LinkSwarm For September 18, 2026

September 18th, 2026

Lots of Democrat/Blue State fraud of varying types (campaign financing, voting, welfare state), hot marine-drone-on-marine-drone action, one of Maduro’s scumbags pleads guilty, the feds investigate Governor Hairgel and his henchmen, corrupt or power-hungry police get slapped down in two different Texas locales, a breakdown of just who is funding the “AI will kill us all” panic, and a Hank Hill meme to represent my continued loathing of restaurant QR codes.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Just as suspected: “Dem Fundraising Giant ActBlue Accepted Illegal Foreign Donations, Covered Up Evidence, House Report Says.”

    ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising giant, may have accepted both fraudulent and illegal foreign contributions — and later concealed the relevant evidence from House Republicans investigating the matter, according to a new congressional report.

    Congressional oversight “found that ActBlue, in its own words, decided to take ‘a more lenient approach’ to fraud prevention in 2024, weakening its fraud-prevention policies at least twice even though internal assessments showed that these changes would result in a measurable increase in fraudulent contributions,” according to the new report.

    “Similarly, internal trainings directed ActBlue’s fraud prevention team to ‘look for reasons to accept contributions’ rather than to examine them closely for indicators of fraud — as required by federal regulation. ActBlue took this lax approach to fraud prevention even though it had detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on the platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources.”

    The report — which is the third released by the Committee on House Administration, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding their investigation into ActBlue — accuses the platform of accepting “illegal foreign political donations” and later undertaking a cover-up.

    ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously wrote in a letter to Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R., Wis.) in 2023, when the investigation began, explaining that donations made by people with addresses outside of the U.S. require a passport number for verification.

    But the report argues the step does little to prevent fraud, as it “only ensures that the entered passport number contains a certain number of characters, not that it is a valid U.S. passport number.”

    ActBlue’s previous law firm, Covington & Burling, told ActBlue in 2025 that Wallace-Jones may have misled Congress in her response because the steps for vetting foreign donations were not always followed, the New York Times reported earlier this year. ActBlue processed $990 million in donations in 2023, including $1.3 million from donors with foreign addresses, according to the Washington Post. ActBlue said it collected passport numbers for 93 percent of the donations with foreign addresses.

    In the new report, the House committees cite internal communications in which ActBlue employees appear to downplay warnings of fraud. “Donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows,” employees wrote in one memo about a “great accept.”

    In another message, an ActBlue supervisor says that a rejected foreign contribution “should have been accepted.”

    “It is a foreign contribution, but the name/email match, the IP/billing match, a full address with the correct country code, and there were previously accepted and successful contributions,” the message says. “The donor uses an Arkansas state code, which isn’t great, but [the] system can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors.”

    On a separate occasion, an ActBlue supervisor said a contribution “set off a lot of” alarms, but suggested the donor should be given the “benefit of the doubt.”

    Democrats always seem to give the “benefit of the doubt” to foreign money flowing into their pockets…

  • “Texas Democrat Caught on Video Explaining $25 Program to Influence Voters.”

    Townhall Media caught Sky McAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, admitting to a scheme involving paying people to influence others to vote for Democrats.

    You know they desperately want Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talerico to win.

    You can’t pay someone to vote for a candidate, but apparently the PAC discovered a way around the rule.

    From the video:

    MCADAMS: We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things. So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially, which is interesting.

    PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: What’s the – what’s this called?

    MCADAMS: It’s called the Paid Relational Program. I think rally Texas is the official name. You can’t pay someone to vote for someone. You can’t be like, “Here’s $25, go vote for me.” You can say, “Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.” And then the class just talks about the importance of…it’s a little gray.

    PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: But right now we could use all the help we can get.

    MCADAMS: If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, “That’s shady as f**k.”

    You know, if I were a Soros-backed PAC that was already under investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (AKA the Republican nominee running against Talarico in the 2026 Texas senate race), I’d want to be a lot more circumspect at breaking federal election law…

  • More Minnesota welfare fraud:

    WOAH 🚨 An addiction recovery center in Minnesota accused of stealing millions with fake Medicaid billing has just been exposed to have another account with $25 MILLION

    They’ve used our stolen tax money to buy:

    – 3 Minnesota homes
    – $10.4 million in charges
    – $3.5 million on leather goods and luggage
    – $380k jewelry and watches
    – $150k clothing and shoes
    – One month of LV charges alone was $440,000

    June 2024 spending alone included

    – $35k at Fendi
    – $57k at LV
    – $13k at Hermès
    – $64k private jet
    – $41k Airbnb

    And now a $25 million CD has been discovered

    Some of the craziest items they bought were

    – 3 Minnesota homes

    – Rolex Oyster Mickey Mouse edition that’s 18kt yellow gold with genuine Rolex crocodile band

    – Louis Vuitton trunks and hard-side luggage including additional jewelry trunks

    – Louis Vuitton black mink coat and other fur pieces

    – Gents diamond cluster rings and fashion rings that were 14kt gold pieces with 7–59 diamonds, plus EFFY, Kabana, and Gabriel & Co. platinum diamond rings

    – 18kt yellow gold and diamond Louis Vuitton pendant on an 18kt LV chain, plus other 14kt gold diamond heart pendants and Tiffany pearl and diamond pieces

    – Louis Vuitton Tambour watches

    Again, this is all with our stolen tax money with fake Medicaid billing in Minnesota

    Tim Walz and Democrats allowed this and would have never did anything to stop them if it wasn’t for Trump getting elected

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • More fraud in California. “Twelve People Charged in $10 Million Home Daycare Fraud Schemes.”

    Twelve people are facing federal fraud charges after an investigation revealed that more than $10 million intended to help low-income families pay for childcare was instead funneled to bogus daycare providers.

    In a coordinated takedown early Thursday morning, more than 250 federal, state and local law enforcement officials arrested all 12 defendants and executed 12 search warrants at homes in San Diego purported to be used as daycare facilities.

    “These charges underscore a simple truth: anyone who steals from programs meant to support children will face swift and uncompromising accountability, said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Fraud against these programs is an attack on vulnerable families, and law enforcement will continue to dismantle schemes that exploit them. I want to thank the prosecutors and agents in the Southern District of California whose relentless work exposed this scheme and ensured that those responsible are being held accountable.”

    “Programs that help families access childcare are intended to support children and working parents, not to enrich fraudsters,” said Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Director Michael Krol. “HSI is proud to stand with our federal, state, and local partners to identify and disrupt schemes that steal taxpayer-funded benefits from the communities they are meant to serve. These arrests reflect our commitment to protecting public programs, safeguarding children, and holding accountable those who exploit systems designed to help vulnerable families.”

    “Today’s takedown exposes a sprawling fraud scheme that siphoned more than $10 million from programs designed to help low-income families who depend on subsidized childcare. By following the money, IRS Criminal Investigation uncovered patterns of deceit that revealed twelve ghost daycare operations billing for children who were never present. This was not a victimless crime. It deprived working parents of critical support and eroded trust in programs meant to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. We remain steadfast in our commitment to safeguarding federal funds and ensuring that those who exploit public programs for personal gain are held fully accountable,” said IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman.

    “Shameless attempts to steal taxpayer‑funded childcare funds for personal gain endanger support for some of our nation’s most vulnerable children,” said Special Agent in Charge Robb R. Breeden of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “Working alongside our law enforcement partners, HHS‑OIG will continue to pursue these schemes relentlessly to protect these funds and the families who depend on them.”

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides federal funding to California to help low-income families pay for childcare. In San Diego County, the County of San Diego, Child Development Associates (CDA), and the YMCA administer childcare subsidy programs.

    When CDA or the YMCA determines that a family qualifies for subsidized childcare, the organizations pay the eligible childcare provider directly after the provider submits required monthly attendance records documenting the care provided. The records must be signed by both the provider and parent under penalty of perjury and include the dates and times children are in care.

    California law also requires licensed childcare providers to be present and ensure that children are supervised at all times, except for limited temporary absences when a qualified substitute is present.

    While the 12 federal complaints are unrelated, the scheme was essentially the same: Defendants obtained a California license to operate a home childcare facility and registered with Child Development Associates (CDA) and the YMCA to provide subsidized childcare to eligible families. To receive government-funded payments, the defendants were required to submit monthly attendance records accurately documenting the dates and times they provided care to each child.

    Instead, the defendants knowingly submitted false attendance records claiming they provided childcare on dates and at times when they did not. They also falsely certified, under penalty of perjury, that the information was true and correct. CDA and the YMCA relied on those fraudulent records and issued payments with federal funds intended to pay for childcare actually provided to low-income families.

    The complaints describe how surveillance recordings of the defendants’ licensed facilities conflicted with what the defendants claimed in their attendance records. For example, Abdulrahman Ayman Alawad submitted attendance records claiming to have provided childcare to 23 children in March 2026 and 25 children April 2026, and that he provided childcare every day of those two months.

    My amazing psychic powers tell me that local media reports refer to Alawad as “San Diego Man.”

    But surveillance recordings covering 57 days of those months showed children entering or exiting Alawad’s facility on just one day—coincidentally, the day a state inspector showed up for an unannounced inspection, when children and Alawad himself arrived at the facility after the inspector arrived.

  • “Washington Finally Connected the Dots on Fraud Cases Across the Country.”

    Twenty-seven FBI field offices were working fraud cases that looked local. Then Washington finally put the data in the same room.

    What emerged wasn’t dozens of unrelated problems. The FBI says investigators connected over 40 cases to the same strategic threat and the same group of overseas actors.

    From the FBI:

    Launched in August, the NFDC brings together the FBI, federal law enforcement agencies, Offices of Inspector General, and state partners in a first-of-its-kind effort to identify fraud across taxpayer-funded programs. Rather than evaluating investigations in isolation, the center combines cross-agency data and artificial intelligence to help investigators spot patterns, connect cases, and dismantle organized criminal networks.

    The initiative stems from a broader “whole of government” approach mandated by Executive Order 14395, which established the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

    The discovery came through the new National Fraud Detection Center, launched in August. The center brings together information from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, Treasury, FinCEN, inspectors general, state agencies, and others.

    Instead of examining one suspicious student loan, Medicare payment, or SBA loan at a time, investigators can search for connections across programs and jurisdictions. The center uses data analytics and AI to help spot patterns that individual offices might miss.

    The student-loan investigation offers the clearest example. Individual cases appeared small enough that some might never have attracted major federal attention. Once the data was combined, investigators concluded they were looking at pieces of a much larger foreign-directed operation.

    Fraudsters had figured out something the federal government has struggled with for years: agencies don’t always talk to each other.

    The Government Accountability Office reported in June that agencies can use more than 100 federal data sources to verify whether people qualify for benefits or payments. GAO examined nine major sources and found data-quality problems in every one. It also found no government-wide rules ensuring those systems can efficiently share information.

    The price of those weaknesses isn’t theoretical.

    Federal agencies reported an estimated $186 billion in improper payments during fiscal 2025. Improper payments include errors and overpayments, so they shouldn’t automatically be called fraud. GAO separately estimates that actual fraud costs the federal government somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, based on data from 2018 through 2022.

    Those numbers help explain why connecting databases matters.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Syzran Oil Refinery Hit Hard By Drones: Supplies Russia’s Armed Forces.” I think that’s at least the fifth attack on the oil refinery we’ve reported here.
  • “Big Drone Strikes on Taganrog Drone Factory and Chemical Plant in Tolyatti.”
  • Plus: “Ukrainian Missile Strike on Taganrog Beriev Repair Plant (Repairs A-50 AWACS) and Drone Factory.”
  • “Ukraine Badly Damaged Gepard-Class Frigate in the Caspian Sea! Big Hole in Deck/Hull!”
  • “Operation Vivaldi: Ukrainian Counterattack Near Lyman Liberates Serednie.”
  • “Russian General Confirmed KIA in Ukrainian Drone Strike.” “Russian Major General Anton Grunis was reportedly KIA in Horlivka.”
  • “First Ever Battle Between Marine Drones! Ukraine Wins!”
  • President Trump signs the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026
  • Peter Zeihan explains how Ukraine targets Russia’s shadow fleet in the Black Sea. “What the Ukrainians have done is they’ve contacted every shipping company in the world and said, “Hey, if you’re operating in the Black Sea, A, tell us the name of the ship. B, give us their transponder so we can follow them. C, tell give us their course and D, the ports you expect them to be at and when. And if we can confirm that information as part of our operations, we will not attack those ships. And so far, shipping company in the world is complying except the shadow fleet. Shadow fleet runs dark. Shadow fleet doesn’t report. And that’s the whole point. So, what the Ukrainians have basically done have mapped out the entire commercial world of shipping in the Black Sea and attacking the ships that don’t report.”
  • Evidently the left is the same everywhere: “Maduro Ally Pleads Guilty In Miami To Scheme That Stole Venezuelan Welfare Funds.”

