Thermoclines of truth, where valid information can’t make it to the top of organizations because telling unpleasant truths is discouraged, has been an ongoing concern of the blog. Simon Whistler and his crew have taken a look at the Russian military, and it appears that it’s thermoclines of truth (and endemic corruption) all the way down.
He starts out with a discussion of the current state of the war:
“Once upon a time, the Russian military was supposed to be the second most powerful on Earth. Today, the Russian military isn’t even the most powerful military in Ukraine.”
“From the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the nation’s armed forces have been subjected to a strange humiliation ritual, partly because of the cunning and innovation of their Ukrainian rivals, but partly because of the sheer bumbling idiocy of their own commanding officers.”
“Russia’s consistent ability to find its way into new and catastrophic blunders also definitely doesn’t hurt. As painful as the last several years have been for the Russian military, the situation has deteriorated even further in 2026. Russia is losing troops at an unprecedented rate, expending more lives, more munitions, and more state wealth. Even as they capture less and less territory each month, his battlefield commanders are making increasingly poor decisions, and they’re openly lying to their higher-ups when their attacks inevitably fall apart.”
“In the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and his inner circle are being fed a constant stream of false victories when on the front lines, Russia’s spring and summer offensive has fallen flat on its face.”
“But however incompetent the Russian military might seem, the reality is even worse. Because underneath Ukrainian victories and underneath obvious blunders by Moscow, the Russian military has built a hidden corrupt machine where every battlefield catastrophe puts rubles into Russian pockets.”
“As the time of writing, Russian forward progress on the battlefield has basically halted in an overall sense. But Russia is still pushing forward in some areas just as it is being pushed back in others.”
“The graft and exploitation we’re going to describe today isn’t an accident. It exists because of the war in Ukraine. It feeds off the war in Ukraine. And the people who benefit most from the exploitation are the same people with the greatest incentives to ensure that the war continues even after any honest outside appraisal would suggest that Russian gains aren’t even close to being worth the cost.”
“Just a few short months ago, Russia was moving assets into position for what was intended to be a major push centered on the city of Sloviansk in the partially occupied Donetsk oblast. Taking Sloviansk wasn’t going to be easy for the Russians.”
“But even before there was time for the spring offensive to get underway, Ukraine revealed what’s turned out to be a decisive advantage. a new arsenal of mid-range drones, including an American-made model called the Hornet, plus the tactical advances to use those drones effectively. Dubbed the Martian 2 by Russian soldiers, the Hornet is piloted partially by artificial intelligence, and it’s completely impervious to Russian jamming because it navigates by using that AI to read the terrain visually instead of relying on GPS or remote control. The onboard AI can identify targets and even handle the final kill process all by itself. Flying at a range of over a 100 km, they’re practically silent until just before impact.”
“They’re extremely cheap, and they’ve been used by Ukraine less to target Russian troops at the front, and more to target the staging operations that would have created the foundation of a successful offensive. Russian forces have been unable to protect their ammunition stockpiles, their fuel trucks, or their encampments and training grounds away from the front lines.” More on how Ukraine is hammering Russian logistics here.
“Nor is the Hornet the only drone in Ukraine’s arsenal. Recently, Ukraine’s 412th Nemesis Brigade unveiled the Morrigan, another mid-range strike drone that’s optimized to operate significantly behind enemy lines. Those drones have allowed Ukraine to completely diffuse the spring offensive before it ever really got going.”
“Even more important, Ukraine has achieved those results without putting its soldiers at greater risk. Ukraine’s forces are chronically undermanned and perpetually exhausted. And Kiev does not have the ability to go head-to-head with the full strength of a Russian offensive in any one area, but instead it’s completely destroyed the infrastructure Russia needed to create an offensive that wouldn’t collapse under its own weight.”
“As a result, Russian forces near the front are badly isolated, cut off from easy reinforcement and resupply, while the bulk of the killing takes place away from the front lines where Russian troops naturally have their guard down. Ukraine has even expanded its strikes to target the highway network leading across occupied territory and into Crimea where the impact of Ukraine’s bombardment has gotten so bad that the entire region is on the brink of economic collapse. Fuel trucks, trains, and even ferries are unable to reach Crimea. The existing fuel storage infrastructure there has been destroyed and the problem’s only getting worse with fuel shortages now starting to spread across the Donbas.”
“According to the latest frontline reports, mobile drone defense teams are now at risk of running out of fuel. A crisis that would clear the way for even deeper Ukrainian strikes.”
“Better yet for Ukraine, targeting efficiency is improving constantly, to the point that it now takes only a few minutes for Ukrainian forces to spot a new moving target, get a drone on site, and destroy it.”
“Over the last several years, Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a cycle of mutual innovation, with one side working out new solutions to battlefield problems and gaining a temporary advantage until the other side counters with innovations of their own. This time, however, Russia hasn’t been able to innovate a solution to the new problems that Ukraine has posed.”
“Russian troops are overextended and they have no choice but to hold their positions on the front when really their manpower is needed to defend the territory that Russia has already captured.”
“In the air, Russia still hasn’t found a way to meaningfully engage its air force in the conflict. Besides the use of strategic bombers and MiG-31 fighters to launch long-range cruise missiles, Russia can’t risk using some of its most valuable reconnaissance and command aircraft after Ukraine proved able to use American-made Patriot missiles to bring them down. And the supposedly world-class Su-57 fighter jet is still almost completely absent from contested airspace.”
“Russia’s aerial problem is expected to get even worse by early 2027, when Ukraine will take possession of its first Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets along with a long-range missile, the Meteor, that will have the range to strike Russian strategic bombers as they conduct those missile launches over the water.”
Snipping discussion of the poor state of Russia’s Black Sea fleet and the most recent St. Petersburg strike that we’ve covered in various LinkSwarms.
“Russian air defenses on the home front appear to be on the verge of complete collapse. Ukrainian long-range drones now regularly impact targets that were once unthinkable. From the Baltic Sea oil terminals at Primorsk and Luga to sensitive or highly specialized defense industrial centers located deep in the Russian heartland. Even Moscow has been targeted successfully.
“According to the chief designer at Ukraine’s leading missile innovator Firepoint, a new line of ballistic missiles will soon be operational and capable of hitting Moscow directly.”
“Russia hasn’t been able to meaningfully address the [air defense] problem.”
“As for its attempts to prevent Ukrainian long-range strikes, Russia seems to be unable to hit the command and control centers or the drone stockpiles that enable the campaign. So instead, Russia tries to deter Ukraine by launching long-range strikes of its own, often targeting population centers, energy infrastructure, or dual use facilities instead of going after the Ukrainian military.”
“Just as important [as Ukraine’s strikes], if not even more so, is the incredible consistency with which Russia manages to shoot itself in the foot. Moscow’s original sin, so to speak, is one that the rest of the world has gotten very familiar with. A supreme overconfidence that’s been helping Russia defeat itself from the very beginning. Despite the alternative storylines pushed out by Russian bot farms and repeated, no doubt, in this very comment section [aside: “Hello there, robots”], the idea that Kiev would fall in three days was very much a Russian invention.”
“But much more important than Russia’s original mistake was the fact that Moscow still hasn’t learned its lesson. Military planners and strategists all up and down the Russian military, from the unit level on the battlefield to Vladimir Putin himself, still base their decisions and expectations on an aggrandized version of the Russian military that simply does not exist.”
“Over time that problem is fused with another one. The fact that Russian leaders, again from the unit level all the way to the top, simply refuse to give each other honest assessments of what’s happening. At a certain point, those leaders realized that they could get away with reporting advances, victories, and other good news that didn’t actually exist.”
“The problem often starts small on the front lines. A Russian army captain sends a small unit to plant a flag and takes a few selfies in a contested area before that unit is annihilated in drone strikes. And then the captain sends those selfies to his major, claiming that today his forces took the territory in the picture. That same day, the major gets several similar reports from other captains. So he reports to his colonel that the front line has moved up by a few hundred meters when in reality most of the forces under his command have not moved at all.”
“That’s a throwaway example, of course, but you get the idea. And that news then travels up the chain until it reaches somebody like chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov. We put the spotlight on Gerasimov in particular, because this is how you get statements like the one he made this past April, when he claims that Russia had captured a total of 80 settlements and over 1700 square kilometers since the start of the year. According to independent war monitors, Gerasimov tripled the amount of territory that Russia had actually taken. And of course, he failed to measure the territory that Russia had lost.”
“Don’t just take it from us, though. Even Russia’s milblogger class was calling bullshit in the aftermath.”
“But those institutional miscommunications, combined with the Russian military’s inflated perception of itself, combine to form a third problem, a demand for forward progress at all costs.”
“At this point in the war, commanders and higher-ups have gotten very used to the idea that their troops are consistently moving forward, consistently taking territory, and consistently getting Russia closer to victory. But now that lie has become too big to fail. And if individual Russian commanders were to report results that don’t align with that lie in places Russia wasn’t expecting, then they are at risk of being demoted, relieved of duty, or even worse.”
“As a result, each level of Russian leadership places immense pressure on the next level below them, all the way down to the frontline soldiers. Because their commanders need to deliver forward progress. And because their commanders won’t get into any real trouble if they sacrifice more lives in exchange, those frontline troops are at immense risk of being ordered forward into incredibly risky assaults.”
“Of course, it’s not unusual that a soldier on the front line of a major war would face some risk. But there’s a difference between being asked to advance as part of a coordinated push on a well-defined, well-scouted target and being told to sneak into a zone where there’s been no prior scouting and where Ukrainian surveillance and kamikaze drone coverage is expected to be overwhelming. Those are the kinds of situations that Russian soldiers are being ordered into. Not because there’s any expectation that they would succeed, but because their attempt gives their commanders enough plausible deniability to report success.”
Sometimes it works. “But the costs of munitions, funds, supplies, and especially human life are so much greater than the value of what Russia’s actually capturing.”
