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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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…
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.”
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.
“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.
The Biden economy is still sucking, the arsonist who helped set LA ablaze was (of course!) an illegal alien, a Tik-Tok triptych, Dan Patrick announces a staggering warchest, WaPo walloped, Stacey Abrams is busted, and Americans are told “no thanks” by Chinese RedNote users.
The bad news for American workers doesn’t end there. “1 in 5 postings on Greenhouse are ‘ghost jobs.'”
There were many reasons why they did it. Some did it for the same reason Biden’s administration did: To make their company look like it was doing better than it was. Some post them just in case there is a unicorn out there with magical qualifications.
But the most frustrating reason was the final one:
Some hiring managers even admitted they post fake jobs to keep their own employees on their toes, saying they want workers to feel ‘replaceable’ so they will work harder.
“LA County Arson Suspect is Illegal Immigrant Repeat Offender Protected By California’s Sanctuary State Policies.” Because of course he is. “The suspect, Juan Manuel Sierra-Leyva, is a Mexican national who has already been convicted of multiple crimes, but because California is a sanctuary state, he is unlikely to be deported, the New York Post reported.”
Just days after reports that she’d planned to can her fire chief, Kristin Crowley, after she publicly criticized the level of funding she’d received from the city, Bass is facing intense criticism yet again from a memo up on a city website, which shows that just months ago, the chief practically begged city hall to stop its budget-cutting spree on fire response.
The memo, which was dated Nov. 18, was written to the fire commissioners, according to the Washington Free Beacon. That’s a five-person board appointed by Bass.
In Crowley’s memo, she urged the commissioners to let Bass and the city council know how dire the situation was.
“In many ways, the current staffing, deployment model, and size of the LAFD have not changed since the 1960s,” Crowley wrote.
A federal judge in Texas has found that American Airlines violated both federal law and their fiduciary duty to their employees by using the company’s 401(k) plan to push ESG. Let a thousand lawsuits bloom.
Texas Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is loaded for bear. “Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick posted ‘over $33.5 million’ cash-on-hand for his re-election campaign in 2026.”
Ron DeSantis continues to drive the enemy before him and hear the lamentations of their women. “United Teachers of Dade, Florida’s largest teachers union, failed to meet the requirements of a new state law that requires at least 60% of union members pay dues.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Keir Starmer’s Labour government has been trying to give away the Chagos Islands, despite them being the home to vital U.S. military base Diego Garcia. Fortunately, someone has slammed the breaks on the deal until Trump is in office.
Big drone attack from Ukraine against Russia, with reportedly over 200 drones used.
“WaPo’s Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, who portrays Republicans as groomers and predators, arrested for possession of child porn. Washington Post cartoonist Darrin Bell arrested for possession of child pornography.”
But it’s not all bad news for Bezos! TDS sufferer Jennifer Rubin quit.
Remember Stacey Abrams, the black female Georgian Beto? The mediocrity whose fawning media profiles never turned into actual election victories? Well, “Stacey Abrams Group Hit with Largest Fine in Georgia History for Violating Campaign Finance Law.”
A Democratic advocacy group founded by former Representative Stacey Abrams and once led by Senator Raphael Warnock were fined $300,000 on Wednesday for breaking Georgia’s campaign finance law.
Georgia’s ethics commission found that the New Georgia Project and its affiliated action fund raised $4.2 million and spent $3.2 million to support Abrams during the 2018 election cycle when she ran for governor. The groups failed to disclose those partisan contributions in violation of state campaign finance law. Abrams ultimately lost to Republican Brian Kemp, who defeated her again in 2022.
The two entities agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty, the largest fine in the commission’s 38-year history, in two $150,000 installments for 16 instances of illegal activity. The punishment is aimed at the groups, not Abrams and Warnock directly.
The New Georgia Project failed to register as an independent campaign committee and failed to file campaign finance reports of contributions and spending in 2018, showing their support for Abrams and other Democratic candidates.
In 2019, the groups committed the same offense without disclosing $646,000 in contributions and $174,000 in spending to support a voter referendum for Gwinnett County’s citizens to join the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority system. Despite the nonprofit’s efforts, voters rejected the referendum.
Just like Beto…
You didn’t expect Ken Paxton to let Biden leave office without one last lawsuit. “Texas Sues Biden Administration Over ‘Unlawful’ Methane Tax. Along with 22 other states, Texas is seeking to bar the final rule from taking effect on January 17.”
Turns out Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin didn’t bother to tell the chain of command that he was having major surgery. Or that he was hopped up on goofballs afterwards…
Not the Bee: “Asked what he’ll talk about at Mar-a-Lago, John Fetterman says, “I demand that I need to be made Pope of Greenland.” Fetterman seems to be the rare Democrat with a sense of humor…
Congratulations on making it to the end of a difficult but exhilarating 2024, and I hope you had a Merry Christmas! Christmas week is always slow, so this will be a smaller LinkSwarm than usual, and thank goodness for that. More Biden misdeeds, lots of Russian stuff blows up, two horrible gay pedophiles go to prison forever, and Democratic judges going out of their way to punish the victims. Let’s dig in!
President Joe Biden is transferring more student loan debt onto American taxpayers with only weeks left until he departs the Oval Office.
The Biden administration announced Friday that it is giving $4.28 billion of student debt relief to almost 55,000 more public service workers including teachers, nurses, and law enforcement officials.
“From Day One of my Administration, I promised to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement.
“Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”
The Department of Education is forgiving the debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a policy that permits the forgiveness of remaining student loans for public employees who have made 120 monthly payments.
Federal bureacurats are simply more equal than mere citizens…
Remember how Biden commuted and pardoned some of the worst people in the world earlier this month? Well, he found worse ones still.
President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, reclassifying their sentences to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from allowing their executions when he returns to office in January.
The 37 men were all convicted of murder. Their sentences will be reclassified from execution to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the White House.
The men whose sentences are being reclassified include Shannon Agofsky, who murdered a bank president, dumped his body in a lake, and then killed another man in prison; Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, who escaped from prison and killed two women while on a 17-day crime spree; Ricky Allen Fackrell, a white supremacist who killed a prison inmate; and Daryl Lawrence, who killed a police officer during a bank robbery.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in statement. “But guided by my conscience and my experience, . . . I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Biden only left three men on federal death row: Robert Bowers, the gunman who shot and killed eleven worshipers at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine people at a black church during a Bible study in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.
Biden’s so opposed to the death penalty he only refused to commute sentences for those criminals the public would pay attention to…
Do blue state Democratic officials think they can defy the federal government on deporting illegal aliens? A hard rain is gonna fall.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Thursday that incoming border czar Tom Homan is starting with Democratic Chicago to deport illegal immigrants in order to set a precedent for other cities threatening to block his efforts.
Since President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Homan as border czar, the former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director has warned Democratic mayors to step aside as some have threatened to refuse cooperation with ICE on mass deportations.
Snip.
Hanson argued that Homan’s focus on Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will set a precedent, emphasizing that the incoming border czar is listening to Democratic constituents concerned about illegal immigration in their city.
Snip.
I know the most obnoxious, the most crazy, the most nullification advocate in one of the second or third largest cities is Chicago, that crazy Mayor Johnson,’” Hanson continued. “‘So we’re going to tell him first, you try to stop the federal government and you think you’re South Carolina 1832 or you think you’re firing on Fort Sumner. You’re going to regret it because you were breaking federal law and we have a lot more federal laws that you would want us to follow in your interest than you do federal laws to break.’”
“That’s going to be interesting because what Homan is basically doing is talking over the mayor’s head to the black constituencies of Chicago and saying, don’t worry, your mayor doesn’t, he’s going to break the law, but I’m going to follow it and I’ll put him in jail for your benefit so that you don’t have to worry about Venezuelans and Colombians shooting you or taking over your social services,” Hanson added.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to continue military support for Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Dec. 20, citing undisclosed sources.
Three officials familiar with discussions revealed that Trump intends to keep supplying US military equipment to Ukraine after his inauguration.
Trump’s foreign policy team also informed European officials that he plans to push NATO allies to raise their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. NATO member states currently follow a goal of allocating 2% of their GDP to defense spending.
A Georgia couple was sentenced to 100 years in prison without parole after adopting two boys and sexually abusing them.
William and Zachary Zulock will each spend the rest of their lives behind bars, after pleading guilty to aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, incest, and sexual exploitation of children. Each were sentenced on Dec. 19.
Sanders said he first encountered some of these services while investigating Kremlin-funded disinformation efforts in Ukraine, as they are all useful in assembling large-scale, anonymous social media campaigns.
According to Sanders, all 122 of the services he tested are processing transactions through a company called Cryptomus, which says it is a cryptocurrency payments platform based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Cryptomus’ website says its parent firm — Xeltox Enterprises Ltd. (formerly certa-pay[.]com) — is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC).
Sanders said the payment data he gathered also shows that at least 56 cryptocurrency exchanges are currently using Cryptomus to process transactions, including financial entities with names like casher[.]su, grumbot[.]com, flymoney[.]biz, obama[.]ru and swop[.]is.
These platforms are built for Russian speakers, and they each advertise the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another. They also allow the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.
An analysis of their technology infrastructure shows that all of these exchanges use Russian email providers, and most are directly hosted in Russia or by Russia-backed ISPs with infrastructure in Europe (e.g. Selectel, Netwarm UK, Beget, Timeweb and DDoS-Guard). The analysis also showed nearly all 56 exchanges used services from Cloudflare, a global content delivery network based in San Francisco.
“Purportedly, the purpose of these platforms is for companies to accept cryptocurrency payments in exchange for goods or services,” Sanders told KrebsOnSecurity. “Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to find any goods for sale with websites using Cryptomus, and the services appear to fall into one or two different categories: Facilitating transactions with sanctioned Russian banks, and platforms providing the infrastructure and means for cyber attacks.”
