Read it.

The party that won’t stop lecturing America about democracy is once again rigging its own primary by endorsing – thereby biasing voters – towards certain candidates over others. On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) endorsed 12 candidates through its “Red to Blue” program to help Democrats win back the majority in the House of Representatives.

“Today, the DCCC announced the first slate of 12 top-tier candidates added to its highly competitive ‘Red to Blue’ program for the 2026 cycle,” the committee said in a statement. “This initial group of candidates will receive strategic guidance, staff resources, training, and fundraising support to ensure they are in the best possible position to win in November.”

…

Now, 17 Democratic congressional candidates are accusing the party’s own campaign arm of torching the integrity of the 2026 primary process by interfering with the primary.

When you are accustomed to cheating, it’s hard to stop.

Elaine Godfrey (The Atlantic, a Voice of th Crust).

Right before armed guards escorted me from the rally and left me on the edge of a Texas county road, I was informed that I was no longer welcome at an event that I had already attended. For the past hour, I’d watched as Representative Jasmine Crockett riled up her supporters in deep-red Lubbock, where voters were thrilled to receive a visit from the Democratic Senate candidate. But afterward, as I attempted to join the other reporters interviewing the lawmaker, a woman with a badge approached me.

“Are you Elaine?” she asked. I recognized her from the entrance of the event, where I had identified myself as she’d waved me into the building’s press area. Yes, I answered. “Her team has asked you to leave,” she said. When I asked why, the staffer looked at her phone and read dutifully: “They just said, ‘Elaine from Atlantic, white girl with a hat and notepad. She’s interviewing people in the crowd. She’s a top-notch hater and will spin. She needs to leave.’”

I will, of course, own up to being a white woman wearing a Menards baseball cap. But “top-notch hater” is a distinction that I had never considered for myself. Last year, I wrote a profile of Crockett that displeased the congresswoman. I interviewed her several times for the story, but after she learned that I’d called some of her colleagues in Congress without asking her permission, she told me that she was “shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions.” (In retrospect, I suppose this was a helpful signal that Crockett does not have a firm grasp on the First Amendment, or at least does not particularly care for it.)

ATQUE: KAMALA HARRIS MAKES LAST-MINUTE PITCH FOR JASMINE CROCKETT WITH ROBOCALL (Patrick Svitek/The Texas Tribune)

ATQUE: Kamala Harris backs Jasmine Crockett in bitter Texas Democratic Senate primary (Aaron Pellish/Politico)

Read it.

Maryland sheriffs from across the deep blue state traveled to Annapolis on Wednesday to voice outrage over unhinged Democrats who control the state under one-party rule and continue pushing extremely unpopular policies that protect illegal aliens.

“This is nothing more than POLITICS over PUBLIC SAFETY!” Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis told reporters. He blasted left-wing immigration legislation in the General Assembly to block ICE cooperation with local law enforcement.

Lewis continued, “We, as elected sheriffs, are FED UP with it! You don’t see this many sheriffs in one location in the state at any given time. But we have to come together in unison to stop the ridiculousness that’s going on up here in Annapolis, Maryland. And lawmakers need to wake up and realize Marylanders and the American people want public safety over politics, and they’re not getting it.”

Read it.

New York City’s sanitation leadership has been caught on camera participating in an Islamic supplication ritual led by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a move critics slam as a blatant push toward Islamification.

The scene, captured during a gathering with officers, shows DSNY brass raising hands in dua—a form of prayer to Allah—before wiping them over their faces as instructed in Islamic hadith, all prior to sharing a meal.

Why are the leaders of the DSNY engaging in such behaviour?

New York City’s sanitation leadership has been caught on camera participating in an Islamic supplication ritual led by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a move critics slam as a blatant push toward Islamification.

And Shari’ah law pads in on little cat feet….

Read it.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg won’t pursue assault charges against a 27-year-old man arrested for allegedly throwing snowballs at New York City police officers this week, the New York Post reported.

Bragg has had a controversial tenure, running for office as a progressive prosecutor and winning a conviction against Donald Trump in 2024 in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.

In video that was widely circulated this week, a group of people appeared to hurl large snowballs at New York City Police officers that reportedly injured some officers. The president of the Police Benevolent Association told CBS New York that officers were hit with ice and rocks mixed with the snow.