    The former minister of industry for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a global money laundering conspiracy that skimmed millions from a Venezuelan public welfare program.

    According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release, Alex Saab, 54, who was extradited from Venezuela in May and charged days later, conducted a decade-long scheme that defrauded a Venezuelan welfare program for food and medicine, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and associates.

    Saab, a Colombian businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments before federal district Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.

    “Criminals like Alex Saab who stole from the people of Venezuela and worked to exploit and misuse American financial institutions to fund illicit activities will be held accountable,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the news release.

    Saab is accused of bilking the welfare program known as Local Committee for Supply and Production, or CLAP (Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción).

    The ex-minister admitted to using a system of bribes and illegal payments to public officials. Entities controlled by conspirators in the scheme would be rewarded with lucrative contracts from the Venezuelan government to import food and medicine under CLAP.

    Saab and his conspirators did not fulfill the contracts and would instead use fake companies, false invoices and shipping records, and other fraudulent documents to unlawfully obtain millions while concealing their association with the scheme, the DOJ said.

    Saab further admitted he used shell companies outside his country to launder the illegal proceeds around the world, including in the United States.

    I wonder if there’s a book called How To Line Your Pockets With Welfare State Funds that leftists the world over all read…

  • “AOC, Mamdani caught laughing together while names are read at 9/11 Memorial.”
  • “Feds Expand Criminal Probe Into Newsom Travel, Spending. The subpoenas… seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that’s funded Newsom and his overseas travel through private donations.”

    Federal prosecutors have expanded their criminal investigation into Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, issuing subpoenas for six years of records covering his international travel, outside funding, and personal expenses, including money spent on his residence and living costs. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Anderson signed the subpoenas, which concern a criminal investigation in the Eastern District of California.

    The subpoenas, issued in early September, seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has funded Newsom’s overseas travel through private donations. The subpoenas are expected to produce records for a federal grand jury.

    Federal investigators also want communications involving Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who helps oversee his foreign travel and has staffed him at events ranging from the California Hall of Fame ceremony to meetings with foreign heads of government. Prowda is married to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. She declined to comment.

    Investigators also sought communications involving Steve Kawa, Jim DeBoo, Jason Elliott and campaign counsel Tom Willis. All four have longstanding ties to Newsom.

    Kawa, Newsom’s former San Francisco chief of staff, now chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the Protocol Foundation. DeBoo, a former Newsom executive secretary, is the foundation’s secretary. Elliott, another former deputy chief of staff, sits on both the Protocol Foundation board and the rail authority. Willis sits on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Records involving Siebel Newsom were also requested.

    Sounds like a cozy influence-peddling cabal, doesn’t it?

    Plenty of money is up for review. Newsom has directed more than $7.5 million in outside donations to the California State Protocol Foundation since taking office, with roughly $5.1 million coming from leftover inaugural funds. Behested payments are donations that public officials solicit on behalf of outside organizations. They are legal in California but must be disclosed. Newsom has directed roughly $349 million in such payments between 2019 and 2026. The foundation ended 2024 with just $7,790 in net funds after spending nearly $600,000 more than it took in over the previous two years.

    Among its donors are CVS, a Blue Shield-linked foundation, and autonomous vehicle company Zoox, all of which do business in California or operate under state rules. Other contributors include the New Venture Fund and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen. Foundations tied to Democrat megadonors Susie Tompkins Buell and Lisa Stone Pritzker have also contributed. Both women have supported Newsom politically and backed nonprofits associated with Siebel Newsom. The foundation has helped pay for Newsom’s travel to Davos, Munich, London, and China.

  • Democrats pull support for NC House candidate Shelly Headen. Oddly enough, wishing you could shove your political opponents into the ovens at Dachau is still beyond the pale, even for Democrats…
  • What.The Fuck. “Dutch officials say first toddler euthanized under new state law was ‘handled well.'”

    This child was born very prematurely, at only 26 weeks of gestation. It quickly became apparent that the child had suffered severe brain damage, resulting in severe cerebral palsy and a visual impairment. This was compounded by frequent and severe epileptic seizures, which were largely unresponsive to medication. This left the child restless and unable to sleep for long periods. They also had mucus in their lungs, which made breathing and swallowing very difficult.

    Cerebral palsy and epilepsy are serious conditions that require focused care.

    Doctors predicted that the child would not live to adulthood; therefore killing the two-year-old was the best choice for “care.”

    ‘Despite all medical and non-medical interventions, the parents and the doctor observed no improvement in the child’s condition and were convinced that the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of relief.’

    Neither the article, nor the medical committee described how the child’s life was ended.

    Was the child removed from life support and allowed to die?

    Was the child injected with lethal chemicals to stop the heart?

    What is the mania on the left for killing children these days?

  • “Roblox Refuses To Appear at Texas House Hearing on Child Safety. Roblox failed to appear before Texas lawmakers investigating concerns about violent and sexually explicit content on online gaming platforms.”
  • How senators John Kennedy (LA) and Ted Cruz derailed Biden judicial nominees with such trick questions as “What does Article II of the Constitution cover?”
  • “Federal Judge Overturned after Denying Jury Trial, Awarding Plaintiff $1 for Home Demolished by City. The appeals court called the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial ‘fundamental.'”

    A federal appeals court has ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Jeff Brown of the Southern District of Texas abused the discretion of the court when he denied a jury trial to a property owner who sued Texas City for demolishing his house without proper notice.

    In an opinion issued earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals also threw out Brown’s determination that homeowner Michael Ramirez was only entitled to $1 in nominal damages for the destruction of his house, but the court’s ruling hinged on the right to a jury trial guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

    “Because ‘the right of jury trial is fundamental,’ federal courts must ‘indulge every reasonable presumption against waiver,’” Justice Leslie H. Southwick wrote in the decision.

    “Indeed, a ‘motion for trial by jury under this rule should be favorably received unless there are persuasive reasons to deny it.’ Those reasons must be ‘strong and compelling’; otherwise, the motion should be granted, and it is an abuse of discretion not to do so.”

    Ramirez’ clash with Texas City began after a fire in April 2022 damaged the home he bought for $90,000, which he planned to renovate and resell for an estimated $230,000.

    Three days after the fire, the City sent a “Notice of Substandard Structure and of Abatement,” labeled the building a “clear and imminent danger,” and said it would be “abated without further notice.” But Ramirez hired an architect with experience in fire restoration who advised that the damage was primarily superficial and that the home was repairable.

    Ramirez then contacted city officials to secure repair permits, but alleged that city employees gave him conflicting information. He also said City Attorney Kyle Dickson assured him the property would be demolished only with his approval. While awaiting approval, Ramirez said he stored tools and appliances in the house valued at $15,000.

    Instead, the city demolished the home without further notice on May 9, 2023, more than one year after the fire.

  • Louis Rossmann offers an update to a previous story he did, where Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going after Taylor for taking land deeded to them to use as parkland and instead using it for a commercial data center.
  • “FBI Agent Wanted To Criminally Investigate Elon Musk.”

    An FBI agent pitched investigating Elon Musk for his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to an email released on Sept. 15.

    FBI agent Kevin Gounaud wrote in the Feb. 22, 2025, missive to a supervisor that he wanted to recommend opening a criminal investigation into the person or people at the Office of Personnel Management who approved transmitting an email to government workers about what they had done the previous week.

    That person was conspiring with Musk “to violate government-wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know,” Gounaud said.

    “Furthermore, Musk used a non-government system (Twitter) to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes,” he said.

    “In doing so, because he is monetized … he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization and/or advertising revenues.”

    Gounaud compared Musk’s action to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct government business.

    Yes, because running a private email server to facilitate foreign bribes is just like looking for patterns of government waste…

  • “Georgia’s youngest mayor makes history again by getting impeached in just 10 months.”

    The mayor is a nonpartisan position, but we all know this kid is a future shining star of the Democratic Party. Stockbridge, Georgia’s youngest elected mayor has been shown the door less than a year into the job, the city confirms.

    Here’s Breitbart:

    [Jayden] Williams — who recently turned 23 — was initially stripped of certain privileges in July before the City Council impeached the mayor on grounds of malfeasance, misfeasance, and violation of his oath of office, then returned to executive session on Saturday to vote for his removal, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

    The former mayor — who took office in early January — was reportedly accused of using his city purchasing card for more than $4,000 in personal expenses such as dining at restaurants, buying clothes, getting haircuts, and watching a movie, in addition to spending $2,600 on gas.

  • Clayton Cramer on Why Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill Matters.

    Before 03/17/1973: “Police hunted today for a man in his early 20s seen leaving a burning home after a businessman, his wife and son were shot to death outside the hillside dwelling.” A neighbor saw the man leaving with a shotgun who rejected the neighbor’s poorly thought offer to help. “Go away,” was the response. Police found at least 22 shotgun shells.

    At a subsequent trial of a man, 22, his defense attorney asserted that the murderer was paranoid schizophrenic and committed the murders because his friend, one of those murdered, “possessed supernatural powers which were bent of destroying [the murderer.” Also, “the Mafia was involved in his life and that Dan Shallock was involved and could not be killed, even by an H-Bomb.” “At one point he believed Dan Shallock was the devil, and to this day [the murderer] fear in his heart that Dan may come back.” The murderer had spent a month at Marin Community Mental Health Center, and in the days immediately prior to the slayings, his mother had been trying to persuade the youth to commit himself.”

  • If you’re confused about the thunderclap of “AI will kill us all” doom forecasting this week, Director Blue has a visual breakdown.

    Here’s the 9-second version: A 27-year-old quits AI frontier lab Anthropic. Fires off a post on X. Says AI could kill us all. The Wall Street Journal has the exclusive ready to drop. Ted Cruz freaks out and calls it “catastrophic”. Bernie Sanders drafts socialist-style regulations. The tweet gets 164 millions views. Elon responds with two words: psy-op. Let’s follow the money trail. It traces back ten years. This isn’t an AI scandal. It’s a clandestine operation designed to damage American interests.

    Go over there for details, I’m just going to pull out the names of the people and orgs running the psy-op for future reference:

    • Anthopic series A investor Dustin Moskovitz and wife
    • Cari Tuna, who fund
    • Coefficient Giving, who gives money to
    • Redwood Research
    • Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
    • Center for AI Safety
    • AI Policy Institute
    • Open Philanthropy, run by
    • Holden Karnofsky, who is married to
    • Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, sister of
    • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. More names:
    • Jacob Coxon
    • Evan Hubinger
    • Samuel Marks
    • Jaan Tallinn
    • China
    • Max Tegmark
    • Future of Life Institute
    • Alexander Berger

    Hope you enjoy the bullet point summary of the visual summary…

  • Speaking of AI drama, here’s the story of a century-old math puzzle being solved, and suspicions that OpenAI stole the work of two math guys.
  • “Texas police department shut down for failing to provide ‘public benefit’ after arresting mom over dirty water Facebook post.”

    The Texas police department that arrested a mother for criticizing the town’s dirty drinking water on social media has been ordered to disband after the state ruled that it provided no “benefit to the community.”

    The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement sent Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws a letter on Sept. 9 revoking the city’s license to operate its own police department — determining the department had “failed to meet minimum standards” as a law enforcement entity, KETK reported.