“Wells Fargo Exits Net-Zero Banking Alliance After Texas Probe Into Anti-Energy Policies Attorney General Paxton has ended a review of the bank and allowed state governmental entities to do business with Wells Fargo again.”
Another day, another fake hate crime hoax. “A Tennessee college revealed that racist messages found written on campus were fabricated by a student in an apparent attempt to make Donald Trump supporters look bad. Rhodes College confirmed to Fox News Digital that a student had admitted to leaving the messages strewn about campus that were found over Thanksgiving break and were being investigated as a hate crime. Instead, it turned out to be yet another race hoax.”
Georgia woman arrested for evicting squatter from her house. And then the judge scolded her for her “privilege.” Sounds like a whole lot of people need federal equal protection lawsuits filed against them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Because I had to get out my book catalog last week, I’ve been as busy as Kathleen Kennedy on Ruin Star Wars Day, so this is another two-weeks crammed into one LinkSwarm. It’s just been a packed two weeks, with so many major stories breaking up not going to tease them up here, so let’s jump right in.
A new report has revealed that 21 George Soros-linked district attorneys across the United States have been replaced by “tough-on-crime” prosecutors. The report also noted that four have left office, either through recall efforts or other means.
Among those listed by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund were former Portland District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who lost a May election to Democrat challenger Nathan Vasquez, Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, who lost her reelection bid to Kalki Yalamanchili, and Kim Foxx, the former Cook County State’s Attorney who in 2023 announced that she would not seek reelection.
For those who were removed from office, there is Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, who in November was indicted on federal bribery charges, and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who was recalled last month after serving just 18 months in office, per The National News Desk.
Replacements also noted by the report were Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, who lost to challenger Nathan Hochman in last month’s election, and former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who lost the 2022 Democratic primary election to Ivan Bates. Since her election loss, Mosby has been found guilty of one count of mortgage fraud.
All of them need to go.
Speaking of Soros tools: Subway Samaritan Daniel penny found not guilty on all charges. Just like Kyle Rittenhouse, he never should have been charged in the first place. Soros tool Alvin Bragg needs to be impeached and removed from office.
Christopher Wray steps down as FBI head. This shouldn’t keep the Trump Administration from prosecuting for his manifest interference in the political process.
More Democratic Party fundraising fraud. “ActBlue, the massive online fund-raising platform for liberal causes, has informed Congress it did not automatically block donations made with foreign-bought gift cards until recently.” Almost like the entire party is a giant money laundering scam…
Busted. “Georgia Court Removes Fani Willis from Trump Case over Relationship with Special Prosecutor.”
An appellate court removed Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis (D) from the racketeering case against President-elect Donald Trump over her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Georgia’s court of appeals ruled Thursday that Willis will be removed from the case because of the appearance of misconduct surrounding her relationship with Wade, but did not throw out the case all together.
“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety is generally not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the three judge panel ruled.
Left unstated is that her lawfare attack on Trump was both illegal and unconstitutional.
He also handed Iran access to $10 billion, because promoting terrorism, plotting to destroy Israel, and trying to build nuclear weapons are activities that Democrats seem eager to reward.
Winning. “ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement in a defamation suit brought by President-elect Donald Trump, which requires the network to apologize, contribute $15 million to a ‘Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff,’ and pay Trump’s legal team $1 million.”
The battle lines are now drawn between West Coast liberals, Bernie Sanders-socialists and moderate technocrats in the Midwest, who insist the party has completely lost touch with the average American voter.
But first, there is one thing that all sides seemingly agree on: The current political establishment must be chased out of national politics for good. A reckoning is coming.
‘The people that are responsible for this s**tshow are the Obama people. They’re just grifters,’ a well-connected Democratic donor exclusively told Daily Mail. He singled out Jen O’Malley Dillon, who went from Biden 2024 campaign chair to serve in the same role for Harris’s camp, and David Plouffe, an ex-Obama 2008 campaign manager turned top Kamala adviser.
“Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster for ‘brazen election interference’ over faulty polling in presidential race.” I think it’s very unlikely that Trump will win this lawsuit, thanks to First Amendment protections and the “absence of malice standard.” Plus pollster Ann Selzer can always just claim “I just sucked at my job.” She retired after the election.
Israel pounded Syrian army bases on Tuesday in strikes it says aim to keep weapons from falling into hostile hands, but denied its forces had advanced into Syria, toward Damascus, beyond a buffer zone at the border.
Regional security sources and officers within the now-fallen Syrian army who spoke to Reuters described Tuesday morning’s airstrikes as the heaviest yet, hitting military installations and airbases across Syria, destroying dozens of helicopters and jets, as well as Republican Guard assets in and around Damascus.
The rough tally of 200 raids overnight had left nothing of the Syrian army’s assets, said the sources.
The Israeli Air Force has carried out over 300 airstrikes in Syria since the collapse of the regime, destroying advanced weapons and other capabilities.
Strikes reportedly carried out by Israel in Damascus’s Barzeh area completely destroyed a defense ministry research center, AFP correspondents reported on Tuesday. Western countries including the United States struck the facility in 2018, saying it was related to Syria’s “chemical weapons infrastructure.”
Plus they sunk the entire Syrian navy.
Speaking of pounding the snot out of things:
According to a US official, the US used B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets and A-10 aircraft to strike ISIS leaders, operatives and camps in central Syria. pic.twitter.com/QreZe4ATau
“Palantir CEO Alex Karp Eviscerates Democrats: Voters ‘Do Not Want To Hear Your Woke Pagan Ideology.'”
Alex Karp, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir, said late last week that Democrats lost the 2024 election because they did not understand the fundamental human desire to feel safe.
Karp made the remarks during a panel discussion at the Reagan National Defense Forum while talking about what Americans expect out of the U.S. government.
“Americans are the most loving, God-fearing, fair, least discriminatory people on the planet,” he said. “They want to know that if you’re waking up and thinking about harming American citizens, or if American citizens are taken hostage and kept in dungeons, or if you’re a foreign power sending fentanyl to poison our people, something really bad is going to happen to you and your friends and your cousins, and your bank account and your mistress, and whoever was involved.”
He continued, “When Americans are spending a trillion dollars on ‘defense,’ what I want and what I think my peers want is: why are these people keeping our citizens as hostages, torturing our people, attacking our allies, maligning us in what was once called the United Nations — basically a discriminatory institution against anything good? We need to stand up and those people need to be scared.”
He said that it was critical for the U.S. to dominate because “we have the best products in the world, and we can not have parity.”
“Our adversaries do not have our moral compunction,” he said. “If it is even, they will take advantage of our niceness, our kindness, our desire to be at home in Nebraska and New Hampshire or wherever we live, in our peaceful environments.”
“They need to wake up scared, and go to bed scared, and if you give that to the American people, the American people will go back and say — and honestly, I probably shouldn’t say this, this is why I thought the Democrats were going to lose the election, and why they did, because people want to live in peace,” he continued. “They want to go home. They do not want to hear your woke pagan ideology. They want to know they’re safe. And safe means the other person is scared. That’s how you make someone safe.”
Democrats are now, finally, pissed at Obama. “There are people there are people who are now multi-millionaires as a result of the Harris campaign, and we know exactly who they are. And I just want to say that half a billion dollars in advertising went to just four well-heeled Democratic firms. This whole thing is deeply incestuous.”
“Ozy Media Founder Carlos Watson Sentenced To Hefty Prison Term For Defrauding Investors. [He] was sentenced to 116 months, or nearly ten years, in prison for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in an unusual case that briefly captivated the media world.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “2020 Carrollton Mayoral Candidate Admits to Mail Ballot Fraud. Zul Mohamed pleaded guilty Monday to 109 voter fraud felonies.”
“After Donald Trump flipped his county for the first time in a century, longtime Democratic Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina has announced he is switching parties to the Republicans saying that “the [Democratic] party left me, and the people of South Texas behind.”
Three U.S. Army soldiers have been arrested in Texas on criminal charges relating to smuggling illegal aliens.
The three soldiers were based at Fort Cavazos, which is near Killeen in Central Texas.
Fort Cavazos is The Fort Formerly Known As Fort Hood. I might have been a little more worked up over the name change if Hood hadn’t been such a shitty general.
U.S. Border Patrol agents made an initial traffic stop of a suspicious vehicle in the city of Presidio, located in West Texas on the Rio Grande. As an agent approached the vehicle’s passenger side, the driver sped away—hitting a second Border Patrol vehicle and injuring the agent inside.
The vehicle was eventually stopped by local law enforcement officers who detained four individuals in the car. Three were illegal aliens, and one was identified as U.S. Army soldier Emilio Mendoza Lopez.
The driver of the vehicle was reported as being another soldier named Angel Palma, who fled on foot from the vehicle but was located in Odessa a day later.
Presidio is nearly 500 miles away from where the soldiers were stationed.
“Mendoza Lopez and Palma allegedly traveled from Fort Cavazos to Presidio for the purpose of picking up and transporting undocumented noncitizens,” announced the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. “A third individual, Enrique Jauregui, is alleged to be the recruiter and facilitator of the human smuggling conspiracy.”
Three Texas teachers made news last week over charges of child pornography—also known as child sexual abuse material, as the images and videos depict sex crimes being committed against minors.
The educators worked in Dallas, Leander, and Wall Independent School Districts. Two of the three taught band.
On December 13, Dallas Police arrested Sean Turner, 34, and charged him with possession of pornography featuring a child younger than 10 years old—a first-degree felony.
Snip.
Retired principal Curtis John Locklear was arrested December 12 and charged with felony possession of child porn.
Locklear was arrested by the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office working with the Houston-area Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.
Snip.
