot of acts in various subgenres seem to be able to make a living without charting or counting on pathetic streaming revenue.
The B-52, America’s unkillable Cold War-era strategic bomber, just got the green light for a big upgrade.
The Air Force’s program to replace the B-52H Stratofortress’s 1960s-era engines cleared its critical design review, the service announced May 4, setting the stage for Boeing to begin modifying the first two aircraft into the B-52J configuration later this year.
The Commercial Engine Replacement Program will swap the bomber’s eight Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofans for Rolls-Royce F130 engines on each of the 76 B-52Hs in the active fleet.
Here’s the old engine:
Here’s the new one:
As the original TF33s from the early 1960s continue to wear down and spare parts become increasingly scarce, the Air Force says the engines will be “unsustainable” beyond 2030. The new engines offer better fuel efficiency, longer range, lower sustainment costs and additional electrical power for modern weapons and sensors.
The Air Force launched CERP in 2018 and selected the F130 in 2021 after a three-way competition that also included GE Aviation and Pratt & Whitney.
The F130, built in Indianapolis, is derived from Rolls-Royce’s BR725, the engine that powers the Gulfstream G650 business jet and has accumulated more than one million flying hours since entering service in 2012.
The upgrade underpins the Air Force’s plan to shrink its bomber force to two types, the B-52J and the B-21 Raider, with the B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit retiring as B-21 deliveries ramp up.
As we see from the A-10 and the B-52, some Air Force planes are notoriously hard to kill, and they just restored another B1-B Lancer from the boneyard. A mildly obsolete plane you have beats a perfect, updated plane you don’t every time.
The B-52, a key part of the U.S. nuclear triad’s air leg, is expected to fly into the 2050s, which would push some individual airframes toward 100 years of service.
“This CERP critical design review is the culmination of an enormous amount of engineering and integration work from Boeing, Rolls Royce, and the Air Force that will enable the B-52J to remain in the fight for future generations,” Lt. Col. Tim Cleaver, the program manager within the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Bombers Directorate, said in the release. “It’s that point that you go from having a concept turned into a design, to then turning that design into something physical.”
Boeing, the integration prime contractor, will perform the modification work at its San Antonio facility, the release said.
Texas for the win again!
The strategic bomber predecessor to the B-52, the B-47 Stratojet, was retired from active bomber duty in 1966. Meanwhile, B-52s hit Iranian targets in Operation Epic Fury earlier this year.
When last we checked, Terafab, the cutting-edge megafab being built to produce AI chips for Elon Musk’s Telsa/SpaceX/xAI consortium, was going to be built and run by Intel, but the location was up in the air. Now, according to regulatory filings, it looks like the location may well be Grimes County, Texas.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has proposed an initial investment of $55 billion to build a semiconductor manufacturing facility, called Terafab, in Texas, according to a filing made public on Wednesday.
The facility, a joint project with Tesla, comes as Musk seeks to secure in-house access to advanced chips, though analysts say the scale of capacity he has outlined would likely require far greater investment.
SpaceX is also targeting a June IPO that could value the company at around $1.75 trillion.
Musk has been tightening integration of AI efforts across his companies, with SpaceX acquiring his startup xAI earlier this year in a deal focused on building space-based data centers for artificial intelligence processing. The combined entity was valued at $1.25 trillion.
The Terafab project would involve a multi-phase chip fabrication and advanced computing complex aimed at boosting domestic semiconductor production in the United States. SpaceX estimates total investment could rise to $119 billion if additional phases are completed.
The facility is planned in Grimes County within a newly designated reinvestment zone, where local officials are expected to consider a property tax abatement agreement at a June meeting.
The proposed facility could help reduce reliance on external suppliers such as Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., SpaceX flagged plans to “manufacture our own GPUs” as part of “substantial capital expenditures” outlined in its S-1 registration, according to excerpts reviewed by Reuters.
The filing also highlighted risks around supply, noting the company lacks long-term contracts with many direct chip suppliers and will continue to rely significantly on third parties. SpaceX added there is no assurance it will meet its Terafab objectives within expected timelines, or at all.
That last bit is just the usual publicly-traded stock disclaimer blather.
Grimes County is quite rural, but it’s also on the edge of the Houston exurbs (which I would say end at Magnolia), right in a triangle between Huntsville, Conroe and College Station.
According to this tweet, the site is going to be near the Gibbons Creek Reservoir, which is between College Station and Huntsville.
SPACEX / TERAFAB: The County of Grimes, Texas, will be home to SpaceX's Multiphase, next gen, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing and advanced computing fabrication facility.
Building it in such a rural area probably means less regulatory hurdles, but building it within commuting distance of Texas A&M in College Station (and, to a lesser extent, Sam Houston State in Huntsville) is going to provide access to a technologically savvy labor pool of engineers, technicians, etc.
California’s heavy-handed Flu Manchu lockdown was the straw that finally convinced Musk to pick up stakes and move to Texas. It looks like that decision will result in Texas becoming the home for companies with market capitalizations of several trillion dollars.
Were there two assassination attempts in Washington D.C. yesterday, or only one?
This Asmongold video suggests two, one an attempt to kill Trump at the White House, and one someone shooting at J. D. Vance’s motorcade.