“Nor does Russia particularly care which soldiers get sent to the meat grinder. More and more sources from within the Russian military report the troops are sent into assault units regardless of their other qualifications, including skilled recruits who could make meaningful contributions to enhance Russia’s overall situation. Soldiers with experience in electrical work, logistics management, and even the medical field, have been reassigned against their will to assault brigades, often without explanation. At times, those reassignments come after they were recruited into the military on the promise that they’d be working with their advanced skill set.”
“Sometimes the reassignments appear to be random, but at other times they’re used as punishment. Soldiers who disobey orders, try to desert, or otherwise anger their commanders are highly likely to be reassigned to units where they’ll be used as cannon-fodder.”
“But let’s circle back to Ukraine’s mid-range drone campaign, because that makes this problem even worse. At the best of times, Russian troops were being sent forward into these high-risk assaults with at least a few things going for them: A little bit of training and prep time, a decently well supplied sustainment infrastructure to keep them alive, a possibility of MedEvac if they’re wounded, and a possibility that reinforcements would soon join them if they survive.”
“Today, though, that entire support infrastructure has been torn to shreds. Yet, the expectation of forward progress still remains. So, these soldiers are still ordered forward, but they’re overexposed, under-supplied, and isolated compared to what was already a bad situation. When they’re wounded, they aren’t evacuated. They die slow, horrific, predictable deaths. To the point that instead of the usual ratio of killed to wounded in modern war, one killed for every three wounded, Ukrainian assessment suggests that Russia’s balance looks more like two soldiers killed for every one wounded.”
“Even worse, the soldiers who are wounded will often be sent back to combat. Every so often, video footage emerges from the front lines depicting soldiers on crutches or in wheelchairs bearing visible shrapnel wounds or dealing with limbs that won’t work like they’re supposed to, forced back into assault units where their death is all but certain.”
“And all of that would be bad enough if Russia wasn’t so insistent on hobbling its soldiers even further. Take the example of frontline drone equipment. According to Russian milblogger sources, the Kremlin recently ordered most combat units to start giving up drones of various models, sending them back to be reassigned to Russia’s dedicated drone forces. That’s despite the fact that the Russian drone forces are not properly dispersed along the front line, and they’re not part of any efficient decision-making infrastructure that would allow them to support Russian troops in real time. So where a Russian platoon might once have been able to use small FPV drones to scout their surroundings or strike Ukrainian targets, they now have nothing. They’re operationally blind and beholden to another branch of the military for support.”
“On paper, Russia has started to fix the issue. Officials in Moscow say that Russia is now producing record numbers of FPV drones. According to the milbloggers, however, these replacement drones are unreliable, ineffective, and of a dangerously low construction quality. Similarly, Russian troops are still reeling from the decision to cut off access to Telegram a couple of months ago, demanding that Telegram be replaced with the state-run Max app, despite the fact that it is insecure, incomplete, and extremely buggy. Maybe Vladimir Putin vibe coded it. The same could be said for the loss of Starlink, a western controlled connectivity service that Russia chose to remain dependent on instead of dedicating the appropriate resources to build its own alternative.”
“If we were to end this episode right now, the situation we’ve described would already be bad enough. A Russian military that’s completely failed to address Ukrainian combat innovations and one that’s consistently made decisions that puts its troops at extreme unnecessary risk. But all too often, when a country or a fighting force seems to suffer from issues so comprehensive and so obviously stupid, that they seem to resist understanding, it’s important to ask another question. Who’s getting paid?”
“If Russia’s obvious incentives are to increase the combat potency of its troops, make legitimate gains on the battlefield, and eventually win the war, then who benefits inside Russia from making sure that that doesn’t happen? To answer that question, we’re going to invite you to think about the war a bit differently for just a minute.”
“Take away the people, the guns, the tanks, the drones, and the territory, and think about Russia’s invasion as a flow of money. That money is being sent from within Russia and funneled into Ukraine. Sent in the form of military equipment, fuel supplies, and direct payments made to Russian soldiers. Then some of that money flows back into Russia as those soldiers paychecks travel to bank accounts or are sent to their families.”
“That flow of funds is partially regulated, but it’s happening in and around an active combat zone, which means monitoring is difficult, and financial transfers have to happen with limited internal oversight or anti-corruption protections. Not to mention that the Russian state isn’t exactly the best at internal oversight.”
“Transactions happen on the aggregate scale of tens of billions of rubles, meaning that even relatively large amounts of missing cash can easily be dismissed as just a rounding error.”
“If you were a person interested in taking money that you could reasonably obtain somewhere within the Russian economy, then the war is the perfect place to do it. You’ve just got to figure out where you can get in the way of the regular flow of funds, whether those funds are headed into the conflict zone or traveling out.”
“Take another look at the problems the Russian military is dealing with and the specter of internal corruption is everywhere.”
“We’ll start with a few examples at the top from people who exert immense power within the Russian armed forces. Take Roman Demurchiev, a major general who serves as deputy commander of Russia’s 20th Combined Arms Army. Over the span of several years, he engaged in regular shakedowns of his subordinates worth the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of US dollars, some of which he passed up to his superiors who expected additional payouts. As he once texted to one of his subordinates, quote, “War is war, but don’t forget about the cash. Get yours. Delete this message later.'”
“Or take the former deputy defense minister Ruslan Tsalikov, who was brought up on bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy charges that alleged he created a gang to steal from the Russian state budget. He was brought down during a wave of prosecutions that surrounded former defense minister Sergey Shoygu.”
“But even though Russia does occasionally prosecute corrupt officials, the Kremlin’s track record dovetails in a very troubling way with the problem we’ve already mentioned. Commanders only tend to come under real scrutiny when they’ve already failed in some way that requires their removal, usually due to battlefield setbacks. From Vladimir Putin’s perspective, the nice thing about everybody in the Russian leadership being so corrupt, is that when it’s time to remove them, it usually doesn’t take very long to dig into their finances and bring legitimate, damning charges against them.”
“But if these commanders understand that they’ll only be scrutinized after they’ve been found to have committed battlefield screw-ups, then they’re heavily incentivized to ensure that their screw-ups don’t become common knowledge. So they push their subordinates harder and they push their subordinates harder still until frontline soldiers are fighting and dying to create an illusion of frontline progress so their commanders can save their skins.”
“Or take another problem we’ve already mentioned, the cheapy and ineffective FPP drones that are being flooded toward the Russian front lines. That decision was the work of Yuri Vaganov, the commander of the Russian unmanned systems forces who was appointed in late 2025. But here’s the thing about Vaganov. He has got zero military experience, zero military education, despite now holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Instead, he owns a very large drone company, the same drone company that’s now guzzling down rubles from state contracts and mass-producing the FPV drones that Russian soldiers are expected to use. Interesting, isn’t it? In essence, this single aspiring oligarch has worked out a way to position himself within both the Russian military itself and the Russian defense industrial complex so that he could give himself a monopoly over drone procurement in the biggest drone war that the world has ever seen.”
“For Russian soldiers, his appointment is a life-threatening catastrophe. But for Vaganov himself, the incentives will be to cut corners, inflate costs, and otherwise pillage as much of Russia’s drone budget as possible.”
“But let’s talk about the other way that money flows through the Russian side of this war, into soldiers pockets, and then ideally back to their bank accounts or to their families. That’s where lower level commanders get their opportunity, because they wield the power to decide who lives and who dies. Take an article published this April by The Economist, where a dozen Russian contract soldiers describe a system where low-level infantrymen will bribe their commanders for a position away from the front and then spend a high share of their remaining wages financing their commander’s lifestyle while carrying out unpaid labor on the side.”
“As one soldier in that article described, troops often start giving up a portion of their paychecks to buy decent drones or body armor or other assets that might, you know, keep them alive. But then also, quote, ‘You’ll pay forever so they don’t send you to the meat grinder.’ Other Russian commanders have purportedly forced troops to pay exorbitant sums to stay alive and sometimes just to avoid being shot on the spot.”
“According to recent reports by exiled Russian journalists, low-level commanders operate more like gang leaders than actual military personnel, in increasingly sophisticated structures that are informed by the high proportion of ex-convicts that now swell the Russian ranks. Often when new troops arrive, commanders confiscate their bank cards and ping codes and threaten violence against those who don’t comply. And when those soldiers are killed, they’re formally reported by their commanders as missing. A change that ensures that money will continue flowing to their accounts.”
“Think of frontline soldiers as a pure revenue stream, and even some of Russia’s most asinine decisions start to make sense. When a soldier is wounded in combat, that soldier still receives a paycheck. And if they can be kept on the front lines, then the process of extortion can continue.”
“When a higher skill Russian recruit shows up in one of those units, commanders know that they’re likely to have more money, partly because they’re going to be paid on a better contract, and partly because they probably have some form of savings squirreled away from their civilian life. Trap those soldiers in an assault unit, and there’s no limit to what they might be willing to pay in order to avoid the meat grinder. But if they seem as if they’ll cause trouble, then the meat grinder is right there for their commanders to use.”
“Those incentives also help explain increasing reports of physical torture of Russian soldiers by their own commanders on or near the front lines, including soldiers who’ve already been wounded. Our own Warfronts team has encountered footage of Russian troops who’ve had multiple limbs amputated due to combat wounds who were then cling-wrapped onto trees and extorted further. Videos like that can be sent to a soldier’s family who will then ends up paying even more to spare the life of a person who’s locked into conscription or contract by the Russian state.” The Western tradition of military service demands leaders who will do just about anything for the men serving under them, while Russian officers torture their subordinates for money.
“Quoting researcher Alexandra Arapova [Russian families] are saying that literally we paid everything to have our father, brother, husband not to be killed. In many cases, superiors, they use torture to take money from the soldiers.”
“As for the scale of the brutality, we can’t know for sure, but judging by the available information, this kind of treatment is everywhere. One Russian exile outlet, Radio Echo, obtained accounts from soldiers like these, and over a 6-month period in 2025, Radio Echo indicated that they had received almost 12,000 complaints of corruption and violence by Russian commanders against their own men.”
