Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Category

LinkSwarm For March 28, 2025

Friday, March 28th, 2025

More DOGE uncovered fraud, Trump yanks security clearances for a lot of swamp creatures, the Democratic Party goes all in on antisemitism, good luck getting an MRI in Canada, Warner Bros Discovery is considering a sale that’s absolutely loony, and a member of the Very, Very, Very Heavy Brigade takes on a Tesla.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • For all the talk of trump not allowing a peaceful transfer of power, it’s lefty Biden appointees who are thwarting democracy.

    On Friday, the Board of Directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace informed the group’s president, George Moose, that he was relieved of his duties. The same day, Moose’s replacement, Kenneth Jackson, arrived at the office for the congressionally funded nonprofit to assume his new role.

    There was one problem: Moose refused to go.

    A source intimately involved in the situation told The Daily Wire that Moose put the building on lockdown when Jackson and his team were en route. When they arrived, they were astonished to find that the doors were locked and they were unable to gain entry.

    “They treated us, quite frankly, like criminals,” a person who was with the group shared with The Daily Wire.

    Jackson encountered similar behavior on Monday. He was ultimately able to enter USIP with the help of the Metropolitan Police Department, and ordered all unauthorized personnel to leave — including Moose, who confirmed to The Daily Wire that he was escorted out by police.

    When Jackson and the rest of his group were finally able to get into the building, they found things in turmoil. The shades were drawn, with white noise playing when they arrived. USIP employees were using walkie talkies to communicate within the building, according to the person who was with Jackson. As of Tuesday, none of the phone systems in the building were working, nor were the elevators, and the internet was down, The Daily Wire has learned.

    “I’ve never seen something so broken,” the source familiar with the situation told The Daily Wire. Moose did not respond to inquiries into whether he and his colleagues tampered with these systems.

    Colin O’Brien, the chief security officer at USIP under Moose, told The Daily Wire on Tuesday evening that the systems likely were not working because the building had been placed on lockdown at Moose’s orders, meaning that all the systems would shut down. O’Brien and other employees were told to exit the building, and he said he hadn’t been in contact with anyone on Tuesday, though he believes he is still employed by USIP.

    O’Brien said that Moose ordered that members of DOGE were not to be admitted into the building, and that members of USIP were under the impression that there was an ongoing dispute with DOGE about who the leadership of the USIP was — “something that, in my understanding, was going to be litigated,” he said. He disputed the notion that DOGE had the authority to enter the building.

    This story, based on accounts from individuals who were on the scene as Jackson attempted to gain access to the organization he’d been put in charge of, shows how federally-funded bureaucrats worked to sabotage operations to stop the Trump administration from taking control.

    Moose, who allegedly “barricaded” himself in his office until police arrived, has told the media that members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) broke into the office without warning. But a review of events and internal emails show not only that USIP leadership blocked Moose’s replacement from entering the building, but that it was preparing to resist changes for weeks ahead of their arrival.

  • “Musk Reveals Shocking Cases Of Fraud Found At Small Business Administration.”

    Elon Musk, the world’s most successful businessman and President Donald Trump’s top White House adviser, said this week that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has uncovered shocking cases of fraud within the federal government.

    Musk made the remarks during a Monday meeting with the president and his cabinet secretaries.

    “One case of fraud was with the Small Business Administration, where they were handing out loans—$330 million worth of loans—to people under the age of 11,” Musk said. “I think the youngest, Kelly, was a 9-month-old who got a $100,000 loan.”

    “That’s a very precocious baby we’re talking about here,” Musk quipped.

    SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler followed up Musk’s remarks by saying, “We’re tackling the fraud, waste, and abuse at the agency.”

    “We’ve seen, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud go unprosecuted, so we’re taking that on,” she said. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for fraud, and we continue to crack down on it and make sure people are held accountable.”

    Trump said that they have found “far too much” fraud, waste, and abuse in the government over the last couple of months.

    “It’s pure fraud,” he said. “We like to use the words ‘waste’ and ‘abuse’ because they sort of sound good, but many of these things are pure fraud.”

  • Musk says we can cut one trillion dollars off the budget each year without touching Social Security. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • DeSantis works with Musk to return nearly $900 million to the federal government that the Biden administration was too inept and/or corrupt to accept.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said this week that the state was returning nearly $900 million to the federal government, something it tried to do repeatedly during the Biden administration.

    “For years, Florida has been trying to return federal funds to the federal government due to the ideological strings attached by the Biden Administration—but they couldn’t even figure out how to accept it,” DeSantis said in a post on X.

    The governor said that he met with Elon Musk on Friday and the rest of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team and was able to return the money.

    “We got this done in the same day,” DeSantis said. “Other states should follow Florida in supporting DOGE’s efforts!”

    The governor posted the letter that he sent to the U.S. Treasury Department alerting them that the state was formally returning $878,112,000.00 in taxpayer dollars to the federal government “as part of DOGE’s efforts.”

  • HUD Cracks Down on Government-Backed Mortgages for Illegal Immigrants.”

    The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on Wednesday that non-permanent residents will no longer be eligible for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgages, National Review has learned, part of a broader effort by the administration to ensure that American citizens are prioritized under taxpayer-funded housing programs following massive flow of illegal immigration under former President Joe Biden.

    FHA loans offer government-insured mortgages to ensure that lower-income individuals have access to home ownership. While illegal immigrants are technically ineligible to obtain FHA-backed home loans under U.S. law, HUD’s announcement will strengthen enforcement mechanisms to ensure that illegal immigrants are not abusing the program in the future. It is unclear how many illegal immigrants have obtained FHA-backed loans.

    “FHA does not retain citizenship or residency data from the loan application and therefore does not maintain information on the number of non-permanent residents who have received FHA-insured loans under past policies,” General Deputy Assistant Secretary for Housing Jeffrey D. Little wrote in a March 26 mortgagee letter shared exclusively with National Review. “This update ensures that FHA’s mortgage insurance programs are administered in accordance with Administration priorities while fulfilling its mission of providing access to homeownership.”

    The new policy will also prohibit government-backed mortgages for non-permanent residents moving forward. “Currently, non-permanent residents are subject to immigration laws that can affect their ability to remain legally in the country,” Little wrote in the March 26 memo. “This uncertainty poses a challenge for FHA as the ability to fulfill long-term financial obligations depends on stable residency and employment.”

    HUD’s revised residency requirements for FHA-backed loans, which take effect on May 25, will apply to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients as well as individuals who are pending asylum or pending refugee status, according to HUD, since there is no guarantee that their residency status will be renewed under the current administration.

    The new policy eliminates the “non-permanent resident” category entirely from the FHA’s Single Family Title I and Title II programs, and reverses a Biden-era policy which allows FHA loans for DACA recipients who provide a valid Social Security Number and work eligibility status.

    I wonder if these programs were abused for helping illegal aliens buy homes in Colony Ridge.

  • President Trump on Friday revoked the security clearances of more than 15 top Democrats – including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former VP Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Biden’s entire family. The list also includes former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, all of whom have been involved in legal cases against Trump, as well as clearances for former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger – so basically the entire ‘get Trump’ crew….

    Others named in the list are retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill, former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic Norman Eisen, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, and lawyer Mark Zaid.”

    Can anyone really say America is less safe because the people on that list no longer have access to classified information?

  • Though Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from most of the territory they captured in Kursk Oblast, they’ve made made a new incursion into Belgorod Oblast.
  • Ukrainian F-16s now hitting targets in Russia.
  • Millsap ISD Superintendent Ousted for Failing to Report Teachers’ Abuse of Autistic Student. Superintendent Edie Martin and two special education teachers were arrested in connection with the child abuse.”
  • Progress: “Maine caves to Trump; universities will keep men out of women’s sports.”
  • “Democrats Go All In On Killing Jews.”

    What the support for Mahmoud Khalil, Hasan Piker and Rasha Alawieh really shows.

    A few days after the anniversary of Oct 7, the New York Times reported that Columbia University Apartheid Divest officially endorsed terrorism against Jews and withdrew an apology by one of its members for threatening to kill Jews.

    Over the past weeks, the paper and the entire Democratic Party, including 103 members of Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Jewish Democratic Council of America led by Kamala’s former foreign policy advisor, went all in on fighting for Mahmoud Khalil, a leader in CUAD who had defended terrorism, from being deported.

    The signatories to a letter standing up for a Syrian national who had taken part in a pro-terrorist group’s harassment of Jewish students and faculty included half of House Democrats, not only extremists like AOC and Rep. Ilhan Omar, but Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking House Judiciary Democrat, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with multiple House Democrats of Jewish ancestry and those who represent large Jewish districts including Rep. Jerrold Nadler in New York, as well as Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Rep. Laura Friedman who holds down Sen. Adam Schiff’s old seat, in the LA area. The same Democrat politicians who had remained silent when Jewish students and faculty were being terrorized on campuses in their areas now rushed to the barricades for a member of a group that had openly celebrated the murder of Jews.

    Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a front group for the college’s suspended Students for Justice in Palestine chapter which reacted to the first anniversary of Oct 7 by promoting a statement from a Maoist publication, “October 7th was Not ‘Barbaric’ or ‘Unfortunate’—It was Strategic and Anti-imperialist” and hailed the “moral, military, and political victory of the Operation”. This is what the Democrats who condemn Trump’s proposed deportation of a CUAD leader as “authoritarian” now support. Not just terrorism: but the mass murder of Jews.

    Now, Democrats rallied once more in support of Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese Hezbollah supporter, traveling to America on a visa who was refused entry into the United States.

    According to Customs and Border Protection, Alawieh (pictured above) had deleted Hezbollah materials on her phone, attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and claimed that she followed Nasrallah’s teachings “from a religious perspective.”

    Hezbollah is not only responsible for the murder of Jews, but the barracks bombing in Beirut which killed 220 Marines, the kidnapping and brutal torture of Colonel William R. Higgins, who was castrated and skinned before his body was dumped near a mosque, and the vicious killing of Robert Stethem, a Navy diver, during an airline hijacking when, as a stewardess described, “They were jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must have had all his ribs broken… they put the mike up to his face so his screams could be heard by the outside world.”

    “A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security,” the Department of Homeland Security warned. Democrats fundamentally disagree with that position.

    Judge Leo Sorokin, a Clinton appointee, barred the Hezbollah supporter from being deported, and then demanded to know why she had not been allowed into the country. Instead of reporting that Rasha Alawieh had visited a terrorist group’s event responsible for the murder of hundreds of Americans, the media claimed she had been visiting her family in her country.

    Rep. Gabe Amo, along with other Dems, have stated that they intend to continue fighting for her

    Brown University, which employed Alawieh and is under investigation for antisemitism, responded by urging foreign employees like her not to travel abroad because of “travel bans, visa procedures and processing, re-entry requirements” they might conceivably run afoul of if they support terrorists and the mass murder of Americans and Jews.