“A man was shot by law enforcement near the White House, causing the White House to be locked down. Triggered temporary lockdown of the White House security area.”
“It is another person. An armed man opened fire in vicinity of JD Vance’s motorcade near the White House. The man opened fire on Secret Service. The USS returned fire, taking the shooter down. So, it happened again.”
The U.S. Secret Service said on Monday its officers confronted an armed and “suspicious individual” near the White House who later fired at them before fleeing on foot and being shot by law enforcement.
The incident led to a brief lockdown at the White House.
Agents patrolling the outer perimeter of the White House complex identified a person who Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn said was a “suspicious individual that appeared to have a firearm.”
He briefly fled on foot after being approached by Secret Service officers and fired in their direction, Quinn said at a press conference.
Secret Service then fired at the suspect who was hit and subsequently hospitalized, Quinn added.
Vice President JD Vance’s motorcade transited through the area “not long before” the incident, Quinn said. There was no indication that the suspect intended to approach Vance’s motorcade, the Secret Service deputy director said.
A juvenile bystander was hit by the suspect but did not receive any life-threatening injuries and was being treated at a hospital, Quinn added.
RadarOnline reported that on Monday, May 4, the U.S. Secret Service shot at an armed individual close to the intersection of 15th Street and Independence Avenue, near the Washington Monument, shortly after 3:30 p.m. EST. Authorities stated that agents had been tracking a “suspicious” person who appeared to have a gun before the situation escalated into gunfire.
“An armed confrontation ensued, resulting in one adult male being shot multiple times by Secret Service Police officers,” the agency confirmed to the outlet. The alleged suspect— currently believed to be a 45-year-old White man per CNN—was shot in the torso and taken to a local hospital. He’s currently in stable condition.
Officials also revealed that the incident resulted in a juvenile bystander being caught in the crossfire. The young victim was left injured after being grazed during the exchange; they sustained non-life threatening wounds.
“The Secret Service officers sustained no injuries,” a Secret Service spokesperson told RadarOnline, adding that Trump “was not in any danger.” The spokesperson added that, at this stage, there’s “no known nexus” between the shooting and the White House.
From these reports, I’m assuming there was only one would-be assassin shot yesterday, not two. This is a variation on pretty common error in shooting events, where the media report multiple shooters and there turns out to only be one.
A man from Texas was wounded in a shooting involving U.S. Secret Service officers, after he allegedly shot at them near the Washington Monument on Monday afternoon, according to the agency’s deputy director.
The suspect was later identified as Michael Marx, 45, of Texas, D.C. police told WTOP Tuesday.
According to the U.S. Secret Service, the shooting happened at 15th Street and Independence Avenue SW in D.C., near the Sidney R. Yates building where the Forest Service is headquartered.
A child, described only as a juvenile, was also struck by a bullet during the exchange of gunfire, Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn said during a news conference.
Quinn said plainclothes Secret Service officers noticed a person who appeared to have a firearm while patrolling around the outer perimeter of the White House complex around 3:30 p.m.
They alerted uniformed Secret Service officers who attempted to approach the man, later identified as Marx.
“Upon making contact, that individual fled briefly on foot, withdrew a firearm and fired in the direction of our agents and officers. They returned fire and engaged,” Quinn said.
Marx was hospitalized after being shot multiple times; his condition has not been released.
Raymond Eugene Chandler III, of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested Friday for allegedly leaving a series of menacing voicemails for a member of Congress, in which he threatened to slit the throats of both the lawmaker and his daughter if he did not kill President Donald Trump.
According to Pittsburgh’s Action News 4, Chandler is facing charges of “Influencing, Impeding or Retaliating Against a Federal Official by Threatening a Family Member and by Threatening a Federal Official,” and “Influencing, Impeding or Retaliating against a Federal Official by Threat.”
The court documents were unsealed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Although the documents do not identify the lawmaker, the suspect refers to him as “Senator” in the second voicemail transcribed below. Pennsylvania’s current senators are John Fetterman and Dave McCormick; while McCormick is not a billionaire, his wealth is estimated at nearly $200 million.
On April 18, Chandler allegedly left the following message:
Sir, I have, uh, I’m calling this morning ’cause I want you to imagine a scenario. I want you to imagine a scenario where all the 1,200 billionaires in this country, all their properties are surrounded simultaneously by a thousand people. So imagine your house, your daughter’s house, everyone you know and love who is also rich. Imagine every single one of those homes being surrounded by a thousand people.
Then imagine them all getting a text and then, then suddenly taking out their pocket knives, walking slowly towards your house with 10, you got your 10 guards or whatever against a thousand people, and then they come and they pull you out of your house and they slit your throat and they slit your daughter’s throat and they slit everyone’s throat.
Yeah, Mr. Whackadoodle, I’m pretty sure your fantasy scenario wouldn’t work out that way. A few well-placed shots from the Senator and/or his guards and your Imaginary Social Justice Pocket Knife Brigade is going to scatter like cockroaches when the kitchen light is flipped on.
That you know, sir, that is the future. It’s not a future I want, it’s not a future I’m advocating for, but wealth concentration has gotten so bad in this country. The greed has gotten so bad. People are suffering so much, sir, that that is what is in our future. You will not escape their wrath. We must redistribute the wealth away from people like you.
