I was struck with this post by Penny Arcade’s Tyco, AKA Jerry Holkins.
I don’t understand why I thought that more information would be better. I think it’s just because I like information. To be fair, though, I couldn’t have imagined what it would actually look like. Coming from a religious environment of High Control I imagined that shattering that status would necessarily have a liberatory payload, as it had for me. I try not to feel too bad. In the prescient Neuromancer, William Gibson could imagine a digital world parallel to our own, one in which you could be functionally embodied, live, and die, but couldn’t imagine that something could be wireless. And he’s way smarter than me.
Because I’ve been sick, and spending an inordinate time in fever spikes until the Advil kicks in, I’ve had the “opportunity” to spend a lot of time in bed on TikTok. I don’t think it’s possible to understand your children at all if you don’t have some knowledge of it. Cultural shift is in some ways a function of baud rate, which has never been higher, if you’re wondering why you feel old at twenty-eight. Noone has ever lived like this and it’s not clear that they should.
TikTok is a litter box of misinformation; even the clean litter is made questionable simply as a fact of its adjacency. Here are just a few of the notions I’ve been presented with the last couple days, and not just once, but multiple times:
– There is conclusive proof that interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is a spacecraft
– There are modern instances of human parthenogenesis, or “virgin birth”
– Pranks where young women generate photorealistic images of men entering their dorms and houses and send them to their parents asking “what should I do”
– It is safe for orangutans and other wilderness beasts to jump on backyard trampolines, and they do so frequently
– Model-generated content of virtually every stripe that would would fool a hundred percent of anyone even five seconds older than me
The amount of AI material on TikTok broadly is just insane, the most obvious examples of which are Jesus Christ bedeviled by… well, the Devil, coupled with a suggestion to like and subscribe to help “our savior.” I’m not a hundred percent sure it works like that. But AI is often just grabbing other people’s videos and altering them slightly and then posting them to accounts whose names look like the kind of password a password manager would automagically generate. The idea I think is that you simply have to be more human to stand out and defeat these machines, like John Henry. Maybe that would make sense in a world not governed by algorithmic feeds, where people chose what they were watching, but we often don’t. Also, John Henry dies at the end of that story.
Gen X is the equivalent of pre-war steel. I’m not implying a particular moral valence, or establishing a hierarchy of moral purity; the thing that largely defines my cadre is that we’ve always resisted the term anyway. We are as subject to propaganda as any human being; we take plus two from flank attacks like everybody else. But having a formed identity prior to the ambient radiation of social media is like having been administered a vaccine they don’t make anymore. Because they can’t.
Bold added.
All worth thinking about, but it’s the last that hits hardest. In the first huge burst of the Internet in the mid-1990s, early adopters talked about “drinking from the firehose” as the torrent of information and connectivity it provided. And that was mostly text-based information.
Today’s Gen Alpha kids live in that firehose.
Every generation changes based on the most powerful information and communication mediums of their day, as Baby Boomers weened on TV, telephones and rock and roll can attest. But it’s not just the content, it’s the speed with which this unstoppable Mississippi of information is being poured into youthful heads. A few years ago, back when I could occasionally afford having a maid come over to clean my house before July 4th or New Year’s Eve, one of them brought their young daughter with them. While their mother cleaned, she sat there endlessly scrolling Tik-Tok videos, one after another in quick succession.
I remember when someone wrote it was impossible to completely scan cable TV stations for something to watch, and started out by saying “Assuming you spend 4 seconds on each channel,” and I went “Who the hell spends that much time? I can do that in a second or less per station.” I suspect saying kids doom-scrolling Tik-Tok videos spend a second or less on each one probably dramatically understates how quickly they scroll past anything that fails to engage their mayfly gaze. Remember when critics said MTV would destroy attention spans? Today’s kids probably regard four minutes to wait for the next video as an excruciating, Masterpiece Theater level of slowness.
If you dropped today’s teenagers into the wilderness with maps and compasses, could they find their way out or would they be helpless without their smart phones to guide them? Can they apply critical thinking skills, or is the first answer ChatGPT hands them always the “right” answer in their minds?
Of course I also remember when some evangelicals claimed Dungeons & Dragons would turn you into Satan worshipers. Didn’t seem to happen to my generation, but now there are actual Satanic tranny death cults, so maybe somebody owes the shade of Jack Chick an apology.
And all this rewiring of children’s brains was already happening before the arrival of widespread commercial AI. And that Pandora’s Box is bringing with a whole host of unforeseen problems, including chatbots allegedly pushing teens to commit suicide.
In science fiction of the 1980s and 90s, AIs were a key component of a theorized technological singularity. Simply put, the singularity is the point in human history in which technological innovation goes vertical, beyond which the outcome is impossible to predict. World Wars I and II were both singularity events, in which human history would be forever altered and for which no one could foresee the new shape of the world before the event.
I’m pretty sure we’re in the midst of such a singularity right now.
We thought AI was going to do things like achieve engineering breakthroughs and create more nutritious crops with which to feed the world. Instead AI hallucinations seem to be creating new ways to lie to people, with more weirdly elaborate lies than ever before, like the guy who ChatGPT convinced had discovered a new breakthrough in physics, but it was all delusional crap.
The joke is a company announcing “We can finally create the Torment Nexus from the classic science fiction novel Don’t Create the Torment Nexus.”
But it seems that the combination of social media plus AI is creating vast warrens of individual Torment Nexi rabbit holes. And AI coming of age at the same time that the woke mind virus was was running rampant made everything immeasurably worse.
No one set out to create the Torment Nexus, it just popped out as an emergent property of cramming all human knowledge into Tessier-Ashpool’s white hot data cores. It used to be that the road to Hell was paved with good intentions, but now we’re told that the road to Heaven just naturally passes through the Torment Nexus. Just ignore the stinging radioactive flames as you make your way to paradise.
It just turns out that the Torment Nexus is the singularity’s default setting.
New details emerged in an exclusive report from Blaze News, citing sources within the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. intelligence community, who revealed that these SIM farms had been operational for more than a year and were operated by China’s Ministry of State Security.