    In the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz hyped Hasan Piker, a Muslim influencer on the video game streaming platform Twitch, as the best hope for the Democrats winning over “bros” and “young men” .Somewhere in the middle of the article, after mentioning his dog’s name and his support for ‘non-binary’ people, gets around to briefly mentioning his “soft-pedalling the brutality of Hamas, or the Houthis, or the Chinese Communist Party” and being named “Antisemite of the Year” as a minor detail before pivoting to a discussion about a possible Hasan reality show.

    And to Democrats today, such things are minor details, less important than anything else.

    Piker, has said, “it doesn’t matter if rapes f***ing happened on Oct. 7, like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much” while holding up his fingers slightly apart. “The Palestinian resistance is not perfect.” And he’s been featured on CNN, invited to the DNC, and Democrats, from Rep. Ro Khanna to AOC to Sen. Ed Markey appeared on his podcast. Buttigieg has been trying to get on. Expect most other Democrats aspiring to run in 2028 to do likewise.

  • A bad week for gambling interests in Texas.

    This week, the Texas Legislature took steps to strip power from the Texas Lottery Commission, possibly setting the agency up for abolition, and Las Vegas Sands’ casino plans suffered a setback in Irving at the hands of outraged citizens.

    On Monday, State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) laid out Senate Bill 1721 in the State Affairs Committee. It would transfer the administration of bingo games in Texas from the Lottery Commission to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

    Snip.

    When introducing his measure to ban lottery couriers operating in Texas, State Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewood) noted that on a hierarchy of administration complexity, bingo and lottery are at the bottom of the totem pole.

    During a September 2024 Sunset Commission hearing, State Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) noted that revenues to the state before and after the lottery was created remained flat. The state is not likely to lose money if the lottery goes away.

    At two separate hearings this week in Irving, citizens showed up in force to oppose a planning variance to build a casino. Ultimately, Sands asked the city council to pull the language allowing the construction of a casino from the development request.

    Sands currently operates no casinos in America and derives most of its revenue from China.

    The mess at the Lottery Commission probably deserves a separate post…

  • UFC fighter Conor McGregor announces run for President of Ireland.

    In his lengthy announcement post on social media, McGregor voiced his opposition to the European Union (EU) Migration Pact, which the bloc has mandated that Ireland must ratify by June 12th, 2026. The pact would relax Ireland’s border security and make it easier for illegal aliens to claim asylum.

    “Between now and 12 June 2026, several pieces of legislation have to be passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas and then signed by the President,” McGregor explained. “The next presidential election must take place by 11 [November] 2025.”

    “Who else will stand up to Government and oppose this bill? Any other Presidential candidate they attempt to put forward will be of no resistance to them. I will!” McGregor declared.

    He also said that, as president, he would pursue a nationwide referendum on the Migration Pact, allowing the people of Ireland to decide for themselves whether or not the country should be forced to abide by the deal.

  • So naturally, the government of Ireland is trying to put him in jail for seven years over old tweets.
  • Disturbing news: “Four Harris County Sheriff’s Deputies Committed Suicide in the Past Six Weeks.”
  • How Reagan speechwriter Tony Dolan (who died this month) helped defeat the Soviets.

    In celebrating the life of Tony Dolan, President Reagan’s chief speechwriter, the most remarkable fact is that he was executing a strategy he conceived to defeat the Soviet Union.

    In numerous conversations in the speechwriting office—long before any foreign policy experts dared to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact, and the Soviet Union itself, Tony said that he knew how to defeat the Soviets.

    As a young journalist in his hometown of Stamford, Connecticut, he had exposed organized crime that, he said, had entirely corrupted the city. Tony was relentless, ultimately breaking the mob’s power and becoming one of the youngest journalists to win the Pulitzer Prize. He said that the same method would bring down the Soviets, an entirely corrupt system, another form of organized crime. Tell the truth about them; expose them as evil; let everyone—especially those in power—hear them described as what they are. It was his conviction that President Reagan, by speaking with moral clarity about the Soviets, could hasten their collapse.

    In his essay How the United States Won the Cold War, Warren Norquist identifies the rhetorical moral battle, “demoralizing the Soviets and generating pressure for change,” as one of seven crucial components in the US victory over the USSR.

    Tony later wrote in the Wall Street Journal that for criminal regimes, there is “one weapon they fear more than military or economic sanction: the publicly-spoken truth about their moral absurdity, their ontological weakness.”

    Snip.

    The Reagan administration, internally, was a battlefield of competing visions that came to a head over presidential speeches. Once the president said something, it became the official policy—which made speechwriting a critical front in these internal struggles. The battle cry of conservatives in the administration was, “Let Reagan be Reagan.” In that struggle, Tony was unwavering. He would not wobble when West Wing power players tried to intimidate him. He was himself an exceptionally skilled political infighter—usually scheming, always charming, and with a spine of coiled steel.

    From the outset of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Tony helped to chisel out the rhetorical space in which the speechwriters could give voice to President Reagan’s resolve that the outcome of the Cold War would be, “We win, they lose.”

    And it was not only combative phrases. At times it was subversive speech, as in Reagan’s 1981 Univ. of Notre Dame speech drafted by Tony: “The West won’t contain communism; it will transcend communism. … it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.”

    Or his 1982 speech in London, the Westminster address, “… one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: of all the millions of refugees we’ve seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward, the Communist world. Today, on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east—to prevent their people from leaving. … What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy, which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.”

  • California announces it will need another seven billion dollars in taxpayer money not to build a high speed rail. But I’m sure all the consultant graft will be channeled into the proper left-wing pockets… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Canadian woman gets a referral from her doctor to get an MRI to see if she has a brain tumor. So now she has an appointment for one. In 2026.
  • Carole Stewart Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn (to use all the names she was known under), former Democratic mayor of Austin, Republican Railroad Commissioner and Comptroller of Texas, has died. In a way her career was emblematic of a certain kind of moderate politician in Texas at the time, with a huge realignment from the Democratic to the Republican Party, a change that started with John Connally, picked up speed with Phil Gramm and Rick Perry, and continues into this day with Hispanic office holders still switching over. Speaking of Perry, she was one of two prominent female Republican moderate officeholders (Kay Baily Hutchinson being the other) who destroyed their careers trying to unseat Perry from the Governor’s Mansion.
  • National Medal of Honor Museum opens in Arlington.
  • Ex-Professor Admits To Stealing Nearly $1 Million From Tarleton State University. Julie Howell used a university payment card for “personal expenditures, primarily related to gambling.” Tarleton State is part of the Texas A&M system, and is located in Stephenville, which is about 68 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
  • John Richardson has a handy roundup of gun bills before congress.
  • Is Warner Brothers Time Warner AOL-Time Warner WarnerMedia Warner Bros. Discovery putting Loony Tunes for sale? What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
  • George Foreman, RIP.
  • No more temporary paper license plates in Texas.
  • Guy who did the Vegas Tesla bomby/turns out to be a dirty Commie.
  • Annals of criminal genius: 5-foot-2, 449-pound drives his 4-wheeler into an Tesla. “Demarqeyun Marquize Cox was arrested after one of his alleged attacks was recorded by the Tesla he purposely ran into, police in Texarkana, Texas announced.” And yes, there’s video:

  • “I guess everybody just dies. And that’s how the new water flumes work.”
  • Democrats Estimate They Are Only One More Arson Away From Being Popular Again.”
  • Bill Burr’s Cycle Syncs Up With Rest Of The View Hosts.”

  • Snow White Beaten At Box Office By Middle School Recorder Recital.
  • “Disney Quietly Cancels Live-Action Pocahontas Starring Dylan Mulvaney.”
  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Paxton Gunning For Cornyn In 2026?

    Monday, March 24th, 2025

    Compared to most states, Texas has seen a very little recent change in office-holders elected statewide:

  • Republican John Cornyn has been a Senator since December 2, 2002.
  • Republican Ted Cruz has been a Senator since January 3, 2013.
  • Republican Greg Abbott has been Governor since January 20, 2015.
  • Republican Dan Patrick has likewise been Lieutenant Governor since January 20, 2015.
  • Republican Ken Paxton has been Attorney General since January 5, 2015.
  • Republican Glenn Hegar has been Comptroller of Public Accounts since January 2, 2015.
  • Republican Dawn Buckingham has only been Land Commissioner since January 10, 2023, since previous Land Commissioner George P. Bush unsuccessfully tried to primary Paxton for Attorney General in 2022.
  • Republican Sid Miller has been Agriculture Commissioner since January 2, 2015.
  • The Railroad Commission and statewide court races haven’t been quite as static. Republican Jim Wright managed to successfully primary Ryan Sitton for his Railroad Commission spot in 2020, and some retirements and federal appointments have resulted in a bit more change in the Texas Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals, but even there reelection has been the norm.

    This year, however, the logjam at the top of the ticket finally seems to be breaking up. Hegar is stepping down to become A&M system chancellor, with Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick running to succeed him as Comptroller, along with former state senator Don Huffines. And now Paxton is saying that he might run for Cornyn’s senate seat in 2026.

    Attorney General Ken Paxton is nearing a 2026 bid for U.S. Senate against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), depending on if he can obtain $20 million in fundraising commitments in the next couple of months.

    On a trip to Washington, D.C. during which he met with various parties, including the White House, Paxton interviewed with Punchbowl News to discuss the long-rumored 2026 bid.

    “I think I can win if I have $20 million. I’ve run these primaries in Texas before. I honestly don’t see how [Cornyn] overcomes his numbers,” he told Punchbowl.

    Public polling has been fairly scant on the matchup. The Texas Politics Project’s poll earlier this month put Paxton’s net approval rating at +51 percent among Republicans compared to Cornyn’s +28 percent.

    A Hobby School of Public Affairs poll from February showed both candidates registering around 70 percent among Republicans who said they’d “definitely consider” or “might consider” voting for them in the 2026 primary; 15 percent said they’d never vote for Cornyn in the primary, while 19 percent said that about Paxton.

    Paxton added, “I think it’s just time. He’s had his chance. He hasn’t performed well, and the voters know it. You can go a long time without people paying attention. And they’re paying attention now. If the numbers were the other way, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

    The coveted endorsement from President Donald Trump will be key in the race. Three years ago, Paxton eventually received Trump’s backing after the then-former president very much considered backing his primary challenger George P. Bush. Cornyn received Trump’s backing in 2020 when he dispatched Dwayne Stovall and the GOP primary field by a mile.

    Paxton has long cozied up to Trump, and has been among his most active allies in legal fights across the board. But Cornyn has increasingly appealed to Trump as the 2026 election gets closer, and he’s expected to have the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee with its deep pockets supplementing his own.