    The action followed an Aug. 5 investigation in which the department was found “unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community” and lacked 18 required policies, including ones on use of force, vehicle pursuit, professional conduct and active shooters, the commission said.

    Texas has ordered the Trinidad Police Department to disband after it arrested Jennifer Combs for posting about the town’s dirty drinking water.

    Police defended the arrest, claiming Combs’ post had created “fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community” — despite the city itself posting a notice urging residents to boil their water to “avoid harmful bacteria” on April 21, weeks before her arrest.

    Despite the mounting contradictions, Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory doubled down — calling the case against Combs “cut and dry.”

    Police also arrested a supporter of Combs, citizen journalist Winston Noles, for misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he displayed a “f–k bad cops” sign outside city hall, FOX 4 reported.

    Combs’ arrest quickly drew national attention, prompting Gregory to drop the felony charge against her and the state to launch its investigation into the department.

    Let’s hope other police departments get the message that their authoritah does not override the First Amendment. (Previously.)(Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “City of Fulshear dismisses chief of police.”

    Fulshear Police Chief Kenny Seymour has been relieved of his duties effective immediately.

    Fulshear is west of Houston and south of Katy.

    At a Sept. 15 meeting, Fulshear City Council voted unanimously to dismiss Seymour after a third-party investigator found “overwhelming” evidence stemming from an alleged affair Seymour had with a subordinate within the police department.

    The city will begin looking for an interim chief and, in the meantime, has appointed City Manager Zach Goodlander to oversee police department operations, while command-level oversight will be assigned to appropriate department leadership.

    Although the proceedings could have been held in closed session, Seymour—who has served as police chief since 2011—requested they be held publicly.

    Officials with the investigation said it showed Seymour “engaged in a prolonged pattern of deception, financial conflict of interest and direct insubordination.”

    Dwight unearthed more details.

    According to the investigator, sworn interrogatory responses from Seymour’s divorce case showed a prolonged sexual relationship with the subordinate. The investigator also said Seymour had a financial entanglement with the captain, including providing money for rent, plane tickets, and other expenses.

    Including a refrigerator.

  • Good. “UT-Austin Eliminating Additional Grievance Studies Programs. University to cut Mexican American, African, women’s and gender studies majors.”

    The University of Texas at Austin will liquidate several grievance studies programs that observers had previously thought it would keep.

    KUT reports that the university will eliminate majors in African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women’s and gender studies, and race, indigeneity and migration.

    The left-wing outlet received a leaked email outlining the changes.

    In the email, Danielle Pilar Clealand, the interim chair of the newly formed Social and Cultural Analysis Department said that “the Provost’s office rejected our proposal to keep our majors.”

    The provost is the chief academic officer at UT Austin. William Inboden currently serves in the position.

  • It’s not just UT! A&M is also killing courses.

    The Texas A&M University System has removed 350 course entries from core-curriculum eligibility, while the University of Texas at Austin provost’s office has proposed removing 113 “topic” courses from core-credit eligibility beginning in spring 2027, with most of the affected UT courses reportedly housed in the College of Liberal Arts.

    In an Aug. 13 announcement from The University of Texas at Austin, the school has announced that it will be deploying a new core curriculum that is designed to specifically give students “a common learning experience built on rigorous, broad and balanced classes.”

    The new curriculum comes after 22 faculty members, who made up a “Core Curriculum Task Force,” found that the school offered “more than 1,000 disconnected courses of inconsistent quality.”

    As a result of the Task Force’s work, the new curriculum at UT Austin is stated to give students a foundation of courses on “three foundational domains of knowledge: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM.”

    Additionally, UT Austin’s Core Curriculum Task Force’s Report found other suggestions to cut the catalog of more than 600 courses to prioritize courses that focus on Western civilization, U.S. History, “Great Questions of Human Life,” principles of American Politics, and others.

    The report also ties the core curriculum overhaul to concerns that “narrow,” specialized courses fail to provide students with a shared academic foundation. It recommends incentives, including tuition discounts and honors status, to encourage students to complete the newly required courses and reduce the likelihood of students transferring to other institutions.

    A curriculum overhaul is also set to take place within the Texas A&M University System as well, as S.B. 37 requires state-funded universities to review their course catalogs and make appropriate changes.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Dwight has a report up of his trip to the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association Symposium in Springfield Missouri, which I commend to your attention if that sort of thing appeals to you.
  • This:

  • “Anthropic Boasts They Will Kill Off Humanity Way Before OpenAI.”
  • “Travis Kelce Victimized By Criminal Ring That Forces People To Dress Like Idiots.”

  • Golden Retrievers are great dogs, but they make poor watch dogs.

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Technology, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Murder Charges Dropped Because Travis County Missed Deadlines

    September 17th, 2026

    In Travis County, the land of bonded-out murder suspects, a case recently resurfaced that had previously evaded my eye, one where a suspect managed to avoid murder charges through sheer sloth and incompetence from the Travis County DA’s office.

    AUSTIN MAN beat a woman to death, left her body under a tarp in his yard for two days, then buried her in a backyard burn pit — and never faced a single day in court for the murder, because Travis County prosecutors missed the deadline to indict him.

    Ad now he’ll be released from prison in March, according to Texas prison records.

    The victim was Natalie Renee Pearce, a 36-year-old caregiver who worked with adults with developmental disabilities and helped run a horse therapy program.

    Peter Perius picked her up near Rundberg Lane and brought her home to get high on meth. He texted his nephew afterward that he didn’t want to spend the second half of his life in prison.

    He apparently is getting his wish and will be a free man soon.

    Perius was charged with murder, bond set at $500,000. Then the case sat. In February 2024, a judge dismissed the murder charge because prosecutors failed to meet deadlines.

    What was left was tampering with a corpse. He pleaded guilty in December 2024, but two enhancements were abandoned, and he got 10 years with 766 days already credited.

    Prosecutors could have put him away before he killed Natalie. Two months before he picked her up, prosecutors had declined to file a felony meth possession case against him. He had 18 Travis County cases already — including a child/elderly/disabled injury charge, three family violence assaults in a single year, an indecent exposure, a revoked probation, a string of DWIs.

    Now Natalie Pearce is dead and her killer is set to be a free man soon because Austin’s prosecutors failed to do their job.

    That’s from the Austin Justice Twitter account, but news stories corroborate all the relevant details. “A murder charge that Perius previously faced was dismissed due to the Travis County District Attorney’s Office failing to meet the indictment deadline.” Somehow this case of massive incompetence got relegated to half a sentence at the end of paragraph five.

    Under Soros-backed DA Jose Garza, Travis County’s DA office has put a revolving door on the jailhouse to allow repeat offenders back out on the streets to continue victimizing law-abiding citizens.

    Usually murder cases are treated with a fair degree of seriousness in a competent DA’s office (at least outside of no-witness drug gang shootings). They’re high profile cases that receive special attention, but evidently not in Travis County. One wonders whether Garza’s staff let Perius walk out of sheer incompetence, or an ideological belief that no one should spend time in jail for committing a crime against anyone, for anything, ever.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 6 Comments »

    Soros-Backed DA Larry Krasner Going Down?

    September 16th, 2026

    The love of Soros-backed DAs for repeat offenders and other criminal scum is well-documented. Evidently Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner’s love of setting murderers free is so deep that he’s facing federal prosecution over lying about it. Robert Stacy McCain:

    On any list of “Things a Lawyer Should Never Do,” lying to the judge must always be No. 1. Let me summarize this complex story as briefly as possible: With financial backing from George Soros, Larry Krasner became Philadelphia’s District Attorney in 2018, and immediately instituted a policy of leniency, which he sought to make retroactive by cooperating with the Innocence Project to overturn previous convictions. Among the cases was that of Dennis Johnson, who was 23 years old in August 2007 when he murdered Kenyatta Smith in a Philadelphia convenience store. Backed by the Innocence Project, Johnson sought to have his conviction overturned and, after Krasner was elected, the D.A.’s office was eager to cooperate with Johnson.

    By an amazing coincidence, the Innocence Project is also backed by George Soros money through the Open Society Foundations. What are the odds?

    A junior staffer in the office was assigned to write a brief conceding the case to Johnson, essentially admitting that previous prosecutors had deprived Johnson of his constitutional rights. However, because Krasner’s handling of such cases had already raised questions (see this long story here), the federal judge overseeing Johnson’s case ordered a hearing — causing “panic” in Krasner’s office.

    “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”:

    A federal judge said Tuesday that District Attorney Larry Krasner may have broken the law while overseeing a contentious post-conviction case, and he said he referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate whether Krasner should be charged with crimes including conspiracy or obstruction of justice.

    U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond made those stunning statements in a memorandum in which he also ruled that Krasner and one of his top supervisors, Matthew Stiegler, could not longer participate in the case — a matter in which a man is seeking to have his murder conviction overturned.

    Diamond wrote that over the past several months, as he conducted hearings to learn more about how attorneys in DA’s office handled that case, testimony from some of Krasner’s staffers revealed actions by Krasner and Stiegler that Diamond called “troubling,” “disturbing” — and potentially illegal.

    Those actions, he wrote, included pressuring other staffers to take steps to protect Stiegler and blame one of his subordinates; urging staffers to lie to Diamond in court; and threatening “consequences” for those who did not follow Krasner’s orders.

    “I have thus reluctantly concluded that Philadelphia’s highest law enforcement official and one of his top assistants may have violated the law,” Diamond wrote. “In these circumstances, with the issuance of this Memorandum, I refer the DAO, Mr. Krasner, and Stiegler to this District’s United States Attorney’s Office for investigation and other appropriate action.”

    Krasner did not provide an immediate comment Tuesday, nor did a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which would have to determine whether or not to open an investigation or file charges. Diamond, as a judge, cannot do so himself.

    The filing was the latest explosive development in the case, which is centered around Dennis Johnson’s 2009 conviction for second-degree murder. Johnson has been fighting to have that conviction overturned, and the matter before Diamond began years ago as a routine petition in federal court.

    But in recent months, the case has led to a series of unusual revelations about the inner workings of the district attorney’s office as various lawyers handled the case.

    Diamond, in his filing Tuesday, said those assertions were not only proof of significant internal disagreements — but also “evidence of possible criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Krasner and Stiegler.”

    Krasner is completely cooked! He’s finished! Done!

    I certainly hope so, but many Soros-backed DAs have an uncanny ability to slough off all sorts of scandals that would torpedo the careers of anyone without a (D) after their name.

    McCain, in turn, points to this Ace of Spades piece for more details.

    Larry Krasner and his “prosecutors” have been questioned and accused by judges of deliberately misstating evidence to contrive reasons to free guilty murders from jail.

    Two of his “prosecutors” have been disbarred over their flagrant crimes before the court– all to support meritless appeals so that guilty murders could go free.

    We covered that part of the ongoing saga here.

    Krasner is a full supporter of the left’s “decarceration” agenda and believes no one should be in prison — not rapists, not killers, not child sex abusers — and he’s not shy about saying so and he’s not shy about putting his communist believes into practice.

    Snip.

    Here’s the bigger problem: That appears to be the way Krasner’s office has handled other post-conviction cases. Under Krasner, more than 60 people convicted — mainly of murder — have been set free or had their sentences reduced following concessions despite no incontrovertible proof of the person’s innocence.

    Given this, their celebration of Charlie Kirk’s murder, and their infatuation with abortion and literal infanticide, Democrats can be objectively called “the pro-murder party.”

    Federal charges are no joke, but we can’t discount the possibility that Krasner and his henchmen could still wiggle out of jail if the case gets assigned to an Obama- or Biden-appointed judge.