“This is something that is a direct threat to our nation right now,” a top intelligence official told Blaze News. “A direct threat to our nation, and it needs to be shut down today — like ASAP. Only five of them have been taken down so far.”
The Blaze’s report continues:
The SIM networks were put in place and are managed by China’s Ministry of State Security, an ultra-secretive, massive espionage agency that has grown in prominence and global activity in recent years, according to the journal China Leadership Monitor.
The MSS employs more than 800,000 people, nearly double the Soviet KGB at its peak. The MSS “now operates worldwide at a scale and tempo not seen in decades,” China Leadership Monitor wrote in a recent newsletter.
Several officials who spoke with Blaze News anonymously said the establishment and use of this destructive network by China should be considered an act of war. The potential threat to America would be “second only to thermonuclear war,” one source said.
“It’s absolutely an act of war — an internationally recognized act of war,” one intelligence expert told Blaze News. “Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure is, and facilitating terrorism to the point where you’re trying to kill high-ranking members of the United States government. Those two alone are acts of war.”
. . .
“These things were being used all summer to SWAT people since Trump was elected,” said one source, speaking anonymously because the source is not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. “Swatting — that’s a terrorist act. The Trump administration declared that a terrorist act.”
While the Chinese facilitated the SWAT raids, it is believed that Americans who are familiar with the system — either through a government or a criminal enterprise — are initiating the hoax calls, the source said.
If Americans are indeed working with a foreign power to commit terrorist acts against American citizens, that opens a whole host of legal and national security tools to go after domestic terror networks.
The swatting of a senior Secret Service official and some Secret Service protectees last spring led to the investigation that discovered the Chinese SIM farms in the Tri-State area, the Secret Service confirmed to Blaze News. A Secret Service engineer assigned to the investigation was key to discovering the SIM network.
An intelligence analyst told Blaze News that:
What’s shocking is that there may be up to 100 or more of these sites everywhere. There’s probably 60, 80, 100 of these in the United States.
The discovery of weaponized SIM farm nodes by China should not come as a surprise. This is because the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing irregular warfare campaign against the U.S. has been supercharged over the years, especially in the era of Trump.
If theses SIM farms are active, there should be ways for telecomms to algorithmically search for mobile call hotspots where too many calls issue from too small an area. Let’s hope they’re doing that and working with various U.S. three letter agencies to shut them down right now.
How many other instances of Chinese infrastructure attack centers currently lie in wait to attack the U.S.?
This is an interesting video of a Miltech conference in Ukraine, which includes a lot of the drones we’ve talked about here, as well as some things we haven’t seen yet.
There’s a wide range of people interviewed here:
“We’re back in Lviv at the second Ukrainian Defense Tech Valley Summit.”
“Judging by this massive unmanned submarine, Ukraine’s defense tech has grown a lot.”
One thing shown is the “RATEL-M logistical case evac UGV,” a remote controlled ground vehicle for logistics and casualty evacuation.
A Fire Point rep talks about the FP-1, “the most used Ukraine deep strike drone by amount and by effectiveness as well. FP-1 is responsible for around 60-65% of the deep strike missions that are currently happening on the front line, and it’s also the cheapest one.”
She also shows off a miniature copy of the Flamingo cruise missile so much in the news this year. “This is our way to deliver big payloads on even deeper distances in a very asymmetric way in returns of price to effectiveness, because this missile costs less than $1 million and is the biggest in the world by payload capacity, and by the distance.”
Ukrainian solder attending the conference: “I believe it’s the good platform to find industrial and manufacturers who create the best products that servicemen like me and my fellow brothers in arms can use on the battlefield.”
“It’s the second edition of defense tech by Brave 1. We had the first one in October 2024. This time we are four times bigger. We have representatives from more than 50 countries. More than 200 companies represent their solutions and we also have more than 300 investors from many countries around the globe.”
“More than $100 million to be invested in the Ukrainian defense ecosystem.”
“One of the brave one ecosystem companies, they raised $16 million in private investment from US and European investors.” Last conference the largest investment was $2.9 million.
STARK UK (not the Tony kind) rep: “We’re a German company with a Ukraine arm. So, we do all our operational testing and R&D in Ukraine. But we also bring the benefits of those systems back to the UK, back to Germany, to the European NATO market.”
“Roma dreamed of taking out one tank, at least one. Now he has personally destroyed 500 enemy vehicles.”
“Our mission is to bring international capital into Ukraine’s domestic defense industry, to get the Russians out and to help integrate Ukraine into Europe’s security architecture.”
There’s some coverage of United24, the Ukrainian initiative whose YouTube channel this is on.
There’s some talk about AI controlled air defense turrets called Sky Sentinel, with prototypes of the system on display. “We’re trying to get multiple ones of these all across cities.”
“Only in Ukraine do you have almost no distance between the technologist, the factory and the war fighter. So the feedback loop is continuous. There’s no Pentagon separating them. There’s no MOD separating them.”
The video provides a glimpse of a Ukrainian defense industry operating under tech startup rules: Move fast, break things, and rapidly iterate through quick prototypes. While that’s probably not the right approach to build, say, a stealth bomber or an aircraft carrier, it’s probably much better for quickly deploying new technology to the field in response to enemy action.
The U.S. Department of Defense weapon procurement system operates more like the IBM of old: Methodical, through, bureaucratic and slow. For the newly rechristened U.S. Department of War to win future wars, we’re going to need less IBM and more tech startup speed to defeat our foes.
Welcome to day three of the Schumer Shutdown! January 6 was an entirely Fed operation, Hegseth reads the brass the riot act, the Trump Administration claws back some taxpayer dollars, Ukraine hits more Russian oil refineries, Tricolor’s numerous scams, a couple of hacking attacks, Fiddy gets 50, and a Beatles demo tape leads to lunch with Sir Paul.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The “FBI disclosed to Congress that there were 275 ‘plain clothes’ agents interspersed with the crowd that gathered at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” So it was a Fed operation top to bottom. And, of course, they lied about it to congress. I guess calling “Operation MAGA Entrapment” would have been too obvious…
There are some familiar names in this Jason Curtis Anderson list of organizations setting America on fire, but a few new ones as well.
