Read it.

On X, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a new gun buyback event on Long Island for Saturday. The post was heavily ratio’d, with the usual X users in the reply section bashing the progressive politician and arguing how ineffective gun buybacks are at reducing crime. Meanwhile, it seems like James’ office has learned from previous gun buybacks how not to be exploited by the 3D-printed community.

“On Saturday, December 14, we’re hosting a gun buyback event in Bohemia at the True North Community Church from 10AM-1PM,” James’ post read, adding, “No ID is needed, and no questions will be asked.”

However, in small italicized font, James’ office wrote:

“Anyone bringing homemade or 3D-printed guns will be paid a total of $25, regardless of how many are turned in.”

Leftists don’t understand markets and how they work, which is why fiascos like this are supported with taxpayer funds. For example, if a government tries to reduce the number of rats by offering a bounty for them, it will actually increase the number of rats because people will start raising rats for the purpose of claiming the bounty.

Read it.

Last week, the Biden administration passed a rule allowing for the government healthcare programs Medicare and Medicaid coverage of a class of weight-loss drugs that promises to help millions of people lose weight and become healthier. This decision by the White House begs the question: Why wait until after the election to pass a popular proposal that will help millions of working-class Americans afford weight-loss drugs they currently cannot afford to purchase themselves?

A lot of the press analysis portrays this White House decision as a shot by President Biden at the incoming Trump administration, forcing the potential new Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has cast doubt on the benefits of these drugs, to either keep this Biden era provision or take critical medical coverage away from millions of working-class Americans who rely on government subsidized healthcare.

But my clear understanding of the White House decision to cover GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic/Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro/Zepbound is that this was not a shot at the incoming Trump administration, but rather, a willingness of the president and the vice president to rebuke the progressive wing of the Democratic Party which has vociferously opposed this new policy. Indeed, lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have waged a personal crusade against the makers of these drugs to reduce their profits.

Read it.

In a shocking video released by Project Veritas, an EPA official appears to confirm what many have long suspected: taxpayer money is being shoveled out the door with reckless abandon, all in the name of climate policy. The official’s words paint a damning picture of an agency prioritizing speed over prudence, all to sidestep political obstacles. His cavalier attitude suggests that the real motive is not saving the planet, but safeguarding their funding from potential Republican oversight.

ZMan lays out how The System really works.

We just went through an election and people are stunned to learn that no one in Washington noticed it. It is business as usual in the imperial capital. The only change is they will have to throw sand in the gears of the Trump transition, but the purpose of which is to make sure it remains business as usual after January. Exactly no one cares that the people have spoken.

The main reason for this is elected office holders have little say in how anything is done, not even in how legislation is passed. This is done by an army of staffers, agency people, lobbyists and the semi-permanent political class. The people in charge are the people you rarely see on television or in the news. They are the people who make up what Sam Francis called the leviathan.

That is the show this week. The stuff we learned in school about how our political system functions has been reduced to nonsense. It sort of worked that way decades ago, but the full flowering of the managerial state has put the system in the control of the army of people who make their living running the leviathan. Elections are just something they now hold to distract us.

Read it.

An explosive new report from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) Caucus, notes that fewer than 1 of out every 10 federal employees (6%) work in an office full time, citing an April survey.

“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” posted Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur leading DOGE with fellow billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, in response to the report. “Almost no one.”

Read it.

Although Donald Trump’s election was widely seen as a rebuke to the Left’s obsession with race, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised to “Trump-proof” his state, and that likely applies to the Democrat’s ongoing plans to give race-based handouts.

This year alone, Newsom signed a slate of reparations bills into law. And although California won’t be handing out checks, its laws are sure to spark more calls from California liberals to take money from Hispanic, Asian, and white Californians and give it to black Californians.

Time to leave — unless you’re black.

Read it.

American defense industries lack the capacity to supply the missiles and other weapons needed for a war with China and U.S. forces would lose the conflict as a result, members of Congress and private defense experts warned Thursday.

 

Read it.