    There’s long been disgruntlement about Cornyn among movement conservatives who think he’s a squish on a wide range of issues, from the Second Amendment to limiting illegal immigration, though Cornyn seems to have repented of his previous record of playing footsie with “comprehensive immigration reform” (i.e. illegal alien amnesty). Despite those misgivings, Cornyn has consistently trounced underfunded primary challengers like Dwayne Stovall and Steve Stockman by comfortable margins.

    Paxton would be a different kettle of fish.

    With his record of suing both the Obama and Biden Administrations for their unconstitutional, radical left-wing policies, Paxton is much more popular with the Republican base than Cornyn. Also, with all his previous legal issues resolved and the dramatic failure of the Dade Phelan-led impeachment effort against him, Paxton is better positioned to run than ever. But, as the above list of long-tenured officials shows, successfully primarying a statewide Republican in Texas is an extremely difficult proposition. Cornyn has already said that he’s running for a fifth term, and he’ll still have all the advantages of incumbency, including juicy campaign contributions from a wide variety of business and special interest PACs.

    Another potential Cornyn primary challenger is U.S. Representative Wesley Hunt. Hunt is sufficiently conservative, but I don’t see him gaining much traction against two heavyweight opponents like Cornyn and Paxton, both of whom have already run multiple successful statewide campaigns.

    If Paxton runs, the 2026 senate race will be very interesting…

    LinkSwarm For March 21, 2025

    Friday, March 21st, 2025

    More DOGE revelations, more leftwing violence, more pervert school teachers arrested, Baltimore builds a ghost city, astronauts get rescued, DVDs rot, and a bunch of fierce togers with a gentle mom.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Hamas-linked CAIR was given over $7,200,000 in taxpayer money, and that money is unaccounted for.

    Muslim charity with links to Hamas was awarded more than $7.2 million in taxpayer cash, which has now disappeared, according to a watchdog group.

    An “immediate investigation” needs to be launched into The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) California chapter’s use of funds, according to the watchdog, who sent a complaint to the Department of Justice Thursday.

    According to the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based, non-partisan advocacy group, the money was given to the chapter to help re-settle impoverished immigrants in California between 2022 and 2024.

    In what appears to be a sleight of hand, the money – $7,217,968.44 — was sent to CAIR-Greater Los Angeles and not to CAIR-CA, which was the only group eligible to receive it, according to the complaint.

    The Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Muslim organization, which is not a registered non-profit and not eligible to handle charitable donations, received the entire pot of money according to the complaint, viewed by The Post.

    I think we all know where that money went: Leftwing pockets and murdering Jews.

  • Trump Signs Executive Order Dismantling Department of Education.”

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday shuttering the Department of Education, fulfilling a long-standing conservative wish to do away with the agency.

    Trump’s order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take the “necessary steps” to close the $268 billion agency and transfer its authority back to the states. The order does not immediately shutter the agency, and it will require programs and services to continue uninterrupted.

    “Everybody knows it’s right,” Trump said moments before signing the order, which he said was 45 years in the making. “We have to get our children educated.”

    The long-expected executive order will likely face significant legal challenges over whether Trump has the authority to dismantle the agency. Fully closing down the Department of Education will require congressional approval.

    Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, Republicans have sought to eliminate the Department of Education, created in 1979 under former President Jimmy Carter, for its role in promoting left-wing ideology and encroaching on state authority. The Education Department’s responsibilities primarily consist of allocating grant money, administering student loans, and enforcing federal civil rights laws

    Trump has long promised to terminate the agency and empower states to run their own education systems without federal interference. Shuttering the Education Department was a bullet point on the 2024 GOP platform.

    National Review seems to think Trump’s plan is more flawed than the previous Republican Presidential attempts to shutter the Department of Education by not doing a goddamn thing…

  • Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman explains exactly what the Department of Education does with your money.

    The Department of Education has a budget of about $280 billion dollars per year. Less than 25% goes to educating our students.

    It goes to a bureaucracy. It goes to a consultant. And that consultant then donates money back to the Democrats. And then it goes to a different consultant. And then it goes to an NGO. It is money laundering and money churning at its absolute best.

    It appears that the entire point of both the Biden and Obama Administrations was to turn the entirety of the federal government into a giant graft machine for the radical left.

  • “Paxton Opinion States District Courts Cannot Order Sex Changes on Government ID.” State district courts can no longer direct state agencies to change a person’s sex on government documents.”
  • “Trump Administration Pauses $175 Million in Funding to UPenn over Refusal to Bar Men from Women’s Sports.” Defunding will continue until sanity improves.
  • Victor Davis Hanson: The left knew they were lying to us.

    For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.

    Once it was known that the first COVID-19 case originated in or near a Chinese communist virology lab engineering gain-in-function deadly viruses—with help from Western agencies—the left went into full persecution mode.

    They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.

    A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak the truth about a lab origin of the deadly virus.

    The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.

    The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”

    Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.

    Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.

    Indeed, that was the point.

    Biden’s role was designed as a waxen figurine for hard-left agendas that, without the “old Joe Biden from Scranton” pseudo-moderate veneer, could never have been advanced.

    His handlers operated a nightmare administration: the destruction of deterrence abroad, two theater wars, 12 million illegal aliens, a weaponized justice system, hyperinflation, and $7 trillion more in debt.

    By 2017, the public knew three truths about the so-called Christopher Steele dossier.

    One, it was completely fallacious—fabricated by a has-been, ex-British spy Christopher Steele. He childishly had cobbled together lurid sex stories, James Bond spy fictions, and Russian-fed disinformation to destroy the Trump candidacy and later presidency.

    Two, it was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. She hid her checks behind the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GSP paywalls.

    Three, the FBI under James Comey hired Steele as an informant. It helped disseminate his concocted files and was also instrumental in trying to subvert the Trump campaign and later administration.

    No sane person ever believed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was the work of “Russian disinformation.” Its contents a year before the 2020 election were verified by the FBI, but it kept mum about its confirmation.

    The pornographic pictures, the evidence of prostitution and drug use, the electronic communications implicating Joe Biden in his family’s illicit shake-down operation of foreign governments—all were never challenged by anyone who was associated with the laptop’s contents.

    Yet future Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, along with former interim CIA Director Mike Morrell, sought to fabricate a colossal lie to arm their candidate, Joe Biden, with plausible denial in the last presidential debate before the 2020 election.

    They rounded up a rogue’s gallery of 51 now utterly discredited former intelligence authorities to lie to the nation that the laptop was likely fake.

    All knew the FBI had verified the laptop. But they also knew that their titles would empower their lies that the Russians likely invented the laptop to aid the sinister Trump.

  • Fort Worth Teacher Arrested for Online Solicitation of a Minor. Christopher Rhodes was placed on leave from Young Men’s Leadership Academy during the investigation.”
  • Austin Elementary Teacher Jailed for Possessing ‘Large Quantity’ of Child Sex Abuse Material. Carl Innmon taught sign language at Baranoff Elementary School in Austin ISD.”
  • The question of whether federal judges can review alien deportation orders under the Alien Enemy Act has already been decided in Ludecke v. Watkins. “The Alien Enemy Act precludes judicial review of the removal order.” Pp. 163-166. (Hat tip: Grim’s Hall.)
  • Sanity: ” New York’s Highest Court Blocks NYC Law Allowing Noncitizens to Vote. ‘Instead, it is plain from the language and restrictions contained in Article II that “citizen” is not meant as a floor, but as a condition of voter eligibility.'”
  • You may not have heard in another packed news week, but once again Recep Tayyip Erdogan is doing Erdogan things in Turkey.

    Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s mayor and a high-profile member of the opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was arrested along with dozens of others Wednesday, state-run media reported, in what critics said was a significant escalation of the government’s crackdown on dissent.
    Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

    The chief public prosecutor’s office ordered the arrest of about 100 people Wednesday, saying Imamoglu and others faced allegations including membership in criminal organization, bribery, aggravated fraud and unlawful acquisition of personal data. More than 80 people had been detained so far, according to local media reports.

    Imamoglu, a popular politician and member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, became mayor of Turkey’s largest city in 2019 and won reelection last year in high-profile races where he defeated candidates from Erdogan’s ruling party. He was expected to be selected as the CHP’s candidate for president in the party’s primary elections scheduled for this weekend. The mayorship of Istanbul is seen as a political stepping stone: Erdogan once held the role.

    Over two decades in power, Erdogan has tightened his control over state institutions and deepened restrictions on speech and expression, including within the judiciary, bringing charges against and imprisoning opponents. He has also exerted widespread control over the media, universities and other institutions.

  • Lefties suffering from Musk Derangement Syndrome are attacking Tesla centers.

    US Attorney General Pam Bondi released a statement overnight, calling the “violent attacks” on Tesla showrooms, service centers, Supercharger networks, and vehicles “nothing short of domestic terrorism.”

    “The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism. The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences,” Bondi stated in a press release.

    She continued: “We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”

    The latest domestic terrorism attack on Tesla occurred at a service center in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning.

  • And of course a Soros-funded NGO is paying for the campaign of terror.

    ver the next few days you’re going to see an organized progressional protest effort at Tesla stores put together by a group called Indivisible.

    George Soros foundation has given Indivisible nearly $8 million dollars for their “activism”.

    They’re calling these “Tesla takedown” events and they’re doing it in the midst of a domestic terror spree targeting Tesla and Tesla owners. They have these planned across the entire country. These images are just six examples.

    How can this not be seen as encouraging more violence and terrorism? I personally think that any violence occurring near locations they’ve chosen should result in Soros, his foundation, Indivisible and their founders being held criminally accountable as co-conspirators.

    The indivisible founders are Ezra Levin and his wife Leah Greenberg. They became “resistance” figures during Trump’s first term and their work is celebrated by elected Democrats. So yeah, it’s clear to me that the Democrats and their typical thugs are organizing this insanity.

    There’s reportedly even a form protest leaders can fill out to receive “reimbursement” payments for their protests.

  • “So the way you fight Nazis in 2025 is paint swastikas on Jewish people’s cars.”
  • Naturally, the Daily Show audience cheered at the news.
  • Meanwhile, Musk’s SpaceX Dragon crew compartment was busy returning stranded astronauts to earth, a path I’m assuming the Biden Administration didn’t pursue because there was no way to rake off leftwing graft from the rescue mission…
  • Plus Trump says they’ll get overtime, even if has pay it out of his own pocket:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • People called up North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis’ office to express polite disagreement with his policies. Ha, just kidding! They threatened to kill him and his family.
  • “Two Texas Universities Investigated by U.S. Department of Education for ‘Race-Exclusionary Practices.'” That would be Rice University and North Texas University.
  • Trump releases the JFK files and they raise more questions.
  • New York Times is now saying that lab leak theory is now plausible, after years of attacking anyone who mentioned it as “conspiracy theorists.” And yes, Not The Bee used the Hot Dog Guy meme.

  • “Federal Prosecutors Secure Convictions for 2022 Human Smuggling Event that Killed 53.”