If I were investigating the organizations who are setting America on fire, I’d start here:
Foundations:
1. Open Societies 2. Tides 3. The Neville Roy Singham funds
-Community Justice Exchange -Unity & Justice Fund -Peoples Support Foundation -United Community Fund -Arc of…
-The People’s Forum
-Party for Socialism & Liberation
-Answer Coaliton
-Code Pink
-Tricontinental Institute
-Breakthrough News
-International People’s Assembly
-Venceremos Brigade
2. PAL Action
3. Palestinian Youth Movement
4. Within Our Lifetime
5. Stop Cop City
6. Samidoun (still no arrests)
7. SJP
8. National Lawyers Guild
9. DSA (planning to disrupt military supply chain)
10. AROC (blocks ports)
11. Alliance for Global Justice
12. Dissenters
13. Indivisible
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of the nation’s top military leaders in Quantico, Virginia Tuesday morning to lay out his vision for restoring the military’s “warrior ethos” by rolling back the left-wing indoctrination that’s taken hold at the Pentagon in recent years.
Warning the assembled generals to “do the honorable thing and resign” if they rejected his message, Hegseth called out the leaders for allowing physical fitness standards to slide while diverting valuable time and resources towards politically fashionable causes related to race, gender, and the environment.
“No more identity months, DEI offices, no more dudes in dresses,” Hegseth said. “No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. We are DONE with that sh**.”
The secretary announced that female physical fitness standards will be eliminated from combat roles, reiterating a directive that was first issued in March.
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men,” the Pentagon chief said.
All soldiers in combat roles, regardless of gender, must now meet the male physical fitness standards, Hegseth said, “because this job is life or death.”
“Each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS, for every combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only,” Hegseth said.
Basic physical fitness standards will also be applied to the highest ranking officers.
“It’s unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon, and leading all around the world. It’s a bad look, and it’s not who we are!” Hegseth said. “You need to meet the height and weight standards.”
“Today, at my direction, every member of the Joint Force at every rank is required to take the PT test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year. EVERY year of service.”
Summary: ““The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things.”
Analysis: True.
At least the shutdown did give us this:
President Trump is trolling Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries over their obsession with giving free healthcare to criminal aliens
One story that broke a bit late to include in last week’s LinkSwarm is the Des Moines school district superintendent who turned out to be an illegal alien with a deportation order. With further digging, it seems that Guyana-born Ian Roberts lied about pretty much his entire list of academic accomplishments.
So, he went to St. John’s with his student visa, but got his EdD from an online university no one has heard of and has a plethora of other universities listed without degrees attached.
In addition to this largely inflated and apparently fabricated professional record, Powell notes that there are some dubious awards Roberts claims which are unverifiable as well as claims to police and military service which are hard to confirm.
So who hired him? Would you believe board chair Jackie Norris, former Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama?
More: “Head of Iowa school district arrested for avoiding deportation, found with handgun after chase.”
In a 6-3 vote last Friday, the United States Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to withhold nearly $4 billion in foreign aid funds appropriated by Congress.
The ruling by the conservative majority of the court permits the White House to withhold the funds through a pocket rescission under the Impoundment Control Act.
The move also permanently stays a lower court’s order by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali who had ruled that the administration’s freezing of the funds was likely illegal and that Congress would have to approve the decision to withhold the funding.
The lower court ruling had been temporarily blocked by Chief Justice John Roberts on Sept. 9 after a federal appeals court had declined to put Ali’s ruling on hold.
A tweet from the Department of State celebrated the ruling as a win for the president’s America First foreign policy and for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and lauded the administration’s efforts to rein in what it called, “wasteful, woke, and weaponized foreign assistance and international organization spending.”
Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought announced that nearly “nearly $8 billion in funding for climate-related projects, which he labeled as ‘Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,’ is being canceled.”
So Keir Starmer, the man who refuses to stop importing unassimilated Muslim illegal aliens into the UK, now says they can only solve the illegal alien problem by imposing a mandatory digital ID on all citizens, without which they will not be permitted to work. “The government said the digital ID would be held on people’s mobile phones and become a mandatory part of the checks employers have to make when hiring staff. Over time, it would also be used to provide access to services such as childcare, welfare and access to tax records.”
So the Syrian immigrant who shot up a Manchester synagogue was named Jihad Al-Shamie. You put that in a novel and your editor would reject it as being too on-the-nose. (Hat tip: Stphen Green at Instapundit.)
Would-be Brett Kavanaugh assassin Nicholas Roske sentenced to eight years in prison. Prosecution asked for 30.
“ICE sting at Dallas strip club nabs 41 illegal aliens, rescues sex-trafficking victims.” “ICE busted into the Chicas Bonitas Cabaret and discovered that a tip they received was correct: Illegal aliens were sex trafficking girls to dance at this strip club. Out of 41 illegal aliens, 29 illegally worked at the club. Five were previously convicted criminals.”
“Plano Private School Teacher Gets 20 Years for Sex Crimes Against Student. Jacob Allred pleaded guilty to sexually exploiting a 15-year-old girl at Great Lakes Academy, which specializes in students with learning disorders.”
Virginia Democrats are using the power of the legal system to protect a transgender sex offender from being prosecuted for his crimes. The policy is in line with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger’s views.
Democratic leaders in Fairfax County, the largest county in Virginia, have repeatedly refused to prosecute Richard Cox, a man who has allegedly regularly exposed himself to women and girls in the girls’ locker rooms at two high schools and a recreation center. Cox is being charged for his crimes in Arlington County, where a detective testified he had child pornography and a Fairfax County children’s swim class schedule on his phone.
Republican Jack Ciatterelli has brought the race to a dead heat between himself and Democrat Mikie Sherrill.
But that’s not all.
AFTER this poll was taken, more news broke about Sherrill’s less than stellar record at the United States Naval Academy.
“A cheating scandal in the Naval Academy prevented her from walking at graduation.” Evidently her friends cheated and she refused to testify against them.