Read it.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger deceived voters and concealed her true leftist agenda to win the Governor’s Mansion last year. Now she and her fellow Democrats are lying to Virginians about a new gerrymandered congressional district map they placed on the ballot as a constitutional amendment on April 21.

It’s a naked attempt to make it impossible for Republicans to win election to Congress in most places in Virginia, and it’s why she was rewarded with the plum assignment of responding to President Trump’s State of the Union address this week.

The Virginia Supreme Court has already had one chance to stop the gerrymandering by upholding a judge’s ruling that Democrats cut legal corners to get the measure on the ballot. The justices, however, inexplicably chose to wait until the vote happens.

Democrats lie. It’s what they do.

Read it.

t’s a disturbing commentary on our times when the concept of men and women being required by law to admit their proper biological sex becomes headline news, but here we are.

For the past decade, transgender ideology (with zero basis in scientific reality) has surged to the forefront of our cultural zeitgeist. Never before in the history of the western world has one tiny minority of people received so much privilege and protection from governments and the corporate establishment. Furthermore, this small group of mentally ill people has triggered a political firestorm that is changing the face of the US.

Why did the Democratic Party and so many wealthy and powerful elites choose transgenderism as the hill to die on? Why do they lie and claim there are no differences between men and women? Why do they want to give unhinged men access to women’s bathrooms and locker rooms? Why are they so intent on indoctrinating children with gender fluid propaganda? Why do they want to let little kids mutilate their bodies with sex hormones and surgeries? It’s hard to say.

“If I wish it were true, that makes it true” has been the cornerstone of Democrat policy since FDR. Even using the phrase “sex assigned at birth” signals tolerance of their delusions. Sorry, neighbor, your sex was assigned at conception, by Mother Nature. Don’t try to fool Mother Nature, it will turn out badly for you.

Read it.

No surprise. They’re crazy; he’s not.

The Foundry.

Last week, a man who allegedly shot the founder of a charity 10 times while he lay in bed with his wife got off without a prison sentence—because the prosecutor, backed by groups funded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, agreed to let him plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

Gret Glyer had founded DonorSee, a charity platform that allowed donors to support specific people while giving video updates to show the donor’s concrete impact. Joshua Danehower, 37, who had gone on one date with Glyer’s wife Heather about 10 years previously, allegedly broke into the family’s house, snuck into the bedroom, and fired 10 shots into Gret Glyer, leaving his wife a widow and his two young children fatherless.

Due to the plea agreement, however, Danehower will move from a jail cell to a mental health facility. After a year, he will receive a psychological evaluation and may then gain his freedom.

Read it.

The California Parole Board’s decision to release a serial child molester who used candy and toys to lure children as young as three years old has sparked outrage from victims, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials.

David Allen Funston, 64, was convicted in 1999 of sixteen counts of kidnapping and child molestation after a horrific crime spree in Sacramento County, during which he kidnapped, raped, and beat eight children aged 3 to 7.

Read it.

Councilwoman Tania Fernandes Anderson made history by becoming the first illegal alien Muslim councilwoman in Boston history. Then she made history again by marrying a convicted murderer serving life in prison with no parole. Then she made history yet again by becoming the first illegal alien Muslim councilwoman married to a lifer serving on the Boston city council while under indictment when she was charged in an illegal kickback scheme involving fraud and theft.

When you’re a Dem, you’re a Dem all the way, from your first petty bribe till they drag you away….

Read it.

Well, it’s obvious who his constituency is.

I’m surprised Ilhan Omar didn’t give a speech in Somali.

Read it.

The House chamber broke out in U.S.A. chants after President Donald Trump called on all elected officials to place American citizens over illegal immigrants during his State of the Union address, but the cheers were from only one side of the aisle: that of the Republicans.

“One of the great things about the SOTU is how it gives a chance to see what their representatives want them to believe,” Trump said. “So tonight, I’m inviting every legislature to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle.

“If you agree with this statement, please stand up,” Trump added. “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens and not illegal aliens.”

Despite the chants and cheers from Republicans, Democrats did not stand.

Read it.

Multiple congressional Democrats refused to stand for the U.S. men’s hockey team, who just won the gold medal in the 2026 Winter Olympics, at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

Trump welcomed the team to the first State of the Union address of his second term on Tuesday evening. Most of the other attendees gave the team a standing ovation.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them get up, and actually not all of them did get up,” Trump noted of the Democrats in attendance.