Boeing’s plea deal with federal prosecutors, aimed at resolving the US Justice Department’s investigation into the 737 MAX fatal crashes that claimed 346 lives over a five-month span in 2018 and 2019, was rejected by a federal judge in Texas on Thursday due to an alarming DEI provision.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, US District Judge Reed O’Connor rejected the plea deal, stating that it improperly constrained the court by requiring diversity considerations in the selection of an outside monitor to oversee Boeing’s future legal compliance.

O’Connor wrote that DoJ prosecutors gave him “shifting and contradictory explanations” of the role DEI would play in shaping the selection of a monitor:

“In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interest of justice that the public is confident this monitor selection is done based solely on competency.”

Read it.

The Biden administration is racing to disburse financing from the government’s biggest clean energy bank to get ahead of possible cuts once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

On Monday the US Department of Energy agreed to lend a project backed by automaker Stellantis up to $7.5 billion for two electric-vehicle battery factories in Indiana. The deal follows nearly $12 billion in other clean energy loans and guarantees announced in the last week, adding up to $41 billion in conditional commitments to about 20 projects the office is now racing to finalize before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

Realistically, most of those deals won’t close before Trump takes office, creating a risk that the new administration could pause or rescind them. Current and former DOE staff told Semafor they worry that the Loan Programs Office (LPO), a bastion of outgoing President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, could be drastically scaled back under Trump. They fear the incoming president may decide to leave roughly $340 billion in remaining loan authority either untouched or directed to projects favored by the fossil fuel industry.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

Why not? If he can pardon Hunter, he can pardon anybody.

UPDATE: Fauci, Schiff, And Cheney May Receive ‘Preemptive Pardons’  We now have a list of the people who ought to be brought to justice.

Read it.

As many Americans shopped for Black Friday deals, the Biden-Harris administration released annual data on improper payments showing that the federal government spent at least $161 billion of taxpayers’ money sending payments to the wrong people and in the wrong amounts in fiscal year 2024.

Read it.

The Biden-Harris administration has granted millions of dollars in funding for a virtual treatment that aims to help cure eating disorders by “affirming” LGBTQIA+ patients’ sexual orientation and gender claims.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health awarded Auburn University assistant professor of psychological sciences Tiffany Brown and San Diego State University professor of psychology Aaron Blashill up to $5 million in grants to “develop and provide” the Promoting Resilience to Improve Disordered Eating (PRIDE) treatment—a virtual “identity-affirming eating disorder treatment for LGBTQIA+ patients,” the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts website states.

The PRIDE initiative is undergirded by the idea that “identity-related stress” is an “underlying motivator of disordered eating,” and thus that “affirm[ing] and support[ing]” patients’ beliefs that they are LGBTQIA+ can help cure eating disorders.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees.

Read it.

There are over 660,000 illegal migrants already convicted of felonies or facing charges who have come across the southern border and been released into the U.S., according to newly released federal data provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some are in jail — on the taxpayers’ tab, of course — having been nabbed for committing more crimes once they got here, but many are walking free, spreading their criminality across the nation.

Over 58,000 of these known criminals have come to New York City alone, including 1,000 known members of South American gangs, like Tren de Aragua, that are making city-operated shelters into their headquarters.

Local sanctuary city rules protect these criminals from being deported. It’s time to end the sanctuary-for-migrants madness and start offering safety and sanctuary to the country’s legal residents.

Jonathan Turley.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is widely known to be angling to be the next Democratic presidential nominee after the implosion of Vice President Kamala Harris. This week, Newsom positioned not just his campaign but also his state as part of the “resistance” for the next four years against the Trump Administration. Newsom pushed a special session to secure a $25 million war chest to take the Trump Administration to court, even before the inauguration and release of policies by the incoming administration.

Read it.

In March, Chicago’s Progressive Caucus made a painful observation: voters believe that city government just isn’t functioning. Following the defeat of the Bring Chicago Home campaign, which would’ve raised real estate transfer taxes to combat homelessness, the caucus observed that “[v]oters who opposed the referendum told us that their vote represented their current distrust, frustration, and disappointment with government… Chicagoans deserve and transparent and responsive government that gets things done.”