“Tricolor Auto’s Failure Has It All – ESG, Woke Capital, Illegal Immigration, Securities Fraud, Government Diversity Programs, BlackRock, etc.”
Tricolor Auto Group, the nation’s seventh largest used car dealer (and 3rd biggest in Texas and California), just filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy – e.g. liquidation. Its target customer had been illegal aliens, and with President Trump deciding to start enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, there has suddenly been a major “market correction” in that market segment. Not only has the customer base largely evaporated, but so have loan repayments, which Tricolor also serviced.
The “tri colors” that the name references are the colors of the Mexican flag – red, white, and green.
While the sudden loss of customers and loan repayments was the catalyst that caused the final collapse of Tricolor, its failure has revealed so much more, including securities fraud, Wall Street ESG gimmickry, race-based federal programs, etc.
Tricolor has securitized more than $2 billion of its very high risk auto loans over the past seven years. The most recent issuance was in June of this year, with JP Morgan Chase and other money center banks peddling more than $200 million of “social bonds” to credulous investors. These securities are certified as “social bonds” by the US Treasury’s CDFI (“Community Development Financial Institution”) program because Tricolor focuses on selling its cars and financial services to underserved communities, specifically Spanish-speaking non-citizens. Tricolor’s CEO, Daniel Chu, was quoted by Barron’s in 2022 as stating, “No one else is providing meaningful dollar credit to an illegal immigrant.”
As documented in this recent Barron’s article (“Tricolor Files for Bankruptcy, The Auto Lender Was Once an ESG Favorite,”) “Financial institutions until recently touted their social bond purchases as part of their commitment to ESG—or environmental, social and governance—principles. BlackRock took a $90 million stake in Tricolor in 2021 as part of its Impact Opportunities Fund focusing on businesses and projects owned, led by, or serving members of minority groups.” Of course BlackRock was involved.
You may recall that a major contributor to the financial crash of 2008 was Wall Street wizards packaging up a bunch of sub-prime mortgages, securitizing them, and then selling those “mortgage backed securities” to investors as something other than perfumed garbage. That is effectively what Tricolor has been doing with its auto loans, with the help of Wall Street.
In a Tricolor press release from March of this year titled “Tricolor Closes $328 Million Securitization to Advance Financial Inclusion at Scale in Underserved Communities,” CEO Chu stated, ”By providing deserving people with access to reliable, affordable transportation, Tricolor, which operates across six states and ranks as the third largest used auto retailer in Texas and California, helps move them into the financial mainstream and reverse systemic financial inequities in America.” Like the other securities issuance I referenced, JP Morgan Chase also promoted these odious securities, along with Barclay’s and Fifth Third Bank.
Per Car Dealership Guy, Tricolor’s bonds have collapsed to a value of 12 cents on the dollar, virtually wiping out the investors who bought those bonds. But as bad as this all sounds so far, it’s actually worse. There was massive fraud by Tricolor, which is causing losses to all parties who did business with it.
The banks who were packaging Tricolor’s securities also had lines of credit extended to Tricolor. There was a recent regulatory filing by Fifth Third Bank revealing that it was booking a $200 million impairment (loss) for fraud involving one of its customers. In this filing, Fifth Third disclosed that there was “recently discovered alleged external fraudulent activity at a commercial borrower,” and that it “is working with the appropriate law enforcement authorities in connection with this matter.” Barron’s confirmed that this commercial borrower was Tricolor. JP Morgan Chase also has about $200 million in loans outstanding to Tricolor, so it too will almost certainly be booking a massive impairment charge for this unrecoverable debt.
Some of the news reports about the Tricolor fraud state that collateral was “double pledged,” meaning that unbeknownst to the banks lending money to Tricolor, the collateral they thought was backing up their loans was also pledged to other banks.
Tricolor was also the servicer of its “buy here – pay here” loan portfolio, remitting collected payments to the banks who securitized their loans. From my experience dealing with fraud in this arena, it is quite likely that there was some level of kiting / ponzi scheme at work, and a constant inflow of new debt was necessary to keep servicing old debt that was not supported by actual assets.
Working in Tricolor’s favor to perpetuate the fraud was the aura of woke virtuosity that kept the money flowing in, which also helped shield Tricolor from appropriate due diligence by those same woke banks throwing money at it.
Working against Tricolor was President Trump’s immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security issued this press release earlier this week: “Over 2 million Illegal Aliens Out of the United States in Less than 250 days.”
Funny how, after the company’s disasterous social justice rebrand, Keir Starmer’s Labour government bailed out Jaguar/Range Rover to the tune of £1.5 billion after a hack attack, despite the company being owned by India-based Tata.
President Trump has had great success in driving down crime rates in various crime-ridden Democrat-controlled cities by deploying inter-agency task forces of various law enforcement officers (along with some National Guard). Texas Governor Greg Abbott is taking a page of Trump’s own playbook to launch a multi-agency task force to tackle repeat felons in Harris County.
“Most violent crimes in the Houston area are committed by repeat offenders,” said Abbott during a press conference at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) regional headquarters in Houston Wednesday. “Today we’re putting those criminals on notice: ‘We’re coming for you. We’re going to target you, arrest you, and put you where you belong, which is behind bars.’”
Abbott said the task force, which is beginning immediately, will involve swarming high-crime neighborhoods with DPS troopers and special agents, Texas Rangers, and Houston-area officers, with support from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and DPS aircraft. The collaborative efforts will focus on locating repeat offenders using available intelligence regarding gang activity and suspects with warrants.
While acknowledging that crime is down this year in Houston by about 22 percent, Abbott said that residents were still worried about public safety and there are still “far too many victims of crime in Harris County.”
Sydney Zuiker of Crime Stoppers of Houston said that at least 55 percent of violent crime in the city was committed by individuals with a criminal history.
“That’s not just a statistic,” said Zuiker. “It represents lives lost, families changed forever, and communities left to pick up the pieces.”