    While I would be delighted to see pro-crime Krasner see hard time in Club Fed, I would be even more interested in possible revelations from a robust discovery process exposing just what communications pass between the numerous tentacles of various Soros-backed organizations and Soros-backed DAs. I suspect seeing exactly what pro-crime and anti-American beliefs and justifications they’re operating on might be what we call a “clarifying moment” in exposing the social justice war against law and order.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 3 Comments »

    RFK Jr. Indicts Modern Democrat Party

    September 15th, 2026

    I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t a big RFK, Jr. fan when he endorsed Trump, and I was moderately skeptical of him running HHS. But overall I think he’s done a good job, and he just dropped a banger of a speech at the Republican Midterm Convention, delivering a blistering indictment of the perfidy of the political party his entire family has given their lives to:

    Some excerpts:

  • “So I’m 72 years old, and for 70 years of my life, I would have bet any amount of money that I would not be addressing a Republican convention. The irony of my presence here is inescapable.”
  • “I attended my first Democratic convention in 1960 when I was six years old and I attended most of the conventions, the Democratic conventions, after that, and I spoke as a keynote speaker in many of them.”
  • “I grew up in a Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, of my uncle John Kennedy, of my father Robert Kennedy. Ours was a party of strong principles, of clear policies, and an inspiring idealistic vision for America. My uncle ran on a platform of tax cuts, strong defense, and fighting communism. Does that sound familiar?”
  • “The Democrats of that era stood with labor and working people and the American middle class. Nearly every cop and firefighter was a Democrat. Our party was a champion of the Bill of Rights, and particularly for unbridled free speech.”
  • “My uncle and father understood the connection between free markets and functional democracy.”
  • “My uncle Ted Kennedy wrote Title IX, which because he wanted to make sure that women, real women, were able to have a safe and guaranteed spot in college sports.”
  • “And they stood with Israel as the bulwark of democracy and as a beacon for press and religious freedoms, a haven from oppression to gays and women and ethnic and religious minorities, amidst a regional sea of intolerance, of misogyny, of child marriage, of human slavery, and of ethnic and religious genocide. They saw Israel as America’s most critical front-line ally in fighting the toxic ideology of Islamism, which by its own accounts is waging an existential war against our country and against western liberal democracy. It’s an ideology that has subjugated, impoverished, and tyrannized and tortured the people of Palestine and the people of Iran. And they openly promise to do the same to us.”
  • “Democrats and labor leaders fought fiercely in my generation to stop illegal immigration at the border.”
  • “During COVID, I watched the Democratic Party turned against every one of its essential values, its principles, and all of the policies that define my party. Democrats turned away from gold standard research and blindly defended industry sponsored agenda-driven science written by corrupt and captive regulatory agencies. And the Democrats, which were once the champions of the American Constitution, systematically obliterated the Bill of Rights, and particularly, beginning with the First Amendment, under the guise of combating misinformation, Democrats censored hundreds of scientists and physicians who questioned the government’s dubious COVID pronouncements and orthodoxies. 37 hours after President Biden took the oath of office, he ordered Facebook and Instagram to remove my accounts in order to prevent public debate.”
  • “Democrats obliterated the second leg of the First Amendment, the right to the guaranteed right of assembly by social distancing regulations that were completely un-science-based. Democrats violated the third leg of the First Amendment, the freedom to worship. They closed every church in our country for a year. Who could imagine that would have ever happened? And they kept open the liquor stores and the big box stores as essential businesses. Democrats torpedoed the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial by giving liability shields to the giant pharmaceutical companies. No matter how negligent they were, no matter how reckless, no matter how toxic the ingredients, no matter how grievous your injury, you could not sue them.”
  • “Democrats violated the Fifth Amendment by shutting down three million businesses with no due process and no just compensation. Democrats shut down the Fourth Amendment, protection from unlawful searches and seizures by forcing Americans to disclose their medical information before they could exercise their constitutional rights. In a single year, my party obliterated 250 years of constitutional guarantees. The only bill of right that they left unscathed was the Second Amendment and probably only because there is a Second Amendment.”
  • “And then the party of my body, my choice forced citizens to wear masks and to submit to invasive and intrusive medical interventions against their own wills.”
  • “The Democrats abandoned all of these values and all of their traditional values, offering Americans only one policy. The one policy that they stood for, the unbridled sociopathic and blind hatred of a single man, Donald J. Trump.”
  • “And they were so confident that Trump hatred alone was sufficient to win elections that they abandoned accountability and made our government a predatory organism of monumental incompetence and corruption. The Democrats dismantled public integrity safeguards and open the floodgates to thieves and fraud, fraudsters who fleeced the American medical regulatory agencies for a hundred billion dollars annually during every year of the Biden administration. They somehow they somehow lost 360,000 children, and they turned our federal government into the biggest child trafficking operation in world history.”
  • “The Democratic Party, in short, lost its way. I mourn the fact that neither my father nor my uncle would recognize the Democratic party of today.”
  • “In April 2023, I ran for president, hoping to summon my party back to its bedrock values. But the Democratic Party had lost faith in American voters and utterly, ironically, lost faith in American democracy. They were convinced that they would lose the ballot box, that they couldn’t win. And so they unveiled a lawfare strategy to prevent an election from occurring. They sued every candidate who dared to run against Joe Biden. And attempted to remove us all from the ballot. A lot of you think that the lawfare was just against Donald Trump. It was mainly against him. But they sued Dean Phillips. They sued Marianne Williamson. They sued Cornel West. They sued Donald Trump 50 times in 38 states to remove him from the ballot. And they sued me in 12 states to remove me from ballots where I had legally qualified. And then, this is almost comical, after I endorsed President Trump and I tried to remove myself from the ballot so that he could have my votes, they sued me to keep me on the ballot.”
  • “They cancelled the primaries. The Democratic Party changed the rules to make sure I could not win and neither could the other people who were running as Democrats. No matter how many votes we got and for the first time in history, they cancelled their own convention. No voter ever cast a primary ballot for Kamala Harris. No elected delegate was ever consulted. A party of ‘no kings’ simply anointed a queen.”
  • “The day that President Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, within three hours of his shooting, he called me and asked me for a meeting. And during the series of talks that followed, I realized that everything that I had heard about President Trump and everything I believed about him from the mainstream media was a lie. Everything. I discovered I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues and in molecular detail. And most of all a near reckless courage to challenge vested interests and official orthodoxies. I found a man who cared deeply about transparency in government, who believed in protecting free speech more than anything, and the entire United States Constitution.”

    • RFK, Jr. looks at the old Democratic Party with extremely rose-tinted glasses, but his enumeration of the nightmarish flaws in its modern incarnation are dead on.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, video | 6 Comments »

    A Visa Restriction Too Far

    September 14th, 2026

    Regular BattleSwarm readers know I’ve become quite the immigration hawk. All illegal aliens should be deported, NGOs that helped carry out the illegal alien invasion should be investigated, disbanded and their members prosecuted, the cost of applying for a H-1B visa should be raised above $100,000, and the government should crack down hard on companies (I’m looking at you, Microsoft) who have abused the H-1B system to avoid hiring Americans.

    But now someone has finally come up with a crackdown idea that’s just stupid and counter-productive.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is floating the end of a 60-day grace period that currently allows some immigrants to remain in the United States after they lose their jobs.

    Migrants with temporary work visas such as H-1B visas would have to immediately leave the country if they no longer have a job, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a proposed rule filed on Sept. 10 and set to be formally published in the Federal Register on Sept. 11.

    Such visas are contingent on an immigrant’s employment, and a company sponsors the employee. Some of the visas are granted only to workers who have specialized expertise.

    DHS originally provided the grace period to encourage immigrants who no longer have jobs to remain in the United States and try to obtain another form of legal status or get another job, Mullin said. But rulemakers did not sufficiently consider the negative effects of the grace period, such as burdening immigration officers who handle additional paperwork from visa holders during the time period, he said.

    “DHS now believes that once the alien is no longer fulfilling the very specific conditions under which he or she was admitted or otherwise provided status, such status, as well as the authorization to remain in the United States, should definitively cease and the impacted alien should immediately depart the United States (unless otherwise authorized to lawfully remain in the United States),” he wrote.

    Immediately? Is the guy supposed to walk out of his termination meeting and straight onto an ICE bus to rush him onto the next plane back to Hyderabad? Is General Raul Alejandro Bastilla Pedro de Veloso de Maldonado from Parks and Rec running immigration enforcement now?

    Does he even get a chance to cash his last check?

    Unlike illegal aliens, visa holders have entered the United States by a process that obeys the law. They are legal, not illegal, aliens. As such, they’ve entered into legally binding contacts, bought goods, and participated in other economic and contractual activities afforded the full protection and due process of the law. Not giving them time to wind down affairs is being needlessly and pointlessly cruel to people who “worked hard and played by the rules.” It inflicts collateral damage on people doing business with them. Apartment managers, car leasing companies, utilities, etc. will all be left in the lurch by the sudden departures mandated by this proposed rule.

    if the H-1B visa program is being abused (and it is), then crack down on the people and employers abusing it. Or even suspend the program entirely until better monitoring systems can be put into place. But don’t make it a nightmare for people following the rules of the system just so you can point to this bit of immigration crackdown theater as a meaningless gesture to prove how serious you are.

    You can leave comments on this proposed rule here.

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    Posted in Border Control, Regulation | 18 Comments »

    Remembering Andrew Wimsatt: “The Coolest Dude Ever”

    September 13th, 2026

    When I originally posted about the random senseless murder of my friend Andrew Wimsatt, I did so out of a sense of obligation. He was a close friend, and I’m a writer with a blog, so if I wasn’t going to write about him, who would?

    But I’ve been stunned by how quickly the story blew up. Andrew’s murder has become national or even international news, from Fox News to the New York Post to even The Daily Mail in the UK.

    Given that explosion of publicity, and Andrew’s family’s dismay over so many articles dwelling on the murder rather than the man, I felt the need to do another, longer post celebrating Andrew’s life and re-post some of the many tributes to him. He was a man of many parts, in the best possible sense.

    The good thing, the heat-warming silver-lining in a very dark cloud thing, is the legions of people who knew Andrew coming from all walks of life, all different enthusiasms, to share what a great guy he was. Here’s one tribute:

    I suspect being described as “the coolest dude ever” would have come as a great surprise to Andrew. As an engineer, Andrew was a geeky, goofy, affable, genial guy, and, with the sole exception of playing guitar, had none of the attributes the media use to label someone as “cool.” Our nickname for him (I think bestowed long before we met him) was “Goober,” or simply “The Goob.” And yet in a deeper, more meaningful way, he was a cool guy: A sturdy presence always looking to help out his friends, try new restaurants, listen to new bands. He was a quiet pillar of strength holding up part of the world, a vital cohort in numerous little platoons, each blithely unaware of how much he meant to others.

    I knew Andrew for over 35 years, so long ago that my initial meeting with him is lost in the dim mists of time. For the last 30 of those years, he was a member of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy, a loose affiliation of myself, Dwight Brown, and a rotating cast of friends and family who go out to a different restaurant for dinner every week, everything from hot dog and taco places to high end steak joints. Andrew was one of our core members, and BBQ and sushi seemed among his particular favorites. So I’ve seen Andrew most Saturdays for three decades. We probably demolished 100 plates of nachos between us.

    And it wasn’t just for food! A quarter century or so ago, we started watching movies every night after dinner, with Andrew usually joining us for that as well. We’ve watched everything from All That Jazz to Suspira to Zulu to any number of Godzilla films. (We have eclectic tastes.) After I bought my house in 2004, it became the de facto movie viewing venue, despite not then having a large TV. Andrew had a video protector he used for teaching classes, and for the first year or two, we projected movies up on a white sheet.

    Andrew wasn’t just friends to us, he was a friend to my dogs as well. He would race my Great Pyrenees Buddy up and down the stairs (“Go up! Go up! Go up!”) to burn off some of his energy, and my Lab/Pit mix Avery frequently found her way under the upraised legrest of the battered brown Lay-Z-Boy Andrew always sat in.

    One thing missing from all the praise flowing in over Andrew is the dark sense of humor he shared with most of our group. When it came time to divvy up the dining bill, Andrew would often joke “In the end, we will all pay.” He was a fan of The Simpsons back when it was good (which, I know, really narrows it down to “every single person in my generation”), and especially liked the 1996 Treehouse of Horror episode where Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are replaced by space aliens, often quoting the line “It doesn’t matter which one of us you vote for, either way your planet is doomed! DOOMED!”