It’s hard to argue with them. On issue after issue, it feels like government is either performing worse than it has in the past, or we’re spending a lot more for the same results.

Jerry Pournelle was fond of saying that the purpose of government is to hire and pay government workers.

Read it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vented his displeasure Monday after two Democratic-appointed federal judges reversed their decisions to retire in what appear to be efforts to stop President-elect Trump from nominating their successors.

McConnell called the unusual decisions to forgo retirement following Trump’s sweeping victory last month a “partisan” gambit that would undermine the integrity of federal courts.

“They rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them and now that he won’t, they’re changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Quod abit circum venit circum.

Read it.

A panel of three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Texas in a lawsuit filed over its concertina wire barriers.

The court ruled 2-1 on Monday in a case that may set the tone for two other cases before the court related to Texas’ border security operations.

Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan wrote for the majority, with Judge Don Willett joining him. Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez dissented, arguing Texas did not meet “its burden to show a waiver of sovereign immunity or a likelihood of success on the merits.” (Duncan and Willett are appointees of then-President Donald Trump. Ramirez is an appointee of President Joe Biden.)

The ruling was issued 13 months after Texas sued the Biden administration after it destroyed concertina wire barriers it erected on state land.

Read it.

America and Russia are now at war. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed as much in September when he commented on the news about President Biden mulling over a decision to grant Ukraine authorization to strike deep inside Russia with U.S.-supplied missiles.

Navy Matters.

The starting point in this discussion is the recognition that the entire transgender issue in the military is predicated on a faulty basis as demonstrated with this statement:

Service members with a diagnosis from a military medical provider indicating that gender transition is medically necessary will be provided medical care and treatment for the diagnosed medical condition … 

This statement pre-supposes that gender transition is a medical necessity rather than a choice. A medical necessity is, by definition, a procedure or treatment that, if not administered, will threaten the life of the patient. A desire to change gender is not a medical necessity. Failure to do so does not threaten the life of the patient. Thus, again by definition, it is a choice and the military should not be in the business of providing elective procedures that are not medically necessary.

Politico.

It’s the most sweeping presidential pardon since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, a grant of clemency so broad that even Democrats were openly criticizing the president today. Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter drew criticism from all corners the day after he issued it, underscoring for posterity an unflattering aspect of his presidency: For all Biden’s insistence that the rule of law was of paramount importance and his talk about restoring democracy, in the end he made it much harder for his own party to hold President-elect Donald Trump to account.

In the most recent instance, Biden and his aides repeated the same line over and over when it came to Hunter Biden’s legal troubles: He’s not considering a pardon for his son. Even if the charges seemed harsher because Hunter was the president’s son, the president’s commitment to the justice system was such that he’d allow the process to continue.

Now, we’ve learned none of it was true. And it’s created a thorny political problem for the Democrats who are still in Washington and are charged with cleaning up Biden’s mess.

Already, Trump has signaled he’ll use Biden’s pardon of his son as justification for his own desire to pardon Jan. 6 rioters. Trump had been largely silent on the Jan. 6 issue since his victory, which had loyalists worrying about his commitment to the pardons. But on Sunday evening, he posted on Truth Social, “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?”

Joe Biden: “Screw the party, screw the country, I’m doing what’s best for me.”
Donald Trump: “What he said.”

Read it.

Civil asset forfeiture is an affront to anyone who’s sincerely committed to the American justice system’s cornerstone presumption of innocence. With law enforcement typically keeping some or all of the assets that are seized, the practice has rightly been called “policing for profit.”

I’ve previously examined the raw tyranny of civil asset forfeiture, spotlighting the story of a Mississippi man who took $42,300 in cash to Houston with the intent of buying a second semi truck for his fledgling trucking business, only to have it seized — or, in legal jargon, “forfeited” — by Harris County police, who pulled him over for allegedly following the vehicle in front of him too closely.