Read it.

As Americans tune in to President Donald Trump’s fourth official State of the Union address Tuesday, they may expect Democrats to make a scene of one sort or another.

Twelve Democrats have announced they will boycott the speech and instead attend the “People’s State of the Union,” an event organized by the leftist group MoveOn.org.

About 60 Democrats boycotted Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., boycotted his address to a joint session of Congress that year (Trump’s speeches in 2017 and 2025 did not count as official State of the Union addresses).

Eleven Democrats said they would boycott the State of the Union in 2018, and others boycotted the 2020 speech (including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Al Green, D-Texas).

Many Democrats, however, stayed and disrupted the speeches—as many likely will on Tuesday.

UPDATE: 3 Reasons Democrat State of the Union Stunts Will Likely Fail

Watch it.

John Kiriakou dishes the dirt.

Whatever you thought about John Kerry, the reality was worse.

The Foundry.

Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer of New York relentlessly smears the GOP-sponsored SAVE Act as “Jim Crow 2.0.” This bill requires that citizens show a photo ID to vote in federal elections. Schumer mendaciously decries this as the Republicans’ freshest flavor of hate, aimed chiefly at blacks.

The GOP, Schumer insinuates, stole this idea from Bull Connor, George Wallace, and the other Southern Democrats who brutally enforced Jim Crow 1.0.

“Well, we find it racist,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told Lindell TV. She recalled Jim Crow 1.0 poll tests that suppressed black votes “because we didn’t know how many bubbles were in a soap bar.”

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., called the SAVE Act a “show-me-your-papers law,” thus heating the rhetoric to full boil atop a “Republicans are Nazis” burner.

But if photo ID is a GOP plot to disenfranchise blacks, why is it so common worldwide?

Read it.

After the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic National Committee conducted an autopsy of the party’s defeat and intended to release it.

It pledged an honest accounting of how Donald Trump reclaimed the White House. It assured its own officials, strategists, and donor class that a thorough post-mortem was coming.

However, after the autopsy was complete, the DNC clammed up and kept it under wraps.

There was something in the report they didn’t want the public to see, and Democrats weren’t happy about it.

Read it.

Over the past week or so, many on the political Right have understandably enjoyed a laugh or two at the expense of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, N.Y.). AOC went to the Munich Security Conference to provide “balance” to the Trump administration’s presence and to burnish her own credentials on the global stage. Instead, she mostly just made a fool of herself. Not only did she stutter, stammer, and offer a Kamala Harris-esque non-answer when asked about American interests in and obligations to Taiwan, but she also demonstrated a comically poor grasp of geography and a righteously ignorant understanding of history. In an effort to rebut and embarrass U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, AOC embarrassed only herself, showing that historical facts mean far less to her than identity-inspired fiction.

But while it’s inarguably fun to chuckle at and mock the ignorance of the smug congresswoman and presumed presidential aspirant, it is also important to acknowledge that her historical and political illiteracy extends beyond the superficial and touches on matters of real and critical importance. Notably, this purported champion of the working class does not know the history of working-class politics, does not understand the reasons for the collapse of the working-class-centered ideology, and, as a result, has never contemplated the dangers inherent in attempting to resuscitate that failed doctrine.

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has long emphasized her biography and working-class roots to enhance her political status—and justifiably so. Her childhood may not have been quite the struggle she pretends it was, but she nevertheless endured economic hardships—especially after her father’s death—and was unable to find employment commensurate with her education. She was, famously, a bartender and a cocktail waitress before her election to Congress and, as a result, has long fashioned herself a champion of the working class and its purported priorities.

Read it.

A majority of Virginians oppose Democrats’ efforts to rig the state’s redistricting process in the name of “fairness” – then change it back to the original system they claimed was unfair – results of a new Roanoke College Poll released Monday show.

The Democrats’ April 21, 2026 special-election ballot measure – which Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger rejected during her campaign but supports now that she’s in office – would reportedly turn Democrats’ congressional district advantage from 6-5 currently to 10-1.

If the amendment to the state constitution is passed, the 46.05% of Virginians who voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election would be grossly underrepresented. What’s more, Republicans wouldn’t be able to restore balance by employing the same method Democrats used to give themselves the distorted advantage.

Read it.