DPS Director Col. Freeman Martin noted that increased patrol presence has been proven to reduce crime significantly in the most at-risk communities, but added that the efforts to locate offenders would not be as visible to the public. Martin noted that law enforcement agencies often know who the repeat offenders are and will be working to check that those out on bond, parole, or probation are complying with the terms of their release.
President Donald Trump has increasingly focused on crime in urban areas in recent months and sent federal law enforcement agents to Chicago, Memphis, and Portland.
Abbott said there’s never been any threat requiring federal intervention in Texas.
“The president does know that I as governor, as well as our local law enforcement, that we are very committed to this,” said Abbott.
“Houston can be the model for public safety in America’s largest cities,” he added.
Although Houston Mayor John Whitmire did not attend the conference, Abbott said the two talk about public safety frequently and that city law enforcement would be participating in the task force.
Houston Police Officers’ Union Executive Director Ray Hunt noted that there is already significant cooperation between Houston police and DPS.
Hunt said repeat offenders are the “number one problem,” and cited the story of a suspect out on felony bond last year who is now facing a murder charge for a road rage shooting that killed Jadrian Edwards.
Earlier this year DHS announced the establishment of a new regional Homeland Security Task Force in Houston to address international cartel and gang activity and to coordinate efforts with multiple law enforcement agencies.
Release of violent offenders in Harris County has repeatedly drawn scrutiny from state lawmakers, who passed a package of bills cracking down on relaxed bail and judicial practices earlier this year. The bills further restrict the crimes for which suspects can receive a personal recognizance (PR) bond — requiring no cash payment — and require judges, rather than unelected magistrates, to set bonds for certain violent offenses.
State lawmakers also approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would give judges the discretion to deny bond for certain violent crimes if prosecutors provide sufficient evidence that the defendant would pose a threat to public safety. Voters must approve the amendment in the November 2025 election.
Remember, Houston is the city with some 900 accused murderers out on bond. Gov. Abbott’s task force is a welcome addition to crime fighting tools, but one that will probably prove inadequate to achieve more than modest gains.
I have snipped the piece a bit, but one name most conspicuously absent is that of Harris County’s Soros-backed district attorney Sean Teare. It is the soft-on-crime policies of Houston Democrats in general, and those of Teare and Democrat judges in specific, that have led them to allow repeat offenders to continually bond out and get back on the street to commit more crimes. The is of a piece with other Soros-backed, social justice Democrats in deep blue cities around the country. It will be of little use if Abbott’s new task force brings more repeat offenders into custody if far-left Democrat judges and DAs just bond them right back out on the street again.
Another problem Abbott’s task force faces is simply the sheer size of Houston. Geographically, Houston is nine times bigger than Washington D.C. (indeed, the entirety of D.C. would fit pretty much within the 610 loop in Houston, the innermost of three road loops around the largely circular city), and the crime hotspots are far more geographically dispersed. There’s a limit to how much additional law enforcement resources can cover.
Maybe the task force can put a dent in crime, but progress will be limited as long as social justice Democrats control Harris County.
I generally avoid stories that everyone else is talking about, but I thought it worth pointing out that one reason Chuck Schumer has sleepwalked into this extremely ill-advised (for Democrats) shutdown over extending ObamaCare subsidies for illegal aliens is that George Soros is backing it.
A left-wing activist group that received millions of dollars from the Soros family’s organization is spearheading a pressure campaign to push Democratic senators to vote against funding the government and force a partial shutdown.
Indivisible — the organization behind many of the recent “No Kings” protests and other demonstrations part of the so-called “resistance” against President Donald Trump — has embarked on a recent effort to goad Senate Democrats to not come to a bipartisan funding agreement with their Republican colleagues and the president. The group’s website currently hosts a form enabling people to easily contact their Democratic senators by phone, complete with a script of what to say. (RELATED: Democrats Reportedly Quietly Planning Luxury Getaway Escape To 5-Star Resort Despite Looming Government Shutdown)
The group’s non-tax-deductible entity, Indivisible Project, has received a total of $7.6 million in grants from the Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) over the past eight years, according to Indivisible’s website. OSF is a grantmaking network which left-wing billionaire George Soros founded in 1993 and his son, Alexander Soros, currently chairs.
Snip.
Senate Democrats led by embattled Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have thus far refused to support Republican-passed CRs that do not include a litany of left-wing policy proposals.
Snip.
After Schumer and nine other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus voted with Republicans to break the filibuster on the March spending bill, Indivisible publicly called for Schumer to step down as the caucus’ leader and even put together an event where people wrote retirement cards addressed to him.
Right after Schumer’s March decision to work with Republicans to keep the government open, Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on the record blasting him, fueling speculation she may challenge him in New York’s 2028 Senate election. A late March poll by left-leaning firm Data for Progress showed Ocasio-Cortez leading the longtime incumbent by nearly 20 points in a hypothetical matchup.
The House on Sept. 19 passed a GOP-backed clean CR to fund the government through Nov. 21 — with the support of only one Democrat. However, it fell well short of the 60 required votes to bypass a filibuster in the Senate on the same day.
Meanwhile, the Senate rejected a Schumer-backed counter-proposal along party lines, also on Sept. 19. This Democratic-backed CR would have reversed about $1 trillion in cost savings of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA), nixed language preventing illegal immigrants from receiving healthcare subsidies and undid the OBBA’s new Medicaid work requirements.
So Democrats are shutting down the federal government because Soros money wants them to, becaause one of the hills they’re willing to die on is taxpayer subsidies for illegal aliens, and because Schumer is scared of being primaried by AOC…in 2028.
While the violent lunatics of Transtifa will probably continue to attempt murder against ordinary people for the crime of pointing out the obvious truth that there are only two biological sexes, signs of the successful rollback of the transsexual madness the social justice Democrats tried to impose on America are readily apparent elsewhere.
One tranny legal case making its way to the Supreme Court is Foote v. Ludlow.
The October Term is about to begin at the U.S. Supreme Court, and another secret social transitioning case is waiting on its doorstep. Over a dozen civil-rights advocates have urged the Justices to grant review—and finally stop schools from “transing” children behind their parents’ backs.