Now I’m compelled to share a new example of this legalized theft — the most brazenly unjust and opportunistic one I’ve encountered yet: In an ongoing, multi-million-dollar racket in Indianapolis, police are routinely seizing cash they find in FedEx packages that happen to be routed through that company’s second-largest hub.

Read it.

President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services is cause for celebration for anyone who cares about the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over regulatory agencies, and the deleterious effect it has had on the health of Americans.

Read it.

There are only two issues that Democrats might care more about than the national legalization of abortion: Blocking the passage of voter ID laws, and, blocking the mass deportation of illegal immigrants.

The reason should be relatively obvious – Keeping the border open and illegal immigrants flowing into the US is the key to election victory for progressives in the long run. If leftists are going to exterminate millions of future voters in the womb, then their only other option to fill ballot boxes is to import people from the third world and give them as much free stuff as possible so they’re sure to vote blue.

Read it.

The Navy will sideline 17 ships to contend with a shortage of civilian mariners, the Military Sealift commander said last week, prompting concerns from the Marine Corps about how it will support and transport its own forces.

Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the MSC commander, told reporters on Thursday that the move to dock more than a dozen ships was meant to give overworked and understaffed civilian mariners a break as the command looks to get “the foundation back intact” for ship maintenance.

While Sobeck said this plan would take place “over the next two years,” he wouldn’t say how long it will take to get ships back in the water. The result is that ships that support the Marine Corps will not be available, causing worries for the amphibious service that will compound existing challenges getting Marines to the field.

Daily Signal.

I don’t always agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, but I can’t help but feel a bit of healthy schadenfreude at the prospect of America’s corrupt health care establishment getting the bitter taste of well-deserved disruptive medicine.

Kennedy isn’t exactly a conservative. He’s on the record supporting abortion, and he has a long track record of working not just in environmental conservation (which I support), but in advancing climate alarmism, which I consider not only wrong, but disruptive for freedom, prosperity, and environmental protection.

Yet Kennedy also represents the inquisitive spirit that the medical establishment has fought tooth-and-nail to suppress, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Big Health’s recent scandals make the kind of shake-up Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promises not only necessary, but also a just retribution.

Read it.

TOPLINE: Taxpayers have spent $15 million on security services for Dr. Anthony Fauci in the past two years, after he had already returned to life as a private citizen, according to a new report from OpenTheBooks.com.

KEY FACTS: The security agreement took effect in January 2023, and extended to September 2024. The agreement states that the contract could be extended. OpenTheBooks.com asked the U.S. Marshals Service for clarification, but they didn’t respond.

The price tag includes salaries and benefits for the U.S. marshals guarding Fauci, a private chauffeur, law enforcement equipment, and more.

Read it.

Americans spend over $500 billion per year defending themselves against the IRS.

That’s spitting distance from the $800 billion the Defense Department spends protecting us against foreigners—well, failing to protect, in the case of the border.

Read it.

With the changing of the guard, it’s time for long-promised accountability over the unprecedented COVID scam. Not only has Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) promised to hold feet to the fire as the head of the Senate’s government oversight panel, we may actually have a shot at a special counsel investigation and more with Trump’s incoming Attorney General pick, Pam Bondi – a loyalist who’s on record supporting the lab-leak hypothesis.

As regular readers vividly recall, ZeroHedge paid a hefty price for our early reporting on the pandemic, after we suggested that a Chinese lab playing weaponized God with bat COVID might have “something to do” with the COVID outbreak across town.

Millions in ad revenue evaporated. Corporate media (brought to you by Pfizer!) penned numerous hit-pieces, and various companies such as PayPal, Amazon and Mailchimp dropped us like a hot rock; other outlets suffered similarly. However brave reporting from journalists like Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Paul Thacker and Lee Fang – armed with factual evidence from Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (now X) and various FOIA lawsuits, has provided more than just breadcrumbs.

Now, four years later, the entire charade has been exposed piece by piece.

Read it.

Of all the celebrities promising to leave the country if Donald Trump won this month’s election, at least one has already kept that promise and decamped to supposedly greener pastures. The actress and filmmaker Eva Longoria recently told Marie Claire that she, her husband, and her son now split their time between Spain and Mexico.