Also on December 12, a federal judge sentenced Joshua Carroll to 30 years in prison for possessing and producing child porn.
Carroll was an assistant band director in Wall ISD from January 2022 until his crimes were discovered earlier this year.
Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw got dinged by the Internet for insider trading. So then Crenshaw attacked the Internet. It didn’t go well for him.
Google on Monday introduced a new chip called Willow, which solved in five minutes a computing problem that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.
Tech companies are chasing quantum computing in hopes of developing systems that perform at speeds far faster than traditional silicon-based computers.
The building blocks of quantum computers, called “qubits”, while being fast, are error-prone, making it hard to ensure quantum computers are reliable and commercially viable.
The more qubits used in quantum computing, the more errors typically occur. But Google said on Monday it found a way to string together qubits in the Willow chip so that error rates decline as the number of qubits rise, adding that it can also correct errors in real time.
My understanding of how quantum computers work is limited to popular explanations, but D-Wave is evidently still in business, so maybe they work?
The trailer for James Gunn’s Superman dropped. I’ve never seen a Superman film in theaters, and this will not be getting me in. But you’ve got to give Gunn credit for thinking way outside the box and including Krypto the Superdog and Hawkman, two characters that absolutely no one in the greater viewing public was clamoring for.
There were apparently no broken water pipes, no 3 AM ballot drops, no other shenanigans so widespread and outlandish that they were able to undo what amounts to a small red wave.
Donald Trump has finally won a Presidential election beyond the margin of fraud. Final polls had Trump winning in all the swing states, and it looks like he won all seven: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Sometimes Minnesota was included in the list of swing states, but Harris did manage to hold onto that (so I guess the Walz pick did accomplish something). It even looks like Trump will handily win the symbolic popular vote, the first Republican to do so since George W. Bush in 2004.
Republicans have retaken control of the Senate, knocking off Democratic incumbents in Ohio and Montana, picking up West Virginia from the retiring Joe Manchin, will likely pick up Pennsylvania, and currently hold a razor-thin edge in Nevada. Unlike 2016 and 2020, this year Trump had some modest coattails.
This was a very solid win for Trump, but not a GOP landslide on the order of 1984 or 1994. But it does show signs of being a realigning election, with Trump continuing to increase his shares of black and Hispanic voters, as well as working class voters of all stripes.
I should be ecstatic. Actually, I’m more tired and relieved, since it seems like I’ve been running flat out the last two weeks, so I’ll make this short.
Tomorrow we’ll examine whether Democrats have learned anything from this defeat, or if they’re even capable of learning…
Following an awesome 2.5 hour podcast with Elon Musk, Joe Rogan announced his endorsement of Donald Trump.
In a post on X dropping the podcast, Rogan said of Musk “He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way. For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”
Trump thanked Rogan:
Nuggets from the interview:
Musk and Rogan discussed how an influx of illegal migrants to swing states followed by some sort of amnesty program would turn the country into a one-party state.
Vote for @realDonaldTrump or the Dems will legalize so many illegals in swing states that this will be the last real election in America. @JoeRogan agrees.
Rogan and Musk both note they were formerly Democrats…
The Georgia Supreme Court quashes a plan to cheat with late ballots in one county. “The Georgia Supreme Court ordered the Cobb board to keep separate the absentee ballots of those voters that are received after the deadline on election day but before November 8 in a secure, safe, and sealed container separate from other voted ballots,’ WSB reported. ‘The court also ordered the board to notify the voters by email, text, or public announcement of the change,” the report continues. At this point, all votes will need to be in by 7 p.m. on Election Day.'” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The election season is upon us, which means it’s time for Democrats to try to win the only way they know how: Cheating. So here’s a roundup of links on some (but far from all) the ways Democrats will attempt to cheat in November.
A network of left-wing organizations backed by billionaire George Soros is working to naturalize and mobilize immigrants and refugees in order to activate them as voting blocs in swing states, boasting that they could “sway the outcome of national, state, and local elections.”
Chief among these groups is the National Partnership for New Americans, which describes itself as “a national multiethnic, multiracial partnership network of 60 of the country’s leading immigrant and refugee rights organizations.” The group received $560,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations from 2016 to 2021. The group had a total revenue of $4.11 million in 2023.
“Our network has supported the naturalization of over 250,000 U.S. Citizens and has been a key driver of advocacy to make naturalization more affordable and accessible,” the National Partnership for New Americans states. Its website features an image of a t-shirt that reads “Naturalize 2 Million by 2022,” along with the phrase “New American Voters.”
Democrats often rebut the Republican argument on illegal immigration — that the left encourages it to forge a path to permanent Democrat political power — by saying that illegal immigrants don’t have the right to vote. But the effort by the Soros-funded group to get as many immigrants as possible on the voter rolls as a way to “sway” elections indicates that the left does view immigration as a political tool.
Figures suggest that mass immigration could be a boon for Democrats’ electoral chances. One analysis found that congressional districts with a higher-than-average foreign born population voted for Democrats in 90 percent of cases during the 2018 midterm election. The foreign-born population residing in the United States surged to 51.6 million — the highest level ever — under the Biden-Harris administration. An estimate from the Center for Immigration Studies found that illegal immigration accounted for approximately 58 percent of that spike.
President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by only 11,000 votes in Arizona in 2020, a fact that underscores the impact mass immigration could have on American elections. Biden beat Trump by just 12,000 votes in Georgia, another crucial swing state, in 2020. The New American Voters campaign notes that there are more than 86,000 individuals who have been naturalized in Georgia since the election.
The New American Voters campaign, a project of the National Partnership for New Americans, maintains demographic reports on critical swing states and the country as a whole.
“Since the last presidential election in November 2020, an estimated 62,179 voting age adults have become newly naturalized citizens in Arizona,” reads one such report, which also track the top ten countries of origin for new citizens in each state.
National Partnership for New Americans Executive Director Nicole Melaku used the release of its demographic data as an opportunity to push Biden to swing further to the left on immigration, pressuring him to support “pathways to citizenship.”
One 2020 report from the National Partnership for New Americans explains that “new American voters form critical voting blocks that can have the power to sway national electoral outcomes,” highlighting their growing share of the population in key swing states and calling them “a sleeping political giant.”
A 2022 report from the group celebrated newly-naturalized voters as part of the “new American majority,” a term used to describe “all people of color, unmarried women, and young voting eligible Americans.” The National Partnership for New Americans directly compared the margin of victory in the 2020 presidential election to the number of newly-naturalized voters who had since gained citizenship within each state.
The National Partnership for New Americans isn’t the only leftist organization working to leverage mass immigration to impact American elections, however. There’s also the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an organization that’s received nearly $7 million from Soros between 2016 to 2022, and had $25 million in total revenue in 2022.
Two of the most recent listed grants from the Open Society Foundations, which total nearly $4.3 million, are intended “to encourage naturalization among eligible immigrants, assist them with the process, and mobilize their civic participation.” The center is one of the organizations behind Citizenshipworks, an effort also funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative to help non-citizens residing in the United States become citizens.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center isn’t exclusively concerned with naturalizing and mobilizing non-citizens. The organization also works to prevent the deportation of illegal aliens. It received $500,000 in 2021 from the Open Society Foundations to fund its efforts to “dismantle the infrastructure of criminalization, detention, and deportation of immigrants.”
A coalition of 19 Republican attorneys general have launched a criminal investigation into the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue over allegations of money laundering.
As American Greatness reported in April, multiple independent investigative journalists, including O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) and Election Watch have uncovered what appears to be illegal activity involving millions of dollars in campaign donations to Act Blue that have been laundered through unwitting small donors.
The process of breaking up large donations and submitting them under the names of small donors to cover up illegal contributions has been dubbed “smurfing.” Suspicions that ActBlue routinely engages in this type of illicit fundraising have dogged the outfit since at least Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020.
The Committee on House Administration, chaired by Congressman Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), launched an investigation into Act Blue in November of 2023 to look into reports that the fundraising giant was skirting campaign donation laws and allowing rampant fraud on the site. The committee widened its probe in August 2024.
In a letter sent to top officials on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on August 5, Steil urged them to “immediately initiate an emergency rulemaking to require political campaigns to verify the card verification value (‘CVV’) of donors who contribute online using a credit or debit card, and to prohibit political campaigns from accepting online contributions from a gift card or other prepaid credit cards.”
In September, Steil sent letters to five states, urging them to launch criminal investigations into ActBlue’s alleged illicit activities, citing three specific areas of concern:
– Donations significantly disproportionate to an individual’s net worth or previous giving history.
– Uncharacteristic donations from party-affiliated registered voters suddenly contributing to candidates of the opposing party.
– Unusually frequent donations from elderly individuals or first-time donors.
The number of GOP AGs involved in the effort has since swelled to 19.
On Tuesday, the 19 Republican Attorney’s General sent a letter to ActBlue CEO and President Regina Wallace-Jones demanding information and explanations regarding the suspicious donations.
Recent reporting suggests that that there may be donors across the country who are identified in filings with the Federal Election Commission as having donated to candidates through ActBlue (and other affiliated entities), but who did not actually make those donations. That raises a host of concerns about whether ActBlue’s platform is being used to facilitate “smurfing”––a type of money laundering in which donors break up large donations and submit them under different names to disguise who the money comes from and thereby skirt contribution limits in violation of state and federal law.
As one former FEC commissioner recently explained, wealthy donors—some of whom are foreign nationals and therefore barred from donating to federal candidates at all—can employ complicated schemes like this to make donations in others’ names. This concern is not hypothetical. Indeed, in an indictment filed last week in federal court, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that a major U.S. political figure knowingly participated in such a scheme in a recent election cycle to receive contributions from a foreign national through straw donors. Further, the apparent irregularities in FEC filings also raise concerns about whether ActBlue’s fundraising methods are deceptive and properly safeguard donor’s data privacy.