    And he loved a good Hitler joke. “You know who else loved to paint?” And after Dolly Parton died, he showed us an AI generated picture of famous singers (Kenny Rogers, Johnny Cash, Elvis, etc.) welcoming her into heaven, only some wag had swapped out Elvis for Hitler. We laughed.

    We grew up in the 1980s. Dark humor is just how we roll.

    Long before I knew him, Andrew was a big music fan, and had collaborated with Karl Rehn on various musical projects in high school and college. We shared interests in Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Yes, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass and Slowdive, among many others. But Andrew’s tastes ran far afield and quite eclectic, championing such odd or obscure bands as Mr. Bungle, Tilts, Tobacco, Torche, and probably dozens I never even knew about. He was a regular attendee of Psych Fest and Levitation, the latter (which Andrew had tickets to attend) being this weekend.

    He got into world music before I did, especially artists on Gabriel’s Realworld label. He was such a fan that he flew to England to work as a volunteer on the WOMAD festival. He picked up Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, all 300+ pounds of him, at an airport in a compact car, which must have been a sight to see. He complained to festival management about some of the ways he thought the artists were being treated, and received a snide, condescending letter for his troubles saying that he was being “disingenuous” and had a “hidden agenda.”

    That inspired Andrew and Karl to form the band Hidden Agenda (now variously known as Hidden Agenda (of Evil) or Hidden Agenda (TX), depending on the music service, due to multiple other bands with the same name), which I would later join for (some) lyrics and vocals. The whole point of the band was to annoy people. We did a song called “Kill Yourself for Satan” and put Christian back-masking in, just so we could piss off everyone. See the FAQ (and ignore the security warning) for more details of what tremendous smartasses we were in our 20s. More recently Andrew had been playing with transforming Hidden Agenda songs into even more mutated forms via AI tools like Suno.

    Apart from his myriad interests, Andrew spent his working life as a civil engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation and associated institutes. He seemed particularly proud of the Mobile Load Simulator, a giant machine he worked on to help test pavement to destruction. He was also a certified bridge inspector, and used to joke about closing bridges, setting them on fire, and then reopening them to see cars race through the flames. Here’s a video of Andrew giving a lecture on pavement fatigue.

    Since so many in our group read science fiction, and Andrew came from a literary academic family, it was natural that we got him reading SF as well, and he subscribed to Nova Express, the SF critical fanzine I used to edit. He became a big fan of Howard Waldrop, another close friend of mine. I sold Andrew several of Howard’s books (among others) over the years.

    Karl got Andrew into guns and shooting. He would go out on our group’s occasional trips to the range, see our various guns, and go “Ooo, I want that!” He eventually acquired quite a collection. We all greatly admired his ridiculously powerful (and loud) Desert Eagle.

    Andrew had been following Iowahawk on Twitter for a while, and we went to a meetup when he moved to Austin. Andrew joined his orbit as a car enthusiast, frequently attending the Hot Rod Meetups at Top Notch Hamburgers, and other classic car events. Here’s a tribute from Iowahawk:

    I won’t belabor the terrible circumstances of his death, which have been discussed in depth online recently. I am as angry and upset about his murder as anyone, but my car ID threads are designed as a sanctuary from the woes of the contemporary world. I would rather spare that anger for a different forum and choose here to focus on Andrew Wimsatt, the human being. He was a relentlessly cheerful and positive soul, I hope you will respect his spirit in your replies.

    I think our mutual friend @AnnaZ perfectly summed up Andrew as “everybody’s biggest fan.” His various fandoms include countless bands, visual artists, podcasters, @wethefifth, @reason, @uaustinorg, and @TheFIREorg. And I am humbled that one of his fandoms was Dave’s Car ID Service.

    You may have noticed from reading the various tributes to him over the past few days his adjectives: kind, generous, warm, positive, never had an unkind word about anyone. All true. But he seldom spoke about himself, despite having a very distinguished career as a civil engineer in road materials research. He was far more interested in talking about you, with zero expectation of anything in return. He was the least transactional person in a hyper-transactional world.

    If you were lucky enough to have Andrew as a fan he was generous with his time and support, and in my case, that support included loads of his old family photos with mystery cars.

    I can’t fully repay my debt to him for that. But I’d like to dedicate this episode of Dave’s Car ID Service to him, and use those photos to illustrate the life a genuine mensch.

    “Least transactional person” seems right. I know if I were friends with important media personalities, the urge to blurt out “Put me on! Put me on! I’m smart and funny and well-spoken and ever so cleeeever!” would be overwhelming.

    Andrew was firmly on the conservative-to-libertarian spectrum. He was a fan of this blog (and my Twitter account, before the ancien regime suspended it (which I never managed to get lifted)). I hold small election night gatherings at my house every two years where we eat pizza and watch returns roll in, and Andrew was a regular attendee. He was here in 2020, where we called it a night just before 3 AM, convinced President Trump had been reelected only to wake up to those mysterious 4:30 AM ballot drops.

    He was a big fan of Gutfeld! and The Five. Such a fan that he started working behind the scenes compiling music and clips for them. Greg Gutfeld offered up a tribute to him on The Five:

    More:

    He was also a big fan of the libertarian We the Fifth podcast, and Matt Walsh put up this tribute.

    We come here to remember and celebrate and express gratitude toward our friend Andrew, whose name will be etched permanently on our under-construction sixth floor recording studio, probably within the area where Never Fly Coachers will be invited to watch us podcast live. Busty, after all, probably witnessed us recording more than any other fan—coming to all the live shows except one, raising his hand on every damned Second Sunday, pouring drinks around the (very!) Stupid Table for Special Dispatch #34, post-gaming an episode or three back when we recorded at the DIY Paloma Media studio.

    Andrew first buzzed across my radar in December 2013 when, over the course of a few days, three things happened for the first time: 1) The Independents television show, starring MTV’s Kennedy, Kmele, and myself, debuted on the Fox Business Network; 2) Wimsatt started following me on Twitter, and 3) he gave a four-figure donation to the Reason Foundation during our annual Webathon. It makes sense that these were related: Andrew l-o-v-e-d music, he adored the anarchic energy of Fox’s legendary late-nite show Red Eye (his pinned tweet for the past decade has been a celebration/compilation of Greg Gutfeld’s chosen outro music on The Five), and he was long attracted to the no-nonsense, structural-engineering ethos of Reason Foundation transportation-policy stalwart Bob Poole, whose annual highway report Andrew suggested improvements for.

    We hung out for the first time in Austin back in September 2018, after which he started doing what Andrew Wimsatt does, which is send us (or just tweet out) clips of all us + others in the extended Fifth Column/Red Eye multiverse whenever we’d appear on other media. He was famously much quicker on the draw publicizing a new Fifth Column episode than any of the drunk co-hosts, and at some early point we just gave him the keys to our Facebook page. And oh yeah, did I know he actually saved most of the entire run of The Independents? (You can watch a few over at the Paloma Media YouTube page, which was chiefly the fruit of his labors.) When we started doing Patreon in November 2019, and created what we thought was an absurd, no-one-will-ever-go-there level of $50-a-month subscriptions, Andrew became one of the first few to Never Fly Coach. He would come to New York several times a year, including the last couple during our annual sojourns to the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown. I took calling him “Busty,” for the very stupid reason that a funny British friend of mine back in the ‘90s would always refer to Kate Winslet as “Busty Winslet,” and this very accomplished transportation engineer not only took it in stride, he kind of beamed a bit when the nickname caught on in the community.

    So that’s where the “Busty” nickname came, which I swear I never heard before he died.

    Here’s one from Nancy Rommelmann, who Andrew brought as a guest to an SDC many moons ago.

    Do you know those friends who seem to always have been around and you don’t recall when you first met? Andrew was like that, though the not-remembering could be because Andrew was so unprepossessing, mild and kind and never wanting to intrude, while in fact being both whip-smart and the person so many, many, many of us relied on to spread the word about our work. The Fifth Column, of which there was no bigger fan, had just about zero visibility, in terms of clips, until Andrew started to create them, quietly tugging the pod onto a bigger and bigger stage. Matt wrote yesterday about some of Andrew’s quiet, steady work on behalf of others.

    Since Andrew’s absolutely senseless murder, we have learned that he did not just signal boost the Fifth, as he had for more than a decade for Red Eye and Greg Gutfield and anything involving Kat Timpf, all of whom have posted their shock and remembrance, but for others, some I have never heard of.

    It is exactly like Andrew not to shine any spotlight on himself. He saw people whose work he liked, probably chortled to himself (he had a good deep chortle) that they could use a little help archiving that work, then did it and them the clips. I literally have a score of these clips from him, as well as twice as many SOSs.

    Snip.

    I can almost guarantee you that Matt and I would have been texting Andrew that Thursday morning about the frozen computer, and that no matter where he was or what he was doing, Andrew would have responded immediately to tell us how to fix it or that he’d be on it as soon as he was by his laptop.

    Snip.

    He was also – and I learning this more and more as the days go by and we touch base with people Andrew knew – a Zelig of sorts, appearing wherever you were gathered, at a Fifth live show in LA, at a Cuckoo’s Nest remembrance in Tulsa, at a meet-up in Chicago. As his friend Karl Rehn told me last week, “You’d say to Andrew, ‘I’m going to such and such music show in New Jersey,’ or Las Vegas, and he’d say, ‘Great, I’ll meet you there.’” Andrew always showed up.

    More tributes:

    Andrew Wimsatt spent his life figuring out how to make things last longer.

    Roads, bridges, tunnels, pavement, friendships.

    He held three civil engineering degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, spent 18 years at TxDOT, ten of them as Fort Worth District Pavement Engineer, and in 2006 joined the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, where he eventually ran the Materials and Pavements Division and its $9 million annual research program. He worked on ground-penetrating radar, nondestructive testing, asset management.

    Describing the work once, he said the real challenge wasn’t building new things; it was making what we already have last longer.

    Andrew made what we already have last longer.

    He was an obsessive live-music fan who would fly across the country to see a band. He loved Slowdive. In 2023 he was recommending “Souvlaki” and “everything is alive” to anyone who’d listen, singled out their cover of Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair,” and admitted that when he heard them play it at FYF in 2014, he teared up. In 2016, when bad weather killed Levitation and Slowdive threw together a surprise show at the Scoot Inn, Andrew happened to be sitting at his computer and grabbed two $7.50 tickets in the roughly two minutes before it sold out. Then he recorded the entire set on his iPhone for a friend.

    I was the one who used the other ticket. And Andrew got to know at least two members of Slowdive (and possible all of them), one of whom, Simon Scott, helped engineer an album with him.

    He made music too. He’d been in bands with Karl Rehn since high school, engineered their home cassette recordings in the early 1980s, and in 1990 released “Reflections” under the name the Andrew Wimsatt Ensemble, cut at Sixth Street Studio. He and Rehn made music videos that ran for years on Austin’s ACTV, and contributed to the score of a 1994 documentary about Barton Springs.

    And more tributes:

    I could have posted dozens if not hundreds more tributes. It seems both overwhelming and strangely inadequate.

    I didn’t anticipate how big the story of Andrew’s murder would be, though I probably should have. The parallels with Iryna Zarutska’s murder are painfully obvious. My initial post may or may not have been the first pebble that started that avalanche, but when your friend’s murder in Texas is news in England and India, many including the tuxedo photo I took of Andrew at A.T. and Carol Campbell’s wedding that accompanied my initial blog post, it tends to give you pause.

    And now politicians, including some I support, are coming out of the woodwork to talk about his murder.

    I’m pretty sure Dustin Burrows couldn’t have picked Andrew out of a lineup with a gun to his head.

    It’s weird to see someone you knew transformed from a man into a martyr for a cause less than a week after his death. Even if it’s a cause you believe in. Even if it’s done by your side. Unsettling. And maybe a little unseemly.