The nation’s Democrat attorneys general are preparing legal and strategic responses to potential Trump administration actions related to federal election oversight ahead of the midterm elections.

Read it.

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) needs to work on his pandering skills – after telling a crowd of black people that he’s just like them because he can’t read and got a low SAT score.

I can believe it.

UPDATE: Newsom’s office rebuffs ‘MAGA-manufactured outrage’ on his SAT score statement (Asher Notheis/Washington Examiner)  At least that MAGA guy can read. He probably got a good SAT score as well.

UPDATE: Gavin Newsom Slammed for ‘Bigotry’ With SAT Remark Must be that MAGA guy again. He sure gets around.

New York Post.

Abigail Spanberger, the new governor of Virginia who has been tapped to deliver the Democrats’ State of the Union reply Tuesday night, is the perfect avatar for her party’s deception.

As her campaign for Governor, and subsequent Left-turn, revealed.

With her long blond bob, minimalist makeup, pinched face and brisk air, she looks like the sort of competent working mom you’d encounter at school drop-off in any affluent suburb. In other words, she seems like somebody you instinctively trust.

Actually, she looks like a typical Karen teacher-union apparatchik.

But don’t be fooled by appearances. Spanberger is an expert at subterfuge, having spent eight years as an undercover CIA case officer, aka a spy, under Barack Obama and John Brennan, in the era when Democrats turned national security back on itself.

In other words, an experienced agent of the Democrat Deep State.

Like Joe Biden, she posed as a moderate to fool willfully gullible voters and then showed her true colors the minute she took office.

My, what a surprise.

The “national security mom,” who is being touted as a future presidential contender, immediately signed off on unlimited abortion and a gerrymander plan to entrench Dem rule, ordered law enforcement not to work with ICE and presided over the introduction of dozens of new taxes on everything from dog walking to Uber rides.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

When former President Barack Obama announced plans for his presidential center on Chicago’s South Side, he described it as a privately funded investment in the city that would give back to the community that shaped his political career.

And while construction of the brutalist eyesore itself remains privately financed through the Obama Foundation, taxpayers are footing the bill for massive infrastructure costs.

A review by Fox News found that state and city agencies have not produced a unified accounting of total public expenditures tied to the project’s surrounding infrastructure. While individual agencies have disclosed partial figures, no single office has reconciled those totals or clarified how they overlap.

Your tax dollars at work.

Read it.

May was trying to ease public anxiety. Families were frightened for their sons in the submarine service. He told the assembled reporters that American submariners were surviving at high rates. The reason, he explained, was that the Japanese were setting their depth charges too shallow. The enemy’s weapons were going off well above where the submarines ran.

…

Clay Blair served as a submarine officer during WWII before becoming one of the most respected military historians of his generation. His 1975 book “Silent Victory” remains the definitive history of the Pacific submarine campaign. Blair documented Lockwood’s full assessment of what had happened.
After the war, Lockwood stated, “I consider that indiscretion cost us ten submarines and 800 officers and men.”

…

Early in the war, he developed a working relationship with Henry and Murray Garsson, two New York businessmen with no background in munitions who wanted defense contracts. May used his position as chairman to push Army ordnance officials and federal procurement figures toward the Garssons.
The brothers secured substantial contracts during the war. Cash payments found their way back to May. A Senate investigating committee uncovered the arrangement in the years after the war.
The investigation found the Garssons had made excessive profits while delivering faulty ammunition to the military. Their 4.2-inch mortar shells were fitted with defective fuses that caused premature detonation in the field. Those faulty rounds killed an estimated 38 American soldiers.

Sounds like a typical Democrat Congressman—both careless and corrupt.

Newsbusters.

Read it.

California’s ‘train-to-nowhere’ program started with a $10 billion budget in 2009 which shot up to $135 billion with no end in sight. The Trump administration has tried to cut off billions in federal funds for the money pit on rails and there are signs that even state voters are growing sick of it.

But California Democrats had an answer.

Around the same time that the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, was arrested on suspicion of domestic battery after an appearance with Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrating the progress of the ‘train-to-nowhere’, Democrats were moving forward a bill to ban the public from getting crucial information about the project whose budget is more than 5 times that of NASA.

Read it.

Twelve Democrats plan to skip President Donald Trump’s Feb. 24 State of the Union address to attend a left-wing activist event titled the “People’s State of the Union” instead.