Some of us and our colleagues have raised these concerns with you directly, and at least one senator has raised these concerns with the FEC. Independent investigations have shown that there are donors across the country who show up on FEC filings as having donated to candidates through ActBlue (and other affiliated entities) but deny having made those donations. Given the prominent role it plays in our elections, it is incumbent on ActBlue to address the serious questions created by apparent irregularities in ActBlue’s FEC filings.
ActBlue is one of the largest fundraising platforms for election-related donations. Already during the 2024 election cycle ActBlue has raised billions of dollars. But there are concerns about where those dollars came from. It is essential that we know whether political donations—particularly in such large volumes—are being solicited, made, and processed consistent with campaign finance, consumer protection, and other state and federal laws. We, the chief legal officers of Iowa, Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming ask that you explain what measures you have in place to ensure that donations made through your platform follow State and federal law.
Just as important, we ask for clarification as to what measures you take to make sure that the donors identified as donating via the ActBlue platform are who they claim. If individuals are inadvertently donating to political campaigns, are misled into making repeat donations, or are having donations made in their name that they do not wish to make, that could violate election-related disclosures or state consumer fraud statutes. Our States’ citizens deserve to know that those facilitating election-related financing are following State and federal laws. Thus we appreciate the assurances that you will provide in answering our questions promptly before the upcoming elections in November.
To prevent voter fraud, many states require voter ID. But in California, Democrats enacted laws to outlaw it.
On Monday, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill preventing local governments from requiring voters to present identification at the polls.
Monday evening, X CEO Elon Musk posted in response to the legislation, “Wow, it is now illegal to require voter ID in California! They just made PREVENTING voter fraud against the law.”
Snip.
The new legislation is in a response to Huntington Beach residents passing a voter ID requirement in March. In April, California’s Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta and Democratic Secretary of State Shirley Weber sued the city to invalidate the law, claiming the legislation violated state voting protections.
The bill was passed by the Democratic-controlled California Assembly and Senate earlier this year after members claimed voter ID laws disproportionately affect low-income, elderly and minority voters. The new bill goes into effect on January 1, 2025 when California will become one of 14 states that do not require voter ID for elections.
Despite the bill being signed into law, Huntington Beach has yet to respond to the lawsuit. According to Newsweek, California’s Democratic lawmakers have introduced multiple bills to prevent conservative-leaning locations in the state such as Shasta County from adopting voter ID laws.
Here in Texas, a federal judge wants Democrats to be able to “harvest” ballots.
Six progressive organizations were victorious in their lawsuit challenging a state law that prohibits paid ballot harvesting, with San Antonio-based federal Judge Xavier Rodriguez issuing a ruling on Saturday that declared the law unconstitutional and enjoined state officials from enforcing it.
La Union Del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) was the lead plaintiff, along with the League of Women Voters of Texas, Texas American Federation of Teachers, the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and OCA-Greater Houston.
The law in question, which was passed within Senate Bill (SB) 1 during the Texas Legislature’s first special session in 2021, creates an offense for “vote harvesting services.”
Specifically, the law bans “in-person interaction with one or more voters, in the physical presence of an official ballot or a ballot voted by mail, intended to deliver votes for a specific candidate or measure” and only if it’s done for compensation or benefit.
Volunteers are not prohibited.
According to the plaintiffs that include LUPE, their paid canvassers are often invited into voters’ homes and asked for assistance with their mail-in ballots.
LUPE staff members and volunteers have been asked for assistance with voting by mail and in-person at the polls by elderly and disabled voters, and have provided such assistance, the lawsuit says, adding, “LUPE often provides its volunteers with t-shirts or gas cards, particularly because there is little public transportation in the Rio Grande Valley.”
According to the judge, confusion about the law’s applicability was not addressed by state officials in charge of enforcing it, such as whether the gas card or other items may qualify as compensation that makes ballot harvesting a crime, and he agreed with their position that the law chilled their First Amendment rights.
In his holding, Rodriguez declared the canvassing restrictions in Texas Election Code Sec. 276.015 unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments, and ordered the state’s Office of the Attorney General and the Secretary of State not to investigate violations of the law and local prosecutors not to enforce it.
State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), who authored the legislation, reacted to the news on social media, arguing why the law is needed and adding that Rodriguez’s decision will be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
“I’m glad the Fifth Circuit will be reviewing,” Hughes wrote.
“I included this in SB1 to protect vulnerable voters — the elderly, first-time voters, voters with limited English proficiency. These are the voters most often preyed upon by vote harvesters and paid political operatives,” he explained.
The Heritage Foundation has a voting fraud tracker. The page for Pennsylvania shows nine voting fraud incidents since 2020, two of which were for “Altering The Vote Count.”
This is just a sampler of how Democrats intend to commit voting fraud between now and election day. If you know of any others, feel free to share them in the comments.
I’m sure they next month will provide many more examples…
Democrats refuse to let rapists be deported, the apple doesn’t fall far from the Democratic assassin’s tree, Israel decapitates Hamas, more illegal alien voting schemes exposed, the boom falls on Eric Adams, Goines goes down, another Russian ammo dump goes boom, a commie sub sinks, Raptor 1 Cylon 0, and 50 Cent throws down some Diddy dirt for your amusement.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Man, Democrats sure love illegal alien rapists. “158 Democrats voted against a bill that would ensure ‘aliens who have been convicted of or who have committed sex offenses or domestic violence are inadmissible and deportable.’ The Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act (H.R.7909) bill was introduced by Republican Representative Nancy Mace.”
No, they really, really do. “ICE Detains Illegal Migrant Accused Of Raping Pre-Teen In Nantucket…More Than A Month After He Walked On Bail.” “After being charged with one count of rape of a child with a 10-year age difference and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, [Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo] was allowed to ‘walk free on bail’ and immigration authorities were never called, according to a report from the New York Post.”
“Ryan Wesley Routh Wrote of ‘Failed’ Assassination Attempt in Letter to ‘World’ Months Ago; Offered $150,000 Bounty to ‘Complete the Job.’” Plus a refresher to the would-be assassin the media already seems to be trying to memory hole: “While Trump was golfing at his International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida on September 15, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel with a scope sticking out of the fence and ‘engaged’ with the person, who was later identified as Routh, a Biden-Harris supporter and Democrat donor with an extensive criminal background.”
“Son of would-be Trump assassin arrested for child porn.” “Investigators say they discovered ‘hundreds’ of files with child pornography during a search of Oran Routh’s residence in Guilford County, North Carolina, on Saturday conducted ‘in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation.’ The two charges he faces include receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography.”
In little more than a year, a once-obscure South American street gang has taken hold in the Big Apple, exploiting the migrant crisis to build a violent criminal enterprise from within the walls of city shelters.
Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-bred crew of thugs, now terrorize Gotham with gun-toting, moped-riding hoods, sell illegal guns under the very noses of private shelter security guards, and run sleazy prostitution rings in neighborhoods suddenly besieged by the marauding migrants.
The gang, which also peddles a lethal fentanyl mix called Tussi or “pink cocaine,” has grown so fast that it has so far overwhelmed both average New Yorkers and the city’s elite police force.
Given how many FBI arrests have been sprung on NYPD brass over the last few months, I’m not sure how well that “elite” appellation still applies.
“Not every migrant is here to commit crimes, not every migrant is a gang member,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. “But these TDA guys hide very well in plain sight in the migrant community.
“We aren’t looking to grab the food delivery guy, but these guys go so far as to wear Uber Eats clothing, [use] the delivery bags while they’re out there committing their crimes,” the chief told The Post. “When we do arrest them, they are very eager to talk about the crime they have committed.
“They are unwilling to talk about TDA itself.”
The gang, whose name means “train from Aragua” (a state in north-central Venezuela) in Spanish, now runs citywide theft and robbery crews that have terrorized neighborhoods.
In Jackson Heights, a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue dubbed the “Market of Sweethearts” has become a testament to TDA’s muscle and influence, with vendors peddling stolen items and an open-air red light district that has migrant hookers walking the streets day and night.
Plus a feud between Tren de Aragua and rival illegal alien gang El Carro De Lost Caragijos 666, as well as a guide to gang tattoos. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
Former President Donald Trump has gained ground and is leading Vice President Kamala Harris in key Sun Belt states, according to a New York Times/Siena poll from Monday.
Trump gained in Arizona and is now leading Harris by five points with the two candidates polling at 50% and 45% among likely voters respectively, according to the poll. At the same time, Trump has also held onto his lead over Harris in Georgia by four points and in North Carolina by two points. (RELATED: Experts Say Major Swing State Is Once Again ‘Pivotal’ To Trump’s Chances Of Retaking White House)
While the Republican candidate is leading, a significant portion of likely voters across all three states are independents, according to the poll. On average, 31% of likely voters in the Sun Belt consider themselves Democrats, 33% identify as Republicans and 31% say they are independents.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and the guerilla journalists at Muckraker have teamed up to unearth a little scheme down in Arizona — registering illegal aliens to vote. And shocker, I wonder which political party those new “voters” might be supporting? I’ll give you one guess, and I bet you’ll get it right.
The illegals Muckraker interviewed said they were registered to vote at grocery stores, while others reported activists visiting their apartment complex and encouraging them to register to vote. Why does this matter? In 2020, fewer than 11,000 votes tipped Arizona’s electoral votes to Biden.
Fast forward to today, and recent polling shows former President Donald Trump holding a narrow lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona, a critical swing state. With the race shaping up to be just as tight in 2024, the integrity of voter registration efforts takes on even greater significance — as does the lack of concern from the left.
It gets worse. The Oversight Project tried to track these individuals on the voter rolls but came up empty-handed — they were nowhere to be found.