…

Eva Longoria doesn’t know this, but she’s not leaving the United States because of Donald Trump. She’s leaving because of Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, London Breed, and all the rest of the party-machine politicians, who see this nation’s cities and states not as places where people live and desire to live well but as opportunities to ply their ideological biases and fulfill their personal ambitions.

Donald Trump is not the dictator his detractors want us all to believe he is. But even if he were, there is nothing he could do to the people of San Francisco that is worse than what London Breed, Edwin Lee, and Gavin Newsom have done to them. There is nothing he could do to the people of Chicago that is worse than what Brandon Johnson and Lori Lightfoot have done to them. There is nothing he could do to the people of New York that is worse than what Eric Adams and Bill DeBlasio have done to them.

Read it.

Campaign season brought with it a steady stream of accusations that various parties and platforms were spreading misinformation and disinformation.

Most recently, the scandals at FEMA over avoiding homes with Trump signs was quickly slapped with a “misinformation” label…until FEMA itself admitted it had happened. MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki suggested “laws have to change” to combat the scourge.

With the misinformation category being weaponized across the political spectrum, we took a look at how invested government has become in studying and “combatting” it using your tax dollars. That research can provide the intellectual ammunition to censor people online.

Read it.

Death certificates have always provided broader and more accurate data than the FBI’s figures, but the gap between them has grown sharply under the Biden administration. This may indicate that local law enforcement agencies, states, and/or the FBI are undercounting murders.

Furthermore, the Biden administration FBI inexplicably revised its pre-Biden murder data all the way back to 2003, elevating the counts in certain years by up to 7%. The FBI made these unprecedented alterations without so much as a footnote to inform the public.

As a result of those factors and others, the gap between murders reported by the FBI and the number of homicides recorded on death certificates has grown from a low of 16 killings in 2003 to an average of 3,711 killings per year during Biden’s presidency.

Considering that such statistics are used by Deep State bureaucrats as a basis for public policy, this ought to bother everybody.

Read it.

People eagerly give money to rich environmental groups. The Natural Resources Defense Council has $463 million in assets.

It claims it uses law “to confront the climate crisis.”

What it really does is pay lawyers to torture people who try to do useful things.

Example: America needs minerals like copper and silver to make things. Even President Joe Biden made a speech saying America will need 400-600% more such minerals to make “solar panels, wind turbines and so much more!”

An iPhone alone requires aluminum, iron, lithium, gold, copper …

But when investors dare try to dig up such minerals in America, the NRDC objects and uses political connections to stop them.

So, actually, it isn’t America that blocks new mines, but government that blocks them. An important distinction that ‘journalists’ ought to keep clear but seldom do.

Read it.

It was recently reported that corrupt Pentagon officials are “scrambling” to wipe all evidence of DEI before President-elect Donald Trump steps back into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Reported! That’s as good as proof to the Narrative Media.

Breitbart News wrote in its exclusive article that its sources stated that the Pentagon is in “absolute disarray” with “generals scrambling” because Trump plans to fire far-left senior military leaders who pushed DEI and other woke policies instead of taking care of combat readiness.

One source compared the organization’s situation to a hornet’s nest being kicked over, adding that “DEI pages are starting to disappear off the main websites.”

“They’re being archived as we speak. They are full-bore focused on cleaning up anything DEI-related,” the source stated.

Archived! DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE!

Read it.

There aren’t any new models available under $20,000 in the for American car buyers anymore, but emerging auto markets like India have plenty of cheap cars to go around. One of these budget cars just proved that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to be safe.

But you’ll still never see it for sale in the U.S., thanks to government regulations.

Read it.

Last year, the FBI official who oversaw the initial investigation into who planted the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill pipe bombs told Congress that cell phone data from that probe was “corrupted.”

“We have complete data. Not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers—not purposely by them, right,” former FBI official Steven D’Antuono told the House Judiciary Committee in a transcribed interview.

“It’s just unusual circumstances that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I can’t remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search.”