“It’s here that we find the real root of Russia’s ongoing military incompetence. Where Ukraine has spent the last four years learning, adapting, and innovating on the battlefield, Russian generals, defense industrial elites, and low-level battlefield commanders have been building a deeply corrupt machine at every level of the Russian armed forces. That machine exists to extract wealth for the direct and personal benefit of people lucky enough to wield power at the expense of frontline soldiers who aren’t so fortunate.”
“In a system like that, where officials aren’t just personally corrupt, but can safely assume that corruption is all around them, reform just isn’t a goal, even if it saves lives. Reform, there is a danger, even an enemy. Because if Russia were to ever fix the incompetence that runs through its armed forces, then it would destroy the machine that Russian incompetence is built to serve.”
“Right now, that status quo demands constant reports of forward progress, by any means necessary. And the Kremlin is willing to pay every ruble in Russia in order to make that happen.”
“But Vladimir Putin’s military is overrun with people who don’t particularly care about conquering Ukraine as long as they know they’ll be set for life in the post-war Russia that comes next. Russian incompetence is getting worse because it’s becoming streamlined and because the Russian leadership has proved that corruption will go unchecked as long as forward progress continues.”
“The incompetence is the point because the longer this situation lasts, the longer this vast corrupt machine can go on making a profit.”
Thermoclines of truth and endemic corruption are the horrifying reality for Russian soldiers, and also a big reason why Ukraine has a real chance to win.
We previous touched on Putin’s thermocline of truth here.
Judges hate it when people lie to them, and when they do it over and over again, they start to get pissed. And the office of Soros-backed Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner seems to be lying to them an awful lot.
Most of the mainstream media isn’t spending much effort to cover the slow-rolling collapse of Soros-prosecutor District Attorney Larry Krasner.
At least I HOPE it will be a collapse, as judges turn on Krasner not so much for his soft-on-crime policies, about which they can do little directly, but for his office’s illegal tactics used to help convicted murderers get out of jail.
I wrote about decision #1 yesterday, in which the Democrat-dominated Pennsylvania Supreme Court blasted Krasner’s office for lying to the courts about deficiencies in trials for convicted murderers, conceding—falsely—that prior D.A.’s had committed errors (or worse) in pursuing convictions of murderers.
By doing so, they gave what amounted to get-out-of-jail tickets to murderers. With convictions vacated, Krasner’s office did not give up the right to retry the cases, but it’s pretty hard to expect that an office that committed what amounted to perjury to help convicts overturn their convictions would then pursue the subsequent cases with vigor. At best, they purposely helped the defense and endangered cases that were won; at worst, they decided to just let guilty people go free.
The Supreme Court was not amused, and essentially defanged Krasner’s office, allowing the Attorney General of Pennsylvania to intervene in cases as required.
In a forceful and scolding opinion, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office misled the courts, “violated its duty of candor,” and submitted false statements when asking a judge to vacate a 2004 murder conviction.
In the opinion released Tuesday, Justice Kevin Dougherty wrote that prosecutors’ pattern of misleading judges in seeking to overturn murder convictions is so troubling and recurrent that, going forward, before Krasner’s office seeks such relief, judges must notify the state attorney general’s office and allow it to review the case.
The decision amounted to one of the most scathing rebukes yet of Krasner’s efforts to revisit decades-old convictions, and arrives amid intensifying scrutiny of the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit and appeals division, whose handling of post-conviction cases has drawn criticism from judges in both state and federal court.
Just last week, Krasner’s office reversed course in a separate murder case, writing in a federal court filing that one of its prosecutors had made “material misstatements” and submitted “legally erroneous” statements when seeking to overturn a man’s murder conviction. The office sought to withdraw its recommendation to grant the defendant a new trial.
This decision is, as far as I can tell, one of the most scathing rebukes of a District Attorney in memory. It’s pretty shocking, actually. The Justices spared no mercy to Krasner and company, and with good reason.
Snip.
Now comes round two: a federal court just sanctioned one of Krasner’s former attorneys who was in charge of this program, barring her for three years from cases before the court.
Nancy Winkelman was suspended for three years by a panel of federal judges who found that she was complicit in efforts to mislead a federal judge while seeking to overturn the death sentence of a man convicted of killing an East Mount Airy couple in the 1980s and allow him to serve life in prison instead.
The ruling, made public this week, adds to the mounting judicial scrutiny of post-conviction work in Krasner’s office. On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court imposed remarkable new restrictions on prosecutors’ efforts to reverse potentially problematic convictions.
In a forceful and scolding opinion, the high court said Krasner’s office misled judges, submitted false statements, and “violated its duty of candor” in asking a judge to vacate a 2004 murder conviction.
The court wrote that prosecutors’ actions in the case were part of a troubling pattern of conduct in seeking to overturn murder convictions and ordered that, going forward, the state attorney general’s office must be asked to review and weigh in on all such cases.
The panel of federal judges, in ordering Winkelman’s suspension, echoed some of those concerns.
Nor did the viciousness of the murders in question prevent Krasner’s office from lying to get said murderers sprung.
The three-judge panel, in a ruling issued in March and unsealed this week, said Winkelman and a subordinate, former assistant district attorney Paul George, misled a federal judge by misrepresenting parts of the case while attempting to reverse the death sentence of Robert Wharton.
Wharton was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1984 strangulation and drowning deaths of Bradley and Ferne Hart inside their East Mount Airy home.
The jury found that Wharton, angry over a disputed debt, spent months terrorizing the family before he forced his way inside the home at knifepoint and killed the couple. Afterward, he turned off the heat, leaving the couple’s seven-month-old baby, Lisa, to freeze to death — but she survived.
Decades later, prosecutors in Krasner’s office, in seeking to vacate his death sentence, suggested in court that the victims’ family backed their effort. But it was later discovered that they had consulted only one relative and never contacted Lisa Hart-Newman, the couple’s surviving daughter, who strongly opposed the move.
George later acknowledged that was a mistake, and U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg ordered Krasner to write apology letters to the Harts’ relatives.
Goldberg, who denied the request to reduce Wharton’s sentence, later said George’s and Winkelman’s review of the case was “patently deficient,” and that they violated federal rules of procedure in a manner that was “egregious” and “exceptional.”
The two prosecutors then faced federal disciplinary proceedings to examine whether they’d been intentionally deceptive.
Last year, the three-judge panel found that George had lied to Goldberg about key facts, “flouted the interests of the public and the victims’ families,” and acted as the “quarterback” of efforts by the district attorney’s office to undo or undermine all death penalty cases.
Is it possible to have them tried for perjury? I am not a lawyer, so I am unclear whether lying in documents to the court count the same as perjury under oath.
Apparently, among the “needed reforms” Krasner refers to, letting convicted murderers escape punishment by lying to courts is on the top of the list.
Two courts so far have made clear that Krasner’s office is not only pursuing bad policies, which could be “justified” by the fact that Krasner was elected, but also willing to break the law to do so in the name of “reform.”
Given that Krasner got some 75% of the vote the last time he was elected, it seems that ordinary Philadelphians are either ignorant of his love of criminals and mindlessly pull the D lever, or are aware of them and side with the criminals as well…
Happy Juneteenth, the day we celebrate Republicans freeing the slaves!
This week: More Newsom graft, the Iran War maybe ends, he horrific extent of Muslim rape gang activity in the UK revealed, black rain in Moscow, two Supreme Court decisions (one Texas, one U.S.) with some interesting implications, and a famous cathedral is finally finished after a mere 144 years of construction.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Another weird week for me, as I had to have over $700 in car repairs done (bad battery, 120,000 mile maintenance stuff, odds and ends, etc.), and dealing with a welcome (but time consuming) order for over 50 paperback books. So a lot of things got pushed aside while I was dealing with that stuff.
Stephen Green: “How Deep Are the Newsoms in It? THIS Deep.”
It seems impossible — or just too revolting — to keep up with the financial hanky-panky of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Partner (gag) Jennifer Siebel Newsom. But thanks to a couple of investigative reporters with stronger stomachs than I have, let’s see if I can’t put everything you need to know into one easily digestible column.
I love it when other people do my dirty work for me, so let’s get started.
“Today, my wife & I joined Donald Trump’s hit list,” Newsom practically boasted on Monday. “He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us. They have not found a crime — they are simply trying to find one.”
Well, let’s see what Fox Business anchor Liz MacDonald and my old friend and Red State colleague Jen Van Laar have to say about that.
MacDonald said Tuesday that the DOJ probe “is about California Democrats’ modern-day machine politics,” which she described as a “feedback loop of Sacramento-corporate lobbyists-governor/wife nonprofit-behested nonprofit donations-lucrative state contracts-Sacramento.”
Don’t bother writing all this down — there won’t be a quiz at the end of today’s column. You’re welcome.
“The modern Sacramento machine trades corporate compliance and nonprofit funding/donations for policy access and state business,” MacDonald added, and then explained how that grift (allegedly!) worked for the Newsoms:
According to IRS Form 990 disclosures, her nonprofit frequently buys from Siebel Newsom’s for-profit film company—Girls Club Entertainment LLC—writer, producer and director services and the licensing and production rights for her documentaries. Then it sells the docs to the state and public schools.
IRS records show that her nonprofit has paid her Girls Club Entertainment LLC roughly $1.64 million for these production and licensing rights since 2012, which includes a steady annual contracting fee of $150,000 since 2018.
TL;DR: Siebel Newsom produced unwatchable propaganda videos for children, for which Democrat-dominated schools then paid her handsomely. Or as MacDonald summed it up, “Over the past decade, Siebel Newsom has collected over $3.7 million in combined personal salary and LLC payouts funded by the nonprofit.”
Then there are behested payments, which MacDonald explained are “a unique mechanism in California politics where an elected official asks a corporation, labor union, or wealthy individual to donate money to a specific charity, nonprofit, or government program.” Unlike campaign donations, there are no caps.