The event, hosted by progressive political advocacy group MoveOn and left-wing media outlet MeidasTouch, will be held on the National Mall during Trump’s State of the Union address as a form of protesting the Trump administration, according to a MoveOn press release.

“We cannot give Trump the attention he wants, or validate his lies to the American people,” MoveOn states on a flyer for the event. “We cannot treat this SOTU as business as usual.”

The event, hosted by former MSNBC anchors Joy Reid and Katie Phang, will feature people “impacted” by Trump, including Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; and the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas.

“Democrats have no obligation to reward him with an audience as he lies and attacks people who disagree with him,” Murphy wrote in MoveOn’s press release.

Read it.

Were Democrats raised in a barn? It’s far worse – they were raised in places like San Francisco where sanitation standards are not far from street poop capitals like India.

There’s just something about left wing government that attracts a stench. Maybe it’s the laziness and the entitlement of socialism. Maybe it’s the inevitable economic malaise beating people down until they no longer care about the state of their surroundings. Maybe leftists simply revel in decay, like pigs in their own filth.

Examples of this lackadaisical gutter dweller mindset are rampant. Wherever Democrats are in control, crime and a river of putrescence follows. Everyone is familiar with San Francisco’s infamous sidewalk poop problem; so much so that the city’s “poop tracker map” became a meme. Tuberculosis outbreaks have also increased by 25% since 2020 and rare disease clusters are making more frequent appearances in areas where third world immigration is rampant.

Read it.

The Hawaii Legislature is advancing companion legislation that would formally codify sweeping emergency powers for the governor and county officials—including authority to quarantine individuals, enter private property without consent, suspend laws, and seize control of infrastructure—under the justification of preparing for future disasters and disease outbreaks.

Democrats: The Real Fascists.

Read it.

“Democrats have shut down DHS because they want to endanger our law enforcement officers and ICE agents by making them show ID,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) warns regarding the partial government shutdown led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Democrats have caused a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by filibustering a bill to continue funding it – unless the funding bill contains provisions crippling and endangering U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents working to enforce federal immigration law.

Democrats are demanding that the funding bill not only provide funding, but also prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks and require them to wear IDs on their uniforms, which would enable violent, pro-illegal immigration activists to identify and target them.

Newsbusters.

Michelle Obama is the poster-child for the Democrat Nanny State.

The New York Times,  Paper of Record for the Crust.

And Jeffrey Toobin is all in. (Next to senile Larry Lessig at Harvard, Jeffrey Toobin is perhaps the most famous proglodyte lawyer in the country.)

The Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization founded in 1982, is justly famous for providing a right-wing agenda for the courts and for promoting its allies to be judges and justices. The American Constitution Society, its lesser-known liberal counterpart, recently announced new leadership, and a new goal: to expand the use of the courts to oppose President Trump’s agenda.

Phil Brest, the new president of the A.C.S., which was founded in 2001, participated in a largely unsung success of Joe Biden’s presidency: Serving in Mr. Biden’s White House counsel’s office, Mr. Brest, now 38, helped the president nominate and win confirmation of 235 federal judges, which is more than Mr. Trump’s total in his first term.

Those judges — and others appointed by Democratic presidents — have proved that the most effective resistance to Mr. Trump has come not from Democratic politicians but rather from federal judges. In the last several weeks alone, these judges, many of them Biden appointees, have ordered the release from immigration custody of five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father and their return to their home in Minnesota; blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary protections from deportation that had been granted to thousands of Ethiopians living in the United States; and directed the Trump administration to allow members of Congress to make unannounced visits to ICE detention facilities.

There is the Democrat program red in tooth and claw.

Read it.

While Republicans are catching up or holding their own in some states, they are still losing elections in places where they should be winning, like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

As a full-time political operative back in the 1980s and early 90s, I remember Colorado being a reliable, even sleepy, Republican state. The GOP controlled the governorship, both US Senate seats, and five of the state’s then-seven congressional districts (they now have eight).

That was true up until 2004. Then something happened. Within four years, it had practically reversed. Beginning that year, Colorado Democrats began to reverse their fortunes. And in doing so, created a model that has been exported to dozens of other states, including Virginia. This was documented in the book “The Blueprint” by Adam Schrager, an Emmy Award-winning journalist from Wisconsin, and Rob Witwer, an attorney, former counsel to the Colorado GOP, a former Republican member of the Colorado House of Representatives, and a Denver attorney.