The case is Foote v. Ludlow, the first of many secret social-transitioning lawsuits we’ve covered from the beginning at Legal Insurrection…
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court decided parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri had no right to be told when their 11-year old daughter “socially transitioned” to another sex in school. The school’s non-disclosure policy, the First Circuit court held, was necessary to promote a “safe and inclusive” environment for all of its students.
The parents brought their original lawsuit against the Ludlow, Massachusetts, school committee in 2022 after they learned from one of its teachers that their child had secretly become “genderqueer.”
If not for that one brave teacher—later fired for coming forward—according to the court filings, the parents might never have known: Under the school’s policy, when a student asks to be called by a new name and pronouns of a different sex, staff members must keep it a secret from the parents, unless they have the student’s consent.
Over the summer, the parents petitioned the Court to review the appellate court’s decision denying their right to be informed when their child “transitions” sex at school.
This is not the first time the Court has been asked to wade into the conflict over secret social transitioning in schools. Last year, in a 6-3 decision, it declined a parents’ petition to review a similar case involving a Wisconsin school’s gender identity plan. Justice Alito dissented, noting that the case presented a question “of great and growing national importance.”
Sixteen “friends of the court” have now filed amicus briefs in support of the parents. Together, they argue that this time, the Court should act.
We previously covered Foote v. Ludlow here. When liberals religiously chant “Protect Trans Children!”, what they actually mean is “Social justice teachers have the right to secretly turn your children gay or trans and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Every parent in America should be furious at that idea, and if the Supreme Court takes the case, I think it’s a near certainty they rule for parents rather than groomers.
Riley Gaines lawsuit against the NCAA for letting men compete against women in college athletics continues to advance.
The NCAA has a “Grand Alliance” with the Department of Defense to study concussions among “more than 53,000 student athletes and service academy cadets & midshipmen.”
That relationship could knock the student athletics nonprofit into a far-reaching settlement with female athletes who claim it’s bound by Title IX via the DoD and committed sex discrimination against them by letting males compete in their sports on the basis of gender identity.
A federal judge refused to wholly dismiss the lawsuit against the NCAA by 19 current and former collegiate athletes led by former University of Kentucky swimmer and women’s sports activist Riley Gaines, complementing the Trump administration’s use of federal funding obligations to ram through its higher education agenda without Congress.
A Department of Education attorney in the first Trump administration credited the Biden administration with giving President Trump’s second term vastly more regulatory runway than it has wielded in its first eight months, warning colleges of much bigger threats.
Harvard’s new “heightened cash monitoring status,” which requires the Ivy Leaguer to pay federal student aid out of its own pockets before drawing funds from the government, shows federal student loan eligibility could be the next “shoe to drop,” consultant Jonathan Helwink wrote in Inside Higher Ed.
In its haste to take down for-profit colleges, the prior administration enabled its successor to “come out swinging against traditional public and private institutions” using the same “regulatory overreach,” he wrote. Few colleges can withstand a costly fight when the feds have successfully shuttered colleges “based upon far weaker versions of the current regulations.”
Snip.
In the case led by Gaines, U.S. District Judge Tiffany Johnson ordered the NCAA to respond to the plaintiffs’ Title IX claims by Oct. 9, to be followed by 90 days of “limited discovery” to determine whether the NCAA is a “recipient” of federal money under Title IX through the DoD partnership.
The 19 female athletes – including San Jose State University women’s volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser, allegedly targeted for injury by her male teammate Blaire [i.e. Brayden] Fleming – “actually allege a clearer connection between the NCAA and the DoD money” than do precedents upon which the plaintiffs relied, the President Biden nominee said.
The Supreme Court distinguished between commercial airlines and airport operators as entities that “indirectly benefit” versus “indirectly receive assistance,” respectively, insulating the former from federal disability obligations.
Under that logic, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals greenlit Title IX claims against the NCAA by a graduate student barred from competition, because she sufficiently alleged it “effectively controlled” two federally funded youth sports organizations made up of NCAA employees and members, which NCAA itself touted as its “best kept secrets.”
Legal discovery is typically followed by settlement talks, and the female athletes’ lawyer, William Bock — a regulatory heavy-hitter also representing them at SCOTUS in support of Idaho’s ban on males in female competition — told Fox News the NCAA would have to agree to a legally enforceable ban on its transgender policy to avoid trial.
While the NCAA insists the lawsuit is moot because its current policy “aligns” with Trump’s “order” – singular – Bock said the “only way” his clients would settle is through a consent decree preventing NCAA from resurrecting them in the event Trump’s two executive orders against gender identity and males in female sports were rescinded.
Even a consent decree is the “priority,” not necessarily the only condition for settlement, Bock emphasized. Gaines and the others are also seeking mandatory sex testing to stop repeats of male athletes competing against females since the NCAA rule change, as happened at Swarthmore and Ithaca College.
The NCAA didn’t argue against the legal standing of the female athletes for “retrospective damages” covering the years 2022 to early 2025, when NCAA policy explicitly let males who identify as women compete against females, so Judge Johnson analyzed the merits.
The Texas Tech University (TTU) System has issued a memorandum directing its schools to be in compliance with state and federal law regarding the recognition of only two human sexes — male and female.
The letter, issued by Chancellor Tedd L. Mitchell on September 25 to the five presidents in the university system, cites three different sources for its directive: House Bill (HB) 229, which was passed during the 89th Legislative Session; a letter from Gov. Greg Abbott; and a President Donald Trump executive order, each of which recognize only male and female as the distinguishable biological sexes.
HB 229 lays out definitions for “sex” as well as “boy,” “father,” “female,” “girl,” “male,” and “mother.” Abbott’s letter similarly directs state agencies in Texas to ensure they are in compliance with “the biological reality that there are only two sexes — male and female.” Both of these came after Trump’s executive order that sought to “defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
“Therefore,” the TTU System letter states, “while recognizing the First Amendment rights of employees in their personal capacity, faculty must comply with these laws in the instruction of students, within the course and scope of their employment.”
Mitchell adds that while some within the university system “may hold differing personal views on these matters … in your role as a state employee, compliance with the law is required, and I trust in your professionalism to carry out these responsibilities in a manner that reflects well on our universities.”