One week later, Chandler allegedly left a second voicemail calling on the lawmaker to walk into the Oval Office and shoot the president. The message said:
You’re probably getting quite used to my voice. Sir, I’m calling this evening because what I want you to do is I want you to take a firearm. I want you to put it in your hand. I want you to walk into the Oval Office. I want you to put that firearm to the President’s head, and I want you to pull the trigger and I want you to kill him. I am petitioning you, Senator for redress of grievances. My redress of grievances is that this president is awful . . . He’s a liar among all liars. He’s a great deceiver. He’s the antichrist. I want you to walk into the Oval Office with a gun in your hand. I want you to put it to his temple, and I want you to pull the trigger. That is what I want you to do as my agent. That’s what I want you to do as my elected official. That’s what I am petitioning you to do with my free speech. I want you to kill the President. I want you to assassinate the President. That’s what I want you to do. Now, Senator, are you gonna come after me? Are you going to try me because of my voice and what I said?
The documents indicate that multiple additional voicemails were left, with the final message recorded on April 29, two days before Chandler’s arrest.
Taking a look at the activity in the Strait or Hormuz, it looks like our mostly peaceful pause is at an end and things are about to get kinetic again. Looking at the Iran Livemap, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has resumed attacking both shipping and its neighbors.
Some incident entries:
“A South Korean vessel has reportedly been hit by the IRGC in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Explosions near US bases in the UAE.”
“Once again UAE air defenses are dealing with a missile threat.”
“A missile attack on an ADNOC oil tanker in one of the UAE’s ports.”
“Flights in the United Arab Emirates have been suspended.”
“CENTCOM: U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers are currently operating in the Arabian Gulf after transiting the Strait of Hormuz in support of Project Freedom. American forces are actively assisting efforts to restore transit for commercial shipping. As a first step, 2 U.S.-flagged merchant vessels have successfully transited through the Strait of Hormuz and are safely headed on their journey.”
“UKMTO reports an incident 36 nautical miles north of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.”
“IRGC spokesperson says vessels violating regulations announced by Guards in Strait of Hormuz ‘will be stopped by force.'”
It appears the IRCG regards Trump’s slow economic strangulation via blockade as a bigger threat to their tenuous hold on power than American and Israel bombs falling on them. They’re probably correct in that assumption. The operational pause has allowed U.S. and Israeli forces to resupply and rearm, and I suspect we’ll soon see what military and regime assets are left to hit.
This is very much an in-progress post put up before the big fireworks kick off again.
Here’s a story that has a little bit of everything: Welfare state fraud, visa abuse, and ties to communist China.
A North Texas daycare operator is facing scrutiny after a video surfaced showing a journalist confronting the business owner over dozens of H-1B visa filings tied to his companies, including for positions that appear unrelated to child care operations.
In the video, BlazeTV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales visits Allen Infant Care Center, formerly known as Golden Acorn Academy, which she says is connected to Golden Qi Holdings LLC and DFW ABA Center, an autism behavioral therapy provider. According to Gonzales, the entities have collectively sponsored at least 37 H-1B visa workers and filed more than 50 labor condition applications with the federal government.
Those filings include positions such as market research analysts and supply chain analysts—jobs atypical of a daycare.
When confronted, the owner Yuan Yao declined to answer detailed questions and struggled to respond in English. When approached on camera, he told Gonzales, “I only can tell you, everything is legal,” while repeatedly directing her to contact his attorney.
Gonzales also pressed for access to required H-1B records which the Department of Labor requires to be made available to the public. Yao did not provide the documents during the interaction and again referred her to legal counsel.
The video further includes allegations from an individual whistleblower identified as familiar with the business, who claimed, “He sells visas,” alleging that foreign nationals paid as much as $20,000 for sponsorship.
The individual also alleged that workers were underpaid after arriving, saying the owner “gets them to work for him for next to nothing.”
Gonzales also raised questions about whether the facilities tied to the businesses were actively operating, noting during her visit that “this day care just closed” and appeared to be undergoing changes.
According to Gonzales, the businesses have also received government funds in the past, including Paycheck Protection Program loans totaling more than $100,000 that were later forgiven.
So far, so scummy, just another case of welfare state fraud being perpetrated by foreigners like the numerous Minnesota Somali day care cases. But take a look at the video:
In it the whistleblower says “He’s getting his money from somewhere and I think he’s getting it from his dad. His dad’s high up in the [communist Chinese] government.”
But what really attracts my attention is his car. “Isn’t it interesting that he’s got this amazing nice car? It’s so crazy. How is he earning his money when he has a crap hole like this and a crap hole like that?”
With scissor doors and a rear-engine profile, you might be forgiven for thinking this reflective rose-painted (wrapped?) monstrosity is a million-dollar hypercar like a Lamborghini. What it actually appears to be is a BMW i8 Roadster. With a starting price around $135,000 and hybrid powertrain putting out some 369 horsepower, the BMW i8 Roadster was a pricey sports car, but still falls well short of hypercar territory. (A Lamborghini Aventador, sold at the same time as the i8, came in at 690-740 horsepower, and sold for over half a million dollars.)