I hear you asking, “Why are you reviewing a nearly 16-year-old book?” Perhaps you’re asking, even as someone who is politically attuned and active, “Why should I care?” Because it remains as relevant as ever, and Republicans everywhere have, with a few exceptions, failed to heed its lessons, no more so than in Virginia in their disastrous 2025 election.

Read it.

Nearly 80% of the 2017 and 2018 Truman Scholars—a taxpayer-funded scholarship program—now have “a clear connection to liberal politics, such as working for Democratic members of Congress, advocating for progressive causes, or teaching classes with a liberal focus,” reports The College Fix.

Jennifer Kabbany, editor-in-chief of The College Fix, joins Jack Fowler on this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” for an in-depth discussion on DEI programs, higher education challenges, and jaw-dropping campus stories.

Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

The Other McCain.

The headline probably seems like common sense to anyone who knows anything about St. Louis. If you’re from Missouri or the part of western Illinois near St. Louis, you probably don’t need any warnings, because the city is notorious dangerous, and folks in the immediate vicinity know to avoid it. “Well, Stacy, how dangerous is St. Louis?” you ask.

IT’S WORSE THAN BALTIMORE!

This is a Third World category of danger found in very few places in the United States. In 2023, only two cities — New Orleans, with a homicide rate of 46 per 100,000 residents, and Memphis, at 41 per 100,000 residents — exceeded the rate in St. Louis which, at 38 homicides per 100,000 residents, was worse than either Baltimore or Washington, D.C., which tied for fourth place that year. My friend Dana Pico likes to joke about “Killadelphia,” but the homicide rate there was just 26 per 100,000. And there were twice as many homicides per capita in St. Louis than in either Cleveland or Detroit. That’s pretty doggone bad.

Did I mention that the population of St. Louis has seen a drastic decline in recent decades? There are currently fewer than 300,000 residents in the city, down more than 50% since 1970, but not all of the lost population was murdered. Most of them escaped to the suburbs, or left the area entirely, as rampant crime turned St. Louis into a nightmare of violence and thievery. Did I mention that St. Louis is a stronghold of the Democratic Party? The city is part of Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, which is rated D+29 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index and was formerly represented by “Squad” member Cori Bush, before she lost the 2024 Democratic primary to Wesley Bell. (Who to blame? The Jews!)

Jonathan Turley.

This month, the anniversary of the California Gold Rush came and passed with little mention … for good reason. When James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill, millions traveled great distances to seek their fortune in the “Golden State.”

Now, 178 years later, California has engineered an inverse Gold Rush, virtually chasing wealth from the state. Rather than covered wagons going West, there is a line of U-Hauls going anywhere other than California.

From boondoggle projects to reparations, California politicians continue to rack up new spending projects despite a soaring deficit and shrinking tax base.

Rather than exercise a modicum of fiscal restraint, Democrats are pushing through a tax that takes five percent of the wealth of any billionaires left in the state.

Blue states forget that they’re not countries. Their people can vote with their feet—and will.

Read it.

Political operatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna have never mentioned the name Katheryn Ruemmler despite her name appearing thousands of times in emails within the Epstein files. Yet both Massie and Khanna went out of their way to publicly claim they forced the DOJ to release the names of four men they accused of being sex traffickers and pedophiles.

Massie was very proud of his efforts to discover the names and force the DOJ to unredact them. As Massie proclaimed, continuously: if President Trump and the DOJ did not publicly unredact the names, it would be proof that President Trump and the DOJ were protecting pedophiles and sex traffickers.

After holding their joint press conference, Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna then went to the House of Representatives to proclaim (1) Salvatore Nuara, (2) Zurab Mikeladze, (3) Leonid Leonov and (4) Nicola Caputo were sexual deviants, pedophiles and much worse. They were horrible men who had abused underage girls.

…. Except, there was a problem. A BIG PROBLEM.

Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonid Leonov and Nicola Caputo had absolutely nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein or anything even remotely associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

The names Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonid Leonov and Nicola Caputo were in the Epstein files because they were random pictures of men, random passport pictures, used in a photo lineup during questioning of one of Epstein’s victims.

This is the sort of shit one might expect of Ro Kanna, a Democrat, but one might hope that Massies, nominally a Republican, would avoid it.