This development comes just days after the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled that nearly 98,000 people with unverified citizenship documents are still eligible to vote in state and local elections.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s rabidly leftist Secretary of State who will forever be known for her anti-democratic drive to knock former President Donald Trump off the ballot, has suffered another election law loss in federal court.
The U.S. District Court for the Colorado District last week issued an order demanding the Democrat secretary of state release Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) reports suspected of containing dead registrants on the state’s voter rolls. The reports, according to a settlement, include individuals who may have died within the past three years.
It’s another significant election integrity victory for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), and another stunning loss for election transparency-stifling Griswold and ERIC.
“PILF has knocked down ERIC’s wall of secrecy in the voter list maintenance process,” J. Christian Adams, president of the election integrity watchdog organization, said in a press release. “States cannot use third parties to hide election records that the public has a right to see.”
Griswold ultimately signed the stipulation after the court denied her original request to dismiss the case. Judge Philip Brimmer ordered the secretary of state’s office to disclose the requested 2021 ERIC Reports by Nov. 1. Brimmer did allow minimal redactions to the ERIC Report Key. With the agreement reached, the judge dismissed PILF’s claim that Griswold violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993.
The long awaited indictments of New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams finally comes down.
New York City mayor Eric Adams engaged in a nearly decade-long conspiracy that included accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources to benefit his political career, according to the federal indictment unsealed Thursday morning.
Adams is accused of accepting free airline flights and staying in luxurious hotels on behalf of Turkish business and government officials who sought to influence him.
He sought foreign money in part to benefit his 2021 mayoral campaign, according to the indictment. But some of the criminal conduct Adams is accused of dates as far back as 2015 when he was the Brooklyn borough president.
Adams had been charged with five counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals; wire fraud; solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national in two instances; and bribery.
He is the first sitting New York mayor to face criminal charges.
The 57-page indictment accuses Adams of funneling illegal foreign money through U.S.-based straw donors, including at least two New York construction companies, to reap over $10 million in public-matching funds based on false certifications that his campaign complied with finance regulations. The funds provide “eligible candidates with public funds to match small-dollar contributions from New York City residents,” the charging document says.
Adams also received free or discounted travel benefits on Turkey’s national airline from a Turkish official, who facilitated the funneling of the straw donations to Adams. These overseas trips included flights from New York to Turkey, India, France, Sri Lanka, China and Hungary from 2015 to 2019. These trips are valued at more than $100,000.
Other luxurious benefits included “free rooms at opulent hotels, free meals at high-end restaurants, and free luxurious entertainment while in Turkey,” the indictment states.
In January 2022, when Adams was inaugurated as mayor, Adams agreed to accept foreign contributions intended for his 2025 campaign while meeting with a Turkish entrepreneur whom the indictment dubs the “Promoter.”
The Turkish government sought influence over Adams, in part, to get his help to open a new consulate building in the city before the country’s president visited in 2021, prosecutors say. The 36-story skyscraper would have failed a fire inspection at the time.
Prosecutors say Turkish officials cashed in on their influence with Adams and he pressured the fire officials to open the building, which they did because they “were convinced that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t back down.”
The question, of course, is how the boom fell on Adams, but Bill de Blasio’s wife “mishandled” hundreds of millions in homeless funds and never received an investigation…
“Ukraine Destroys ANOTHER Ammo Dump! In Kammenyi, Krasnodar Krai.” Here’s my quick, handy description of the different between an “oblast” and a “krai’: I have no frigging clue.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly voted 26–25 to recommend Antony Blinken be held in contempt of Congress following the diplomat’s failure to appear for Tuesday’s hearing.
“Secretary Blinken’s refusal to comply with the Committee’s subpoena — despite months of notice and offers of accommodations — warrants contempt,” the resolution read.
The Republican-led committee has long sought to host the secretary of state as it investigates the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan over three years ago that left 13 U.S. service members dead.
Israel took out Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut. You would think Hezbollah honchos wouldn’t be hanging around their headquarters in the current conflict, but Israel reportedly took out five senior Hezbollah officials. Not sure if this is the strike or not, but it’s pretty shock-and-awe:
These are JDAMs using either BLU-95 500 lb (230 kg) (FAE-II) BLU-96 2,000 lb (910 kg) thermobaric warheads.
The double slap sounds and the jet plumes of orange tinted smoke out of the impacts signify an underground tunnel network being 'serviced' by thermobaric munitions. https://t.co/sZZQ1ngaXA
The blue is Israel. The lack of counter-activity (which would be in red) suggests Israel may have already crushed Hamas in Gaza.
Here’s a very long range look at Lebanon and northern Israel, showing that while Hezbollah is still launching a few rocket attacks at Israel, Israeli air power is bombing the absolute snot out of Hezbollah, not only with strikes in southern Lebanon, but even all the way up near the northern border in the Bekaa Valley.
Israel is obviously able to hit targets in Lebanon with impunity.
You feel sorry for Lebanese civilians caught in the crossfire, but pity is tempered by the fact that Hezbollah is part of the ruling March 8 coalition.
International law expert covers Operation Grim Beeper. “In the context of distinction, necessity, proportionality these principles of the laws of armed conflict being adhered to in an exemplary fashion.”
Bill to strip the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations (like the Council on American-Islamic Relations) moves forward in the house.
“Pentagon to Send Additional U.S. Troops to Middle East as Regional Tensions Boil Over.” “The U.S. maintains about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria, primarily tasked with counterterrorism operations. U.S.-controlled military bases also exist in Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, with a total count of U.S. military personnel in the region numbering around 40,000, up from the 34,000 troops stationed in the Middle East before the October 7 massacre.” But wait! Kamala Harris said we had no troops in a war zone!
A woman from Warrington, Cheshire, has revealed how her attempt to report a sexual attack led to her own arrest while the perpetrator remained free to assault others for nearly two years.
Helen Ingham, 48, recently waived her right to anonymity in order to share her harrowing experience with law enforcement after reporting an assault by Ahmed Fahmy, 45, a hotel manager whose reign of terror against women spanned more than 15 years.
There, as here, the left doesn’t want foreign rapists deported…
Democrats chances to take the senate this year appear to be dim. Good.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday aimed at streamlining permitting laws to facilitate the domestic construction of semiconductor factories.
The bipartisan legislation passed by a vote of 257 to 125, with 49 members not voting, and now moves to the president’s desk for approval.
The bill passed the Senate last year, and was passed in the House of Representatives this week as the “Kelly-Cruz substitute amendment.”
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) submitted the amended text of their Senate bill in December 2023.
When a bill passes as a “substitute amendment” in Congress, the original text is entirely replaced with new content. This new version of the bill, offered as an amendment, becomes the text that is voted on and passed.
It aims to accelerate the construction of U.S. semiconductor facilities, as the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022 has made over $50 billion available to promote domestic production and innovation.
It will also streamline federal permitting by designating the Department of Commerce as the lead agency for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, exempting certain projects from NEPA, providing the Secretary of Commerce with greater authority to expedite reviews in coordination with state and local governments, and limiting court challenge timelines.
Snip.
Cruz supported one portion of the CHIPS Act but disagreed with another.
Cruz explained in 2023 that the CHIPS Act consisted of two key parts: the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors (FABS) Act, offering a tax credit to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing investment, and the CHIPS Act itself, providing billions in direct subsidies to companies. While Cruz co-sponsored the FABS Act, he voted against the CHIPS Act due to his opposition to direct subsidies, favoring the more indirect incentive of the tax credit.
“Many companies have fired Gen Z workers just months after hiring them and several business owners said they are hesitant to bring on recent college graduates due to concerns about their work ethic, communication skills and readiness to do the job, according to a new survey. Six in 10 employers said they have already let go recent college graduates this year, while one in seven said they are inclined to refrain from hiring new graduates next year, according to a survey conducted by Intelligent.com.” Also: “Although they may have some theoretical knowledge from college, they often lack the practical, real-world experience and soft skills required to succeed in the work environment.” Also: “75% of companies reported that some or all of their recent college graduates were unsatisfactory.” There may be a bit of truth to this, but a lot of companies seem to be laying off and firing people of whatever age right now…
Seems like an Air Force F-22 Raptor shot down a UFO over Canada in 2023. This was during the Red Balloon Menace, but it sort of looks like a Cylon Raider from the BattleStar Galactica reboot.
Critical Drinker gives thumbs up on The Penguin. “Just the right balance between grounded realism and industrial gothic. It’s obviously still based on New York, but rundown, neglected, stricken by crime, corruption and decay. So basically just actual New York, then.”
Happy Friday the 13th! Harris continues to slip behind Trump despite (because?) of their debate on the network of her Best Friend Forever, Haitian immigrants in Ohio accused of eating roof rabbit, Texas blasts Biden Administration overreach (again), Conor McGregor steps into a different kind of ring, a worse than usual remake idea, and American cats meet a variety of grisly ends.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
You know that Harris bounce? Nate Silver says not so much. “I’d also note that Harris’s raw polling averages have DECLINED in most swing states since the start of the DNC. This data is NOT subject to the convention bounce adjustment. She’s had a run of pretty mediocre state polling.”
It’s not surprising that the snap polling, including by groups that conservatives trust, like Trafalgar, is showing that Harris “won” the debate. And I think that’s true. She was more polished, more prepared; she had her canned barbs. But there’s something strange going on here. While she won the debate, Democrats always come across in snap polling as winning the debates. I saw people sharing on X the history of snap polling after debates with Donald Trump, first with Hillary and then with Biden. In every one of those debates—six in total—clear majorities said that Trump lost the debate. I’m not sure what to read into that.
So, it was anger at the moderators, frustration that Trump wasn’t making a lot of the points I thought he could have made, but he was being Trump. And I’ve misjudged his appeal to voters and his electoral success so many times, so it is what it is.