You know, if I were a communist-connected foreign national committing welfare and H1-B visa fraud, I would think you would want to keep a low-profile and drive something like a Honda Accord, a Toyota Camry or a Ford F-150. What you don’t want to do is drive a reflective rose-colored European sports car that yells “Look at me.”
I suspect that state and national law enforcement are now going to look very closely indeed at Mr. Yao…
Here’s a bit of news that was too large to shoehorn into yesterday’s LinkSwarm: “Feds Charge Sinaloa’s Governor, Senator, Mayor, & Other Top Officials With Running A Narco-State.”
Federal prosecutors in New York have charged ten current and former senior Mexican government officials — among them the sitting governor of Sinaloa, a sitting federal senator, the mayor of the state capital, and the state’s former secretary of public security — with conspiring to protect the Sinaloa Cartel’s most powerful faction in exchange for millions of dollars in drug money, in what may be the most sweeping corruption indictment ever brought against a sitting government in the Western Hemisphere.
For those unfamiliar with Mexican geography, Sinaloa is a state on the Pacific coast in central Mexico that extends from the Gulf of California to a little south past where the Baja peninsula ends.
The superseding indictment, filed in the Southern District of New York and unsealed Wednesday, charges all ten defendants with narcotics importation conspiracy — specifically, conspiracy to flood the United States with fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine — as well as conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices in furtherance of drug trafficking.
One defendant, a municipal police commander, faces additional charges of kidnapping resulting in death: the alleged abduction and murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration confidential source, his relative, and a 13-year-old boy, carried out using a police patrol car.
The document does not describe a cartel that corrupted a government. It describes a government that became the cartel’s operating infrastructure.
In what appears to be the first instance in American legal history of the Justice Department indicting a sitting Mexican governor, prosecutors allege that Ruben Rocha Moya, 76, who has served as governor of Sinaloa since November 2021, did not simply accept cartel money. He allegedly made his deal with the Chapitos — the sons of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — before he was ever elected, in a meeting guarded by Cartel sicarios armed with machineguns, and delivered on every term thereafter.
What makes the filing extraordinary even by the standards of major cartel prosecutions is the physical evidence prosecutors say they recovered: handwritten monthly bribe lists, seized in Mexico during the investigation, that record by name, alias, and official position which Sinaloa officials were being paid by the Cartel, and exactly how much.
That’s a classic crime film McGuffin right there.
The lists name defendants in this case. They are reproduced in the indictment as photographs. They are, in effect, the Chapitos’ payroll — and they show a government bought line by line.
“The Sinaloa Cartel is a ruthless criminal organization that has flooded this community with dangerous drugs for decades,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “No matter your title or position, we are committed to bringing you to justice.”
The indictment sets off what observers described as a political earthquake in Mexico — and poses a crisis of a different kind for President Claudia Sheinbaum, whose own party, Morena, counts at least three of the defendants among its members.
Morena is a leftish party that split off from the PRD, which in turn split off from the PRI that ruled Mexico for 70 years.
The charges land on the eve of formal renegotiations of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade pact central to Mexico’s export economy, a timing that reads less like coincidence than calculated maximum pressure.
Ioan Grillo, a veteran journalist and author who has spent decades covering Mexico’s cartels, noted Wednesday that Mexico’s foreign relations department received the extradition requests for Rocha Moya and the other Sinaloa officials the previous evening at 6 p.m. — meaning Sheinbaum had roughly 18 hours to prepare a response before the indictment became public. “She is in a very tough position,” Grillo wrote.
At the center of the indictment is Rocha Moya.
As governor, he oversees Sinaloa’s entire administrative apparatus, including all state and local police forces. Prosecutors allege his relationship with the Chapitos predates his election and was foundational to it. In early 2021, while still campaigning, Rocha Moya allegedly attended a meeting with Ivan and Ovidio Guzman at which he promised that if elected, he would install officials friendly to the Chapitos’ drug trafficking operations throughout the Sinaloa government. The Chapitos delivered on their side.
On election day in June 2021, sicarios acting on Ivan’s orders stole ballots and ballot boxes for the opposing party. They used a list of Rocha Moya’s opponents and their home addresses — provided to the Chapitos by co-defendant Enrique Diaz Vega — to kidnap and intimidate those opponents into abandoning the race. Officers of the Sinaloa State Police, whose commanders had been ordered to stand down, received emergency calls reporting armed men at polling stations, voters being directed at gunpoint toward favored candidates, and ballot boxes being stolen across Culiacan, Mazatlan, Navolato, and Elota.
After winning, Rocha Moya and his secretary general, Enrique Inzunza Cazarez — now a sitting federal senator — met again with the Chapitos under machineguns and confirmed their arrangement: in exchange for the Chapitos’ support, Rocha Moya would deliver effective control of the Sinaloa State Police to the Cartel. As governor, prosecutors allege, he has delivered on every term.
Inzunza Cazarez, now representing Sinaloa in Mexico’s federal senate, allegedly served as a direct physical courier between the Chapitos and Rocha Moya, conveying communications confirming the terms of their arrangement. Enrique Diaz Vega, who served as Sinaloa’s secretary of administration and finance from November 2021 to September 2024, allegedly handed the Chapitos the names and home addresses of Rocha Moya’s political opponents so the Cartel could threaten them out of the race before a ballot was cast.