    Federal prosecutors announced the convictions of two of the human smugglers responsible for the horrific 2022 mass casualty event wherein 53 people were killed and 11 injured after being locked into a tractor-trailer and left in the Texas heat.

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) described the tragedy as the single deadliest human smuggling case in U.S. history at the time. Four men, all Mexican nationals, were charged in connection with the crime: 30-year-old Riley Covarrubias-Ponce, 28-year-old Felipe Orduna-Torres, 37-year-old Luis Rivera-Leal, and 53-year-old Armando Gonzales-Ortega.

    Fast forward, and the DOJ confirmed in a press statement that Orduna-Torres and Gonzalez-Ortega were convicted for their roles in the alien smuggling conspiracy that led to the deaths.

  • In Mexico: There’s a big difference between “screwing up” and accidentally killing three of your fellow guardsman in a negligent discharge. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Speaking of negligent discharges, Brandon Herrera did not appreciate Sig Saur’s media team trying to gaslight people over the P320’s well-documented issues .
  • Japan’s “evaporated people,” who completely abandon their previous life, family and friends to move to slums anonymously. Some similarities with American homeless or China’s “lie flat” movement, but I get the impression a big difference is that evaporated people are primarily motivated by shame of failure.
  • Baltimore offers tax incentives to inner harbor development project, only to create a ghost city.
  • Kotaku gets a defamation lawsuit by former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. Some people are calling it “Gawker 2.0.”
  • Another day, another indicted rap mogul.

    A music bigwig who helped launch Nipsey Hussle’s career and was lauded as rap’s “godfather” has been accused of running a “Mafia-like” criminal enterprise involving murder, human trafficking, robbery and extortion on the streets of Los Angeles.

    Eugene Henley Jr. — known as “Big U” in the entertainment world — was one of 18 members of the Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips street gang charged in a sprawling federal racketeering complaint, the US Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.

    Henley has “maintained the image of an entertainment industry entrepreneur running a music label and of somebody who gives back to the community here in Los Angeles,” US Attorney Joseph T. McNally said while announcing the indictment.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Carl Erik Rinsch, the guy who $55 million from Netflix to make an SF miniseries and instead bought stocks and Dogecoin has finally been indicted.
  • Amazon driver goes ballistic, cussing out woman’s doorbell camera for “buying all this shit.” Turns out the woman is in a wheelchair. Pink slip ensues.
  • New Yorker art critic Jackson Arn fired for “making ‘inappropriate overtures’ at some of the party guests and appeared to be drunk.” I hold no water for Arn (a lefty who used to write for The Nation) or Conde Naste (Teen Vogue), but “getting drunk and making a pass” at a holiday party used to be a forgivable sin in corporate American, but the woke religion of social justice is incapable of offering forgiveness or redemption. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Looks like I’m one of the authors that Meta ripped off to train their AI on without permission.
  • Warner Brothers DVD bit rot is a real problem.
  • A simplified description of how your brain actually operates. I wouldn’t take it as gospel, but I’m regretting that I never actually read Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind
  • Rick Beato interviews Hans Zimmer. “The job is not to listen to the director telling you what the music is he wants, because if if he knows what music he wants, then he can do it himself. My job is to sort of listen to him tell me the story and then do the thing that he can’t even imagine.”
  • “Federal Judge Orders Astronauts Be Returned To Space Station.”
  • “Democrats Say Fire At Tesla Facility Likely Caused By Climate Change.”
  • “Single Woman Constantly Stressed With No Man Around To Tell Her To Relax.”
  • Pack of tigers has Golden mom:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





    DOGE Uncovers “Magic Money Computers”

    Tuesday, March 18th, 2025

    It’s hard to keep up with all the waste and fraud allegations coming out of the DOGE deep-dives into the labyrinth depths of federal funding swamps. Musk just went on Ted Cruz’s Verdict podcast and revealed some new twists.

    Musk estimates that there is an 80/20 ratio of waste to fraud in the federal budget and says $1 trillion in annual savings is not outside the realm of possibility.

    “You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes, okay? It’s very obvious, basic stuff. In every government department, and I say ‘every’ because we’ve not yet found a single exception, there are far too many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department. Like, an agency with 15,000 people might have 30,000 licenses,” Musk said. “We found entire situations of software licenses or media subscriptions where there were zero logins. And yet we were paying for it. Yes, the government was paying for thousands of licenses of software or media subscriptions, and no one had ever logged in even once. Or, like credit cards—you found the same thing with government credit cards. We found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans.”

    “I still don’t have a good explanation for why this is the case. And these are $10,000-limit cards, so it’s a lot of money.”

    “It’s like 80% waste, 20% fraud but you do have sort of gray areas. We saw a lot of payments going out of treasury that had no payment code, no explanation to the payment,” Musk said. “Like a contract was supposed to be shut off, but someone forgot to shut it off, so the company kept getting money. is that waste or fraud? Both.”

    “One of the biggest scam/fraud hauls we’ve uncovered -which is crazy- is that the government can give money to a so-called ‘non-profit’ with very few controls and there’s no auditing subsequently of that non-profit,” Musk said. “They then give themselves lavish insane salaries, expense everything to the non-profit, buying jets and homes and all sorts of things.”

    “This is happening at scale,” Musk said. “This is not just one or two, we’re seeing this everywhere. It’s insane.”

    “You may think that these government computers all talk to each other—they synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere, and it’s coherent, that the numbers you’re presented as a senator are actually the real numbers,” Musk offered. “They’re not.”

    “I mean, they’re not totally wrong, but they’re probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases.”

    “So, I call it a ‘magic money computer,’ any computer which can just make money out of thin air,” he said. “It just issues payments. And you said there’s something like 11 of these computers at the Treasury that are sending out trillions in payments? They’re mostly at the Treasury. Some are at HHS, some—there’s one or two at State. There’s some at DOD. I think we’ve found now 14 magic money computers. They just send money out of nothing.”

    “The government is run by computers. So, you’ve got essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government,” Musk said. “So, when somebody, even when the President, issues an executive order, that’s going to go through a whole bunch of people until, ultimately, it is implemented at a computer somewhere. If you want to know what the situation is with accounting, and you’re trying to reconcile accounting and get rid of waste and fraud, you must be able to analyze the computer databases. Otherwise, you can’t figure it out—because what you’re doing is asking a human, who will then ask another human, ask another human, and finally usually ask some contractor, who will ask another contractor to do a query on the computer.”

    How many of those “magic money computers” were directly transferring money to Democratic pockets?

    It seems like it’s graft, fraud and corruption all the way down.

    Here’s the full interview:

    Library Additions: Two Books

    Saturday, March 15th, 2025

    I usually catalog book acquisitions on my other blog, but both of these touch on subjects covered here.

  • Morris, Edmund. Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. Random House, 1999. First edition hardback (with “First Edition” states and “24689753” numberline (yes, Random House first printing numberlines of the period started with “2”; don’t ask me why)), a Fine- copy with a touch of a crease at head in a Fine- dust jacket with a slight bit of pull at head and top front edge, inscribed by Morris: “To Wade/With regards.” Massive 874 page authorized biography of Reagan that was quite controversial when released because it added fictional characters for dramatic effect. Bought from Recycled Reads, the Austin Public Library resale shop, for $1.85.

  • Neville, Leigh. Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces. Osprey, 2018. Fourth printing of the first trade paperback original edition, a Fine copy. Just what is says, a history of technicals, civilian vehicles (frequently Toyota pickup trucks) modified to mount military weapons like machine guns, anti-tank guns and rocket launchers. Usually an insurgent weapon, American Special Forces used them in some theaters in the 1980s and 90s. Given to me as a late Christmas present by Dwight.

  • Dade Phelan Wants To Ban Memes

    Tuesday, March 11th, 2025

    After spending a great deal of special interest money to hang on to his Texas House seat and stepping down from the speakership after getting so many of his allies slaughtered in the primaries, Dade Phelan has decided on his next battle: outlawing memes.

    Posting a political meme could soon land you in jail—if State Rep. Dade Phelan gets his way.

    House Bill 366 would make it a crime to distribute altered media, including political memes, without a government-approved disclaimer. Violators could face up to a year in jail.

    The State Affairs Committee will take up the bill by the former speaker of the House on Wednesday, alongside a slate of energy transmission legislation. It is the first hearing of the committee on legislation this session.

    The bill specifically targets political advertising that features an “image, audio recording, or video recording of an officeholder’s or candidate’s appearance, speech, or conduct that did not occur in reality.” This broad language includes media altered using generative artificial intelligence technology. The Texas Ethics Commission would have the authority to determine the specific format, font, size, and color of the required disclaimer.

    Critics say the legislation raises serious First Amendment concerns.

    Ya think?

    Fort Worth attorney Tony McDonald, who specializes in First Amendment litigation, blasted the measure, saying, “It’s amazing that this ridiculous bill is the top priority of the Texas House’s most powerful committee. This bill is obviously unconstitutional. It would criminalize protected speech on the basis of its content.”

    Notably, the legislation could have sweeping implications beyond political advertising.

    For example, the “Drunk Dade” parody call-ins on Michael Berry’s radio program would seemingly be criminalized under the proposed law, as they involve audio recordings that portray an officeholder’s speech in a way that “did not occur in reality.”

    Additionally, the bill leaves questions about enforcement and selective prosecution.

    Courts have routinely struck down laws that regulate political discourse based on content, citing the First Amendment’s strong protections for satire and parody.

    Indeed. I’m guessing that this is precisely the sort of thing Phelan wants to outlaw:

    The bill reeks of the sort of censorious rules against insulting a member of the ruling party you see in communist countries like China or Venezuela. Hell, even the traditionally prickly French repealed their law against insulting the dignity of the French president. The “published, distributed, or broadcast” clause alone is too broad to be constitutional. Even forwarding or reposting a meme is theoretically a crime.

    It’s so poorly written and unenforceable bill that Babylon Bee piece “Media Scrambles To Fact-Check Image Of Trump Riding Hero Dog Into Massive Space Battle” could quickly result in actual government prosecutions, at least if Dade Phelan’s fragile ego has anything to say about it.

    This is a stupid, unenforceable and unconstitutional bill that deserves to die a quiet death in committee.

    Feel free to share your best Dade Phelan memes below.

    LinkSwarm for February 28, 2025

    Friday, February 28th, 2025

    Pinkslipapalooza in BureaucratLand, more DOGE savings, the deportation machine gets cranked up, Apple invests in America. Plus some depths of human depravity.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Federal Judge Rules In Favor Of Trump Government Layoffs.” “U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by Barack Obama, ruled that the labor unions which filed the lawsuit against the government layoffs had to take their case before the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) rather than a federal court.”
  • USAID Funneled $122 Million to Charities Tied to Designated Terrorists.”

    The now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development has funneled at least $122 million in approved grants to terror-tied aid charities, including an evangelical Christian group that in 2014 facilitated a $125,000 sub-grant to a Sudanese terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden.