As governor, Newsom requested a record $226 million in behested payments in one year. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to the California Partners Project,” MacDonald wrote, “a nonprofit founded by his wife.”
“Many of the biggest donors were corporate giants (like health insurers and utility companies) actively bidding for lucrative state contracts or fighting state regulations.”
One hand washes the other with filthy lucre, if you’ll allow me to mix metaphors.
Which brings us to Jen Van Laar, and her hip-deep-in-the-muck wade through the Newsoms’ finances, going back years.
Way back in 2021, Jen asked, “Somebody Paid $3.7 Million Cash for CA Gov Newsom’s Estate – But Who?” But couldn’t come up with any satisfactory answers. That’s because the Newsoms alternately claimed that “the Newsoms’ cash was used to purchase the home but was done through an LLC managed by his first cousin,” or that “Newsoms obtained a loan… to purchase the home because the sale happened so quickly that they didn’t have time to obtain a mortgage.”
Then, California’s First Couple played similar LLC games, buying a second home for $9.1 million in ritzy Marin County. “Based on my examination of 15+ yrs of Newsom’s financial disclosures, tax returns, and real estate transactions,” Jenn explained in March, “they absolutely did not have $9.1M in cash.”
Clearly, somebody did.
The shenanigans were so egregious that — no matter what TDS nonsense Newsom’s social media team posts on X — the DOJ investigation began under the Biden administration. As I quipped on Instapundit this week, maybe Newsom needs to take a break from social media and lawyer up.
“U.S.-Iran MOU Language Released and Signed.” I haven’t read it yet, and a lot of people aren’t too happy with it. After I’ve had a chance to actually read it, I hope to have a far more extensive, informed write-up on it.
1) The number of raped and trafficked British girls is in the hundreds of thousands.
From the report:
The scale of the crimes committed is staggering. It has been previously established that, at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and lifelong trauma. The true number is probably higher.
This number was reached by compiling reports from Rotherham and Telford over several decades, in addition to conversations and estimates from dozens of British cities, then looking at estimates of national distribution and underreporting (many women have never acknowledged that they were raped by these gangs).
Reviews that informed these estimates include the 2025 Baroness Casey National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, as well as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), a group established by the British government in 2015.
2) The attackers are overwhelmingly Muslim foreigners.
From the report:
In court records and official inquiries, around 87% of those convicted in these group-based child sexual exploitation (‘CSE’) cases bore distinctively Muslim names. The vast majority of men involved in these gangs were not convicted. Dr. Taj Hargey, an imam with the Oxford Islamic Congregation, believes the true proportion of gang members who are Muslims to be around 95%.
And:
Researcher Peter McLoughlin in Easy Meat (2016) compiled a comprehensive list of grooming gang convictions from 1997 to 2018 (with updates in subsequent analyses), drawing from published court outcomes. His examination of names indicated that approximately 87% of those convicted bore distinctively Muslim names, which was a figure echoed in related analyses far exceeding the Muslim proportion (around 6%) of the general population of Britain.
While the largest rape gangs were operated by Pakistani Muslims, “smaller groups from Somali, Iranian, Syrian, Turkish, and other Muslim origins were also involved.”
Snip.
The report goes on to say that these gangs were religiously motivated to carry out these rapes under the theological teaching of al-walā’ wa-l-barā’, which demands subjugation of the infidel, including sex slavery as a form of subjugation.
Muslim armies have used this teaching to justify rape across the world for 1,400 years.
Evidence for these numbers includes from a 2017 Quilliam Foundation analysis, Peter McLoughlin’s research, and “analysis of 264 convictions for group-based child sexual exploitation from 2005 – 2017.”
The report does not pull punches in its conclusion:
These figures indicate that the rape gangs are a specific ethnoreligious phenomenon, with Muslims – especially Pakistani Muslims – significantly overrepresented.
3) The problem is geographically widespread, affecting all corners of the nation.
From the report:
We found that the same unspeakable crimes occurred in at least 149 local authority districts – close to 40% of all such districts across the United Kingdom…
Here is a map showing where rape gangs have operated in the nation (these are only the known cases).
4) The rape gangs started more than 50 years ago.
From the report:
The independent chair of the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection Alexis Jay has identified the 1970s as the decade when immigrant rape gangs first began tormenting the girls of Britain. However, the British Newspaper Archive reveals that the first recorded case of specifically Pakistani rape gangs dates back to 1955, when four Bradford-based Pakistanis were charged with raping a 15-year-old girl from Middlesbrough.
This was soon after former colonial subjects, from the subcontinent as much as the Caribbean, became eligible to enter the United Kingdom in non-trivial numbers under the British Nationality Act 1948. What began as singular and small-scale instances became systematic and industrial over time.
These horrific crimes have only escalated in recent decades, especially following Tony Blair’s 1997 victory and the start of orchestrated mass immigration. With greater numbers came greater opportunities for abuse. Perpetrators built organised networks that transported victims between towns and cities and passed girls between multiple adult men.
5) Authorities purposefully and willfully ignored the mass abuse.
From the report:
Police forces ignored repeated reports, criminalised victims instead of perpetrators, destroyed evidence, and allowed known rapists to walk free on bail. Social care services undermined protective parents, placed children in trafficking hubs inside children’s homes, closed cases despite clear indicators of exploitation, and retaliated against whistleblowers.
The NHS [the UK’s health service] recorded genital injuries, multiple sexually transmitted infections in children as young as 13, pregnancies caused by rape, and suicide attempts, yet discharged victims back to their abusers without safeguarding referrals or trauma care. Schools observed older men collecting girls at the gates, heard disclosures of rape on school premises, and responded by excluding victims rather than protecting them.
Taxi licensing authorities renewed permits for drivers who formed the logistical backbone of the networks and collapsed in the face of organised protests when basic safety measures were proposed.
The report specifically blames the Labour Party for these government failures.
Much more at the link, including “Whistleblowers were silenced and threatened with seizure of their assets and careers.”
A final example that should make your blood boil: “But the report describes one particular occasion in which a vulnerable young girl was returned by the authorities to a house where she was being sexually abused. According to the account, the police officer who brought her back reportedly told the men inside to ‘have fun with her.'” Plus this pick of the rapists Labour policy let into the country:
Nor is it limited to the UK. In France, they’re threatening to send a rape survivor to prisoner for daring to point out the rapes are being carried out by black and Muslim men:
The announcement of the European Parliament’s final vote on the Return Directive was met with a burst of jubilation in the chamber, where energetic cries of “Send them back” rang out, reflecting the MEPs’ enthusiasm at having succeeded in passing the first genuine measure to seriously restrict immigration at the European level. On the opposite side of the chamber, MEPs responded to these exclamations with vigorous—though minority—cries of “Shame on you.”
The choice of words is not insignificant; some even see it as a foreshadowing—still a fantasy at this stage—of remigration.
Through a number of key measures, the directive drastically changes the landscape for the management of illegal immigration. Previously, an obligation to leave the territory remained a national decision. From now on, thanks to the Return Regulation, these decisions may be converted into a ‘European Return Order’—an obligation to leave European territory.
The maximum detention period for irregular migrants is quadrupled, up to 24 months, with the possibility of a further six-month extension.
The Return Regulation lists a number of other measures that may be taken: body searches, property searches, the obligation to remain contactable during the procedure, the recording of biometric data, house arrest, and the obligation to report regularly… Finally, the Return Regulation establishes a framework for EU member states to sign agreements with third countries that agree to receive individuals subject to a return decision.
This outpouring of enthusiasm did not go down well with everyone. Fabienne Keller, a French Renaissance MEP, made a fool of herself in the European Parliament by denouncing the right-wing “celebratory evening” organised by a few MEPs on the terrace of one of the parliament’s buildings, following the vote on the Return Regulation for rejected illegal migrants—a measure which, Keller argued, “will send families with children to camps.” Her statement, in which she lambasted a “political drinking spree,” was met with boos and prompted a call to order from the chair on the grounds that no breach of conduct had taken place.
On the Left as well as in the centre, the prevailing mood was one of exaggeration and dramatisation. Abir Al-Sahlani, a left-wing MEP from the Renew group, said she had never felt “as unsafe in Parliament as she did after the vote.”
It is true that the MEPs’ symbolic reaction marks a real turning point in the mindset of the political class at the European level. For a long time, the EU has been a brake on the implementation of more selective migration policies. This remains the case on many issues, particularly asylum. But we are witnessing a major shift, one that is being openly acknowledged. From a political standpoint, as a result of this vote, the European Union can no longer be invoked as a convenient excuse for inaction that satisfies the imperatives of political correctness.
The man accused of coordinating a failed scheme to attack the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House over the weekend is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) under the Obama administration, Department of Homeland Security officials said Thursday.
FBI agents arrested Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez in Omaha, Neb., on Sunday for his alleged connection with a plan to attack the recent UFC event on the south lawn of the White House, which was attended by numerous government officials and others. Alvarez is believed to be the ringleader of the group that planned the attack, according to officials, while four other co-conspirators were also arrested over the weekend in Ohio, Missouri, and California.
The FBI alleges Alvarez was responsible for organizing the thwarted attack, which involved a multi-part plan to target buildings near the event with explosive-laden drones in an attempt to force a mass evacuation that would send crowds toward a pre-staged sniper team. The would-be attackers then allegedly planned to storm the White House gate.
Alvarez, who operated under the name “Shepherd” online, allegedly “used a Signal chat to direct staging locations, sniper and drone positions, escape routes and communications protocols,” according to court documents. He instructed the others involved in the plot — police say as many as 23 people were involved in the chat planning the attack — to obtain explosive-capable drones, specifically instructing them to get their hands on “as many and as deadly as we can get.”
Now DHS says Alvarez, who is facing federal charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds, entered the United States on a B2 visitor visa and failed to depart before it expired in December 2001. He was later granted DACA status by the Obama administration in 2014.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged a detainer for Alvarez.