But there’s something else I took away from this—and it’s showing on the screen just to the side of me here. One thing I really noticed throughout was the faces that Harris was making—very condescending, very mocking, very childish, actually. I think that’s the one thing I remember more than anything about the debate.
Now, I think Trump did a very good job, even though he didn’t make the points I thought he could have, like showing how she flip-flopped. He hit hard on the border and the economy, and I think that may have a lasting impact.
What’s showing up in the focus groups—ones I’ve seen not by right-wing groups, but CNN, Reuters, NBC—there seems to be a disconnect between who they think won the debate and how they’re reacting substantively.
Trafalgar was consistent with the others, showing a 15-point win for Harris in terms of who won the debate, but no movement in who people were going to vote for. CNN was interesting—they had an even larger, 20-plus-point win for Harris, but found that on the key issue—voters’ most important issue—the economy, Trump actually improved over pre-debate polling. Similar findings came from Reuters and NBC.
Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, is one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “extraordinary friends,” according to a report in the New York Times.
Walden and Harris have known each other since 1994, while their husbands, Matt Walden and Doug Emhoff, have known each other since the 1980s.
Dana Walden has donated to dozens of Democrats and contributed to Harris’ political campaigns since at least 2003, when she ran for district attorney in San Francisco.
While the legacy media has yet to find any evidence of pet consumption that it’s willing to accept, there are some much larger issues regarding the crisis that has been created in Springfield through the importation of nearly 20,000 Haitian illegals.
Former Ohio State Representative Kyle Koehler has sounded a warning regarding the consequences that have followed the Biden administration’s policy that gave temporary protected status to more than 100,000 Haitian migrants, including those relocated to Springfield.
BREAKING:
Former Ohio State Rep. Kyle Koehler (@repkoehler) has made SHOCKING revelations about the illegal Haitian crisis in Springfield, Ohio during a recent speech.
1.) The Haitian illegals in Ohio are given $600-$1600 per month on Debit Cards through the Refugee Cash… pic.twitter.com/aWDyVcx7b3
Among the concerns raised by Koehler are the strain on the local school system with more than 1,600 non-English speaking students now enrolled and Haitian refugees who are 20 years old being placed Freshman High School classrooms with 13 year old kids.
Koehler also voiced concern over an individual who is renting his 63 homes to the relocated Haitians for as little as $250 per month, with 20-25 individuals living in each home.
Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) has also weighed in on the controversy, saying that he too has heard from Springfield residents complaining that pets and wildlife were being abducted and that health services are being severely strained by an influx of individuals with communicable diseases like TB and HIV.
The community of 60,000 residents is clearly facing serious issues related to the open border policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
When tales of Haitian immigrants eating cats emerged on social media this week, it suddenly focused attention on the city of Springfield, Ohio, but now we are learning there’s more to the story:
“Those 20,000 Haitians did not show up overnight or uninvited. Though flown in by the federal government, they were not forced on the city by the federal government. Elections have consequences. Springfield voted for this. They signaled their virtue, their signal was seen, and virtue arrived. This is what they wanted. This is what they got. They’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Much commentary has focused on whether it’s true that pets are being killed and eaten by the Haitians, but that’s not really the point. The point is why Springfield became the destination for thousands of Haitians (who may or may not eat cats).
It’s a long story. First of all, you’ll find liberals insisting that these Haitians are not illegal immigrants. Research further, however, and you learn that most of them entered the country illegally, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after making their way through Central America. After Haiti descended into its latest crisis, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to all Haitians in the U.S., so you may say that they have been retroactively (but temporarily) “legalized.”
Now let’s talk about Springfield, which is a “blue” island of liberalism in a sea of Republican “red.” Ohio was once a battleground state, closely contested in every presidential election, and then Trump came along and the Buckeye State has now become a GOP stronghold. Springfield was a city of 58,662 residents before the Haitian influx, and the city sits in Clark County (population 136,000) which voted 61% for Trump in 2020.
You see that, if the Democrats can turn these Haitians into voters, they can make Clark County “blue,” and a similar calculus is being applied nationwide by the Biden administration’s immigration policy. Democrats insist that the “Great Replacement” is a right-wing conspiracy theory, but we can see them doing it — blatantly, deliberately, in front of our eyes — in places like Springfield. And this brings us to the late Warren Copeland.
For most of the past three decades, Copeland was the mayor of Springfield. He was a professor at Wittenberg University, a local institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Anyone who knows anything about the ELCA will tell you it is the pluperfect example of degenerate liberal Protestantism. “The ELCA has drifted so far into pagan goddess worship that to call it ‘Lutheranism’ is an insult to Luther; to call it ‘Christian’ is blasphemy,” as I wrote in 2016. Copeland was a radical obsessed with “social justice,” and the fact that Springfield repeatedly elected him as their mayor tells you something about the politics of the city. Indeed, Springfield eagerly welcomed the influx of Haitians. Read this article from December 2022:
A surge in the number of Springfield residents from Haiti has resulted in an outpouring of language assistance and additional forms of help from the Springfield City School District and others who are trying to meet their needs.
Social Justice destroys everything it touches.
Citizens have questions to City Council about vetting of Haitian refugees in Sylacauga, Alabama. City Council: “Meeting adjourned.”
For the first time in EU history, Germany is at the forefront of immigration suspension. Other EU countries will follow.
The Schengen Area…is an area encompassing 29 European countries that have officially abolished border controls at their mutual borders.
Reuters reports Germany Tightens Controls at All Borders in Immigration Crackdown.
Germany’s government announced plans to impose tighter controls at all of the country’s land borders in what it called an attempt to tackle irregular migration and protect the public from threats such as Islamist extremism.
The controls within what is normally a wide area of free movement – the European Schengen zone – will start on Sept. 16 and initially last for six months, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Monday.
The government has also designed a scheme enabling authorities to reject more migrants directly at German borders, Faeser said, without adding details on the controversial and legally fraught move.
The restrictions are part of a series of measures Germany has taken to toughen its stance on irregular migration in recent years following a surge in arrivals, in particular people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East.
Recent deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers have stoked concerns over immigration. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a knife attack in the western city of Solingen that killed three people in August.
Polls show it is also voters’ top concern in the state of Brandenburg, which is set to hold elections in two weeks.
Scholz and Faeser’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are fighting to retain control of the government there, in a vote billed as a test of strength of the SPD ahead of next year’s federal election.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.
Seems like Germans are getting tired of all that vibrant raping and stabbing diversity…
On Wednesday, a federal court ruled in favor of Elon Musk’s X Corp in its case challenging California’s content moderation laws, citing free speech violations. X Corp filed a lawsuit to block the controversial law, which took effect on January 1, 2024.
The legislation requires social media companies to disclose details of their content moderation policies to the state or face civil penalties.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a previous lower court’s decision that ruled against pausing enforcement of the state law. The panel of three judges decided the law facially violated the First Amendment, Reuters reported.
“X Corp. is likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. wrote in his case opinion.
In the complaint filed in Sept. 2023, X Corporation argued that Assembly Bill 587 violates the company’s First Amendment rights because it pressures “companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech that the State deems undesirable or harmful” which “interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments” of the company.
For free speech advocates, we often feel that other citizens have become passive observers as an anti-free speech movement grows around us, threatening our “indispensable right.”
One of the most infamous figures in this movement has been former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been the smiling face of censorship. As the head of the Labour Party, Blair pushed through some of the early crackdowns on free speech in the United Kingdom. He is now calling for global censorship to expand these efforts.
In an interview on LBC Radio, Blair declared:
“The world is going to have to come together and agree on some rules around social media platforms. It’s not just how people can provoke hostility and hatred but I think… the impact on young people particularly when they’ve got access to mobile phones very young and they are reading a whole lot of stuff and receiving a whole lot of stuff that I think is really messing with their minds in a big way.”
Remember, when the want to crackdown on “misinformation,” the sort of things they want to ban are opinions contrary to their social justice agenda. Such as “the Chinese coronavirus came from a lab” or “there are only two biological sexes.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “Illegal Alien Charged With Stealing U.S. Citizen’s Identity to Vote in Elections. She voted in the 2016 and 2020 primaries and general elections.”
The Biden Administration wants Texas to cede Fronton Island to federal control. Texas Governor Greg Abbott told them to get stuffed.
I am in receipt of a letter from the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) to the Texas General Land Office (GLO) … given that it concerns actions taken under Operation Lone Star to secure Texas’ southern border around Fronton Island against the ongoing invasion of Texas by transnational criminal cartels — a crisis created and incentivized by your Administration,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott added that the letter “alleges that GLO has altered the flow of the Rio Grande by engaging in activities on Fronton Island without USIBWC’s approval.”
“It also alleges that [the] GLO trespassed on federal land in the process of facilitating cleanup and security efforts on the Island … That agency responded in a letter … detailing that GLO has not engaged in construction activities at all, and, in any event, Fronton Island is state-owned land.”
Abbott then responded to the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner’s request that Fronton Island be returned to its pre-construction conditions: “You are either unaware of, or indifferent to, what those ‘pre-construction conditions’ were.”
Before Texas secured Fronton Island, Abbott wrote, “[T]ransnational criminal cartels had assumed practical control of the densely vegetated Island and used it to terrorize Texas communities.”
He recounted occasions when authorities found the criminal cartels to be using the “thick vegetation” to “stash weapons, plant explosives, evade apprehension, and engage in open warfare against rival cartels and against state and federal officers.”
“Are you aware that your appointee is asking Texas to return grenades and rocket launchers along with IEDs to the Island?” he asked the Biden administration.
Abbott continued, “Your open-border policies have allowed an invasion at the southern border and incentivized criminal activity that threatens the lives of Texas law enforcement, soldiers, and citizens.”