    USAID has long been complicit in funding humanitarian aid groups associated with designated terrorists, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. This is just one egregious example of the waste, fraud, and abuse within USAID that the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency are working to uncover.

    “There’s a fox loose in the henhouse of our foreign aid system—a system intended to uplift lives abroad that instead has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to radical and terrorist-linked organizations,” Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, said in his testimony before House Oversight’s DOGE Subcommittee on Wednesday.

    The Middle East Forum published these findings in a years-long study earlier this month, as DOGE head Elon Musk started targeting USAID and its wasteful, often ideologically-driven spending.

    One organization, World Vision, was given $200,000 in taxpayer funding to direct toward the Islamic Relief Agency a decade ago. Of those funds, a $125,000 sub-grant was approved by the Obama administration. A whistleblower came forward to reveal the improper relationship between the two groups.

    The evangelical non-governmental organization claimed in 2018 it had no knowledge of the al-Qaeda affiliate’s terrorism ties. In 2010, two members of Islamic Relief’s U.S. branch pleaded guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and other charges. Six years earlier, the Treasury Department designated Islamic Relief as a terror-financing organization.

    Despite the scandal, World Vision obtained $200 million in approved grants from USAID last year. It has received an estimated $2 billion since 2008.

    Additionally, Helping Hand for Relief and Development received a $78,000 USAID grant in 2023 even after USAID’s inspector general launched an investigation into a prior grant. The group held ties to Pakistan’s Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a designated terrorist organization that played a role in the 2008 Mumbai massacre.

    Helping Hand is partnered with the Unlimited Friends Association, a charity affiliated with Hamas and known for promoting violent antisemitism.

    Another Hamas-tied group, Bayader Association for Environment and Development, received its last USAID grant on October 1, 2023, just before the October 7 terror attack on Israel. Bayader previously featured senior Hamas officials, including the son of the late Ismail Haniyeh, who orchestrated the October 7 massacre.

    Other examples of aid groups involved in funding terrorists, sometimes knowingly, include the American Near East Refugee Agency, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and Tides Foundation.

    Is there no evil in the world George Soros doesn’t have his fingerprints on?

  • Surprise! Trump’s policies are hugely popular…even among Democrats.
    • 81% of Americans, including 70% of Democrats and 80% of Independents, support deporting illegal aliens who have committed crimes.
    • 76% of Americans support a “full-scale effort” to eliminate government fraud and waste.
    • 76% of Americans want to close the border and add extra security.
    • 69% of Americans, including half of all Democrats, want to ban men from women’s sports – and a similar number want the government to declare that there are only two sexes.

    And yet the Left has spent the last month railing against ICE arrests and DOGE audits while stumping for the right to castrate kids and let boys in girls’ restrooms.

    Some more key findings:

    • 70% of Americans said government should hire people “strictly on the basis of merit and objective evaluations.”
    • 79% of Americans said the government should make sure that categories “like race, gender, and religion” are not used to discriminate against applicants.
    • 66% of Americans, including more than a third of Democrats, think Democrats shouldn’t oppose everything Trump is doing out of the gate and help Trump eliminate government waste.
    • 58% of Americans say Trump is doing a better job than Biden.
  • How republicans have been so successful with getting Trump’s cabinet picks confirmed.

    Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Morning Wire that the Senate GOP “has not let up the pressure at all” on Democrats as Republicans ram President Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments through their confirmations.

    Senate Republicans, with their 53-47 majority, have cleared nearly all of the president’s most controversial picks after Kash Patel was confirmed to be the next FBI director in a 51-49 vote on Thursday. Mullin, who has gone to bat for each of Trump’s cabinet picks, told Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley that the confirmation process had gone smoothly thanks to Republican leadership that is laser-focused on supporting Trump’s agenda.

    “What you’ve seen is a new leader in the Senate with Leader [John] Thune. He is just 100 percent grinding the Democrats down from the get-go,” Mullin told Morning Wire.

    “And so once the president got confirmed and sworn into office on the 20th, what we did is we immediately started the clock on these nominees, and [we] haven’t stopped,” he added.

    The Republican senator from Oklahoma explained that the party didn’t wait for Trump to be sworn in on January 20 to push his nominees through the confirmation process. Since the new Republican-controlled Senate began on January 3, the GOP immediately went to work putting pressure on Democrats to speed up confirmations.

    Mullin said that Thune “has literally kept that clock running 24/7, seven days a week” on cabinet confirmations.

    After a cabinet nominee gets reported out of committee, “there’s a 24-hour soak,” followed by a 30-hour debate, he explained, adding, “On directors, like Kash Patel, when you invoke cloture on them, you have a two-hour debate. So while you still have a 24-hour soak, you only have two hours of debate on that person. So you can move those faster.”

    “Even when we’re not here, the Democrats will negotiate and say, ‘If you don’t make us stay over on the weekend, we’ll allow the clocks to run consecutively, even though we’re not here.’ So we’ll go ahead and invoke cloture on the next person,” Mullin told Morning Wire. “So when we get back here on Monday, we can confirm two people at once. That’s why we’re so far ahead — because Leader Thune has not let up the pressure at all, not one bit on the Democrats.”

    Sounds like Thune is a vast improvement over Cocaine Mitch…

  • “DOGE and EPA Work to Reclaim $67M in ‘Environmental Justice’ Grants.”

    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working with the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cancel over $67 million in grants that had been issued by the Biden Administration.

    According to Fox News, the EPA is focusing on $77.1 million in spending that was earmarked by the Biden-era EPA for “environmental justice” grants, distributed to 20 different recipients. Although approximately $10 million has already been spent and is irretrievable, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency was able to successfully cancel $67.4 million in planned funding.

    “We will make sure every penny spent by EPA goes towards protecting human health and the environment, and Powering the Great American Comeback,” said Zeldin. “I am proud to partner with DOGE to restore fiscal responsibility and accountability in our government.”

    In response, the official X account for DOGE lauded the EPA cuts as “good work.”

    Among the canceled grants was a $4.2 million grant to San Diego State University Foundation, which planned to use the money to bring “environmental justice” to “tribal, indigenous, and Pacific Island communities.”

    Under Zeldin, the EPA has revealed that the previous administration’s EPA was freely giving at least $20 billion in taxpayer dollars, with the spending being determined solely by eight agency entities “at their discretion.” Among this spending was a $2 billion grant sent to Power Forward Communities, a far-left non-profit with ties to failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

    We’re very fortunate that those on the left were too greedy and incompetent to keep rigging elections…

  • Tiffany Henyard, the crooked, free-spending mayor of Dolton, Illinois, got slaughtered in a Democratic primary this week. “[Jason] House won the primary with 3,896 votes (87.91%), compared to Henyard’s 536 votes (12.09%).”
  • “Whistleblower: There’s a Trans Cult Inside the NSA.”

    Christopher Rufo: Tell me about this culture and how it’s been spreading through the NSA. And talk to me about what it was like, even a year ago or a few months ago, before Trump reentered the White House.

    NSA Whistleblower: About ten years ago, they started doing the “employee resource groups”: African-American, veterans, Pride. It was just a meeting here and there, almost like a potluck—culture, food, a speech. Then it started to get more and more. Instead of just one day a month, it was one week a month, or the whole month. You could be hired as a mathematician, a staff officer, or system engineer, but you would spend your time going to these events and having meetings all day about it. They got themselves into position to help craft policy and started pushing the idea that if you want to get promoted, you have to participate in these events.

    And then everything became Pride. You would go to a training, and it would be about “privilege” and “how to be a better ally.” A lady would give classes on how to talk “gender-neutral” to people. You had analysts that didn’t want to do the reporting they were supposed to be doing because they were going to have to report on somebody’s “dead name.” They were having this crisis of conscience about reporting the adversary’s actual name because they thought it was their “dead name,” and they didn’t want to disrespect the person. It was like a cult that was hellbent on pushing gender ideology.

    Rufo: It seems like this is a clique of very activist male-to-female transgender agents. Tell me about this community.

    Whistleblower: There is a very small number of them, but they wield an enormous amount of power. And outside of the sick stuff, you also see a prevalent Marxist philosophy going on with these people in their chat rooms. They hate capitalism. They hate Christians. They’re always espousing socialist and Marxist beliefs.

    I know several people at the agency brought that up, like, “Hey, we’re here to fight for the U.S.A. and go after the adversaries.” And they just got hammered. They would just start coming out with “transphobe” and “homophobe” right away or calling you a “racist.” And that’s why a lot of folks are still hesitant to say anything, because you still have people at these agencies in those key spots. It infected everything.

    If this is true, intelligence head Tulsi Gabbard needs to purge the Puzzle Palace of all transculters and commies with a pink slip machine gun. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ. )

  • Bill Clinton advisors saying Democrats are screwed is nothing new, but this time it’s not James Carville.

    “It’s very hard to be optimistic about the Democrats,” the advisor to President Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, Douglas Schoen, tells The New York Sun. The party is “totally off base.” Lacking a message, strategy, or leader, the pollster says President Trump may defy expectations in next year’s midterms.

    In a telephone interview, Mr. Schoen likened Mr. Trump to the boxing legend, Mohammed Ali, at his peak. He’s “moving so quickly, he has the Democrats totally unnerved,” he said. “They can’t hit him. They can’t find him. He’s way ahead of them.”

    Mr. Schoen, “exaggerating” for illustration, said the Ukraine War “could be settled and resolved before the Democrats develop a coherent position.” They’re “MIA,” with “no interesting voice.” He suggests governors take the lead, rather than Senator Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

    “There is nobody making policy,” Mr. Schoen said. “There is nobody with an overarching strategy.” That weakness is reflected in his Schoen Cooperman Research surveys. It “sort of tells you how off base the Democrats are” that their favorability is 31 percent versus Mr. Trump’s 53 percent.

    “The Democrats spent $2 billion on Kamala Harris,” Mr. Schoen said, “and her percentage was lower than where she started. It’s an inescapable conclusion that $2 billion bought Democrats nothing at all.” Mr. Trump dodged every uppercut, jab, and haymaker.

    Mr. Schoen said that Mr. Trump “gets the public mood” that “people are frustrated with government and angry about immigration.” The president also gets that Americans “want plain speaking and somebody outside the system.”

    Democrats, in Mr. Schoen’s view, aren’t counterpunching against these strengths. He sees them as “off-putting and scolding,” whereas on the other side, “people love” Mr. Trump. “His rallies and his approach were entertaining — and, in their own way, positive.”

    Mr. Schoen cites as another misfire the way Democrats went after Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees on “personal stuff rather than policy.” He adds: “It wasn’t, ‘We disagree with you on this,’ etc. It was all, ‘You had an affair, you were drunk, etc.’”

    In a flip from Mr. Schoen’s time in the Clinton White House, voters now judge Democrats, not Republicans, as focusing too much on “social issues” and personal lives. “Abortion,” Mr. Schoen said, “may be good in a midterm. It’s not going to win a presidential election.”