    Politics has been played as a blood sport for a long, long time, and I’ve delivered my fair share of rhetorical blows. But the flood of stories had me going “Wait, that detail is not quite right,” and made me wonder how many errors I’ve unwittingly spread here reposting “hot takes” on different stories.

    It’s the modern condition. Or the post-modern condition. For a long time, Americans naively believed we had a news media that at least tried to report objectively, but the rise of the alternate news sources on the Internet proved that wasn’t so. But it’s particularly hard watching the sausage being made when it’s someone you know being fed into the machine. (Probably the wrong metaphor to use here.)

    As the pitted olive on top of this shit sandwich, Nancy Rommelmann sent me a note pointing out that some scumbag scammer is raising money in Andrew’s name. Losing someone is bad enough without the human cockroaches shuffling out of the shadows to feed. Here’s a form to complain to. Update: In a tiny bit of good news, the scam fundraiser for Andrew has been “unpublished.”

    I’m in touch with Andrew’s family, and once they get together any sort of fundraiser (and an obituary and memorial website, etc.), I’ll let you know here.

    It still feels a bit overwhelming. This post is pretty long already, but I fear I haven’t adequately captured the smart, goofy friend I knew. But it will have to do.

    Feel free to share memories of Andrew in the comments below.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Republicans, Texas | 5 Comments »

    Updates On The Murder Of Andrew Wimsatt

    September 12th, 2026

    In my original post on my friend Andrew Wimsatt’s murder, I was relying on early accounts of the crime, and thus said a few things that turned out to be wrong.

    Here’s the high level summary of corrections:

    1. In the original post, I said Andrew was a CHL/LTC holder who “likely would have survived his assault had he been carrying that day.” The early reports I was relying on didn’t make clear that he was sitting on a park bench when his assailant snuck up behind him and stabbed him in the neck.* I had the impression he was still walking when the attack occurred. Obviously, in such a situation Andrew wouldn’t have had time to draw his weapon to stave off the attack.
    2. I originally wrote that Benedict Ogbodiegwu, Andrew’s alleged attacker, “does not appear to have been released on bail for previous offenses in Travis County.” This may technically be true, but I didn’t think to search the Williamson County judicial database, where it shows he has had one felony and multiple misdemeanors dismissed.
    3. But evidence has emerged that his attacker wasn’t just known as a crime risk, but a mental health risk as well:

      Many are quick to blame revolving-door justice, but the Benedict Ogbodiegwu case—the man charged with murdering Andrew Wimsatt—is a criminal justice failure of a slightly-different sort. He wasn’t a violent repeat offender.

      Ogbodiegwu was ruled incompetent for trial last Feb and sent to restoration. Then, his competency hearing scheduled for May was cancelled, and in April his theft charge was dropped.

      Was he sane enough to walk free, like nothing ever happened? Obviously not. So, what did the system miss? How does mental health treatment, ordered specifically to restore competency for trial, lead to zero accountability instead of that trial?

      A good question.

    More complete details of the (be forewarned) grisly crime have emerged:

    The affidavit says that a woman had reported finding Wimsatt’s body at around 11:15 a.m. Sept. 7 in a park in the 2400 block of Chandler Creek Boulevard, near Double File Trail Elementary. The woman told law enforcement she had found him near a park bench with significant injuries and called 911.

    Video footage obtained from the neighborhood HOA showed a white man in a button-down shirt and dark shorts sitting on the bench at about 10:55 a.m. that morning.

    A couple of minutes later, a black man with a knife in his hand is seen coming up behind the other man, later identified as Wimsatt, and beginning to stab him in the neck while wrapping his other arm around him. Wimsatt is seen on video attempting to push the man off, but is unable to.

    Wimsatt was stabbed several more times and left on the ground when the suspect wiped the blade on his shift and ran from the scene towards the pool area. More video footage showed the suspect running north of the pool and towards N AW Grimes Boulevard.

    Video from before the attack led investigators to a water fountain near the basketball court where they were able to lift a palm print.

    The suspect was in a black shirt with red writing, grey sweatpants and dark shoes and had medium-length braids with light-colored tips and a dark goatee.

    A canvass of local businesses and homes revealed that the suspect had visited a McDonald’s on E. Palm Valley Boulevard hours after the attack in a different set of clothes. Video footage from the restaurant also showed the man getting into a red SUV in the parking lot.

    Detectives identified the SUV as belonging to Ogbodiegwu’s family and registered at a home less than a mile on foot from the park.

    Another canvass around the home uncovered surveillance footage showing a black man walking west in the same clothes as the man in the HOA footage at about 10:22 a.m. He also appeared to have an object in his left pocket. He is then seen returning eastbound at about 11:05 a.m.

    Snip.

    A search of the area did not uncover any new evidence, but a residential search warrant did, with detectives finding a white trash bag inside an outdoor garbage can containing the black shirt, grey sweatpants and black shoes the man in the video was wearing and a 5.5 inch knife with a wooden handle. The sweatpants had red stains on them and the blade tested presumptive positive for blood, says the affidavit.

    Despite Ogbodiegwu’s prior history of possible mental illness, he seemed to be cognizant enough to ditch his blood-stained clothes and murder weapon and then enjoy a meal at McDonald’s after his violent murder of a complete stranger.

    One thing I have not found in local news reports is that Ogbodiegwu attempted to “behead” Andrew, as some farther flung outlets have reported. This appears to be a too-many-steps removed exaggeration of an already horrific crime. (Edited to Add: A correction to the correction: Though it doesn’t mention “beheading,” the Statesman article does mention the perp “sawing” at Andrew’s neck. It sucks to have to add graphic details in the name of accuracy.)

    I felt the need to post this update because many people used the original post as a source, and I fear the original mistakes have already been fed into numerous AI databases, possibly beyond the reach of human correction.

    Barring some major new revelation, I hope this is the last post I have to write on the murder itself. Tomorrow I hope to have a post up celebrating Andrew’s life and posting some of the many tributes that have poured in from people who knew him.

    *I originally ended this sentence with “like a cowardly little bitch,” but I fear this would have marred the objective tone were media outlets to use this post as a source. Though I still feel this description is totally accurate.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Media Watch, Texas | 6 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For September 11, 2026

    September 11th, 2026

    The 25th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, GOP midterm convention, Iran and Yemen both get spicy again, AfD shocks Germany, Ukraine’s longest drone strike yet, more welfare state fraud, more money for Paxton,

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    More information about the murder of my friend Andrew Wimsatt has come out, and some of my original post needs to be corrected. I’m going to put that in a Saturday post, and there will be another for remembering Andrew on Sunday.

  • Your obligatory 9/11 remembrance post.

    On a perfectly clear morning 25 years ago, America changed forever.

    At 8:46 a.m. on that day, a team of Islamic terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 76 passengers and eleven crew members, into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was followed 17 minutes later by United Airlines Flight 175, carrying 51 passengers and nine crew members, which terrorists steered into the South Tower. Less than 90 minutes later, both of those towers had collapsed into a massive pile of rubble.

    Meanwhile, as Americans’ televisions were tuned to live footage of the burning buildings, American Airlines Flight 77, carrying 53 passengers and six crew members, was slammed into the Pentagon. And shortly after, United Airlines Flight 93, with 33 passengers and seven crew members, crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

    Today, we remember the 2,977 innocent victims who were the first casualties in what would become known as the War on Terror. We also remember the extraordinary heroism displayed that day, without which the horrific losses would have been far worse.

    One of the most miraculous facts about that day was that at the World Trade Center, which may have had an occupancy of 19,000 people between the two buildings at the time, 99 percent of those who were below the point of impact of the planes survived. This achievement is owed to the extraordinary evacuation efforts of first responders, who ran into burning buildings, no doubt knowing that there was a good chance they wouldn’t make it out. In the end, 441 firefighters, police officers, and paramedics did not.

    Then there was the civilian heroism displayed by the passengers on Flight 93, who had heard about what happened at the World Trade Center, overtook the plane, and ensured that it crashed in an empty field rather than into the U.S. Capitol or White House, one of which was believed to be the potential target. Passenger Todd Beamer’s remark to his fellow passengers, “Let’s roll,” overheard from a phone call, became a rallying cry as the nation fought back.

    I have no dramatic, notable 9/11 stories to tell. I was driving to my job at Applied Materials when NPR (yes, I sometimes listened to them in the morning, back in the day) broke into regular coverage to report the first tower impact. I heard a rumor that the layoff that came next week (as the depths of the Dotcom Bust were just being felt) was actually scheduled for that day, but they decided to hold off due to the attacks. Ironically, one of the people in one of the planes was an Israeli Applied employee, who survived a country beset by terrorism only to be killed on an American flight.

    See also my review of United 93.

  • The Republican Party held their first ever Midterm Convention in Dallas.

    President Donald Trump delivered the convention’s closing remarks following a keynote address from Vice President J.D. Vance.Before they took the stage, though, Texas Republicans used their appearances to focus on the November elections, public safety, immigration, and the direction of the Democrat Party.

    Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick invoked Texas history and the Alamo before turning to the November election, portraying the contest as a broader fight over the country’s values.

    “This election coming up is not about politics,” said Patrick. “It’s about darkness, and it’s about light.”

    He accused Democrats of embracing socialism and communism and argued that Texas’ economic growth has been driven by conservative policies including low taxes and no state income tax.

    He also singled out Democrat Senate nominee James Talarico, saying Republicans would put “the Democratic Party and James Talarico and his ilk on the dust heap of history.”

    Patrick closed his remarks by urging Republicans to view the election as a fight for their families and the country. “You started a fight, and the Republicans are going to finish it in November.”

    Eric Flores and Tano Tijerina, two Republican candidates challenging Democrats in South Texas, also addressed the convention. Their appearances highlighted Republicans’ continued focus on South Texas, where the president made significant gains in 2024.

    U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz used his speech to warn about what he described as an emerging red-green alliance between communists and Islamists. He received one of the strongest reactions from the crowd when he declared that Sharia law is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.

    “Sharia law has no place in America,” said Cruz. “Sharia law is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution, and we need to stand together and stop it now.”

    Gov. Greg Abbott focused much of his speech on Texas Democrats running statewide in November, contrasting their legislative records with policies he has signed into law.

    Abbott pointed to the GOP’s success on a variety of issues including border security, policing, property taxes, oil and gas, election laws, parental rights, and school choice.

    “All the Democrats running statewide in the state of Texas, they had a chance to vote on those policies, and they voted against those policies,” said Abbott. “They voted against common sense.”

    Abbott highlighted legislation he signed prohibiting cities that reduce police funding from receiving certain state tax revenue, restricting some purchases of Texas property by citizens and entities tied to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and prohibiting gender mutilation procedures for minors.

    Snip.

    Vice President J.D. Vance delivered the night’s keynote address, reflecting on the administration’s first 19 months back in office and making the case for Republicans in November.

    Vance also paid tribute to Charlie Kirk on the anniversary of his assassination, recalling that Kirk had been in the front row when Vance addressed the Republican National Convention as the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2024.

    Turning to Texas politics, Vance took aim at Democrat U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico over his previous comments on gender and Christianity.

    “This Talarico guy—he will not shut up about how there are six genders. He will not shut up about how, ‘God is non-binary,’” said Vance.

    “I gotta say, a guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children-I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser.”

  • On the AfD’s shocking election win in Germany.

    Last night Germany’s much-maligned AfD party won a crushing and historic victory. The victory is already being downplayed by many, owing to the fact that Saxony-Anhalt is technically one of Germany’s smallest and least consequential states. But there is far more to it than sheer numbers, as the win defines a turning point not only in German but European politics, and cements the gradual downfall of the globalist ruling class that has tried desperately for decades to keep populist movements from gaining power, in particular utilizing the “Brandmauer” or “firewall” to suppress the so-called far-right.

    The destruction of this firewall is an historic occasion, even if it should come by way of such a seemingly inconsequential state.