“This illegal alien from Mexico should never have been allowed in our country. He was the ringleader of a failed terror attack targeting UFC Freedom 250 at the White House,” acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “He and his co-conspirators now face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds. He will face justice and swiftly be removed from our country.”
“Moscow Refinery Hit Again! With Oil Tank Toss (Lid Lifted on Fireball!)” But see the next item about that dramatic lid toss…
“Russia Destroyed Their OWN Oil Tank With Missile: Plus MORE Air Defence Failures in Moscow!” Russian air defense is like those scenes in Sleeper where a crew repeatedly sets up a gun, only to have it misfire every time…
U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents busted a stash house used for human smuggling in El Paso, Texas, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) exclusively told The Epoch Times on Monday.
The joint investigation, which resulted in the arrests of 11 illegal immigrant adults and one unaccompanied child found in the house on May 27, highlights the need for strict enforcement efforts at the border to dissuade individuals from entering the country unlawfully through human smugglers, CBP officials said.
“This operation, in partnership with U.S. Border Patrol, reflects our mission to safeguard the homeland and uphold the integrity of our immigration system,” HSI El Paso Special Agent in Charge Ryan McRae said. “We remain committed to ensuring the safety and security of El Paso and beyond.”
Of the 12 illegal aliens arrested, 10 were from Mexico and two from Guatemala.
The 11 adults were processed and charged with violations of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, CBP said, which encompasses immigration offenses including unlawful entry, unlawful reentry, alien harboring or smuggling, and more.
The unaccompanied minor was “administratively processed,” CBP told The Epoch Times.
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that state agencies cannot invoke sovereign immunity to block former landowners from reclaiming property taken through eminent domain and later deemed unnecessary for public use.
Snip.
In 2013, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) sent an offer to Joyce Hutcherson, Rudolph Pusok, and Jimmie Pusok—the owners of 19502 Mueschke Road in Tomball—to purchase their property. TxDOT planned to construct a new road along the Grand Parkway (State Highway 99).
After receiving pushback from the landowners, the state filed an eminent domain lawsuit to acquire the property in 2014. The suit was dismissed when the owners ultimately agreed to sell at $1.05 per square foot.
Years later, TxDOT stated in an email that approximately 20,000 square feet of the subject property constituted “surplus land,” as the decision to reroute Mueschke Road made the land no longer necessary for public use. When the landowners—now represented by JRJ Pusok Holdings—sought to buy it back, TxDOT denied the request.
Pusok then sued both the State of Texas and Kyle Madsen—director of TxDOT’s Right of Way Division—in a Harris County civil court, claiming a right to repurchase under the Texas Property Code Chapter 21.
The code states: “A person from whom a real property interest is acquired by an entity through eminent domain for a public use … is entitled to repurchase the property as provided by this subchapter if … the property becomes unnecessary for the public use for which the property was acquired.”
The State argued that the property was purchased from a settlement—even though the process began with the threat of eminent domain—rather than a final judgment in an eminent domain proceeding. According to the State’s logic, “the repurchase statutes therefore do not apply.”
Pusok rejected this logic, asserting that “all that is required for a property to be acquired through eminent domain is a transfer of land in exchange for compensation.”
Another argument made by the State was that Pusok sought to recover only a portion of the property, while the repurchase statutes allegedly require any repurchase to cover the entire parcel.
Snip.
On Friday, Texas’ Supreme Court sided with Pusok, affirming that the State has “no immunity from Chapter 21 claims to repurchase condemned property no longer necessary for public use.”
“Repurchase claims derive from constitutional limits placed on the State’s eminent domain power,” the opinion continued. “Further, Chapter 21 permits the repurchase of a portion of condemned property no longer necessary for public use.”
The ruling is significant as it clarifies that State actors may not eminent domain a property then claim immunity to block repurchase attempts when the property goes unused and unneeded.
Correctly decided, especially since “sovereign immunity” was never intended as a “Get Out Of Any Statute Free” card.
An interesting case. “SCOTUS Sides With Texas Man Over Second Amendment Rights for Drug Users.”
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has unanimously sided with a Texas man in ruling that the government cannot restrict gun rights for casual drug users.
The case involves a dual citizen of Pakistan and the United States, Ali Hemani. In 2019, Hemani, the subject of an FBI investigation that found he was connected to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was stopped at the Texas border. He was not arrested at the time.
The FBI had additional information that not only was Hemani connected to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, but that he was dealing drugs.
In 2020, Hemani attended the funeral of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani after Soleimani’s assassination by the U.S. that year. Hemani’s mother was reportedly seen on Iranian television stating that she hoped her sons would follow in the footsteps of Soleimani and become martyrs themselves.
Over the next couple of years, his passport showed trips to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and a July 2022 border search of Hemani upon return from Iran “found Defendant deleted all messaging applications and wiped communication data from his cellphone.”
Eventually, the FBI obtained a warrant to search the home he shared with his parents, at which time a handgun, cocaine, and marijuana were all discovered.
Hemani is clearly a Jihadi scumbag, but that’s not the focus of the decision.
Hemani was indicted by a grand jury, not for foreign terrorism charges, but under the federal statute that it is unlawful for a person addicted to or using a controlled substance to possess a firearm “in or affecting commerce.”
Hemani moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the statute violated his Second Amendment rights and conflicted with Second Amendment precedent. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Hemani’s argument.
However, the government sought SCOTUS’ review of the lower court’s decision, and on Thursday, the high court announced its decision, delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Gorsuch stated, “Ali Hemani uses marijuana a few times a week. That fact alone, the government says, means he is automatically banned from possessing a firearm under federal law.”
“This case poses the question whether the government’s prosecution of Mr. Hemani is consistent with the Second Amendment.”
Gorsuch stated that the government’s argument, which attempted to draw a parallel between “present regulations and historical laws addressing habitual drunkards,” did not hold against Second Amendment violation claims by Hemani.
Other justices also rebutted the government’s comparison of chronic alcoholism to casual marijuana use by Hemani. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “marijuana use today is like alcohol use at the founding. It is widespread and increasingly considered socially acceptable in many quarters.”
“And from a practical standpoint, law enforcement widely tolerates the use of marijuana.”
This is a case of “bad defendant, good decision.” If Second Amendment rights are “fundamental” and “deeply rooted” in American history, as per Heller and Bruen, then they can’t be tossed aside for misdemeanor offenses. Now I’m waiting for the Supremes to apply the originalist jurisprudence test of Bruen to interpretation of the commerce clause…
Public school closures are increasing across Texas as districts face historic enrollment declines and mounting financial pressure.
Despite Texas’ continued population growth, public schools lost 76,000 students in the past school year—the first nonpandemic decline in nearly four decades. Districts across the state are consolidating and shuttering campuses in response to the decline, setting the stage for major structural changes to Texas’ education infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of emotions and history tied to these schools,” said Monica Ryan, board president of Judson ISD, which voted to close four campuses amid a budget shortfall. Ryan is one of many district officials across the state citing enrollment declines and budget pressures as reasons for the closures.
The closures are widespread. Fort Worth ISD plans to close 18 campuses over the next four years, while Houston ISD will close 12 next year and Austin ISD 10. Arlington, McKinney, Aldine, and many other districts are pursuing similar plans.
In a May 2026 report, Texas 2036 pointed to parents increasingly choosing private or homeschooling options as a big reason for the decline. As families move away from traditional public schools, districts are shifting budgets and long-term planning.
“Parents are paying attention to the weekly barrage of failures across the education system,” Mandy Drogin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told Texas Scorecard. She pointed to schools’ failures to adequately serve students, especially those with special needs, to shield classrooms from political agendas, and to protect students from predators.
Lower birth rates have further accelerated enrollment losses. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told lawmakers, “a lot of this is a decline in birth rates that has happened that is working its way through the system as students age up.”
While elementary schools absorbed the majority of the losses, the empty desks are expected to ripple upward through higher grades.
School choice programs could also affect future trends.
Beginning next year, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program (TEFA) created through Senate Bill 2 will provide $1 billion in education savings accounts for eligible families seeking alternatives to public schools. Around 102,000 families have been approved, though it remains to be seen how many will use the funds.
Strangely, given that it’s Texas Scorecard, no mention is given to the deportation and self-deportation of illegal aliens that were previously overloading the system.
A national trade association for higher education administrators held a conference last week in downtown Austin that demonstrates the continued presence of diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology in higher education.
Texas Scorecard was present at the conference, which highlighted a series of less politically charged terms that expressed similar goals to DEI.
The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) describes itself as “the leading association for the advancement, health, and sustainability of the student affairs profession.”
The organization has a membership of over 15,000 professionals at 2,100 institutions across the globe.
While the conference was not exclusively dedicated to DEI, many panel discussions across the three-day event explicitly discussed DEI themes. Examples include:
Servingness and Beyond: An Equity Minded Leadership Playbook for Institutional Transformation.
First Gen Latinas Leading First-Gen Strategy.
Black First Gen Collective.
Operational Equity: Creating STEM Circles of Belonging.
Building a Neuro-Inclusive Campus.
Eternal vigilance…
TPPF: “Why Can’t We Get Rid of Drag Queen Story Hour?”
Americans have pushed back. Many, even on the left, believe that a big factor in President Donald Trump’s re-election is because he is for “us,” and his opponent, Kamala Harris, was for “they/them.”
Polling consistently shows that most Americans oppose allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports and support maintaining sex-specific spaces, such as locker rooms and restrooms for women.
Pride celebrations in many cities can’t find sponsors anymore as corporations reconsider whether it’s worth alienating customers to add their brand to a “pride” event.
Americans delivered a resounding “no thanks” to Bud Light after it featured Dylan Mulvaney, a man pretending to be a woman, in its advertising. Customers also turned their back on Target after it marketed a line of cross-dressing clothing.