It turns out, D’Antuono—who oversaw the FBI’s 2020 Gov. Whitmer kidnap case before being transferred to Washington DC just in time for Jan. 6—may have perjured himself.

The House Oversight Subcommittee said Thursday that it has found no evidence to support the claims from D’Antuono, who is now retired.

Read it.

Research led by scientists at Emory University in Atlanta found that while tetanus and influenza vaccines prompt the body to produce long-lived plasma cells that generate antibodies, COVID-19 vaccines do not.

The mRNA vaccines cause the body to produce short-lived plasma cells that can only generate antibodies for a period of time before dying off.

Vaccines like tetanus give long-lasting immunity, with antibodies persisting in the body for up to 10 years. COVID-19 antibodies rapidly wane three to six months after vaccination, often resulting in breakthrough infections.

The Hill.

The Pentagon on Friday failed its seventh audit in a row, with the nation’s largest government agency still unable to fully account for its more than $824 billion budget, though officials stress they are making good progress toward a clean audit in 2028.

The Department of Defense technically earned a disclaimer of opinion, meaning it failed to provide sufficient information to auditors to form an accurate opinion.

The goal is to earn an unmodified audit opinion, or a clean audit that says the financial statements are accurate. A qualified opinion says there are omissions and concerns but the finances are generally reliable.

Read it.

The Department of Homeland Security is rolling back progressive internal policies in anticipation of a second Trump presidency, according to internal agency documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

One example, described as “superfluous signaling” by one senior career staff member, is a memo entitled “Commitment to Nondiscrimination in Department of Homeland Security Activities.” That memo, which will no longer be released, largely focused on behavior that is already outlawed in the federal government, such as forbidding any “reliance on generalized stereotypes involving any individual characteristic.”

“It’s not clear why this memo was ever even written,” said one senior DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We can’t discriminate against anyone, but I guess this is what they prefer we do instead of deportations. But now I guess they don’t want to piss anyone off.”

Read it.

The number has grown each year, and represents 6 to 7 percent of ICE detainers issued in those years. Each declined detainer represednts a deportable criminal alien who was released back into the community and given the opportunity to prey on more victims. The number reported by ICE include detainers declined by the law enforcement agency with custody of the alien, cases in which the local law enforcement agency provided insufficient notice to ICE to arrive before the alien’s release, and early releases of aliens despite a detainer.

Read it.

Two days after the election, a federal court in Texas ruled against President Joe Biden’s latest unauthorized scheme to subvert immigration law: “parole in place” for illegal aliens who are the spouses of U.S. citizens.

In a 73-page decision, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas upheld a challenge by 16 states to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to create the parole program by administrative rule.

Introduced by Biden back in June, “parole in place” for spouses was built on a legal house of cards, as my BorderLine column explained at the time. In promulgating the order, Biden’s government created another administrative runaround to dodge the lawful visa process.

Read it.

Recently, legacy outlets Politico and The Washington Post reported on, and appeared to sympathize with, an amendment co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that would continue the work of an anti-free speech State Department program, the Global Engagement Center (GEC). In response, the Media Research Center relentlessly sought answers from the potential Senate majority leader candidates. The Media Research Center reached out to Cornyn, Thune and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

The GEC, for its part, was shown to have aggressively worked to censor free speech on social media platforms, including targeting users of platforms as being a part of foreign influence campaigns. For example, Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi has reported that the GEC has smeared Twitter users by accusing them of acting on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. The GEC gave Twitter a list of “5500 names” that included CNN employees and “multiple Western government accounts.” The GEC has also been caught working with, and even giving $100,000 to, the George Soros-funded anti-free speech Global Disinformation Index (GDI). In Feb. 2023, Washington Examiner Investigative Reporter Gabe Kaminsky exposed the GDI for seeking to “defund conservative media” by cutting them off from their advertising funding.