    Of course, there are other criticisms as well. AfD is seen by many as a kind of Trojan horse, a German “MAGA” party led by a lesbian woman in Alice Weidel. Even so, it represents a striking loss of power for the elites and a turning point which breaks a kind of psychological barrier that will only energize other anti-establishment, “far-right”, or populist parties throughout Europe.

    Another secondary effect of the victory is that it has caused the ruling German establishment to go back to the drawing board and review its most unpopular policies, like on immigration, in order to bend with the clearly changing winds.

    Merz expressed his “deep shock” at the election result, foreseeing it having major repercussions on Germany as a whole:

    The AfD, however, fell just three seats short of an ‘absolute majority’ which would have allowed it to govern the state alone. Some commentators have pointed out some major ‘anomalies’ in regard to mail-in versus in-person votes. Just like in the highly irregular American 2020 election, every party but AfD was allegedly boosted by disproportionate numbers of mail-in votes:

    More analysis at the link. Just think if Germany’s elites hadn’t decided to import millions of unassimilated Muslims into their country, they wouldn’t have empowered the AfD. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Iran: The Islamic regime has been targeting U.S. bases, with a few hits on aircraft, we’ve launched retaliatory strikes on Iranian forces, and we’ve disabled three Iranian tankers in retaliation for unsuccessful strikes against U.S. ships. So: Same old, same old.
  • Yemen has also been getting spicy, with the Iranian-backed Houthis driving for the coast, successfully attacking a Saudi pipeline, and the official anti-Houthi government of Yemen making gains in the interior. More from Preston Stewart. If this week hadn’t been so insane, I might have done a separate post on this…
  • Maybe this is why I’m still unemployed. “Women Filled 98 Percent of Jobs Created in August.”

    Women accounted for 158,000, or 98 percent, of the 162,000 nonfarm payroll jobs created in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ establishment data. Compared to this time last year, there are 870,000 more women employed in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 1.5 million fewer employed men.

    So there were only 4,000 men hired in August.

    Accounting for the new data, the gap between male and female employment reached its highest level since 1990, when men were overrepresented in the workforce.

    Dramatic month-to-month swings in employment gains between the sexes are relatively common, and labor economists warn that sharp shifts don’t necessarily indicate lasting changes in the market. However, the August jobs report is in keeping with existing trends that have obtained for decades, namely a substantial increase in employment among women and a linear decline in employment among men.

    There has been a “multi-decade decline in male labor force participation” and a “multi-decade increase in female labor force participation,” Kirk Doran, a professor specializing in labor economics at Notre Dame University, told National Review.

    Part of this shift can be explained by the evolution of American industries. The sectors that grew at the highest rate in August — health care and public education — are female-dominated. Meanwhile, the industries that shrank — computing, data processing, and finance — are male-heavy.

    Sound like illegal discrimination by sex to me…

  • Ace of Spades HQ makes the case for Trump47 being a tremendous success already.

    We have every reason to be excited to go to the polls to ensure an ongoing Congressional Republican majority, and to keep the DSA-influenced Democrats away from any levers of power.

    The 20 months since President Trump’s inauguration in early 2025 have had the most significant conservative victories of my lifetime, far exceeding President Reagan’s accomplishments. Here are just a few of the things President Trump and his team have done:

    • Closed the border to illegal invaders.
    • Deported hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, and caused millions more to self-deport.
    • Slashed the federal workforce.
    • Eliminated DEI and wokeness from the military and federal agencies.
    • Eliminated EV mandates and green energy subsidies.
    • Effectively terminated corporate average fuel economy requirements for auto manufacturers.
    • Engaged the military to eliminate narco-terrorists.
    • Engaged the DOJ to target corporations engaged in illegal racial discrimination in hiring.

    There are so many more milestone accomplishments beyond those.

    For decades the conservative base has clamored for the above victories. President Trump finally delivered. Amidst all this, there are many “conservative” influencers who are promoting doom. For many of them, that is their job – being paid to blackpill conservative voters to stay home, so as to elect a Democrat Congress. The resumption of Democrat lawfare against the Trump administration is their goal.

    Despite razor-thin congressional majorities, Trump47 has delivered numerous policy wins, and conservatives (and anyone else who wants to stop the insane, jihad-friendly, socialism- and social justice-infected Democrats from reclaiming power) should head to the polls in November to ensure Republican control through 2028.

  • “Ukraine’s Longest Range Drone Strike Yet! Nearly 3,000km! Plus Strikes on Sochi and Dagestan.” “Ukrainian drones carried out their longest range drone strike to date, hitting Russia’s Novy Urengoy and Purovsky gas processing plants in Yamalo-Nenets.” Yamalo-Nenets is an “autonomous okrug” on the Arctic Circle just east of the Urals.
  • “Ukraine Attacks Novorossiysk Fuel & Grain Terminal.” Again.
  • “Ozon Warehouse in Saratov Attacked and Burning Heavily! Plus Saratov Oil Refinery.”
  • “Frigate Admiral Essen & Buyan-M Corvette Confirmed Badly Damaged by Neptune and Drone Strike!”
  • “Two Russian Su-35S Fighters Collide in Kursk.”
  • Seems like a trend: “Nine Russian Aircraft Destroyed in One Week: X2 Su-35 Crash, x5 Helicopers, Su-24 and Su-33.”
  • More: “Satellite Imagery Confirms THREE Russian Helicopters Destroyed, x2 S-300 and a Pantsir at Sochi!”
  • “Su-33 Confirmed Destroyed at Anapa Air Base.”
  • “Ukraine Bombards Russian Cargo Ship in Mediterranean Sea With Bomber Drone.”
  • “Russian Ice Breaker Admital Makarov Sets Itself On Fire at Kronstadt, St. Petersburg.”
  • Autism fraud ring in Maine?

    Quality Care Access, LLC was chartered in July 2020 by Jovin Bayingana, and the Portland-based company rapidly became one of the most lucrative new MaineCare businesses in New England.

    According to Medicaid payment records obtained via a Freedom of Access Act request, the company billed the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for $1.2 million in 2021, $5.3 million in 2022, $7.4 million in 2023, $6.7 million in 2024, and $7.2 million in 2025 — for a lifetime cost of $27.8 million.

    The more detailed federal Medicaid dataset shows that throughout this time frame QCA had fewer than 16 patients in most years.

  • Finally: “Republican Reinforcements Arrive for Paxton in Senate Race. The Senate Leadership Fund is pouring millions into Texas after questions over whether the Cornyn-aligned group would back Paxton.”

    Republican reinforcements are finally arriving for Attorney General Ken Paxton in his U.S. Senate race, months after the party’s biggest Senate-focused outside group backed his primary opponent.

    The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has purchased $32 million in television advertisements across Texas and is reportedly preparing to spend more than $50 million to support Paxton against Democrat James Talarico.

    The group announced Friday it created a new Texas PAC dedicated to the race, with ads promoting Paxton and contrasting his record with Talarico expected to run continuously through Election Day.

    The investment ends months of uncertainty over whether the Senate Leadership Fund would support Paxton after backing Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary.

    It also comes as other major Republican groups have already begun pouring money into the race.

    MAGA Inc., the super PAC aligned with President Donald Trump, recently announced $10 million in advertising supporting Paxton. America PAC, the political group backed by Elon Musk, is also supporting Paxton and has begun door-knocking operations to register and get out the vote.

    This is good, if overdue news, but media ad spends are the fools gold of politics. The same group spending zillions for Cornyn didn’t move the needle, so the efficacy of their political efforts seems debatable. But maybe they’re better at convincing squishy moderates than Republican primary voters…

  • “South Texas Democrat House Candidate Sponsored March With Socialists. The Rio Grande Valley DSA has celebrated Zohran Mamdani, depicted a Border Patrol vehicle in flames, and promoted LGBT causes.

    Democrat Texas House candidate Oziel Ochoa’s campaign sponsored a May Day event co-hosted by the Rio Grande Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

    Ochoa is challenging Republican State Rep. Janie Lopez for House District 37, a South Texas district covering Willacy County and portions of Cameron County.

    Campaign finance records show Ochoa’s campaign made three $259 payments to La Union del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, on May 4. The expenditures, totaling $777, were listed as advertising expenses for the first annual May Day Marcha del Pueblo (March of the People).

    May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, is an annual labor observance that has long been embraced by socialist and communist movements around the world.

    The event took place two days earlier, on May 2, in Edinburg.

    Organizers included LUPE, Texas Rising, the Rio Grande Valley American Federation of Teachers, the Rio Grande Valley Central Labor Council, South Texans for Reproductive Justice, Poder Latinx, and the Rio Grande Valley Democratic Socialists of America.

    Ochoa was publicly recognized for his financial support, while RGV DSA was listed among the event’s organizers.

  • “Muslim police chief of Detroit suburb told his subordinates that wife-beating isn’t a “formal” criminal offense.”

    The former police chief of Hamtramck, Michigan, is in hot water after investigators have dug into allegations against the Muslim chief for how he ran his department.

    Court records show that Hamtramck Police Chief Jamiel Altaheri personally engaged in a “pattern” of domestic violence in his own household, and told officers that wife-beating isn’t a “formal” crime.

    The primary effects of Democrats importing unassimilated Muslims for political advantage seems to be more wife-beating and more rape.

  • “Criminal Illegal Alien Arrested in Texas, Ordered Deported 26 Years Ago. A Cuban national who evaded deportation for 26 years is now behind bars.” “According to ICE, Cuban national Emiliano Martinez Perez entered the United States around 1998 and was convicted of cocaine possession shortly afterward. He was ordered to leave the U.S. in early 2000, but remained in the country and was later convicted of drug trafficking in 2007.”
  • Speaking of immigration fraud: “Houston Immigration Attorney Arrested for Fraud. Nowowiejski allegedly committed mail fraud and made false statements related to immigration cases.”

    A Houston immigration attorney was arrested Wednesday after a federal grand jury indicted her on charges of mail fraud and making false statements related to her work on behalf of immigrants seeking work-related legal status in the United States.

    Alla Nowowiejski is a naturalized citizen from Russia and has practiced law in Texas since 2009 and specialized in business immigration assistance, but she allegedly never submitted, or only partially submitted, paperwork for clients seeking to obtain work status or work visas.

    The indictment also alleges that Nowowiejski provided clients with false documents or reference numbers tied to active immigration cases unrelated to her own clients to make them believe their applications were being processed.

    In 2023, Audubon Engineering Operations sued Nowowiejski for gross negligence and legal malpractice in Harris County. The company alleged that although she had charged them more than $109,000 for immigration work on behalf of five employees, she never filed paperwork with federal immigration agencies.

  • When your entire life amounts to a bad meme: “Gays for Gaza’ activist killed by Muslim immigrant in Arizona.”
  • Gavin Newsom brags about giving welfare to illegal aliens.
  • “Chaos ensues in Democratic Party after Arab reporter calls black congressman ‘AIPAC monkey.'” Arab reporter is Rula Jebreal (who, I guess, is most famous for dating Roger Waters) and the black congressman is Hakeem Jeffries. Hakeem Jeffries should never be called a monkey, only “TEMU Obama.”
  • “South Korea is eyeing Texas for a new $22.6 billion investment in a natural gas-burning power plant.”

    The deal would mark the first chunk of change the nation will provide to the U.S. under South Korea’s new $350 billion commitment.

    Last year, tariff talks between the U.S. and South Korea led to a 10 percent decrease in tariffs imposed on South Korea — a drop from 25 to 15 percent — provided the country invests $350 billion in the U.S. in exchange.

    The power project would be set in Encinal, Texas, a small city in La Salle County.

    According to The Korea Herald, talks initially began with South Korea proposing $19.8 billion for the project, and the U.S. countering with $25 billion. Negotiations will now proceed in the $22.6 billion range, although the exact amount will not be determined until the project is finalized.

    The proposed gas combined-cycle project plant would total 6.3 gigawatts (GW) of power, built in stages. The first stage will consist of a 1.4-GW gas turbine power facility. Once the first stage passes inspection, the second stage, a 4.9-GW combined-cycle facility, will be built.