So why has there been so little progress in eliminating drag shows for children, most commonly manifested in what has become known as Drag Queen Story Hours?
Texas has spent several legislative sessions attempting ban drag shows that target kids. Senate Bill 12, which passed in 2023, prohibited sexually oriented performances in the presence of minors and on public property. Texas has gotten leave to enforce the law, but court challenges continue.
Some educational leaders, including Texas public school librarians, believe it is important that children see drag shows. They insist drag queen performances are part of the mainstream, so they belong in public schools.
Unspoken by TPPF: Because the leftwing groups pushing it want to destroy the nuclear family because it represents a separate power center apart from the all-powerful stateand they view it as a celebration of their power in the culture wars.
The TDCJ administration emphasized that impartiality is a non-negotiable requirement for state parole employees. A department spokeswoman released an official statement defining the agency’s position.
“These statements are incompatible with TDCJ policy and values. They demonstrate bias and a lack of the impartiality essential to the fair administration of justice in Texas. Discriminatory or inflammatory conduct that erodes public confidence in the criminal justice system will not be tolerated,” the spokeswoman added.
Obama the Deadbeat. “Obama Presidential Center subcontractors claim they’re owed millions and facing financial ruin ahead of grand opening.”
Several [contractors] also described what they viewed as a wall of silence surrounding the project, with some declining to speak publicly or requesting anonymity because of confidentiality agreements or fears of professional retaliation.
The allegations emerge days after a Fox News Digital investigation reported that the Obama Foundation’s reserve fund — originally promoted as a $470 million financial safeguard intended to help protect taxpayers if the project encountered financial trouble — remains funded at roughly $1 million.
Standing outside the center on a gloomy Friday afternoon, Owen flipped through spreadsheets and financial records that he said documented millions of dollars in losses tied to the project.
Owen said the project stretched on for years longer than anticipated, forcing his company to absorb millions of dollars in labor and overhead costs as work demands changed and expanded.
He said the losses have drained the company’s reserves, created uncertainty for employees and could ultimately force layoffs.
Debts are for the little people…
Nick Freitas doesn’t think China can take Taiwan. It was looking pretty difficult before Russia invaded Ukraine, and the recent leaps and bounds in development of military drones make it look all but impossible.
Missed this last week: After 144 years, Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia cathedral, designed by Antonio Gaudi, was finally completed.
Joshua Baer, godfather of Austin’s startup scene, dies in plane crash. A dramatic video shows bystanders rushing to the plane with tools and implements of destruction to extract the other passengers.
Everyone else survived.
Rick Beato says he was right about AI. He also mentions Flock AI cameras mysteriously popping up everywhere. Maybe he and Louis Rossmann should compare notes…
The bright side of the Google-pocalypse: “What’s left of Vox Media has been sold (likely on the cheap) to Penske Media, and this is after Buzzfeed imploded and MSNBC got spun off from Comcast because it was such a failure.”
Some jobs are more difficult than others. Houston’s Democratic Mayor John Whitmire employs a “Financial Integrity Advisor” for $127,000 to rarely show up for work.
Houston City Controller Chris Hollins announced Monday that his office has launched a formal investigation into Chris Brown, Mayor John Whitmire’s senior advisor for financial integrity.
Brown, it should be noted, was the previous City Controller.
The investigation follows a Houston Chronicle report raising questions about Brown’s attendance and work output in the taxpayer-funded position. According to Hollins, badge records show Brown swiped into city facilities just 13 times across nearly 600 workdays, including only twice so far in 2026.
Nothing says “integrity” like barely showing up for work.
The Chronicle also reported Brown sent roughly a dozen outgoing emails in the first three to four months of this year, with none of them appearing to involve fiscal policy or budget strategy. Brown’s annual salary for the position is just over $127,000.
Hell, when I was working from home, I probably sent out a dozen emails a day. And while there are many work-from-home positions that don’t require badging in or sending emails to gauge progress (say, a programmer who checks in the work using GitHub and tracks their progress via Jira and Confluence), I rather doubt that “senior advisor for financial integrity” is one of them.
Hollins said his office will examine what work was actually performed, what deliverables were produced, who supervised Brown, and how his performance was evaluated over the roughly two-and-a-half years he has held the role. He also pointed out that the position itself did not exist before the Whitmire administration and was created specifically for Brown.
Sounds a little like a juicy sinecure for a political supporter, doesn’t it?
“The central issue in question is whether the work being paid for with taxpayer money was performed at all,” Hollins said at a Monday press conference. He added that the investigation is not a finding of wrongdoing and that investigators plan to interview Brown, Whitmire, and other relevant parties.
Hollins also called on Whitmire to suspend Brown while the probe is underway, saying suspension is not a finding of guilt.
There’s a difference between “working from home” and “getting paid to breathe.”
On the other hand, Chris Hollins, the guy slinging these accusations, is a Democrat who talks about diversity, and who helped found an organization, Texas Democratic Voices, with two lawyers, Kurt Arnold and Jason Itkin, who donate to some of the same leftwing PACs as George Soros. Is it possible that Hollins is retaliating against Brown for advising against funding various left-wing NGOs and causes? Possibly, though I’m not seeing any direct evidence thus far.
Of course, it’s possibly that Chris Brown isn’t showing up for work and Chris Hollins shouldn’t be trusted…
The Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center (FCIC), led by its North Texas Field Operations Team, dismantled a five-member criminal enterprise composed of foreign nationals who used payment card skimmers to steal diesel fuel from multiple North Texas truck stops.
“The Texas FCIC was created by the Texas Legislature for the purpose of coordinating large-scale investigations such as this, and we are privileged to lead an effort that protects the citizens of Texas,” said Captain Jeff Headley of the FCIC.
The Garland Police Department requested assistance from the FCIC in April after multiple reports of stolen fuel and card information, and the FCIC established that the group had installed devices on diesel pumps as far out as Smith County.
By pumping fuel into hidden compartments built into vehicles, the group stole an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 gallons of diesel per evening, five to six nights a week.
Credit card skimmers have been around to steal credit card info for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve read of them also being used to quickly encode new cards for the purpose of stealing gas. Cards with chips embedded prevent such attacks if the card reader uses chip validation, but scammers frequently look for pumps that allow mere swiping.
The FCIC conducted three search warrants on June 12, two in Irving and one in Arlington. They were assisted by multiple groups: the Smith County District Attorney’s Office, Garland Police Department, Irving Police Department, Arlington Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Special Operations Group, the DPS Anti-Gang Group, Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force.
The search warrants recovered 10 skimmers, 50 altered payment cards, and a laptop with a re-encoding device allegedly used to inscribe stolen card information onto new cards. This operation is estimated to have prevented an estimated additional $10 million in fraud losses to Texans.
“Friday’s operation reflects the exceptional coordination and commitment of our local, state, and federal partners,” Headley said.
Four Cuban nationals were arrested across two operations: Jael Diaz Morejon and Adriana Castillo Oliveros in Arlington, who are being held at Tarrant County Jail, and Noel Pena Rodriguez and Carlos Virgilio Lopez Coba in Irving, being held at Dallas County Jail.
Mexican national Betsy Santiesteban Lopez was arrested upon arrival from Mexico on June 15 and is also being held at Dallas County Jail. Two individuals present at the residences were detained by ICE for administrative reasons.
Given the inclusion of ICE, I’m guessing most if not all of the foreign nationals were illegal aliens.
All suspects have been charged with the first-degree felony of Engaging in Organized Criminal Activity, and the case will be prosecuted by the Smith County District Attorney’s Office in Tyler.
Snip.
The FCIC also announced the dismantling of another fuel skimming ring in Hewitt — of which all suspects are Cuban nationals — and prevention of $19 million in potential losses in April.
I’m sure Democrats will argue that their crimes don’t merit deportation.
Always check a gas pump to make sure it doesn’t have a skimmer before filling up (there are frequently tell-tale cables or some sort of thin plastic overlay), and contact police if you see something suspicious.
As long as I’ve been blogging (and long before), the Texas economy has been growing by leaps and bounds. That trend continues with Texas leading the nation in economic growth.
As California continues to impose strict regulations on businesses, many companies have moved to Texas, strengthening Texas’ position as America’s new financial capital.
In a meeting in Houston on Friday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent spoke on the contrast between California and Texas.
“In California, I saw firsthand what years of failed governance looks like: a tax system that is hostile to ambition. A regulatory state that smothers enterprise. An economic climate indifferent to consequence,” said Bessent according to Fox News Digital. “Here in Texas, meanwhile, the contrast is so striking that it begins to feel like a tale of two states.”
Since 2018, 725 companies have moved to Texas, including behemoths such as Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, and Chevrolet, underscoring the state’s business-friendly appeal.
Not to mention Chevron, Caterpillar, Telsa and newly-minted $2 trillion IPO SpaceX. Just think, if California hadn’t transed his kids and kept Elon Musk from building cars, it could have kept all those funds and jobs in the once Golden State.
Texas is currently the fastest-growing state in terms of GDP and is set to surpass California by 2036.
Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the creation of 132,500 jobs between December 2024 and December 2025 as the state reached a new high, with the largest labor force in its history.
The influx of large businesses migrating to Texas has also increased demand on local financial institutions to meet growing levels of commerce.
“Our banking sector’s strength and depth is a true differentiator not seen in other states or other countries. America is choosing Texas. The world is choosing Texas,” said Texas Bankers Association CEO Chris Furlow.
Though Texas is blessed with a lot of natural resources, the source of our success is quite repeatable: Low taxes, low regulation, right to work laws, a stable, reliable business environment, the rule of law, a law-and-order approach to preventing crime, and long-term Republican governance that isn’t ruining the state in the name of socialism and social justice madness. And other states that follow those rules should be able to achieve steady economic growth.
Too bad Democrat-run blue states seem incapable of doing so…
Asmongold has compiled a few video clips of the pure product of America’s union-dominated educational system, and oh boy do things look grim.