The memo comes after Angelo State University, one school in the TTU System, issued rules changes to faculty and staff on September 19 that made similar directives regarding biological sex. The information sent to Angelo State University personnel, first obtained by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, also includes rules prohibiting preferred pronouns and removing “safe-space” designations.
The hard left, from Planned Parenthood to the ACLU, are all in on turning your children gay and trans. Yet this is another issue where some 85% of normal Americans stand with Republicans and against the radical transsexual social justice groomer gangs of the left. State by state, and lawsuit by lawsuit, transsexual madness is finally being rolled back.
It seems that Moscow’s main accomplishment in launching their illegal war of territorial aggression in Ukraine is to unite just about all of Europe against it. Now Moldova, another European country that has occupying Russian forces in it, has again voted decisively for the EU and against Moscow.
The pro-European party of Moldovan President Maia Sandu has claimed victory and a new majority in parliament in Sunday’s elections seen as critical for her country’s future path to the EU.
Sandu had warned of “massive Russian interference” after voting, saying the future of Moldova, flanked by Ukraine and Romania, was at stake.
Igor Grosu, the leader of Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) which secured about 50% of the vote, said Russia had thrown “everything it had” at the election.
Opposition leader Igor Dodon had claimed victory even before results came in and called for protests outside parliament in the capital Chisinau on Monday.
However, the win by PAS is emphatic: Monday’s protest was tiny and mostly attended by pensioners. And there is no sense at this point that they have any momentum.
With 99.9% of the 1.6 million votes counted, PAS had 50.17% of the vote – far ahead of the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc on 24.18%, Moldova’s central electoral commission said.
Turnout was 52%, higher than in recent years.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the result. “You made your choice clear: Europe. Democracy. Freedom,” she wrote on X on Monday.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk praised Sandu, saying she had “saved democracy” and “stopped Russia in its attempts to take control over the whole region. A good lesson for us all”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on social media: “These elections showed that Russia’s destabilising activity loses, while Moldova in Europe wins.”
Snip.
To form a government it will not need to rely on support from other parties, such as the Alternativa bloc or the populist Our Party.
In a measure of the tension surrounding the vote, bomb scares were reported at polling stations in Italy, Romania, Spain and the US.
Similar scares were reported in Moldova itself and three people were arrested on suspicion of plotting unrest the day after the vote. Grosu blamed criminal groups backed by Moscow for Sunday’s incidents and appealed for “patience and calm” to let the electoral process continue.
Moldova also has a pro-Russian breakaway enclave called Transnistria along its border with Ukraine, complete with a Russian military presence.
Residents in this sliver of land have Moldovan passports. Many are strongly pro-Moscow and Socialist party leader Igor Dodon said there had been “all sorts of harassment, stopping them from voting”.
Russia’s inability to achieve victory in its invasion of Ukraine may endanger its tiny puppet state in Moldova. The EU has previously been slow-rolling Moldova’s membership request for fear of angering Moscow, but the marked failure of Moscow to conquer Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin’s insistence on serial provocations to NATO members may have changed their thinking. A serious push by a modern military could likely roll up Transnistria in a matter of days, and there’s very little an overextended Russian military could do about it.
And there’s always the long-running possibility that Romania (a NATO member) and Moldova could merge. Normally NATO wouldn’t allow a country with a territorial dispute in, but, again, Putin’s many provocations may get that particular hesitation tossed to the wayside.
Russia’s weakness plus Putin managing to piss off both the EU and Trump may finally earn the greenlight to do away with this particular vestigial remains of Putin’s shattered dreams for a Greater Russia…
Again and again on the left, we’ve seen money supposedly earmarked for one cause diverted into other pockets, be it fraudulant ActBlue donations under fake names or directors using #BlackLivesMatter money to buy mansions. It turns out that not even funds earmarked for LightBringer McLegTingle are immune to this effect, as money meant to fund the Obama Presidential Library ended up in the pockets of anti-Isreal organizations.
Millions of dollars sent to Barack Obama’s foundation has ended up being donated to a progressive fund that supported anti-Israel groups, accused of setting up encampments at Ivy League universities, according to public documents.
Donations to the Obama Foundation, set up by the former president to build a 19-acre campus including a museum, athletic facility and fruit and vegetable gardens in Chicago, totaling $2 million were instead sent on to Tides Foundation in 2022 and 2023, according to its latest available federal tax filings.
The cash was earmarked to “support local organizations that are working to reduce violence in communities,” according to the nonprofit’s filings.
Tides Foundation — also funded by Democratic mega-donor George Soros — is a network that operates as a fiscal sponsor for groups that have not registered with the IRS as charities.
The third-party grant-making group is under scrutiny by the House Ways and Means Committee for handling donations for anti-Israel groups such as the Adalah Justice Project, Samidoun and the People’s Forum. Such groups helped set up pro-Palestinian demonstrations and college encampments after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel that left 1,200 Israelis dead.
Cold-blooded murder does seem to be the surest path to winning Tides Foundation favor.
After this story was published Friday, a spokeswoman for the Obama Foundation told The Post that the $2 million was granted to more than 50 organizations across the country to help reduce “surging summer violence” and provide “safe spaces” for young people.
And by “reduce” they mean “increase.” Pretty much everything Tides and Soros touched with the word “justice” in the title results in drastically increased crime.
“The Tides Center played an administrative role in the program by processing grants while Cities United [a nonprofit] managed the application process,” the spokeswoman said in an email. Grants ranged from $15,000 to $30,000 each over the two summers.
Tides has also handled donations for Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which sued the group in California Superior Court last year. It alleged “egregious mismanagement” of more than $33 million in its funds, according to court documents. That lawsuit is ongoing.
In addition to sending donations to Tides, the Obama Foundation has sent more than $3 million in 2022 and 2023 in grants to Gofundme.org for undisclosed “grassroots leaders to empower girls through education,” according to the group’s filings.
I’m just spitballing here, but when I read nebulous descriptions like that, it makes me guess that the money went to fund European vacations for the daughters of high ranking Democrats so they could see the Louvre.