    Even modest gains next year could give Democrats control of one or both chambers of Congress, but Mr. Schoen has doubts. “I worry about 2026,” he said, “because I don’t see a message, a strategy at all — and the Republicans have a message and a strategy.”

  • “Apocalyptic environmentalism by Maryland’s far-left Democratic leadership in Annapolis has plunged the state into a severe energy crisis, with power bills doubling in some cases and 20% of households in Central Maryland now behind on payments.”
  • Soros DAs seem to love illegal alien criminals a whole lot more than they hate “gun violence.” “Two men arrested in a Feb. 5 gun and drug raid at a New York City auto repair shop were later released on reduced charges that may not lead to prosecution, according to police and court records – despite being suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang, which has been spreading violence across the country. Jose Tamaronis-Caldera, 27, and Richard Garcia, 33, were taken into custody after authorities seized a Glock handgun, two imitation pistols, and a significant amount of drugs.”
  • Obama IRS Targeted Conservatives, Biden IRS Leaked Taxpayer Data.” Of course they did.

    A new disclosure by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to the House Judiciary Committee reveals that, under the Biden administration, the IRS leaked the taxpayer information of more than 405,000 Americans–including President Trump.

    Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, began an inquiry into the leaks last year and with this latest disclosure has found that the scope of the leak was much larger than the Biden administration initially led the public to believe.

    The scandal began in late 2019 when an IRS contract worker named Charles (Chaz) Littlejohn, illegally accessed and stole tax returns and return information for President Trump and other wealthy Americans and then leaked that information to news outlets.

    Littlejohn pled guilty to the unauthorized disclosure in Oct 2023 and was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

    In April 2024, the IRS issued letters of notification to victims whose data had been leaked but the notifications prompted deeper questions into how many people’s data may have actually been disclosed.

    One month later, an IRS spokesman stated that “more than 70,000” taxpayers had been affected by the leak.

  • Turns out that when you put warfighters in charge of the Pentagon rather than social justice weasels, recruiting problems disappear.

    After years of struggling recruitment numbers — in 2022, the Army faced a shortfall of 15,000 recruits — the service celebrated record-breaking enlistment in December 2024 with nearly 5,877 recruits joining up.

    “@USArmy: @USAREC had their most productive December in 15 years by enlisting 346 Soldiers daily into the World’s greatest #USArmy!” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote in a post on X.

    A Navy spokesperson tells National Review the service has contracted 4,000 more sailors and shipped 5,000 more sailors to boot camp at this point in the fiscal year, which began in October, than the year prior. (Navy officials said last month it will take three years of meeting recruiting goals to recover from the Navy’s current 20,000 operational gaps at sea.)

    Hegseth and Senator Tom Cotton praised the “Trump effect” for the rise in recruiting numbers, though the trend does pre-date Trump’s election.

    “Army’s recruiting started getting better much earlier. We really started seeing the numbers, the monthly numbers, go up in February of 2024,” former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Fox News. “We were seeing sort of in the high 5000 contracts per month, and that accelerated, you know, into the spring all the way into August, when the Army really hit a peak.”

    Still, the record-setting December is nothing to sneeze at, and regardless of who would go on to win the 2024 election, the boost began as Biden prepared to exit the White House.

    Veterans tell National Review they feel confident the recruitment wave is here to stay, with prospective service members feeling more confident in our current commander in chief.

  • Hegseth is also purging the tranny lunacy from the ranks.

    The Department of Defense is giving the military branches 30 days to identify service members who identify as transgender in order to remove them from the armed forces.

    Pentagon senior leadership were notified in a Wednesday memo that they must begin setting up mechanisms for finding troops with gender dysphoria by March 26th to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender-identifying people from the military.

    “The medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service,” defense undersecretary for personnel Darin Selnick said in the memo…

    The Department of Defense recognizes the two sexes, male and female, and will only allow service members to be subject to standards based on their biological sex. Pronoun usage and access to facilities will be determined by biological sex, ensuring that males will not be allowed into female spaces for sleeping, changing, or bathing, the memo clarifies.

    Were it not for social justice madness, these essential truths wouldn’t even need to be explicated…

  • “Trump tops 50,000 migrant removals including fugitives who evaded justice for 20 years.”

    When immigration agents were first ordered to deport Ivan Oramas and Santos Maradiaga-Villalta, President George W. Bush was in the White House and the iPhone was a distant dream.

    That was over two decades ago—yet both men were arrested this week, according to federal data reviewed by DailyMail.com.

    They were among over 50,000 illegal immigrants removed so far, a Department of Homeland Security official revealed to DailyMail.com.

    News of their arrest was circulated Thursday in an internal immigration memo noting recent enforcement actions made by President Donald Trump’s administration.

    Oramas, 61, is a citizen of Cuba with a rap sheet including convictions for sexual battery and aggravated assault.

    His sexual battery case caused serious injury, according to his charges in the file.

    ICE Houston nabbed Oramas this week, enforcing a deportation order first handed down in October 2003—21 years overdue.

    Maradiaga-Villalta, a 40-year-old alien from Honduras, has convictions for smuggling aliens into the U.S. He was arrested recently by ICE in Phoenix. His first deportation order dates back to January 2006, a 19-year lapse in action.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Democratic Policies At Work: ‘Almost Half’ Of Seattle’s Homeless Population Is Not From Seattle.”

    A new study from the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness reveals the devastating consequences of Seattle’s failed policies, which have not only failed to address homelessness but have actively worsened the crisis, according to 770 KTTH.

    Driven by progressive ideology rather than practical solutions, city leaders have fostered a system that attracts homeless individuals from outside the region while keeping them trapped in cycles of addiction, crime, and dependency.

    Rather than tackling the root causes, these policies have invited more homelessness, turning the issue into a manufactured disaster rather than a problem to be solved.

    The study reveals that nearly half of the city’s homeless population became homeless outside of Seattle or King County, drawn in by the city’s permissive policies—free tents, open-air drug use, and a refusal to enforce encampment laws. An overwhelming 86.6% were born elsewhere, and 80.2% didn’t even attend high school in the area.

    As in Austin, homeless programs in Seattle are not designed to solve the homeless problem, they’re designed to provide conduits of graft to the far left.

  • First drone intercepted with a laser in Russo-Ukrainian War.
  • Texas Joins Coalition Lawsuit Against New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act. The New York law seeks to penalize energy producers for emissions dating back to 2000.”

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with a coalition of 22 states and several industry groups, has initiated legal action against New York over its Climate Change Superfund Act.

    “New York’s law is nothing more than an unconstitutional shakedown of vital American energy industries that form the bedrock of our national economic independence,” said Paxton.

    The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the act, which seeks to impose significant financial burdens on energy producers for past greenhouse gas emissions.

    New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, signed into law in December 2024, aims to collect approximately $75 billion over the next 25 years from oil and gas companies to fund “climate change adaptation” and infrastructure projects within the state. It retroactively holds energy producers accountable for emissions dating back to 2000, regardless of whether the companies operate within New York.

    New York is quite ambitiously stupid to cram two different unconstitutional provisions into a single law, adding a lack of jurisdiction cherry on top of an ex post facto sundae…

  • Transsexual madness is alive and well in the Democratic Party. “Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers introduces budget recommendation that replaces ‘mother’ with ‘inseminated person.'”
  • Jeff Bezos made liberal heads explode with an editorial shift at the Waswhington Post.

    Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is overhauling the paper’s opinion section and shifting its editorial stance towards defending personal freedom and free markets.

    Bezos emailed Washington Post employees Wednesday morning to inform them of the dramatic change and told them contrary opinions could be found elsewhere.

    “I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages,” Bezos wrote. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars can be left to be published by others,” Bezos added.

    “There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”

    Bezos’s announcement, which he posted on X after emailing it to Post staffers, also revealed that opinion editor David Shipley opted against staying on in the role given the section’s new direction.

    I think Bezos has figured out that WaPo has a bad infestation of social justice, and the cheapest way to get rid of it is to publically announce policy changes that encourage the SJW termite to quit…

  • Apple to invest $500 billion in America.

    The latest onshoring trend, spurred by President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports, has led to a major announcement from Apple. The company has embraced “Make America Great Again” with plans to hire 20,000 US workers to manufacture high-tech AI servers in the Heartland and invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new factories.

    Bloomberg reports Apple plans to unleash a tsunami of investments in the US, upwards of $500 billion over the next four years, including a new AI server manufacturing plant in Houston, Texas, and a supplier academy in Michigan.

    This disclosure comes just days after President Trump announced that Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to relocate manufacturing operations from Mexico to the US.

    He’s investing hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said after his meeting with Cook at the end of last week, adding that the executive is ramping up US investments because he wants to avoid tariffs.

    Earlier this month, Trump imposed a 10% US levy on Chinese imports, where Apple manufactures most of its iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other products. In a tit-for-tat effort, Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs on US goods shortly after.

    Apple’s $500 billion investment and promise to add 20,000 new US jobs over Trump’s second term is more evidence that corporate America is more willing to participate in onshoring efforts this time.

    I live less than a mile away from Apple’s Austin campus, so it would be nice if they could open some technical writer recs there…

  • On the other hand, somebody on Apple’s programming team needs firing for their shenanigans.
  • Connecticut puts a cannibal back on the streets.

    A man accused of cannibalism and murder has been granted conditional release, according to the Connecticut Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB).

    The board granted Tyree Smith’s release after a careful review of his clinical progress, officials said.

    He’s currently at Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown. Smith is accused of hacking a man to death with an axe in Bridgeport and eating part of the victim’s brain and an eyeball….Smith stood trial for the murder of Angel Gonzalez with an axe and consumed parts of the victim’s brain and eyeball in 2011. He was found not guilty because of insanity in 2013 and ordered confined to Whiting Forensic Hospital for 60 years.

    I apologize if you find this story…

    ( •_•)
    ( •_•)>⌐■-■
    (⌐■_■)

    unappetizing.

  • “East Texas Teacher Charged With Child Porn and Bestiality.”

    An East Texas teacher and her boyfriend have been arrested on child pornography charges.

    Authorities allege the couple had child sexual abuse images and video of her performing a sexual act on a male dog on their phones.

    Hillary Danielle Williams, 33, was arrested Saturday in Lufkin and charged with bestiality and possession with intent to promote child pornography.

    Her partner, 37-year-old Michael Scott McCary, was charged with possession of child pornography.