I’m a little more forgiving of the “read this sentence off a card” failures. Yes, educated people should know words like “epitome” and “gauche,” but I’m willing to chalk those up as college words not everyone will have been exposed to. But not being able to name a single continent? Not know how many miles you’ve traveled in one hour at 60 MPH? Thinking Obama’s last name is “Care”?
The American educational system has failed every single one of these people…
Nurse Bloomberg is back! The failed presidential candidate with irrational hatred for mere citizens living in ways that defy his wishes has now set his sights on inserting Big Brother into every 3D printer because they might be able to produce gun parts.
“It’s very important that you understand that you’re not going up against the grassroots movement. You’re going up against one individual, in my opinion, that is responsible for 99% of this that is a control freak and likes to stick his dick where it doesn’t belong.”
“The laws that I’m talking about are these laws in New York State.”
“‘No person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation shall sell or deliver any three-dimensional printer in the state of New York unless such printer is equipped with blocking technology that is going to be able to tell if you’re printing a firearm or a firearm part.’ And the definition of 3D printer is so wide. Any machine capable of rendering a three-dimensional object from a digital design file using additive or subtractive manufacturing. This means that dental devices, construction devices, food devices, jewelry devices, all different types of CNC mills are going to be covered under this and they would have to have the spyware installed.”
“This is fundamentally based on a false premise because every single 3D printed firearm tied to a killing has been a hybrid, a plastic frame bolted to metal barrels and slides that are bought online. These are not fully 3D printed firearms. In order for a gun to actually consistently shoot well, you have to have all these different metal parts.”
One big problem is a lot of non-gun parts look like gun parts. “This is a Magbolt pistol grip. And this is the grip to a cordless drill.”
“If you are going to try and create something that can actually detect all these things, you’re going to end up with a bunch of false positives.” Plus you can add extensions to the printed part that are easy to cut off.
“This bill is either going to a do nothing or be even worse, it’s going to do a lot of damage and keep you from being able to print a lot of normal things because it is going to constantly be flagging shit that it should not be flagging.”
“Above all, the reason this bill is horrible is you have to think about what blocking technology is. Blocking technology means it’s going to stop me from doing something. The 3D printing ecosystem is fundamentally created with open-source software. Open source software is software that I can see the code to. And if I can see the code to it, I can edit it and add features or remove features at will.”
Section on open source software and corporate enshitification snipped.
“This isn’t gun control… This is manufacturing control.”
“I’m going to make the case that the person who’s behind all of this is a multi-billionaire that has a two decade long career of having to have dictatorial, top-down control of everything in his life.”
“The new laws that put a firearm scanner inside your 3D printer are not a grassroots safety movement. They’re the work of one billionaire’s organization, Every Town for Gun Safety, founded and funded by Michael Bloomberg, and they fit a documented pattern of Michael Bloomberg dictating how everyone else should live and then spending money to enforce it.”
History of Everytown snipped. It’s pure AstroTurf.
“It’s very important to to ensure that the message that gets out there is not that putting spyware in every single part of the manufacturing chain in the United States, including 3D printers, is a popular idea among average Americans. It is a popular idea among one control freak billionaire who has enough money to make it seem like it is a popular idea when it is not.”
“The blocking bills in New York, Washington, and California share identical defined terms. The same firearms blueprint detection algorithm and the same STL/CAD and geometric code clause appear in each text.”
Section on NYC stop-and-frisk policies under Bloomberg snipped.
“Another example was the soda ban. There was a sugary drinks portion cap rule. A 16 fluid ounce cap on cup and a container size for sugary drinks at restaurants, theaters, and stadiums. This man wanted to control how much soda you drank. If you were going to drink more than 16 ounces of soda, he had a problem with that.”
“This man is obsessed with telling other people what to do.”
Then there was Bloomberg’s initiative to put infant formula under lock and key.
Rossmann goes over Bloomberg’s control of Everytown long past the point of convincing, but I want to excerpt this passage to capture the names of the Bloomberg toadies involved.
John Feinblatt is the president of Everytown Entities. Everytown’s own release is that Feinblatt previously served as chief policy adviser to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and leads former Michael Mayor Bloomberg’s National Coalition on Gun Violence Prevention. The board is stacked with Bloomberg administration and Bloomberg LP alumni. The action fund chairperson, Howard Wolfson, runs Bloomberg Super PAC and leads education at Bloomberg Philanthropies. Other directors carry Bloomberg administration roles. Dennis Walcott, his school’s chancellor and a deputy mayor, and Fatima Shama, his commissioner of immigrant affairs, both sit on the Everytown board. The books of the organization run through Geller & Company, the same firm that served as Bloomberg LP’s CFO operation. Its founder was Bloomberg LP CFO and sat on its board. The action fund 990 names Geller & Company LLC as the firm that prepared its return. Geller & Company was Everytown’s highest paid contractor in the year of 2024 at $4.5 million.
“Bloomberg thinks that he knows how you should live. He has decided how you should live. He has decided what you should drink. He has decided whether or not you should be allowed to walk down the street without being bothered. He has decided whether or not you should or should not breast-feed your kid. Michael Bloomberg believes that he has control over your breasts if you are a woman who is giving birth. And if you have a health problem that does not allow you to be able to breastfeed like other mothers can, he doesn’t give a shit. He thinks it should still be more difficult. There should be more friction in the process of being able to provide nutrition to your child just to try and get you to conform to his sick, fucked-up worldview where he controls everything.”
“How about we not allow a multi-billionaire to spend all of his money to put spyware inside of every piece of manufacturing equipment in the United States just to make him feel better?”
“The only way that freedom will be preserved is if people watching this video realize that this is a lot more than just one or two shitty lawmakers. This is a serial control freak that has a fuck-ton of money to spend. And if you guys don’t got up off your ass and do something about it, he’s going to win. Don’t let him win. Call and email your legislator today. Show up to their office. Let them know that you don’t want a billionaire to buy the manufacturing supply chain so that they can insert closed source spyware into it. Fuck that.”
“If you don’t want your 3D printers into the future to be run off of closed source software, where the state gets to control what you print and the manufacturer gets to control whether or not you’re able to even use it without paying them a subscription in the future if they feel like it, contact your legislator and let them know that you don’t want one fucking billionaire to be able to control the entire manufacturing supply chain in the United States of America.”
“And if you’re watching this, Michael Bloomberg, fuck you.”
Rossmann isn’t shy about saying what he really thinks.
American was founded as a nation where citizens were free to do whatever they wanted as long as they was no existing law against it. Nurse Bloomberg seems to want to turn American into a European style nation where everything not explicitly permitted is prohibited.
Been a weird week, so here’s something a bit lighter, assuming “lighter” includes “idiots mishandling firearms to delete themselves from the gene pool.”
All of Jeff Cooper’s rules will be violated. Fun for the whole family!
Come to see the guy testing whether a Makarov is loading or not by pulling the trigger with the gun to his head, stay for the guy deleting his head with an RPG.
This time soon-to-be-U.S. Congressman Brandon Herrera is with King Trout, who seems to share the same dark sense of humor.
And although the actual Darwinizing is pixelated to avoid demonetization, the video is still not safe for work, just in case that was unclear…
More California fraud! More Minnesota fraud! Ukraine continues pounding Russia! Murder still illegal!
Personally, this week has been an exercise in frustration, mainly due to trying to replace an old, cracked car keyfob where the results were my car refusing to turn on. Which means I’m behind on all my errands. Solved now, but it was a pain. Also, for some reason Bluehost has crapped out 429 errors more than usual today.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“New House Oversight Report Claims Walz, Ellison Were Aware of Fraud in 2019. “These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.”
Following a months-long investigation, the House Oversight Committee released a report Monday accusing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison of knowing about rampant fraud in the state’s federally funded social services programs as far back as 2019, and turning a blind eye.
The investigation also draws on testimony Walz and Ellison provided during a March hearing before the committee.
The 205-page report, titled “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion,” states that Walz and Ellison:
Possessed the legal and procedural authority to stop payments and ban fraudulent providers from participating in these programs, but repeatedly failed to act. As a result, billions of American taxpayer dollars were potentially paid to fraudulent actors. These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.
Testimony and documents obtained to date establish a consistent pattern: fraud warnings were elevated to the most senior levels of the Minnesota state government, meaningful corrective action was delayed or avoided, and payments continued long after credible signs of fraud emerged.
Senior officials in Governor Walz’s office and Attorney General Ellison’s office were aware of credible, systemic fraud concerns in social services programs as early as 2019 within the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and by April 2020 within the state Department of Education (MDE), despite later public statements by Governor Walz suggesting otherwise.
The committee concluded that Minnesota officials had ample authority to suspend payments to providers suspected of fraud but repeatedly failed to do so. Investigators found that state agencies continued funding Feeding Our Future even after identifying serious deficiencies, allowing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to flow to fraudsters until federal authorities intervened.
Of course they were aware. It was a major conduit for lining the pockets of the left!
California is home to the lion’s share of illegal immigrant families in the United States with children who received federal welfare assistance in 2024, according to a federal report published on June 10.
More than 80 percent of all nationwide cash assistance allocated to such households was spent in California. The report tracked $759 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spent in 2024 on families headed by a parent living in the country illegally.
In those cases, the child qualified for federal welfare, even though the parent was excluded from the federal program because of immigration status.
“These cases receive relatively little public attention, yet … data show that they are far from a negligible part of the program,” wrote authors David Swegle, director of the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, in the report.
Nationally, the federal government paid 85,000 households with qualifying children receiving assistance who were living with their illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. in 2024.
“Although the benefit is formally paid on behalf of the child, it still supports a household that includes an immigration-status-ineligible parent,” the authors stated. “The significance of these cases therefore cannot be judged solely by the fact that the adult is not the formal recipient.”
The cases are also significant because they don’t have to adhere to the TANF rules requiring work expectations, such as regularly applying for jobs, and the payments aren’t limited to the federal 60-month lifetime limit, according to the report. The illegal immigrant families, therefore, can receive federal welfare until the child turns 18 years old.