“Yet … the federal government has refused to enforce federal laws — even in dangerous areas like Fronton Island.”
“I determined that Texas could not ignore an ongoing invasion of its sovereign territory,” Abbott said of his decision on October 5, 2023 to move a “heavily armed invasion force” onto Fronton Island.
He then addressed USIBWC’s complaint that Texas had built “two sediment bridges.”
“Your Administration’s letter betrays a basic misunderstanding of facts on the ground, and its claims are unsupported by either science or common sense.”
Dwight has been sending me tidbits on the ongoing meltdown among government officials in New York City following FBI raids. Like this: “Paranoid police officials meeting in parking lots as fed raids leave NYPD, City Hall in shock.” “Law enforcement sources telling The Post that they’re afraid NYPD headquarters is bugged and their words are being recorded.” Plus New York City Mayor Eric Adams evidently has several burner phones, which is both highly suspicious and probably justified. And since Adams is reportedly using the messaging app Signal, presumably they’re modern Android or iPhones, which are: A.) More expensive than classic burner phones, and B.) Probably not conducive to quick SIM card swaps, ala Stringer Bell on The Wire.
Anyway, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban just resigned.
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori dead at 86. Fujimori revived Peru’s economy and destroyed the Maoist Shining Path guerillas, but in the end he too fell prey to Peru’s long history of government abuse of power and corruption. In the end, he too was corrupt and committed human rights abuses…and was still arguably the most successful (and important) President in Peru’s troubled history.
“The head of the UN wants to create a fake bank that will circumvent EU and US sanctions against Russian banks.”
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham pushed back against a Biden-Harris administration proposal to “lease nearly 150,000 offshore acres to an energy company (Hecate Energy) with no experience in wind projects.” But it’s easy to understand why the Biden Administration wants to hand the assignment to Hecate: They donate lots of money to Democrats.
Alan Dershowitz announces he’s leaving the Democratic Party over its “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist convention.” One wonders what took him so long.
Remember Taral Patel the Ft. Bend democrat who faked hate crimes against himself? Now he’s facing even more felony charges. “Last week a grand jury indicted him on four felony counts of Online Impersonation and four misdemeanor charges including Online Impersonation and Misrepresentation of Identity with intent to ‘harm.'”
Self-cleaning litter box has the unfortunate downside of killing your cat.
Rick Beato interviews bassist Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame. It’s an interesting interview, especially the part about how he sold all his stuff to go on tour with Buddy Rich, only to find out that Rich’s old bassist had agreed to come back, so he was out of a job…
“Optronic Technologies, Inc., better known to backyard astronomers as the parent company of both Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments, has shut its offices and storefront in Watsonville, California.” Actual manufacturing was done in Tijuana, so I’m not sure how much California’s new minimum wage law had an effect.
There are rumors that Barbie director Greta Gerwig wants to make an all female Fight Club remake. That’s about as good an idea as an all-male reboot of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Comedian Kevin Hart’s chain of vegetarian restaurants in LA closed down. 1. How’s that minimum wage working out for you, California? 2. Vegetarian restaurants aren’t even profitable in LA. 3. Stick to comedy. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
More dirt comes out about the (intentionally?) shoddy security at Trump’s Butler rally, Netanyahu addresses congress, China bribes some Democrats, Israel hits the Houthis, Redbox users are screwed, and Sanrio upends the world with a shocking revelation. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
More whistleblowers are coming forward with damning allegations about the law-enforcement failures surrounding the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.
Whistleblowers with “direct knowledge” of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) handling of the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., last weekend came forward to Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) alleging that the rally was a “loose” security event featuring personnel drawn from a different wing of DHS who were not trained for such an event.
“Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event. For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter,” Hawley wrote in a letter sent Friday to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”
Embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after her refusal to answer basic questions in front of a congressional committee drew bipartisan calls for her resignation.
Cheatle stepped down ten days after the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump, one of the most significant law-enforcement failures in American history, and the defining moment of her law-enforcement career.
Snip.
At a hearing with the House Oversight Committee Monday, Cheatle brought Republicans and Democrats together in calling for her resignation. She repeatedly failed to answer basic questions about what went wrong at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., instead deflecting to the Secret Service’s ongoing investigation and the FBI’s separate investigation.
Cheatle admitted the assassination attempt was the Secret Service’s most consequential failure in decades, but did not disclose much information, despite being under subpoena.
She did not have a specific timeline of what law enforcement did after the shooter was first discovered, failed to explain why agents were not deployed onto the rooftop the gunman equipped, declined to comment on specific personnel assignments for the Trump rally, did not elaborate on why the rooftop was outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter, would not commit to firing anyone involved with the Trump rally, and deflected each time Trump’s requests for enhanced security came up.
She did tell lawmakers that she had not visited the crime scene, nine days after Trump was wounded when a bullet grazed his right ear. After the attack, Cheatle said she called Trump to apologize.
The Secret Service will have an internal report on what went wrong at the Trump rally in 60 days, a timeline multiple lawmakers told Cheatle is unacceptable given the intensity of the presidential campaign and America’s political climate.
We're only starting to dig into the cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. Everyone knows Kamala Harris is going to be under the microscope.
But key to the cover-up was Kim Cheatle. Look at her record (detailed below), and it's clear she was hired to help conceal from the… pic.twitter.com/Q9uHlhgm0E
Never in modern presidential history has a political party staged a veritable inside coup to remove their current president from his ongoing candidacy for his party’s nomination and reelection.
Stranger still, the very elites and grandees, who now are using every imaginable means of deposing Biden as their nominee, are the very public voices that just weeks ago insisted that candidate Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fit as a fiddle.” And they damned any who thought otherwise!
They are also the identical operators whose machinations ensured that there would not be an open Democratic primary. They demonized the few on the Left who weakly challenged Biden in the primaries. Yet now they will select a replacement candidate who likely never received a single primary vote.
Note further: Biden’s impending forced abdication is not because he is non compos mentis.
Rather, the inside move is due to Biden’s disastrous debate exposure that confirmed his dementia could no longer be disguised by a conspiracy of leftist politicos and media.
But far more importantly, the impetus for removal is driven by the admission that the cognitively Biden is headed for a climactic November defeat.
Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.
Yet now Biden is being un-personed and Trotskyized, as we prepare the new groupthink narrative of his likely surrogate—a soon to be praised eloquent, mellifluous, and articulate Cicero-Harris.
That Biden will likely remain as president until January 20, 2025, should remind the country the Left is more worried about its own next four-year continuance in power than the fate of the country that now admittedly will be guided in the next six months by a president judged unfit by his own supporters to run for the very office that he will still keep holding.
Further irony arises when those who, as supposedly guardians of democratic norms, pontificated to the country the last nine years about the Trump-Hitlerian threat to democracy. Yet now they so cavalierly work overtime on how:
a) to pull off the removal of their candidate from the November ballot on grounds of senility,
b) but not the removal of the same president from office (their own fate is more precious than our collective fate as a nation),
c) while trying to select, rather than elect, a replace candidate,
d) without ever offering any explanation, much less an apology, how a Democrat president from January 20, 2021, was daily declared vibrant, dynamic, and engaged but suddenly one day after June 27, 2024, was remanufactured as not?
In this report on cell phone location (presumably from publicly-sourced advertising data, which should terrify you), the Heritage Foundation claims one device that regularly visited the Crooks home was tracked to DC near an FBI office.
Also strange was the fact that a device linked to the Crooks home had visited Butler twice in the week or so before the shooting (an hour and twenty minute drive).
Another device repeatedly visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, although how that connects to the Trump shooting is unknown.
Going back to last August, one device visited a local gun shop (again, not suspicious for an American to visit a gun shop unless this was the visit where the AR was purchased).
If this proves to be true link between the FBI and Crooks, the implications here are pretty frightening…
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing congress, the pro-Hamas Useful Idiot Brigade was busy vandalizing national monuments.
Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of downtown D.C. carrying signs with messages like “arrest Netanyahu” and “end all U.S. aid to Israel.” Groups waving Palestinian flags, and chanting “Free, free Palestine,” marched toward the U.S. Capitol.
Outside Union Station, protesters removed American flags and hoisted Palestinian ones in their place. The Columbus Memorial Fountain in the circle outside the station was defaced with the words, “Hamas Is Coming,” written in red paint. Other monuments, like the Freedom Bell and various statues, also suffered damage. FOX 5’s Stephanie Ramirez says law enforcement is preparing for more possible protests Thursday.
U.S. Capitol Police officers deployed pepper spray after they said some protesters became “violent” and “failed to obey” orders to move back from the police line.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for anti-Israel protesters in his Wednesday address to a joint session of Congress, slamming the activists as “useful idiots” for Iran and other bad actors even as they congregated outside the Capitol.
“Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity,” he said. “Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who come into the kibbutzim — into the home — with the parents and the children, the two babies in the secret attic, and murder the parents, find the secret latch to the attic, find the babies, and they murder them. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Netanyahu referenced the claims from many anti-Israel protesters that Hamas terrorism constitutes legitimate resistance while Israel’s retaliatory war is out of bounds.
“They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians — between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas,” he told the chamber.
The prime minister stressed in his speech that anti-Israel protesters are not just opposed to the existence of the Jewish state but are anti-American as well.
“These protesters burn American flags even on the Fourth of July.”
According to the 3,000-participant, three-year study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, giving people $1,000 per month increased leisure time, as recipients spent less time on sleeping, child care, community engagement, caring for others, and self-improvement.
The study also found that recipients’ income, not including the free money, reduced their incomes significantly, as “for every one dollar received, total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents, and total individual income fell by at least 12 cents.”
“The takeaway from the best study done so far about UBI in the United States is that handing out money isn’t the solution to all our problems,” Daniel Di Martino, a economics researcher and graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Center Square. “In fact, sometimes it makes things worse.”