Meanwhile, the foundation admitted it has so far spent more than $615 million building the Obama Presidential Center, which is scheduled to open in spring 2026, according to its website.
The group, which received just $129,320 in donations in 2022, spent more than $27 million on salaries.
Among the highest-paid board members are Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to President Obama and CEO of the foundation, who raked in more than $750,000 in compensation in 2023.
Nice work if you can get it. But that’s hardly all Jarrett is doing. According to Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge, “She joined the board of directors of Ariel Investments, 2U, Inc., Lyft, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Ralph Lauren Corporation, Sweetgreen, and is a member of the Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women advisory council.” That’s a whole lot of fingers in a whole lot of pots.
Robbin Cohen, executive vice president of the Obama Presidential Center, took in nearly $650,000 in 2023, according to the tax filings.
So it’s a slush fund for Obama cronies.
Cohen is a former president of the Pritzker Realty Group, founded by Penny Pritzker, a philanthropist who is also on the Obama Foundation board of directors. Pritzker, whose brother, JB Pritzker, is the governor of Illinois, does not draw a salary.
It’s a big club, and you’re not in it.
This sort of co-mingling of charitable fund (the Obama Foundation is a 501(c)(3)) with organizations dedicated to naked political activism (usually 501(c)(4), if they’re not some more exotic organizational beast) would usually be illegal if it weren’t being carried out by powerful Democrats. But the Department of Justice is finally starting to investigate the Tides Foundation thanks to Antifa’s assassination fetish. Maybe they should start investigating other areas where the Tides Foundation is breaking the law.
Some forensic audits of proctological intensity seem in order.
As former consultant Dr Amal Bose begins a prison sentence the tally of staff from Blackpool Victoria Hospital to have been jailed for criminal offences committed at work continues to rise.
Bose is the sixth staff member to have been jailed since police were called in to investigate allegations of neglect on the hospital’s stroke unit in 2018. The arrogant surgeon molested younger, female staff members on the cardiothorasic unit after he was promoted to be head of department.
The unit had a toxic culture – with Bose at the heart of it, Preston Crown Court heard. He attempted to pass off his predatory behaviour as ‘banter’ but his victims were left feeling helpless due to his seniority.
But troubles at the Whinney Road hospital run deeper with ongoing investigations into allegations of neglect, mistreatment, and possible corporate failings.
Last week, Lancashire Police confirmed the stroke unit is at the centre of a major investigation, Operation Bermuda…
…which is considering offences including corporate manslaughter, corporate ill-treatment, wilful neglect, and breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act.
The investigation comes after staff nurse Catherine Hudson and healthcare assistant Charlotte Wilmot were jailed for their roles in a neglect scandal. During a 2023 trial, Preston Crown Court heard how difficult patients would be sedated to give the staff an easier shift.
Hudson was jailed for seven years, while Wilmot was locked up for 32 months for their roles in the cruelty meted out on the ward.
Their trial heard that, in 2017 and 2018, there was “a culture of abuse” on the stroke unit, with staff able to help themselves to Zopiclone, a strong sedative, and other drugs for their own use or to drug patients. Some reportedly used the drugs to manage the effects of class A substances, the court heard.
Band 7 staff nurse Marek Grabianowski, 46, was also jailed for 14 months for conspiracy to steal prescription drugs and perverting the course of justice. Two colleagues were also handed non-custodial sentences.
While none of the patients connected to those convictions died, police enquiries have since uncovered additional disturbing concerns. In 2021, it also emerged that police were reviewing the deaths of eight other patients treated on the unit in 2018 as part of allegations of mistreatment and neglect. Those inquests remain outstanding.
Within days of being called in to investigate the unit – after a student nurse reported concerns over what she had seen on her placement – beloved grandmother Valerie Kneale died after being admitted to the stroke unit. As a result of the investigation, detectives discovered Mrs Kneale had been ‘forcefully sexually assaulted’ and died as a result of her injuries.
So a stroked-out grandmother was literally raped to death. Hell of a hospital you have there, NHS.
In February 2024, locum doctor Xowi Mwimbi was jailed for 12 months after he was convicted of punching a dementia patient in the face. Preston Crown Court heard how the doctor had been warned the patient’s condition could cause outbursts, but when he used a racist term, the doctor forced his head away and punched him.
The jury concluded that the doctor was not acting in self-defence and found him guilty of ill-treatment by a care worker. He was jailed for 12 months.
In May 2023, Hernando Puno, a healthcare worker on the stroke unit, was jailed for nine months after being convicted of five counts of sexual assault. Puno, of Onslow Road, Blackpool, was first warned about his behaviour in 2014, but his victim felt her complaint was not taken seriously.
In total, five women complained about the way the ‘jokey’ colleague touched and kissed them while they were at work. None of the convictions related to Valerie Kneale.
In March 2025, Dr Aloaye Foy-Yamah was banned from practicing for 12 months after a General Medical Council tribunal found he had raped a female colleague. The civil hearing heard Dr Foy-Yamah had been accused of raping a female colleague in December 2018. He has consistently denied committing any offence.
In a statement, Lancashire Police said they were unable to proceed with a prosecution due to ‘evidencial difficulties’ however the GMC hearing found ‘on the balance of probability’ – a lower standard of proof than is required in criminal cases. The case brought the profession into disrepute and Dr Foy-Yamah was banned from practicing.
Amal Bose, Xowi Mwimbi, Hernando Puno and Aloaye Foy-Yamah don’t exactly sound like they were born in Blackpool, do they?
Speaking after Bose was jailed, Maggie Oldham, Chief Executive at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, said: “Our thoughts remain with all those affected by the actions of Mr Bose, and we thank our staff for the bravery and courage they have shown throughout the police investigation and trial of Mr Bose.
Uh, Maggie, it sounds like you were the one who either hired these felons, or let them be hired under your supervision. Thoughts don’t cut it. Where does the buck stop?
Here’s Count Dankula commenting on the story, though much of this video is just him reading the story.
Thanks to NHS, British hospital patients are in the best of hands…