I must confess that prior to this I had no firm opinions about Massie; the only think I knew about him was that Trump apparently dislikes him (a status that Massie shares with a large portion of the populatin). However, in light of this news, I suspect that (once again) Trump Is Right.

Apparently I’m not alone: AG Pam Bondi Releases List of Names Appearing in Epstein Files to Complete Demands of Thomas Massie

This is a free segment from Glenn Greenwald’s System Update, made available on Substack.

Read it.

In the days since the 2026 Super Bowl football game, I have seen several articles about players on the winning team having to pay California more in state income taxes than the bonuses the players received for winning the game. All because the players were in the state for ten or more days. Thus, according to California law, players owe California a proportion of their entire annual pay.

So?

This California visitor’s income tax is not new.

This California visitor’s income tax is not limited to highly paid athletes.

This California visitor’s income tax is a feature of California government stupidity.

And has been for a long time.

Although I grew up mostly in Southern California, in 2000 I moved to New York State for a job. Beginning in about 2010, a part of my job became supervising a couple of company offices in California. This required me to physically visit those offices a few times per year.

I kept careful track of how many days I spent in California for those visits. If those days accumulated to ten or more in a calendar year (which my employer would know, since travel was booked through the company’s travel program), I would owe California income taxes based on a proportion of my total annual income. And, because of its connections to California, my employer was obligated to track that information and to report it to the state. So, I made sure to keep my cumulative visits to the company’s California offices to fewer than ten days in a calendar year. Although I found the first half of December a beneficial time to travel for business, I sometimes skipped visits to the California offices lest I incur taxation by the state of California.

Democrats never saw a pocket that they didn’t want to pick.

Read it.

Sen. Josh Hawley accused Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison of having knowledge of massive welfare fraud in his state, yet enabling the fraud to continue.

“I should call you ‘prisoner’ because you ought to be in jail,” Hawley, R-Mo., told Ellison in a heated exchange during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday.

Hawley specifically pressed Ellison on an alleged conversation the attorney general had with leaders of the Minneapolis nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which orchestrated a massive fraud scheme.

Read it.

Sympathy for bums, homeless unhoused drug addicts, wanted criminals, violent illegal aliens, vandals, thieves, drug dealers and gang members can be a cost-free self-congratulatory, ego-boosting practice if one is wealthy enough live safely insulated from such theoretical objects of compassion.  However, when they are next door and attacking one’s home, person and property, it should be a distinctly different cost-benefit calculus.

A horror story out of Prince George’s County, MD raises the question as to why people who suffer from proximity to social dysfunction continue to vote for and echo the verbiage of self-congratulatory wealthy insulated white people. When majority black residents of a PG County condo community reached out to majority black police leadership under the direction of a majority-black county government to ask for protection and relief from theft, trespass and assault emanating from an adjacent illegal homeless unhoused, drug-riddled, gang infested encampment, a senior black police officer responded that “we’re not criminalizing the unhoused”, a response more fitting for a female college sophomore or an ICE-hating, climate-saving older AWFL than from a cop being asked by citizens to deal with actual criminal activities.

Read it.

Rep. Becca Balint stormed out of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday after Bondi deflected questions about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and instead criticized Balint’s record on antisemitism.

Lawmakers called the hearing to press Bondi on a range of issues, including Epstein and the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.

Balint, a Vermont progressive, asked Bondi during her questioning whether Trump had been aware of billionaire financier Howard Lutnick’s ties to Epstein when he was appointed as commerce secretary. The most recent files released last month showed that Lutnick had visited Epstein’s private island and dined with him years after he said he had cut off ties — and after Epstein pled guilty to sex crimes.

After Bondi refused to answer Balint’s question, the congresswoman replied, “I’m going to conclude that the president, in fact, did know about his ties.”

At the end of Balint’s questioning, which devolved into shouting as Bondi consistently interrupted Balint, Bondi then raised Balint’s record on antisemitism.

I guess Democrats can’t stand to be treated like Republicans.

Read it.

This is one step further than simple Lawfare, this story is about lower court judges openly strategizing ways to stop the enforcement of laws they are supposed to uphold.

Last week the Fifth Circuit Cout of Appeals ruled that detaining illegal aliens during the deportation proceedings is entirely following current immigration law [SEE HERE]. Now, according to Politico, federal judges in Texas are openly strategizing ways to work around that higher court ruling and keep giving bond releases to illegal aliens under the guise of “liberty interest.”