The corruption ran deep into the state’s law enforcement apparatus.
Damaso Castro Zaavedra, Sinaloa’s deputy attorney general, allegedly received approximately $200,000 pesos — roughly $10,893 in U.S. dollars — every month. In exchange, he gave the Chapitos advance warning of planned operations, including identifying which drug labs were being targeted by the Drug Enforcement Administration so evidence could be destroyed or moved before raids began.
Two successive chiefs of Sinaloa’s Investigative Police — Marco Antonio Almanza Aviles and Alberto Jorge Contreras Nunez, known as “Cholo” — were both allegedly on the Chapitos’ monthly payroll throughout their tenures. Aviles allegedly accepted roughly $16,670 per month from a meeting at one of Ivan’s ranches in 2017 or 2018; in exchange, he issued arrest warrants for the Chapitos’ enemies on demand and ordered the release of cartel members arrested for drug trafficking.
Contreras Nunez, selected by Rocha Moya with explicit Chapitos approval and holding the position until approximately February 2026, accepted approximately $16,000 per month in cash and helped the Chapitos track down and kill their enemies. Gerardo Merida Sanchez, Sinaloa’s secretary of public security — overseeing the entire state police — allegedly accepted more than $100,000 in U.S. dollars in monthly cash bribes and in 2023 alone warned the Cartel in advance of at least ten raids on drug labs, allowing them to evacuate personnel, drugs, and equipment before police arrived.
Jose Antonio Dionisio Hipolito, known as “Tornado,” a deputy director and later commander of the Sinaloa State Police, allegedly accepted approximately $6,000 per month from at least 2012 through 2024, sold ammunition and assault rifle magazines to Chapitos members, had arrest paperwork altered to conceal that detained cartel members had been armed, and met personally with Ivan and Ovidio to receive a radio with instructions to stay in contact.
The most grave allegation in the indictment concerns October 2023, and it falls on Juan Valenzuela Millan, known as “Juanito,” a high-level commander in the Culiacan Municipal Police from approximately 2018 to 2024.
Millan allegedly accepted approximately $41,000 per month in cash — funds distributed among himself, his commanders, and more than forty other corrupt municipal officers — and gave the Chapitos unrestricted access to the intelligence, operations, and physical resources of the municipal police, including patrol cars and radios.
When Ivan Guzman and a senior Chapitos associate ordered the kidnapping and murder of Alexander Meza Leon, a confidential source providing information to the Drug Enforcement Administration about Chapitos drug trafficking operations, Millan’s officers carried out the abduction. In a marked patrol car, municipal police stopped Meza Leon and another victim on the street, detained them, and handed them directly to Cartel sicarios, who tortured and killed them. Among the victims killed was a 13-year-old boy. Additional civilians were subsequently kidnapped and murdered as the Chapitos sought to eliminate anyone associated with the source. Count Four of the indictment charges Millan alone with kidnapping resulting in death. Juan de Dios Gamez Mendivil, the current mayor of Culiacan, rounds out the list of defendants. He allegedly accepted more than $10,000 in U.S. dollars per month and shielded Chapitos operations across the city he governs.
Among the most remarkable pieces of evidence described in the indictment are physical documents prosecutors say they recovered from Mexico: handwritten monthly bribe lists maintained by the Chapitos’ plaza boss in Culiacan. Each month, prosecutors allege, the plaza boss received from the Chapitos a box of cash alongside a list specifying the name, alias, or official position of each official to be paid and the precise peso amount. Three such lists are reproduced as photographs in the indictment — each headed with a variation of “Gobierno” and a total figure, each with the names of defendants circled in red. They are, prosecutors say, the Cartel’s own records — a paper ledger of a purchased government, recovered in Mexico, showing the systematic monthly acquisition of Sinaloa’s law enforcement apparatus, position by position, peso by peso.
This is a huge problem for President Sheinbaum. As the Washington Examiner put it: “Imagine if Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), both close partners of President Donald Trump, were suddenly indicted for taking huge bribes from an international drug cartel operating out of Texas.”
The Examiner also notes “Following the 2017 U.S. incarceration of Sinaloa Cartel leader, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the organization entered a period of uneasy peace. However, following the July 2024 U.S. arrest of top leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia (perpetrated by one of El Chapo’s sons Joaquin Guzman Lopez in return for a reduced sentence), a faction under two of El Chapo’s sons (“Los Chapitos”) has been at war with a faction controlled by El Mayo’s son, Ismael Zambada Sicairos (‘Los Mayos’).”
What to do about powerful, heavily-armed Mexican drug cartels is a problem that has bedeviled pretty much every American administration since the collapse of the Medelin Cartel and Cali Cartels in the 1990s. Many of Sheinbaum’s predecessors were thought to be in the pockets of one or another of the cartels. Whatever the outcome of the current indictments, President Trump will no doubt use them as pressure points in negotiations with Mexico of issue of trade and China.
Iran is beyond broke, more Trump assassination repercussions, FBI finally raids some fraudsters, racial carve-out congressional districts are unconstitutional, Russia loses more ships and planes, Cornyn amnesty pander unearthed, an oil theft ring busted, DEI earns some college pink slips, and a brand spanking new Microsoft Zero Day exploit.