    Though unconfirmed, the plant is expected to help meet the state’s booming demands for artificial intelligence (AI) computing capacity, data center development, and semiconductor development.

    Sort of an odd location, but maybe it has to do with this proposed data center near Laredo.

  • “Microsoft Plugs Nearly 1,000 Security Holes.

    Microsoft Corp. today issued updates to plug at least 974 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, by far its biggest single patch batch ever. Microsoft says artificial intelligence is helping to speed the discovery of vulnerabilities, but security experts warn that many organizations already are struggling to prioritize the more human-intensive endeavor of testing and deploying so many fixes each month.

    This month’s patch bundle obliterates the software giant’s previous record set in July, when it released updates for at least 570 security vulnerabilities. September’s Patch Tuesday brings this year’s total to more than 2,600, more than twice Microsoft’s previous record-setting patch year in 2020 (1,245) and with three more months to go.

    There are two “zero-day” flaws fixed this month that are being actively exploited: both CVE-2026-81963 and CVE-2026-85880 allow an attacker to elevate their privileges on Windows system.

    Fully 113 of the bugs addressed today earned Microsoft’s “critical” rating, meaning they could be abused by malware or miscreants to seize control over a vulnerable Windows machine with little or no help from the user.

    Among the more serious critical flaws this month is CVE-2026-69730, a DNS weakness present in Windows Server 2012 onward and on Windows 10. Microsoft warns that an unauthenticated attacker could leverage this weakness simply by sending a specially crafted packet to an affected system, and that it is likely to be exploited.

    Also scary is CVE-2026-69829, a critical, remote code execution flaw in the Windows Shell. This vulnerability has a CVSS base score of 9.8 (10 is the most severe), and can be exploited with low attack complexity, no privileges, and no user interaction.

    Whatever else AI is or isn’t good at, it seems to be great at finding security flaws in Microsoft products…

  • Mac vs. PC, 2026 edition.
  • Rick Beato on why you need to own physical media.

    It’s incredibly important to own physical media, because you do not know what people are going to do that work for these massive tech companies. Once they get a hold of the data and they put it into those AI [slop] machines, because that’s what they are, they can change anything. Half the stuff that people, when they Google things or whatever, that just comes out with some AI thing that’s based on something that somebody wrote on Reddit six years ago that’s probably not even true. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Who actually knows whether it’s true? It’s kind of like if you listen to a record on Spotify that says remastered in 2018, remastered in 2022, remastered in 2012, that’s not the original version. What they’ve done is they’ve either taken the original version, the mastered version, and just remastered it and made it sound worse, or you don’t know what they’ve actually done to it.

  • Another weird blog tidbit that may only be of interest to myself: Starting October 6, 2025 and running through February 9th, 2026, the Internet Archive took multiple daily snapshots of my blog after a long period of snapshotting it on a somewhat random basis, sometimes several time a week, and sometimes only a few times a month. I would say the optimal periodicity would be once a day, but I have no idea how the process works.
  • “Mamdani: Women Attending 9/11 Memorial Will Be Required To Wear Hijab.”
  • “Nation’s Murderers Excited To Learn Killing Legal If You Say You Were Sad.”
  • “Women Honor Gloria Steinem By Leaving Kids At Daycare And Working 9 Hours At Jobs They Hate.”
  • “Hollywood Colorist Fired After Accidentally Leaving Color In Film.”
  • “Breakthrough As Scientists At University Of Michigan Develop Ability To Travel Back In Time One Second.”
  • “Moses Threatens Pharaoh With Plague Of Unskippable YouTube Ads.”
  • “‘Oh, Your Intelligent Creations Are Trying To Kill You? That’s Interesting,’ Says Jesus.”
  • Dog + balloon = happiness.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Technology, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 3 Comments »

    My Friend Was Murdered On Labor Day

    September 10th, 2026

    Andrew Wimsatt, a friend for over thirty-five years, a regular member of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy (and the movie night afterwards) and an all-around standup guy, was murdered on Labor Day.

    New details have emerged in a homicide investigation in Williamson County.

    The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office responded to the 2400 block of Chandler Creek Boulevard on Monday after a report of an injured person. Deputies arrived to find a person who was later pronounced dead by medics. The agency’s Investigation Division determined the death to be a homicide.

    Investigators identified 26-year-old Benedict Ogbodiegwu of Round Rock as a suspect. Court documents identify the victim as 62-year-old Andrew James Wimsatt.

    According to court documents obtained by KVUE, a witness called 911 after finding what appeared to be a dead person near a park bench. Authorities obtained video footage of the incident. After reviewing the footage, the sheriff’s office said it showed a Black man with braids or locks and light-colored tips and a dark goatee holding a knife in his right hand. The man appeared to approach a white man from behind and repeatedly strike him in the neck with a knife while wrapping his left arm around the victim, according to the documents.

    The victim allegedly tried to defend himself but was unable to, the sheriff’s office said. The footage showed the victim was stabbed multiple times before falling to the ground. The suspect then ran toward a neighborhood area, the documents state.

    Detectives later found Ogbodiegwu at a home on Matagorda Drive in Round Rock. He matched the description of the person in the park surveillance video and in footage from a McDonald’s restaurant in Round Rock following the alleged incident, where video showed the suspect leaving the parking lot as a passenger in a red SUV.

    A search warrant at the home led investigators to a white trash bag in an outdoor trash can. Inside, they found a 5.5-inch-bladed knife with a wooden handle and a red substance. The substance was tested for human blood using a Bluestar identi-hem test and showed a presumptive positive reaction, according to court documents.

    Documents state clothing and a knife found in the trash matched what the suspect wore and used in the fatal stabbing, according to video footage reviewed by investigators.

    Following this incident, Ogbodiegwu was taken into custody and is facing a murder charge. Investigators said Tuesday they believe the attack was random and that the victim and suspect did not know each other.

    Andrew was murdered by a thug for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His mother is in a nursing home in the area, and he would regularly visit her and take her out for a walk. According to the family, he would do one walk with her, and then one walk alone, and it was during that second walk when this random thug murdered him for no reason. (His mother was unharmed.)

    I looked into whether some of the themes covered by this blog applied to Andrew’s murder, but as far as I can tell Ogbodiegwu was not an illegal alien and does not appear to have been released on bail for previous offenses in Travis County. (See update here.) (Edited to add: I’m hearing reports that I may be wrong on both these counts. Feel free to share additional information in the comments below.)

    Writing about the murder just makes me mad, so let’s talk about Andrew.

    I first met Andrew through Karl Rehn, because Karl and I were both prog rock fans who traded tapes in college at UT. Andrew had been bandmates with Karl in high school, and roommates shortly after college. I remember playing P. D. Q. Bach’s “Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz” in their shared apartment, telling him it was the latest Philip Glass CD. When it got to the “Ko-Hosti-Tatsi” part, Andrew went “This isn’t Philip Glass.” Karl, Andrew and I were also in a band together whose entire point was to piss people off.

    Being smart, geeky and well-read, Andrew naturally slipped into the orbit of my group of friends. In addition to his existing love of music, Andrew was easy to get involved in your own interests, be it science fiction, guns or politics. I sold him several books over the years, and he ended up driving Howard Waldrop and Ellen Brody back to Austin from the 2013 San Antonio Worldcon. Karl and I might have sucked him into politics equally, to the point he was doing some behind-the-scenes work for The Greg Gutfeld Show and the We the Fifth podcast. Andrew frequently flew across the country to catch a show for one of the many bands he followed, or for watching the taping of a political show. He was even an executive producer on the Penn Jillette film Director’s Cut.

    Andrew loved all sorts of obscure bands I’d never heard of, but I was the one who introduced him to Slowdive. We saw three Slowdive shows in Austin, in addition to a King Crimson show and a very intense Filter/Everclear show at Liberty Lunch right after both those bands burst into prominence in the 1990s.

    Andrew was a devoted son and brother, who helped care for both his ailing mother and his father James, a literary academic and occasional SDC member who died at age 96 in 2023.

    Andrew spent his career as a civil engineer working for the Texas Department of Transportation and related entities. He spent stints in Fort Worth and College Station, but even then frequently drove back to Austin on weekends to see his friends.

    I saw Andrew two days before he was murdered, when he came over Saturday to watch movies with us, where he saw the giant collection of books someone gave me and we watched the MST3K version of The Crawling Hand.

    His murder offers up several bitter ironies. He was a CHL/LTC holder who likely would have survived his assault had he been carrying that day. (See update here.) He owned a condo in the crime hotspot that is downtown Austin but was killed in nominally safe suburban Round Rock. Both his parents were long-lived, and Andrew, who frequently walked several miles a day, probably would have lived to a ripe old age had he not been cut down.

    He was a sturdy friend, and I will miss him greatly.

    Now that he’s gone, the years grow colder, and more silent.

    Always be aware of your surroundings, and take whatever precautions you can to avoid (or survive) encounters with random criminals or lunatics. Make a will (I need to do this).

    Tomorrow is promised to no one.

    Update: Promoting Greg Gutfeld’s post from the comments:

    man, this is horrible and shocking. Andrew was one of the nicest, most selfless people i’ve ever met. i’m so sorry for you, and for all of us who knew him. if you have any details on how to help, you have my email.
    we are reeling over the news here at gutfeld. he was a regular at our shows, and always lent a hand clipping videos. The whole thing is sickening.

    Update 2: Some notables weigh in on Twitter:

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    Posted in Austin, Crime | 22 Comments »

    DOJ: Report Illegal Aliens Or Lose Welfare Funding

    September 9th, 2026

    One of the most basic, fundamental differences between normal Americans and the left is that normies believe that welfare benefits should be strictly limited to American citizens. On the other hand, the radical, social justice-infected left seem to believe that taxpayer dollars are party to favors to be showered on everyone, especially the illegal aliens they took so much trouble to import in the name of ensuring a permanent Democratic electoral majority.

    But with Trump47, normal Americans are back in charge again, and illegal aliens are being deported just as the law requires. Now the DOJ is telling state welfare agencies that if they want to keep receiving welfare funding, they have to report illegal aliens on their rolls.

    A new legal opinion dictates that all state agencies, in order to receive most forms of federal welfare funding, must report their knowledge of illegal aliens on those programs.

    The opinion targets the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income programs, which are received by all states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories.

    The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program “is designed to help families with children experiencing low-income achieve economic security and stability,” while the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) “provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.”

    It seems that every week a news story reports on yet another welfare state program I didn’t already have a tag for. They seem to multiply like rabbits.

    “When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser. “Tax dollars intended to help vulnerable Americans should not perversely encourage illegal entry into the United States, but rather should reinforce our laws and our borders.”

    According to some reports, 59.4 percent of illegal immigrant households use one or more welfare programs in the United States. This is partially due to over half of all illegal immigrant households having at least one U.S.-born child, with about $1.43 billion—or 9.4 percent—of TANF funding going to U.S.-born children of illegal aliens in fiscal year 2022.

    The U.S. Department of Justice announced last Wednesday that its Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) withdrew a Clinton-era opinion that gave a more narrow interpretation of the legal requirements for TANF and SSI funding.

    The former interpretation required only state agencies facilitating the programs to report knowledge of illegal aliens to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while the new opinion broadens the requirement to all state agencies based on a 1996 congressional interpretation of the term “state.”

    “Our clarification does not impose new obligations on states,” said OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock. “It simply restores the original meaning of the statute Congress enacted and ensures that DHS receives the information it is legally entitled to. States that accept TANF funding must abide by federal law, and failure to comply may lead to serious consequences, including loss of program funding.”

    Texas has the second-highest population of illegal aliens in the United States, with about 14.3 percent of the nation’s overall illegal population.

    In 2023, Texas had 2.1 million illegal immigrants living within its borders, representing about 7 percent of the state’s total population and an increase of 450,000 since 2021.

    As stewards of taxpayer money, both DOJ and the state should continue to crack down on welfare state fraud and deport illegal aliens.

    It’s a win-win for both taxpayers and the rule of law.

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    Posted in Border Control, Texas, Welfare State | 4 Comments »

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