    Texas public schools seem to have let some real filthy degenerates teach kids…

  • “New Caney ISD Teacher, Coach Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for Sex With Student. Samantha Cummings had sex with a 17-year-old female student at New Caney High School.”
  • Liberals are staging a boycott today in a vain attempt to prove they matter, so now would be a good day to buy something from Amazon or Walmart. In fact, today I went to Walmart for the first time in, I don’t know, probably over a year…
  • What happens when a Detroit water main breaks during a deep freeze? This.
  • The difficulty of restoring Se7en.
  • A drag race between a Koenigsegg Jesko and a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport. Just in case you were wondering which multi-million dollar hypercar you should buy…
  • Golfer 1, Gator 0.
  • Federal Judge Declares Constitution Unconstitutional.”
  • “Congressional Gridlock After DOGE Fires Only Government Employee With Key To Capitol.”
  • “Trump Claimed, Without Evidence, That 2+2 Makes 4. Not So Fast, Experts Say.”
  • Gobble, gobble/Gobble, gobble/We accept you!/One of us!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





    LinkSwarm For February 14, 2025

    Friday, February 14th, 2025

    Happy Valentine’s Day! Or, as I call it in my house, “Passover.” DOGE uncovers more infuriating waste and fraud, another job number revision downward, a bit on the Russo-Ukrainian War, a Second Amendment ruling, and the Babylon Bee offers up a double-shot of Tolkien.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “HHS Spent over $22 Billion on Giveaways to Illegal Immigrants over Past Four Years.”

    The Department of Health and Human Services spent $22.6 billion on assistance to illegal immigrants from 2020 to 2024 as border crossings hit all-time highs, a new watchdog report shows.

    The HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, a unit that lost track of 32,000 migrant children, distributed the bulk of the funds to nonprofit organizations during President Joe Biden’s term, according to a report from government spending watchdog Open the Books, first reported by the New York Post.

    In fiscal year 2023 alone, the ORR doled out $10 billion worth of grants as the Biden administration expanded the number of illegal aliens eligible for assistance. HHS distributed obligated funds of $2.6 billion in 2020, $2.3 billion in 2021, and $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2024. Over that time period, the Biden administration allowed record numbers of illegal immigrants to cross the southern border and remain in the country.

    Some of the ORR money went towards a program that helped illegal immigrants save for car and home purchases, while another program distributed business and personal loans to help migrants build credit. Additional funds were allocated toward providing migrants with “legal assistance,” “cultural orientation,” and “emergency housing support.”

    “ORR is part of a troubling trend of using nonprofit groups as ideological proxies. Vast sums are being outsourced to evade accountability and prop up an immoral, exploitive system that is hurtful to both American citizens and people in other countries who are longing for a better life,” Open The Books CEO John Hart told the Post.

  • Heh: “Terrified staff left hysterical as ‘well drilled’ DOGE nerds storm hyper ‘woke’ Department of Education.”

    Elon Musk’s nerd army stormed into the Department of Education on Tuesday and saved over $900 million.

    Musk’s DOGE lieutenants Akash Bobba and Ethan Shaotran, both 22, already have access to the department, NBC News reported.

    And as many as 16 DOGE team members have entered the premises as the agency begins to be ripped apart.

    Rep. Melanie Stansbury, (D-NM) described the terror agency staff are feeling after Musk’s team entered to ‘actively dismantle’ the institution.

    ‘They are in the building, on the 6th floor, canceling grants and contracts,’ she said in an interview with HuffPost.

    The Department of Education was targeted by Donald Trump during his campaign, He is keen to dismantle the so-called ‘Deep State’ constantly working against conservatives.

    Most Republicans believe the department employs some of the most activist liberal bureaucrats in the federal government.

    Trump plans to sign another executive order on Tuesday to order all agencies to work with DOGE, according to Semafor, including with the ‘workplace optimization initiative.’

    Snip.

    The department has already terminated 89 Education Department contracts worth $881 million.

    And over 29 training grants for DEI have been eliminated saving $101 million, according to the DOGE X account.

    President Donald Trump campaigned on shutting down the Department of Education and sending the funding back to the states to fund their schools as they see fit.

    Gooder and harder. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • If you’re not already furious enough with the Biden Administration: “USAID Sent Over $18,000,000,000 to Islamic Terror States.

    Over the last two years, USAID had funneled $2.3 billion in “humanitarian assistance” to [Ilhan] Omar’s native Somalia. Last year it reported a request for $1.6 billion in aid and even with the Biden administration on the way out the door, it sent an additional $29 million in December 2024.

    USAID support for Somalia had doubled under the Biden administration and with $3.3 billion from USAID allocated in the last 5 years, the end of the USAID gravy train for the Islamic terrorist state of Somalia must have been a painful blow for Omar, who is very close to the Somali regime. Former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Khaire had reportedly celebrated that “the interest of Ilhan are not Ilhan’s, it’s not the interest of Minnesota, nor is it the interest of the American people, the interest of Ilhan is that of the Somalian people and Somalia.”

    It’s unknown if any of Omar’s Majerteen clan members benefited from the billions in American money, but considering the prominence of the clan in Somali politics, it’s likely to be the case.

    Somalia, along with other Islamic terrorist entities, including the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza, were among the top beneficiaries of USAID cash.

    USAID boasted of having sent $2.1 billion to Gaza and the West Bank since the Hamas attacks of Oct 7. In 2024 alone, $917 million was programmed for the terrorist areas occupying Israel.

    USAID provided over $3.7 billion to Afghanistan since the Taliban took over with $832 million in the previous fiscal year alone. The money was so unaccountable that USAID refused to cooperate with the U.S. Government’s Afghan War watchdog tracking money going to terrorists.

    Even while the United States of America was at war with the Houthis, the Iran-backed Islamic terrorist group firing on US Navy vessels, USAID continued to direct billions of dollars to Yemen.

    In 2024, USAID announced a $2.7 billion aid request for Yemen and allocated $753 million. In the last 5 years, USAID provided an estimated $3.4 billion in aid to an enemy terror state.

    Other Islamic terrorist states that have heavily drawn on USAID include Pakistan which harbored Osama bin Laden, but benefited from $600 million in the last 5 years. While some American towns and cities lacked clean drinking water, USAID labored to build plants for Pakistan’s majority Muslim population even while it engaged in the persecution of Christians.

    USAID spent over $700 million on Iraq during the last 5 years even though the country has long since been governed by Iranian puppets whose militias have been firing on American soldiers.

    $3.4 billion was directed to Syria over the past 5 years by USAID even as it was caught in a civil war between Shiite Islamists aligned with Iran and Sunni Islamists aligned with Al Qaeda.

    USAID allocated $1.1 billion to spend on Lebanon even as the country was run by Hezbollah.

    While USAID is unable to function in Iran, between Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, over $8 billion was sent to Iranian puppet regimes even without counting the money spent on Gaza.

    In total, USAID had spent some $18.5 billion on Islamic terror states over those 5 years.

  • And even more looting of taxpayer money for leftist causes.

    PA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video released on Wednesday night that his agency has discovered an unprecedented scheme that was utilized by the Biden administration to funnel money to far-Left activist groups.

    “An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,” Zeldin said.

    He continued, “The gold bars were tax dollars, and tossing them off the Titanic meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it.”

    Zeldin said that he has contacted the U.S. Justice Department and the inspector general to launch investigations into the $20 billion that was transferred to an outside financial institution for the purpose of doling out funds to leftist organizations during Biden’s final days in office.

    “Fortunately, my awesome team at EPA has found the gold bars,” he said. “Shockingly, roughly $20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA.”

    “This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposely designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight,” he continued. “Even further, this pot of $20 billion was awarded to just eight entities that were then responsible for doling out your money to NGOs and others at their discretion with far less transparency.”

    He said that the financial agreement with the bank needs to be instantly terminated and the funds need to be returned to the government.

    Let the prosecutions begin.

  • More USAID fraud uncovered.
    • $2M sex change surgeries in Guatemala
    • $20M to increase tourism in Egypt
    • $520M for consultants to teach people in Africa about climate change
    • $4.5M to teach people in Kazakhstan to fight back against internet trolls
    • $15M for condoms to the Taliban
  • “Trump Draining Pool Of Money From Which Leftist Activists Drink.”

    People need to understand what Trump is doing, whether it’s intentional or not, but he is cutting off the flow of money to the pool from which a variety of left-wing groups and activist groups around the world and in the US drink.

    So imagine a pool that’s being filled with money. A lot of that money comes from the programs that have been cut off by his DEI orders, Federal funding.

    But a lot of it came from USAID, which is essentially an international development and development agency of the government, which has a massive, tens of billions of dollars, budget. And now we know what has been happening.

    It has been like a fire hose filling up the same pool that the DEI funding filled up, and they all drink from that, and he’s cutting off that flow.

    This has the potential to be absolutely devastating to the DEI and left-wing industrial complex.

    We always think of it as being George Soros and people like that, and, and it is, but they all are feeding into the same pool. And Soros doesn’t have enough money to replace what the US government spends on this stuff.

    That’s why they are apoplectic. That’s why they are losing their minds. That’s why they are senators are trying to break into buildings. That’s why there’s a lawsuit after lawsuit because they know if Trump is successful in cutting off the various spigots that fill the pool from which left-wing activist groups drink, they are in big trouble.

  • The evil that the Biden Administration did lives on in so many ways. “January Jobs Report: 2024 Employment Revised Down by 600,000.”
  • “Federal Judge Blocking Spending Freezes Has History of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

    The federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze all funding pauses while federal spending is being assessed, has a history of anti-Trump and woke activism.

    Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island can be seen in video footage from 2021 accusing Trump of being “a dictator” and claiming that “racism is a white people problem” and that “we all have racism inside of us.”

    Judge McConnell certainly has stupidity inside him…

  • Newly confirmed Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi is suing Letita James along with other New York Democratic politicians for refusing to help deport illegal aliens.
  • Polls show Trump and his policies are deeply popular.
  • American voters have decisively rejected wokeness. So how do Democrats respond? By doubling down on reparations.
  • GOP senators are terrified over the prospect of facing primary challengers funded by Elon Musk if they stick their necks out by opposing President Trump’s agenda.” Good. Get-along go-along Republicans have played a key role in letting the federal budget deficit grow to Brobdingnagian proportions. They can atone but letting Trump balance the budget and crush the left or they can get the hell off the stage. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Russia has launched a drone attack against the Chernobyl radiation containment sarcophagus. Way to convince Europe you’re ready for peace, Vlad…
  • Suchomimus has a video roundup of Ukraine strikes on Russian oil facilities.
  • A Ukrainian Su-27 pilot describes the changing nature of the air war, including the desperate early days.

    Viking was not at his normal base in the Zhytomyr region when the war started, he was in Kyiv. His race to Zhytomyr was frustrated by a lack of rail services out of the capital and ended with a walk between 25-30 miles to get to the air base, still in civilian clothes. Once there, he was very quickly in the thick of action, and from Feb. 25 on he flew air defense missions that he described as “deterrence,” first flown in daylight and later at night, over the Kyiv region.

    “We held them back,” Viking explained. “If their aircraft had come here and worked freely, everything would have been completely different.”