The Media Research Center called Cornyn’s D.C. and district offices 12 times, in addition to sending two emails and a text message to Cornyn Press Secretary Tatum Wallace about the amendment. At no point did any Cornyn staffer address the amendment or even agree to speak on the phone. A staffer from Sen. Thune’s office informed the Media Research Center that Sen. Thune did not have a comment on the amendment. The Media Research Center also passed on concerns about the amendment to a staffer at one of Sen. Scott’s regional offices.

I believe I shall vote against Senator Cornyn if it runs again.

Read it.

Yesterday, news broke that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) focused on radically restructuring federal spending during Donald Trump’s presidency. What parts of government will be some of the easiest targets?

Using data from the OMB, 24/7 Wall St. identified the government agencies wasting the most taxpayer money. The 13 federal agencies on this list are ranked by the dollar value of overpayments made in the government’s 2023 fiscal year. All supplemental data in this story also came from the OMB report. Among these agencies, overpayments range from about $16 million to nearly $99 billion.

While some of this money is recoverable, taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for much of that wasted spending. The agencies on this list recovered a reported $25.2 billion in improperly made payments in fiscal 2023, some share of which was paid in error in a previous year. Still, this amounts to only about 14% of the total overpayments made in 2023. (These are the companies that receive the most in government subsidies.)

Read it.

No matter how bad you think Covid policies were, they were intended to be worse.

Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed.

It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back.

Read it.

Got them ol’ Deep State blues….

Nearly a month ago highly classified US intelligence detailing Israeli plans for a retaliation attack against Iran appeared online. The pair of documents were prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the leak immediately kicked off a massive federal investigation and hunt for the leaker.

On Wednesday federal prosecutors have revealed an arrest, with the NY Times reporting that “The man, Asif W. Rahman, was indicted last week in federal court in Virginia with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.” He had worked for the US government overseas, and is being charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act. The Times has followed with an update identifying him as a CIA official.

UPDATE: CIA Officer Arrested in Cambodia for ‘Deadly Serious’ Leak of Classified US Docs on Israel

The Washington Poop.

Voters in Montana, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania — states that Donald Trump won on Nov. 5 — also voted for Republicans to take over Senate seats currently held by Democrats, helping Republicans secure control of the upper chamber.

After these flips, only Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will send a split-party delegation of one Democrat and one Republican to the Senate. That is the lowest number since Americans began directly electing senators more than a century ago.

The 17th Amendment was a mistake, a big step on the road toward twisting our Republic into a Democracy. Of course Democrats loved it.

Financial Times.

That will get a bunch of panties in a wad.

Read it.

The complaints directed at FEMA leadership keep coming weeks after Hurricane Helene ravaged North Carolina and the 2024 presidential election flipped U.S. leadership.

Savage Operations founder Adam Smith, whose group assisted hurricane relief, claimed FEMA led with a culture of “fear” under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris amid the reported skipping of homes with Donald Trump campaign signs.

“And one of the interesting thing was, is it was stated that, Hey, we can’t have our fingerprints on this, which I think leads back to the actual question, which is, What sort of culture and what sort of fear is there in place at some of the lower levels of FEMA personnel where they’re afraid they’re going to lose their job if they don’t speak up against actions that are blatantly not aligned with what the organization is supposed to be doing?” Smith said in a TV interview, as reported by Mediaite.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

Good.

Public Notice, a Voice of the Crust.

We really dodged a bullet when this guy didn’t make it onto the Supreme Court.

It has often been said that Donald Trump was running for president to keep himself out of prison. Mission accomplished.

But the fact that Trump wasn’t behind bars long ago, that he didn’t suffer any consequences for his criming and now likely never will, can be laid squarely at the feet of one man: Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland dragged his feet on prosecuting Trump for election interference and pilfering classified documents, making it easy for him to run out the clock.

Coming in on the heels of a literal insurrection, Garland was a bad fit for his job from the jump. He made clear early on that he didn’t see addressing issues from the Trump era as a priority, declaring that he would not look backward. Garland is an institutionalist, leading him to see his real job as protecting the Department of Justice rather than imposing any consequences on Bill Barr and others who turned the DOJ into a corrupt playground.

Apparently his chief fault was not being a more thoroughgoing Democrat tool.  Good to know.