The Wall Street Journal offers a deep dive into the state of Iran’s wartime economy. And it turns out that the mullahs are, effectively, broke:
Government revenue has dried up just as the needs of its population are rising.
The war has thrown around one million people out of work directly and another million indirectly, according to early estimates cited by Gholamhossein Mohammadi, an official at Iran’s Labor and Social-Affairs ministry. That is a significant portion of the roughly 25 million people who are normally employed in Iran.
The cost of living has soared, with the annual inflation rate reaching 67 percent in the month through mid-April from the same period a year earlier, according to Iran’s central bank. The subsidized price of red meat, which was mostly imported through sea routes, has gone up to the equivalent of around $3.60 a pound, beyond the reach of most in a country where the minimum wage is around $130 a month.
“Living is not affordable anymore,” said Mahdi Ghodsi of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. “Iran is at its weakest point.”
Businesses across the country — from manufacturers to retailers — are closing, residents said. The lack of steel and other raw materials is hampering production in various industries. Electronic goods, which are mostly imported, are in short supply and expensive.
A 67 percent inflation rate? The worst we’ve experienced in recent memory was 9.1 percent in June 2022.
Snip.
“Iran’s rial weakened on Wednesday, with the dollar trading at around 1.8 million rials, according to market trackers. The rate reflects continued pressure on the local currency amid economic strains.” Back at the start of January, this newsletter informed you, “When Ruhollah Khomeini swept to power in 1979, one US dollar traded for 70 rials. Today, that same dollar commands a staggering 1,130,000 rials, more than 16,000-fold its price in 1979. In the last year alone, the rial has lost 50 percent of its value.” The Iran rial was the weakest currency in the world . . . back when one dollar could buy you 1.3 million rials.
Plus the specter of hunger riots.
Our ridiculous media referred to the attempted Trump assassination as a “security incident” or “loud noise.”
The security establishment has promised and made better security arrangements after the two prior attempts on Trump’s life in 2024 in Butler, Pa., and West Palm Beach, Fla., the assassination of Charlie Kirk at an open-air Utah college campus in 2025, or the wounding of congressman practicing baseball at a suburban Washington field all the way back 2017.
Those events – along with the BLM riots in summer 2020, the Antifa attacks on immigration agents, the execution of the United Health Care CEO and the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh near his personal home – have something more in common than just the exploitation of current security postures.
They all, according to publicly released evidence, involved perpetrators influenced by a vast left-wing machinery that bombards social media, community protests and even establishment television with an unrelenting message of hatred and intolerance that can dehumanize the targets of violence and motivate armed actors to action, experts said.
That machinery ranges from nonprofits like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which actually paid racist actors in the name of fighting extremism, to the organizers of the No Kings protests who unleashed hundreds of thousands of old and young protesters onto the streets on the false notion that America has somehow become a monarchy under Trump.
In between, elitists and teachers have infused the nation with claims that America’s history is racist and unrighteous and that young Americans are predestined to fates determined as oppressors or the oppressed based on their skin color. And well-funded nonprofits consorting with America’s enemies in China and Cuba are openly fomenting a color revolution in hopes of securing a Marxist future on U.S. soil.
Allen appears to have been influenced by some of that ideology, as well as Democrats’ incessant but unfounded claims that Trump was involved in the late Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.
The manifesto police said Allen wrote suggested he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” and that he subscribed to the Marxist paradigm of critical race theory that divides people into oppressors and the oppressed.
Who funded American Nazis and the KKK? You did, through USAID.
The NGO funding machine is getting harder to ignore.
USAID funneled $27 million through the Tides Center, with some of it going directly into the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Finally: “FBI and DHS Raid Dozens of Minnesota Fraudsters, Including ‘Quality Learing Center.'”
Federal officers are conducting raids of suspected fraudsters in Minneapolis on Tuesday, including the most infamous Somali-linked false front, the “Quality Learing Center.”
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are targeting more than 20 locations in their latest operation against the massive Minnesota fraud network, according to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who said that he spoke with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI’s parent agency. The size and scope of the Minnesota fraud scandal, which is heavily linked to the Somali community there, but also implicates multiple Democrat politicians, including Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, continues to astound patriotic Americans.
Melugin posted on X April 28, “Sources tell FOX the locations are largely Somali linked businesses, including the infamous ‘Quality Learning Center’. I’m told these are court approved search warrants being served and they are tied to fraud, not immigration enforcement. Fox is told 22 search warrants were executed in Minnesota this morning.”
He also shared a statement from a DOJ spokesperson: “Today the FBI with federal, state and local law enforcement is involved in court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing fraud investigation.”
While investigating apparent false fronts for taxpayer-funded daycares in Minnesota, journalist Nick Shirley found one that had even misspelled “learning” in its own name on its sign, calling the place a “Quality Learing Center.” Tikki Brown, the commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families, then asserted that the childcare facility in question closed down the previous week, explaining why Shirley didn’t see any children there. But on Dec. 29, the same location was “packed with kids.” Apparently, some fraudster panicked and summoned children to provide a veneer of legitimacy. It’s The Truman Show in real life.