    Viking and his fellow 39th Tactical Aviation Brigade (39 BrTA) pilots faced a significant disadvantage in terms of radars and missiles compared to the Russians. While Ukrainian fighters could occasionally track enemy aircraft, getting within missile-launch range was rarely possible.

    The Ukrainian Air Force began the war with around 32 Su-27s operational within two brigades, the 39 brTA at Ozerne in the Zhytomyr region of northwestern Ukraine and the 831 brTA at Myrhorod in the Poltava region of central Ukraine. At least 15 Ukrainian Flankers have been visually confirmed as destroyed but, in the meantime, additional examples have also been returned to airworthiness after overhauls. The aircraft are also regularly moved around between different operating locations, some of them austere in nature, making it harder for the Russians to target them.

    Snip.

    In these early days, Viking’s available intelligence on Russian air defenses was scrawled on a piece of map that he’d torn off, with information vital for survival being exchanged by word of mouth between pilots. The map simply showed the best route into a given area, with circles showing the approximate engagement ranges of hostile air defenses.

    The primary job at this time was attempting to blunt the advance of Russian tactical aircraft flying from Belarus. “We were the only ones here, to put it bluntly. We were the first line of defense, and they were constantly trying to sneak their Su-34s and Su-35s in at night, at extremely low altitudes.”

    Complicating their job was the fact that, according to Viking, the avionics and missiles of the Ukrainian Su-27s, at this time, were “two generations behind” those of the Russians. Within these parameters, “the battle was reduced to trying to get closer to [the Russians].” But even if that was possible, the Ukrainian Su-27 pilots were rarely able to get within the launch parameters of their missiles, with the Russian jets always having the opportunity to launch weapons first.

    “Even though our [missile] launches had short ranges, we still tried something, we launched missiles, we held the Russians back, and we repelled these attacks every night,” Viking explains. “Almost every pilot flew two, sometimes three sorties each night.”

    Also a lot of interesting discussion about how western munitions (HARM missiles and JDAMs in particular) have improved their chances.

  • Another day, another public official arrested on fraud charges.

    Pearson, Georgia is a small town, with a population of 1,821 per the 2020 census. Robert “Buster” Johnson is the mayor.

    “Buster” was busted yesterday.

    I’m just going to quote the list of charges here:

    • Criminal Attempt to Commit Hindering or Apprehension or Punishment of Criminal
    • 3 counts of Influencing Witnesses
    • Criminal Solicitation to Commit False Statements and Writings
    • Criminal Solicitation to Commit False Official Certificates or Writings by Officers or Employees of a State and Political Subdivision
    • 2 counts of False Statements and Writings
    • Criminal Attempt to Commit Theft by Taking
    • Conspiracy in Restraint of Free and Open Competition
    • 4 counts of Conspiracy to Defraud State and Political Subdivision
    • Theft by Deception
    • 3 counts of Bribery
    • 2 counts of Theft by Taking
    • Fraud, Forgery, and Theft in Connection with Registration of Title to Land
    • Filing False Documents
    • 4 counts of Violation of Oath of Office by Public Officer

    Given Andy Ngo’s highlighting of Johnson’s posts charging racism, I think I’ll go out on a limb and guess he’s a Democrat…

  • “On January 30, the Fifth Circuit decided Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives, holding that the federal Gun Control Act’s prohibition on the sale of firearms to persons under 21 years old, as applied to adults aged 18 to 20 years old, violates the Second Amendment. The law effectively banned handgun sales, as it has an exception for rifles and shotguns, which may be sold to persons 18 and older.”
  • Object to not deporting illegal aliens? Expect a beating from those “mostly peaceful” protestors.
  • Harris County Comes Up Short on Funds For Planned Flood Control Projects. One set of projects for subdivisions may face a shortage of nearly $140 million.” Is there anything in the article that indicates where the real problem lies? Why yes, there is: “The framework, which has been slightly revised since then, shifts from targeting areas with the most damage to adding consideration of the Social Vulnerability Index and areas with lower incomes.” There’s no institution so robust that adding social justice to it can’t beat it out of whack…
  • “Blind director of watchdog group funded by George Soros testifies that he does not see widespread evidence of government waste.”
  • Crazy story out of Columbine High School (yes, that one) in Colorado.

    A friend of the student’s mom, Heather McCormick, accused a female teacher of grooming the teen girl at school. According to the allegation, she then worked with the school to secretly change the girl’s status to “homeless” so she could legally move out of her parents’ home … and into the teacher’s home.

    The unnamed mom discovered thousands of phone calls and texts between the two, which revealed that the female teacher had, at the minimum, been making out with the student.

    When the student’s mom went to the principal to let him know that a predator teacher had been sexually grooming her daughter, this is how the principal reportedly responded: “Ms. Kearney takes interest in helping kids navigate their sexuality.”

  • “French Far-Left Leader Mélenchon Openly Calls For Great Replacement In Shock Speech.”

    In two speeches given less than 24 hours apart in the French city of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Mélenchon delivered some of the most shocking yet brutally honest words from a European politician, openly calling for the older French to be replaced by a “Creole” generation of mixed races and cultures.

    The leader of France’s far-left LFI is calling outright for replacement of White French people, conjuring up the Great Replacement term that has been demonized as a conspiracy theory by the left for years.

    “In our country, one person in four has a foreign grandparent. 40% of the population speaks at least two languages. We are destined to be a Creole nation and so much the better! May the young generation be the great replacement for the old generation,” said Mélenchon.

  • The Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Let the reckoning begin.
  • They also confirmed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.
  • They also confirmed Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture.
  • 40 Massage Parlors Closed in Texas Since Passage of Anti-Human Trafficking Law.”
  • “Department of Education Urges NCAA to Restore to Female Athletes the Records Stolen by Men.” This is obviously the right thing to do, so expect them to drag their heels on it.
  • Stolen from Sarah Hoyt:

  • “Burrows Promises Trump: Texas House Will Pass School Choice. Both the House and Senate budget proposals currently allocate $1 billion for education savings accounts.” Color me skeptical. The Democrat-backed cabal backing burrows has made killing school choice a priority in the past
  • A US Navy aircraft carrier has collided with a merchant ship off the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea, a US Sixth Fleet spokesman revealed Thursday. The collision involved the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at around noon local time on Wednesday.” Fortunately there was no lose of life, but there’s a whole lot of stupid to go around for this one. At 189 meters, or over 620 feet, the Besiktas-M certainly isn’t small, but the Harry S. Truman is over 1,000 feet long.
  • Facebook lays off 4,000 workers, some of whom say they had glowing performance reviews last year.
  • Good news! Trump rescinds Biden’s plastic straw ban! There seems to be no end of the woke making your life more difficult to display their own climate virtue…
  • Microsoft Drops USAID-Funded NewsGuard After Ted Cruz Starts Digging. Microsoft has dropped NewsGuard, a left-wing fact checking organization they partnered with that has helped the advertising industry justify blacklists for independent conservative media sites such as ZeroHedge.” Good.
  • Target faces class-action lawsuit for misleading investors about DEI initiatives.

  • Critical Drinker says that Captain America: Brave New World is exactly as bad as we thought it would be.
  • And here’s my imitation of Jonah. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Democrats Furious Republicans Trying To Control Government Just Because They Won Election.”
  • Soros-Funded Judge Vows To Keep Billionaire Influence Out Of Politics.”
  • “Sauron-Appointed Judge Rules Frodo Must Return Ring To Sauron.
  • “Government Retirement Files Ruined After Miners Dig Too Deep And Unearth Balrog.”
  • “RFK Jr. Sworn In On Raw 32-Ounce Ribeye.”
  • I have no idea what you’re talking about, so here’s a video of a dog riding a pony:

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





    Blitzkrieg And Head Fakes: How Trump And Musk Operate

    Tuesday, February 11th, 2025

    This tweet from John Robb does a good job of explaining just how Trump and Musk operate:

    The online maneuver warfare that Trump and Elon employ attacks the psychology of the opposition.

    They use rapid maneuvers, fast transients (rapid shifts to new maneuvers), novelty, and feints (head fakes, etc.) to disorient, disrupt, and overload the opponent.

    Annexing Greenland, Canada and Panama are all, I think, head fakes and feints, as is rebuilding Gaza.

    Their effectiveness is amplified because the establishment’s decision-making loops are far slower than theirs (John Boyd) due to how the red tribe operates in parallel (the dynamics of open source networks).

    These maneuvers freeze the establishment in place (deer in the headlights effect), making it impossible for them to think or decide for as long as it continues — you can see this happening right now.

    Maneuver warfare, of course, is another term for blitzkrieg, a doctrine of warfare in which you move too fast for the enemy to react. You’re capturing Objective 5 while the enemy is just starting to respond to your capture of Objective 3. If you’re operating inside your enemy’s OODA loop, you are effectively inducing the equivalent of a nervous breakdown.

    This is what’s happening to Democrats right now.

    Their response seems to be to cling more tightly to ritual invocations of the same social justice warrior polices (child mutilation in the name of radical transsexism, DEI, opening the border to illegal alien criminals, etc.) that made them so deeply unpopular with American voters.

    (Hat tip: The Daily Scroll via Tablet.)

    Paxton Joins Lawsuit Against Child Mutilation

    Wednesday, February 5th, 2025

    If you were worried that Ken Paxton would run out of people to sue with Biden out of office, you need not have worried. Texas just joined a lawsuit against child mutilation.

    Texas has joined an amicus brief to prevent a district judge from mandating taxpayers fund “gender transition” surgeries for criminals in a state prison.

    Texas joined 23 other states in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit backing Indiana’s appeal in a case brought by a prison inmate who demanded a taxpayer-funded “gender transition” surgery.

    “Taxpayers should not be forced to fund dangerous and experimental procedures for prisoners based on radical gender theory,” stated Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    Brady Gray, president of Texas Family Project, agreed, saying that the case is about protecting Texas families from being compelled to support policies that contradict their values.

    “Forcing taxpayers to fund these surgeries not only diverts critical resources away from public safety and rehabilitation but also imposes an extreme ideological agenda on the people of Texas,” Gray told Texas Scorecard. “This is a fight to uphold common sense, defend biological reality, and ensure that public funds are used responsibly.”

    Both President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott have issued directives for government agencies to reject gender ideology.

    “On his first day in office, President Trump signed an Executive Order to end this kind of nonsense. The United States recognizes two unchangeable sexes, male and female,” continued Paxton’s statement. “That biological reality has always been true despite the political activism of extremist gender theory advocates.”

    For inexplicable ideological reasons, many social justice warrior Democrats have decided that a willingness to mutilate a child’s genitalia is a virtue-signaling hill they’re willing to die on. Not only Ken Paxton, but the entirety of the Abbott and Trump Administrations, as well as the Republican establishment as a whole, are committed to keeping crazy leftwing Democrats from mutilating children.

    If that’s the hill Democrats want to die on, we should make them.