Low-income American families are held to the federal welfare restrictions that require work participation and are restricted to a 60-month lifetime limit, the authors said.
The number of TANF cases involving an illegal immigrant parent reached nearly 850,000—or 10 percent of all cases—in 2024, up from nearly 6 percent in 2001.
Of those, nearly 78,000 households—or about 91 percent—also received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the report revealed.
Most of the illegal immigrant parents—over 106,000—identified as Hispanic, while 5.3 percent were White, 4.3 percent were Black, and 2 percent were Asian, the report stated.
Here’s an idea: California doesn’t get any more cash for illegal aliens, period, until they repeal all the sanctuary city declarations, allow federal auditing of all their welfare programs, and implement SAVE Act compliant measures to ensure only citizens vote.
More Cali fraud: “Federal Government Pauses Funding To Los Angeles Homeless Agency Citing Fraud Allegations.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on June 11 suspended federal funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), cutting off millions of dollars to the L.A. region, over allegations of fraud and widespread mismanagement.
It’s superbly managed to line the pockets of leftists.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development about his department’s proposed FY2026 budget in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 14, 2026. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
HUD action to suspend federal funding comes in the wake of an investigation into LAHSA, Secretary Scott Turner announced Thursday, adding that the agency has “uncovered evidence of LAHSA’s false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures,” including a lack of financial management and lack of safeguards against conflicts of interest.
The Los Angeles Continuum of Care (CoC), led by LAHSA, has received nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars over the last five years. Despite federal assistance, L.A. remains the epicenter of the nation’s “drug-fueled” homeless crisis, according to Turner.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD will fund results, not corrupt failure or the homeless-industrial complex,” Turner said in a statement. “Year after year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled to LAHSA with little accountability. Meanwhile, homelessness skyrocketed. Taxpayers will no longer bankroll an organization that puts its own self-interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve.”
HUD stated in a letter to LAHSA that suspension of funding will be final if the agency does not contest the notice by requesting a hearing. LAHSA must file a written hearing request within 30 days of receipt of the notice.
The Homeless Industrial Complex maw is insatiable.
A possible reason for my continued unemployment? “Of the 369,000 jobs the Labor Department says were created since the start of Trump’s second term, nearly all — 348,000 of them — went to women, with only 21,000 going to men.” I wonder if Kurt Schlichter would be interested in filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of myself and other men…
One year after Frisco high school student Karmelo Anthony was indicted on murder charges over the fatal stabbing of [Austin Metcalf], his trial concluded with the jury’s verdict that Anthony is guilty of murder.
During their sentencing deliberations, the jury considered a “sudden passion” claim, but eventually rejected it and decided that Anthony would face a 35-year prison sentence.
He will be eligible for parole after 17 and a half years.
Like Kyle Rittenhouse’s not guilty verdict, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who doesn’t view the world through social justice-tinted glasses.
“Whistleblower vindicated: Biden officials invented loophole to impose gender identity, flout court. Leaders ‘actively engaged in efforts to thwart at least one regional office from following the plain and unambiguous meaning’ of the injunction against their gender identity reading of Title IX, Department of Education concludes.”
High-ranking Biden administration officials conspired to violate a 2022 court order against their interpretation of Title IX as covering “gender identity” within the definition of “sex,” and may have also tried to conceal those efforts through coercion and intimidation, according to a Department of Education report made public Wednesday after lengthy outside review.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel told President Trump the department “fully substantiated the allegations” by whistleblower Timothy Mattson, who now leads the department’s Office for Civil Rights’ regional office in Kansas City, recommending sanctions against current and former officials and compensation for Mattson for the risk he took coming forward.
You know the giant Democrat tantrum over ICE funding? We won.
Democrats put everything they had in their effort to shut down President Donald Trump’s border control plans. And what exactly have they achieved for their often-infantile antics?
Well, let’s see. This week, the House passed a bill that funds ICE for three years. Deportations are near all-time highs. Oh, and it looks like Trump’s border wall will be completed next year.
On Tuesday, the House passed a “budget reconciliation” bill that provides enough money ($38 billion) to fund ICE for the rest of Trump’s term, plus $28 billion for the Border Patrol, and another $5 billion for border security technology and screening.
And what did Democrats get for shutting down all or part of the government for nearly four months?
Bupkus. Zilch. Nada. Nichts. Niente. 没有什么.This has to be one of the most embarrassing political defeats in history.
If Border Czar Tom Homan is intimidated by the Left’s endless anti-ICE rhetoric and threats, he’s not showing it. In fact, on Monday, he announced he’s doubling down on illegal immigrant operations in New York City and plans a surge in the very near future. This is a direct “in your face” move to counter Gov. Kathy Hochul’s efforts to kneecap federal enforcement in the Empire State.
He spoke as ongoing violent anti-ICE protests continued throughout the weekend at Delaney Hall, a detention facility in nearby Newark, New Jersey.
It’s coming, he told Fox & Friends:
Trump border czar Tom Homan revealed Monday that the administration has already drawn up an operational plan and warned Hochul before she signed legislation late last month restricting ICE activities and banning masked immigration agents in New York.
“You’re going to see more ICE than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan said, according to Bloomberg. “I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming.”
Maine Democrats obeyed The Will of The Party and lined up yo vote for the Nazi.”
Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued progressive veteran, will win the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate race, according to a projection by the Associated Press.
Maine Governor Janet Mills suspended her own Senate primary campaign on April 30, effectively handing the nomination to Platner.
Platner has painted himself as an outsider to the Democratic establishment since his fiery campaign launch last fall. In line with those of other progressive and populist candidates, Platner’s political bid has focused on working-class issues, including affordability, universal health care, and labor union relations.
He will advance to face Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins in November. Collins is seen as a moderate Republican, often crossing party lines to vote with Democrats. However, because Collins appeals to a more moderate, centrist bloc of voters, she has received backlash from her supporters on several occasions for voting with her own party, including her vote to advance the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018.
The Senate campaign has been rocked by controversies since last year. In October, CNN and several other outlets uncovered Platner’s past Reddit posts and comments, which included offensive comments about police and sexual assault survivors. He’s since been ensnared in a number of other scandals, including those involving his Nazi tattoo, his marital infidelity, and his past treatment of women.
Remember all that self-serving “when they go low, we go high” blather Democrats mouthed to further the laughable illusion of their moral superiority? They never meant it.
“Trump ally Nikol Pashinyan wins Armenian election, paving way for US-backed peace deal.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party won a majority in the country’s parliamentary elections, marking a victory for Donald Trump after the president endorsed him.
Pashinyan first took power in 2018 in the so-called Velvet Revolution, then won again in the 2021 snap elections triggered by his crushing loss of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War against Azerbaijan. Armenia held its first regular election since he first took power in 2018 on Sunday, during which he won reelection with a vote total far above his closest rival.
The latest preliminary results on Monday gave Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party 49.82% of the vote, the Associated Press reported, with the pro-Russian Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia bloc coming in second with 23.28% of the vote. The Armenia Alliance bloc led by former President Robert Kocharyan is hovering around 10%, while the rest of the splintered opposition remained in the mid to low single digits.
He beat three pro-Russian parties, another black eye for Putin.
Two independent candidates for U.S. Senate have fundraising profiles on ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s key fundraising platform, raising questions about the candidates’ true political independence as they look to capture two long-held Republican seats this fall.
ActBlue allows independent candidates to fundraise on its platforms on a “case-by-case basis,” based on whether a Democrat is in the race, the candidate has an endorsement from the Democratic Party, or the candidate has demonstrated alignment with the Democratic Party’s ideals and policy goals.
But both independent candidates — Seth Bodnar in Montana and Dan Osborn in Nebraska — are running against Democrats, as well as Republicans. While the Nebraska Democratic Party has endorsed Osborn, Bodnar has not received an official Democratic endorsement.
Speaking of ActBlue shenanigans: “Clinton-Appointed Federal Judge Bars Texas AG Paxton’s Lawsuit Against ActBlue.”
A federal judge has barred Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from pursuing his state court lawsuit against ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising platform.
President Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled Thursday that the case represented no more than a retaliation campaign for ActBlue’s political activities supporting Paxton’s opponent in the 2026 U.S. Senate race.
Stearns issued a preliminary injunction preventing Paxton from pursuing the Texas case. The judge found the lawsuit attempted to undermine protected political speech and therefore violated the First Amendment.
“The truth is plain and captured in Paxton’s own declarations: The lawsuit was filed in retaliation for (and in an attempt to suppress) ActBlue’s efforts to fund Talarico’s campaign,” Stearns wrote in the ruling.
Neither Paxton’s office nor ActBlue immediately returned a request for comment.
Paxton filed the initial lawsuit in April in Texas state court as he campaigned as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat.
The suit singled out ActBlue, a Massachusetts-based fundraising platform that claims to have raised billions for Democratic candidates and causes since its founding in 2004. It sought civil penalties and an order blocking ActBlue from accepting certain gift card donations.
The Texas attorney general alleged that ActBlue employed deceptive practices after the fundraising platform resumed gift card and foreign prepaid debit card donations after informing Congress that it had ceased conducting the transactions. Paxton alleged the practices could empower foreign nationals to hide their identities while making political contributions, potentially in violation of state law.
Under Sterns logic, no Republican could ever sue ActBlue for breaking the law because they ran against Democrats using the platform to raise money.
SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk a trillionaire. Maybe he could give me a million to run an anti-Social justice Warrior center here in Austin…
“Basic Health Fixes Doctors Know Work But Can’t Make Money From.” I do own dogs and cook at home for all but one meal a week, but only do strength training once a week.
“How Japan Finally Made It Impossible to Make Babies.” Women in the workforce + culture of overwork + high Tokyo prices = shrinking population. And the rest of the west faces similar (if less currently less severe) demographic problems.