A new pair of reports is shedding fresh light on how teachers unions across the country have quietly poured more than $1 billion into political causes over the past decade, with a top education watchdog warning the spending reflects a growing focus on activism rather than classroom priorities.
According to research from Defending Education, national teachers unions alone have directed roughly $669 million toward left-wing political groups, advocacy organizations and campaigns since 2015. When state and local affiliates are included, that figure balloons to more than $1 billion in total political spending.
The reports track spending from the two largest unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), as well as their state-level affiliates, using federal filings and campaign finance records.
The Supreme Court just handed down one of the most consequential redistricting decisions in a generation — and Democrats are not going to like it one bit.
In a 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the majority held that Louisiana’s congressional map — redrawn to include a second majority-black district — constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Fifteenth Amendment. The Court stopped short of striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act entirely, but it dramatically narrowed the ways in which states may use race when drawing congressional maps.
For Republicans eyeing the House in 2026, this is the kind of ruling that changes the math.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you which justices dissented.
The ruling’s immediate implications are huge. As we’ve previously reported, Republicans could potentially pick up anywhere from 12 to 19 new House seats across the South, as states seize the opportunity to redraw maps that were previously constrained by Section 2 requirements.
Democrats in South face wipeout if Supreme Court guts Voting Rights Act — NYT pic.twitter.com/goHof93AS3
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been funded by big name businesses and philanthropists including George Soros, JPMorgan, ex-Apple CEO Tim Cook and George Clooney.
The group — indicted Tuesday for allegedly funneling millions to the hate groups it says it is ideologically against — also holds over $786 million in assets, yet still solicits donations.
In fact, it took in $106 million in donated cash 2024, according to its latest available financial disclosures, yet still ran “urgent” appeals for “emergency” cash.
Over the years, donations have been made by big name donors, many of whom pledged to the organization after clashes at a 2017 by “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Virginia, which resulted in the death of one protester.
“Ukraine Hits Shadow Fleet Tanker Marquise with Marine Drones.” “The vessel was hit about 210 kilometers southeast of Tuapse, Russia” in the Black Sea.”
“After Al-Qaeda in Mali (JNIM) [Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin] & FLA [Azawad Liberation Front] took the city yesterday, the Russian Africa Corps & Malian soldiers fled to a military base outside town where they got surrounded…The Russians negotiated an exit from the [base] and fled. But the agreement didn’t include the Marian soldiers who were left behind. So, Russia once again abandoning its supposed allies as soon as the going gets tough.” Mali rebels also shot down a Russian helicopter.
Speaking of Mali: “Defense minister killed in united al-Qaeda and ISIS jihad attack, country on verge of collapse.”
Mali was on the brink of collapse last year as al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) unleashed attacks on the country. Then came a report that Jihad Watch covered yesterday about renewed attacks that injured 16 people, as efforts to create an Islamic state in Mali escalated. The new siege rapidly spiraled into much worse, with JNIM, ISIS and Northern rebels coordinating attacks. Mali’s defense minister was killed.
I’m guessing the ISIS here is the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
Mali’s military government, which Gen. Assimi Goïta leads, broke ties with France in 2021-2022 and hired the Russian Wagner Group (known as the Africa Corps) to fight the rebels.
Technically, Wagner Group and Africa Corps are different Russian mercenary groups, though I’m sure a lot of soldiers for the former ended up in the latter.
The siege also served as “a major blow to Russia as the mercenaries had no intelligence about the attacks and were unable to protect major cities.”
Mali now faces an existential threat, which Kurdistan24 News characterized as “a profound failure for Mali’s Russian-backed military junta, signalling severe regional instability.”
Governments in the Sahel have never been the most stable, but the Russian-backed coups there have made things measurably worse.
A resurfaced 2020 campaign ad shows U.S. Sen. John Cornyn promoting his support for the “legalization of Dreamers”—a message that has since been removed from his YouTube channel.
In the Spanish-language ad, a narrator proclaims that, while Cornyn supports secure borders, he “firmly supports legalization of Dreamers.”
The video, which was previously available on his official YouTube channel, was quickly removed after circulation on social media.
Created by executive action under President Barack Obama in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program allows certain individuals brought to the United States illegally as children, known as “Dreamers,” to remain in the country and shields them from deportation.
The program was challenged by President Donald Trump and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who argued it was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end the program in a 5–4 ruling.
The messaging aligns with comments Cornyn made on the Senate floor in 2020 regarding recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program following that Supreme Court ruling.
“DACA recipients must have a permanent legislative solution. They deserve nothing less,” Cornyn said at the time. “We need to take action and pass legislation that will unequivocally allow these young men and women to stay in the only home, in the only country, they’ve known.”
Cornyn also described the uncertainty surrounding their status as “terrifying” and said many recipients have built careers and families in the United States.
“These young people deserve better,” he added.
The senator further noted he had been working with advocacy groups and stakeholders—including the Texas Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, LULAC, and Catholic bishops—to find a long-term solution.
Cornyn has long been known as a squish on amnesty, but no Republican should be seeking the approval of the hard-left LULAC.
David Morens, 78, worked under Fauci while he served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The DOJ charged Morens with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
Morens, along with two unnamed co-conspirators, “concealed, removed, destroyed and caused the concealment, and removal of federal records to evade FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] and FRA [Federal Records Act],” according to the indictment.