Or they could have read pages 150-152 of Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 for his summary of the results of the SIME/DIME experiments, which were similarly bleak.
After letting camps of drug-addicted transients overrun his state for years, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom decides that he can finally start clearing out those camps, now that he has the cover of a Supreme Court ruling.
California governor Gavin Newsom directed state officials to remove homeless encampments across the Golden State on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled in June that local governments have a right to ban public camping and impose fines for violators.
Newsom announced the guidance in an executive order, advising cities to crack down on encampments on public property while providing social services and housing alternatives. The order, first reported by the New York Times, represents a sharp departure from the accommodative homelessness policies adopted by progressive state governments over the last decade.
Note that “providing social services” means that the Homeless Industrial Complex will still be able to rake off the graft…
Food for thought:
Democrats are rigging their own election. Does anyone still believe they didn’t rig the 2020 election? https://t.co/G3svXIpKmp
CBS said nearly half of Americans can’t afford healthcare, but for some reason didn’t mention ObamaCare.
Americans spend more money on health care on a per capita basis than people in any other developed nation, yet almost half say they’ve struggled recently to pay for medical treatment or prescription drugs, according to a new study from Gallup and West Health.
About 45% of those polled by the organizations said they’d recently had to skip treatment or medicine either because of cost or lack of easy access. Of those, about 8% said they also wouldn’t have access to affordable care if they required it today, a group that Gallup and West Health termed ‘cost desperate.’
Snip.
The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, became law back in 2010, and President Obama promised Americans that his legislation would “reduce the costs of health care” and that “families will save on premiums.” He said Americans could even keep their doctors and health plans – over and over again, in fact.
Instead, here’s what Obamacare did, according to America First Policy Institute:
Premiums have increased by 80%.
From 2010 to 2023, the average premium for family coverage increased 80%, from just over $13,000 to nearly $24,000.
Total healthcare costs for a family of four now exceed $30,000 per year — increasing from $18,000 per year when Obamacare was passed.
Deductibles have increased over 50% since Obamacare was implemented in 2013.
Speaking of Obama, he officially endorsed Harris, which presumably puts a surprise Michelle Obama nomination at the convention off the table.
Well you can add this to a list of reasons Democrats just can’t seem to stomach Elon Musk any more.
The U.S. subsidiary of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD and its top executive, Stella Li, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations over the past decade.
A review of federal and state political spending records by the Daily Caller News Foundation reveals these contributions.
They found that between 2020 and 2023, BYD and Stella Li contributed over $40,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Additionally, they have invested more than $30,000 into organizations supporting President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.
BYD, the world’s largest EV producer, was recently banned by Congress from selling batteries to the Pentagon due to security concerns, according to Bloomberg News.
The report says that between 2018 and 2023, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom received about $60,000 from Li and BYD USA. Newsom faced criticism for awarding BYD a $1 billion no-bid contract for protective equipment during the pandemic and later test-drove a BYD vehicle in China in 2023.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received over $10,000 from Li for his unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, while the California Democratic Party got about $19,000 from Li and BYD USA between 2018 and 2020.
In 2015 and 2016, BYD USA and its executives donated over $11,000 to Michael Antonovich, former Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who often supported BYD-friendly initiatives.
Additionally, BYD USA contributed $25,000 in 2018 to Californians For Safe, Reliable Infrastructure, a group opposing Proposition 6, which aimed to repeal a gas tax.
In 2017 and 2018, BYD USA and Stella Li donated over $19,000 to Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de Leon. De Leon, then President pro Tempore of the California Senate, praised BYD at a 2017 ribbon-cutting for its Lancaster manufacturing facility, emphasizing the company’s role in job creation.
There’s an old saying in politics that “personnel is policy” which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job. It’s a reflection that politics is about coalitions – building them and maintaining them. The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top. If they’re not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.
This was actually Trump’s biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition. In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.
That’s exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together. Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won’t know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren’t his coalitions. They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.
It takes time to forge a governing coalition – just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid. Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members. When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results. Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.
Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his. This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such – featherbedding is the name of this game. But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they’re better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.
Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions. Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.
Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party. It won’t happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.
The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to “fortify” the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans. Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them? Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) – leading to various party elders behind bars. That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they’ve taken out some of the competition.
Althouse: “Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange.”
“Visibly Angry Kamala Harris Lashes Out At Israel After Netanyahu Meeting.” Of course she did. How dare Israel defend itself when she needs to suck up to all those pro-Hamas voters Democrats insisted on importing to Michigan?
Dispatches from the Biden Recession: Commercial real estate bond default rates hit “8.7% in 2024, nearly three times higher than two years ago.”
“Judge Rules for Musk’s SpaceX in Lawsuit Against National Labor Relations Board.” “Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and administrative law judges (ALJ) employed by the board, are likely unconstitutionally protected from removal by the president, according to U.S. District Judge Alan Albright.”
Israel hits the Houthis. Looks like Israel is kicking just about all Iran’s catspaws in the nuts…
According to an indictment filed with the federal court, beginning in 2021 defendants working for or with AABLE Bonds of Houston created or co-signed fraudulent bond agreements that allowed non-qualifying suspects to obtain pre-trial release.
“An integral part of the criminal justice system, as old as the system itself, is the bail bond – a device that allows defendants temporary release while awaiting trial by guaranteeing future court appearances,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani in a statement. “Honesty in the underwriting of those bail bonds is essential to ensuring compliance and protecting the community. However, this indictment alleges employees of AABLE Bonds and many others conspired to violate that trust.”
In addition to the 50 arrested, officials are seeking three fugitives: Tawana Jones, 44, Pamela Yoder, 60, and Amir Khan, 60.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that co-conspirators allegedly emailed or submitted falsified co-signer financial reports via electronic communications. The office noted that the government and insurance agencies rely on these financial reports to enter into third-party agreements known as surety bonds.
Most of the 53 co-conspirators are charged in connection to alleged conspiracy to commit wire fraud, while AABLE Bonds CEO Sheba Muharib is charged with affecting persons engaged in the business of insurance.
The 11 named criminal defendants who obtained release under the allegedly fraudulent enterprise include Curtis Holliday, who has pleaded guilty to killing his wife and stuffing her body in a freezer. Another is the man who shot to death 17-year-old David Castro as the teen rode in a car with his family after an Astros baseball game in 2021.
David’s father Paul Castro noted on social media that Muharib had bonded out his son’s killer on a discount bond, but he also pointed to the role played by Harris County Justice of the Peace Angela Rodriguez.
“Remember that Judge Angela Rodriguez voted to renew Muharib’s bond license after Muharib showed herself to be a danger to our community,” wrote Castro.
Muharib has been the focus of investigations for several years. Her brother Wisam Muharib provided bail to a murder suspect who was later charged in the murder of Harris County Constable Deputy Omar Ursin.
Andy Kahan, Victim’s Advocate for Crime Stoppers of Houston, emphasized during a press conference Thursday that there were victims impacted by the fraudulent releases of suspects.
During the press event, resident April Aguirre said that after the man charged in the shooting death of her nine-year-old niece Arlene Alvarez was released on a bond by AABLE Bonds, her family became suspicious of some local bail bond companies.
Aguirre, Castro, and others worked with elected officials to change Harris County’s rules in 2022 to require that suspects charged with violent offenses pay at least 10 percent themselves to ensure release from jail, but during a press conference with Crime Stoppers of Houston, she said they suspected fraud was continuing.
“Murderers were still getting out on discounted bonds,” said Aguirre. “So, we started making complaints to the bail bond board and to our federal partners asking for help. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, and we could never have imagined how large this is.”
“But I can say one thing, we need to stop making money off dead children and we need to stop making money off of homicide victims. This should not be a lucrative business, it’s sick.”
Mario Garza, President of the Professional Bondsman of Harris County, said that there were bondsmen who followed the rules and helped support the criminal justice system but lamented that what was supposed to be a partnership between bondsmen and elected judges had broken down.
“Judges used to take that discretion seriously,” said Garza. “What we have is what’s morphed out a soft-on-crime criminal justice system that’s allowed a company like this to do what they’ve done.”
Kahan expressed concern that bail bond companies elsewhere may be operating similar schemes.
Cann’s files for Chapter 11 and will be closing 9 Texas stores, including one in Austin. When I was getting ready to move into my house in 2004, they were one of the stores I thought about buying appliances from, but people told me they hated dealing with Conn’s, so I ended up buying them from Lowes.
“Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting ‘All men are created equal.'”
Unclear on the concept: “California judge says school was justified in punishing 7-year-old who said all lives matter because ‘she’s too young to have First Amendment rights.'”
Intel says it’s software, not hardware that is causing its latest generation of chips to fail. “Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.” OK, microcode is embedded in the heart of the chip, but can be updated, which means that it doesn’t require expensive mask fixes.
The CDC is trying to keep people from importing dogs into the U.S.. This is going to impair the efforts of many dog rescue groups. A bipartisan group of senators is opposing. “The unprecedented requirements included in the final rule, such as the six-month minimum age requirement for dogs to enter the United States and the need for a microchip before a rabies vaccination and additional documentation and certification would create significant barriers to low-risk entry from Canada into the United States and have a disproportionate effect on border communities in our states.”
Everyone who “purchased” a movie from Redbox is now screwed because now that Redbox is bankrupt it turns out they’ve got nada.
If I’m reading between the lines here, Social Justice Warriors seized control of the Romance Writers of America, blew it up when they got caught, and left the organization $3 million in debt.
“Judge Refuses To Dismiss Trump Defamation Lawsuit Against ABC, Stephanopoulos. On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a motion by ABC News and George Stephanopoulos to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against them by former President Donald Trump.”
(@NOELreports) 
(@iAnonPatriot) 