To be clear, these are Federal judges, many of whom were appointed by Democrat Presidents, not state judges, who know better.

Read it.

Move over, Golden State. You’re being replaced by the Sunshine State.

The wealthiest people in the U.S. are forsaking California in favor of Miami to escape a looming wealth tax that might be coming to the West Coast state. And as these affluent folks head to the 305, they’re giving the real estate market a seismic shakeup upon their arrival by snatching up luxe mansions in South Florida, Bloomberg reported.

Larry Page, the cofounder of Google, is one of many people making the move. He reportedly just snagged a $101.5 million manse and another $71.9 million property in the luxe enclave of Coconut Grove last month, according to Bloomberg. Another adjacent $15 million home was also allegedly snapped up by an entity connected to Page in January, too, completing his property trifecta (and following the trend of billionaires amassing luxe compounds in Miami). Fellow billionaire Mark Zukerberg has also stepped into the Miami fray, reportedly buying a property on Indian Creek, a man-made isle that’s also known as Billionaires Bunker. If the Facebook founder has actually purchased a home there, he’ll count Jeff Bezos (who has a $90 million spread there) and Tom Brady (and his blinged-out watch collection) as his neighbors.

The Telegraph (UK).

Everybody goes to Ricks; everybody moves to Florida.

Indian Creek Island is a very interesting place; look at it on a map and you will see why billionaires like it.

None of the world’s five richest people live in California, despite four having founded their companies there.

Gee, I wonder why.

The Foundry.

The Census Bureau recently released updated population figures through June 2025. The country grew slightly, but that growth wasn’t equally distributed. Many red states, like South Carolina, Idaho, and Texas, grew significantly. In just one year, each of those states saw their population increase by more than 1%.

Blue states aren’t keeping up. California, Illinois, and New York now have fewer people than in 2020. In contrast, Florida’s population is up around 9%.

There’s an obvious and important takeaway here. Blue states implemented leftist ideas. They have high taxes and regulations that strangle construction. They have failing schools that teach students to hate America. They force female athletes to compete against boys.

The results have been so intolerable that millions of people have moved out. It’s yet another example of people fleeing socialism.

There’s a less obvious but just as important takeaway. After the decennial census, states gain or lose congressional seats based on population. Those adjustments change the Electoral College. States receive electoral votes based on how many House and Senate members they have.

The forecast from the American Redistricting Project shows Democrats losing nine seats in reliable blue states. Two swing states, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, would each lose a seat. Those 11 seats would go to states that Trump won in 2024. A different projection from Jonathan Cervas at Carnegie Mellon University has solid red and lean red states gaining 13 seats.

Read it.

Representative Ilhan Omar is one of the most sanctimonious corrupt Democrats in congress, and she’s loud and proud about it because she understands how to engage in financial fraud safely. Just do what everyone else is doing but do it bigger, that way there’s no way her peers can approach it.

Someone in DC gave House Oversight Chairman James Comer the familiar tap on the shoulder and told him they don’t investigate their own Uniparty tribe. So, Comer drops his planned review of Omar’s corruption and shifts it to the ethics team.

Read it.

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts have announced charges in a major welfare fraud case tied to a local restaurant, alleging more than $1 million in stolen government benefits were funneled through a multi-state scheme involving stolen identities and SNAP fraud.

Authorities say the lead defendant, Raul Fernandez Vicioso, operated El Primo Restaurant and worked with three co-defendants to obtain SNAP benefits using the identities of more than 100 victims, according to Newsmax crime correspondent Jason Mattera on Monday’s “Wake Up America.”

Investigators allege the group collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in EBT funds between 2023 and 2025, using the cards to purchase bulk food from wholesalers and stock the restaurant at taxpayer expense.

Prosecutors say the fraud extended beyond SNAP, with the same group accused of filing bogus COVID-era unemployment claims in multiple states, netting more than $700,000 in additional funds. Federal officials say the case highlights ongoing vulnerabilities in benefit programs and the need for tougher enforcement when state officials fail to act.

The defendants now face multiple federal charges, including fraud and conspiracy.

Ponder why you never see these massive fraud cases in Red states. The nature of the Democrat party as a criminal enterprise is becoming painfully clear.