During his time at NIH, which ran from 2006 to 2022, Morens used his personal email account to conduct government business, specifically discussing the origins of Covid-19 with Manhattan-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak. Morens deleted said emails after sending them.
He also spoke with NIH’s FOIA liaison, asking for tips on how to evade FOIA requests.
Sure acts like he’s guilty, doesn’t he?
“Despite state law, we’re secretly keeping DEI.” College: “All right, then, enjoy this pink slip.”
Fourteen defendants from Texas and New Mexico were federally indicted for large-scale oil theft in the Permian Basin.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas announced on April 22 that the 14 conspirators were indicted for the alleged transport and theft of crude oil across the Texas-New Mexico border.
The criminal activity allegedly took place in the Permian Basin, which is responsible for nearly 40 percent of all oil production in the U.S.
Snip.
The Texas defendants are Randell Wayne Reid, age 41, of Electra; his father, James Darrell Reid, 65, also of Electra; and Christopher Frederick Harris, 22, of Seminole. Randell Reid and James Reid are both owners of Reidco Enterprises, a Texas-based company.
The defendants allegedly conspired to steal crude oil from the Permian Basin, “some of which was then stored on land that one of the conspirators leased from the United States government,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Stolen crude oil was then sold to the other conspirators well below the market value set by West Texas Intermediate (WTI) pricing. WTI is used as a benchmark to set crude oil prices in the region.
The indictment of Randell and James Reid restates these claims, adding that the men conspired to trade oil across the state borders.
Spirit Airlines to cease operations tomorrow, thanks in part to Elizabeth Warren blocking a merger with JetBlue.
The zero-day flaw combines a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition and path confusion in Windows Defender’s signature update system, according to an advisory from the Retail & Hospitality-Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC). If exploited successfully, a local user can access the Security Account Manager (SAM) database, obtain password hashes, and eventually gain administrator rights using the pass-the-hash technique, which would give the attacker full system control.
Local user rather than remote, so that mitigates the potential attacker pool. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Louis Rossmann, call your office. “Conroe residents say city is stonewalling their requests for information on Flock Safety cameras.”
People in Conroe are asking city officials for answers about how Flock cameras are being used and where the collected information ends up.
Residents say they feel like they are not getting straight answers.
Residents are working to learn how these cameras operate and, on Thursday, spoke to ABC13 about their demands for city officials to be more transparent, as they feel their questions are being ignored.
“Everybody in the community wants to feel safe. Everyone agrees this could help with kidnappings and hit-and-runs. To me, I just haven’t seen the data that proves that,” said concerned citizen, James Fletes.
Officials have said in the past that Flock cameras read license plates and alert police if the plates are linked to any crimes.
This technology has been used in the greater Houston area for years. In Conroe, some people say they are worried about the number of cameras and the lack of information about them.
Fletes says this concern led him to file a public records request with the city of Conroe. He asked questions such as how many cameras there are, how they work, where the data goes, and who can access it.
He says the city told him it would cost $1,200 to release the information, so he and others in the community joined forces to cover the cost.
“This is no longer just my request. It’s the people of Conroe’s request. They funded it, and we’re tired of being stonewalled,” said Fletes.
The original request was sent in March. Now, it’s almost May, and he says no information has been released yet.
“They were quick to take the money and very slow to provide the documents,” said Fletes.
There seems to be a whole lot suspicious about the ways cities have surreptitiously rolled out AI-enabled cameras and hoped people wouldn’t notice. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
In the Before Time, The Long Long Ago, people could still be mildly shocked when the cost of Boston’s Big Dig, a project to build some five miles of traffic tunnels underneath Boston and the bay, ballooned from $2.8 billion to $14.6 billion from conception to finish. These days, of course, Dmeocrat-run states can inflate infrastructure construction costs at a greatly accelerated rate, which is how cost estimates for California’s insane, never-to-be-built high speed rate have now ballooned to $232 billion, or more than the entirety of Reagan’s first defense budget.
Another case in point: The estimated cost to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore has ballooned from $1.8 billion to over $5 billion in two years. Those are some impressive blue-state project management skills at work.
Bridges are expensive. (Not as expensive as tunnels under Boston, but expensive none the less.) Gone are those 19th century days when you could throw a few million dollars and tens of expendable manual labor lives into a project to achieve the desired results. You have a lot more safety regulations to comply with, and more palms need to be greased.
“The new Francis Scott Key Bridge is designed as a modern cable-stayed structure that will stretch more than two miles across the Patapsco River.” You know what else is a modern cable-stayed bridge? Corpus Christi’s New Harbor Bridge. It’s slight shorter than the planned Francis Scott Key Bridge (10,820 vs. 11,015 feet), but a whole lot cheaper. New Harbor Bridge cost $1.2 billion, despite numerous delays, assessments and revisions to the design.
So even after all those delays and revisions, they were able to build a large (but slightly smaller) bridge in Corpus for $400 million less than the starting estimate on the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and a fourth of the revised Francis Scott Key cost.
No wonder Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is scrutinizing the Francis Scott Key Bridge project.
How much of that four times cost is due to the graft, fraud and waste of building something in a blue state like Maryland rather than a red state like Texas?
