UnHerd.

Doubtless the fake nonconformist is an American type that goes back centuries, but we surely reached an apex of fraudulence in the early 2020s. How passionately the rioters of Antifa demanded the same things as Fortune 500 CEOs, how righteously millionaire celebrity “activists” raged for the machine. And there was something mournful too, about Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama’s coffee table book Renegades, heavy as a tombstone marking the spot where Rock n’ Roll was finally laid to rest. The counterculture had gone full Weekend at Bernie’s.

Of course, it had been green around the gills for a long time. Confronted with the hyper-commercialisation of radicalism in the early Nineties, the political historian Thomas Frank doubted that even its Golden Age amounted to much: “The Sixties was the age of postmodern fantasy and retailers’ dream, for each identity, each new phase of rebellion, necessitated a comprehensive shopping expedition.” The rejection of tradition, Frank argued, was simply the outcome of a desire to be free to flit between images: “They would be rebels, poets, perky-girls, English, hippies, and playboys in quick succession.”

But while there is much truth to Frank’s critique, the counterculture was not entirely bogus. Some hippies really did turn on, tune in and drop out. Hunter S. Thompson may have ended his days writing for Esquire, but all those drugs and guns weren’t going to pay for themselves. The cartoonist Robert Crumb really was a weirdo. And then there was Frank Zappa, guitarist, satirist, avant-garde composer, and writer of “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?”

I have always had an affection for Frank Zappa. His Album Weasels Ripped My Flesh had a prize place in my record collection when I was young (until I had to sell them to help pay for law school).

Movin’ to Montana soon;
Gonna be a dental floss tycoon…

The Other McCain.

Six years ago (“The Media’s ‘Climate of Hate’ Myth,” American Spectator, Jan. 18, 2019), I examined the political forces behind allegations of an “epidemic” of violence against transgender people. The mainstream media were complicit in a propaganda campaign to convince the public that right-wing “hate” was responsible for this phenomenon. The propaganda campaign involved a running total of how many transgender people had been “murdered” during the current calender year, so that a news report about a recent death could include the fact that the victim was 14th (or 27th or whatever) such person killed in the U.S. that year.

Of course, the activists compiling those lists of transgender victims were not scrupulous about who got included in their totals — they wanted a big number to promote the EPIDEMIC OF HATE narrative, and relied upon the gullibility of journalists not to examine the details of these deaths on a case-by-case basis. Any reasonably curious person could do some basic research and realize that the “epidemic” narrative was bogus. The number of transgender victims whose deaths could be clearly attributed to “transphobia” was so close to zero as to be statistically neglible, a drop in the bucket in a nation where there are about 20,000 homicides a year. Let us stipulate that a drag queen who gets shot during an argument outside a bar at 3 a.m. may, in some vague way, be a victim of “transphobia,” but does it make sense to depict such an incident as evidence of a “Climate of Hate”? And yet this was the substance of the alleged “epidemic” of anti-transgender violence that the media kept hyping up during Donald Trump’s first term. Anyway . . .

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The European Commission has channeled billions of euros in public funds to finance NGOs and think tanks that, far from acting independently, have served as instruments to promote its political agenda. This is revealed by a newly published report from MCC Brussels titled ‘The Commission’s Propaganda by Proxy’, unmasking programs such as the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) one that aims to consolidate pro-EU narratives while marginalizing critical voices.

The report denounces the way in which the European Commission allocates funds to NGOs aligned with its values and objectives. “The Commission funds organizations that are economically dependent on its grants and that act as spokespersons for its agenda,” the document states, highlighting a clear distortion of civil society’s traditional role. It also criticizes the Commission itself, which, as an executive body, has evolved into an ideological entity in recent years, moving away from its original role of mere political management for which it was created.

Among the cited examples is the financing of the Young European Federalists (JEF), which has received more than 1.2 million euros between 2021 and 2025 to mobilize young people in favor of European federalization. Another case is the European Policy Centre (EPC), a think tank that has received nearly 30 million euros in the last decade and openly advocates for greater supranational integration.

Read it.

Actually, it’s more specific than North vs. South, because Minnesotans don’t necessarily use the same vocabulary as New Yorkers or Vermonters. And there are going to be variations across the South as well, so more specifically, I want to write about the linguistic differences between Minnesota and Tennessee. Some of you know that after living all my life in Minnesota, I moved to Tennessee about three years ago. Even before reading this fine post on Ricochet, I knew that Southerners drank “soda,” not “pop,” so I was ready for that one. But here are a few examples that took me by surprise.

I was raised in northern Indiana, almost Michigan, and I’ve said ‘soda’ all my life; but I guess that’s just me.

Read it.

Four years ago, Storm Uri caused Texas’s centrally planned wholesale electricity market (ERCOT) to buckle, vindicating warnings about the state’s wind/solar reliance. The mainstream media implicated natural gas instead, failing to explore the why behind the why. Rather than deregulation, Texas has chosen to add wind, solar, and batteries, while subsidizing natural gas plants to counter intermittency. This duplicated grid is now driving rates up in a state that could have relied on surplus natural gas instead.

Government acts like government, even in red states. My wife and I bought a backup generator (powered by gas) so we’ll never have to rely on such unreliable people again.

Financial Times.

The Financia Times is Britain’s analog to the Wall Street Journal — if the Wall Street Journal were put out by the staff of Mother Jones.

Recent weeks have provided a stark reminder of Europe’s vulnerabilities. The eurozone barely grew at the end of last year, underlining the fragility of the domestic recovery. And the US began imposing tariffs on its major trading partners, with the EU next in its sights. This prospect casts further uncertainty over European growth given the economy’s dependence on foreign demand.

Two major factors have led Europe into this predicament — but they can also lead it out again if it is prepared to undergo radical change.

The first is the EU’s long-standing inability to tackle its supply constraints, especially its high internal barriers and regulatory hurdles. These are far more damaging for growth than any tariffs the US might impose — and their harmful effects are increasing over time.

Reducing tariff and other trade barriers was the foundational purpose of the European Union, just as the foundational purpose of the United States was democracy and individual liberty.

Neither one appears to have survived in a recognizable form.2

Pity.

Gothamist.

“OK! If you’re monogamous, come on this side of the room. If you’re figuring it out, stay in the center. And if you’re polyamorous, then all the way on this side.”

On the night before Valentine’s Day, comedian Naomi Karavani was on stage corralling the packed crowd at “Thots & Trots,” a “socialist singles mixer” hosted by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The sold-out event was held at Silo, an airplane hangar-sized music venue in industrial Bushwick, with more than 300 registered attendees mingling to talk politics and love.

THOT means ‘that ho over there’. (Compare ‘304‘.)

“?If you have a pet, over here,” Karavani announced, directing traffic. “The polyamorous people do not have pets. You guys can’t afford pets. You’re spending all the money on your girlfriends.”

Note that it’s not ‘You’re spending all your money on your boyfriends.’ Even in the socialist world, men are the ones doing the spending, and women are the ones getting spent on. (How sexist.)

What goes around comes around … and sometimes piles up.

Read it.

On “cisheteropatriarchy” and the ugliness and obscurity of cultural discourse.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

One of the consequences of the unfolding revelations in Washington is that we must reexamine the past in light of this new data. We now know that the political process was captured by the Blob and used to serve the Blob. That means the alleged policies of past presidents were probably not their policies at all. They were simply staying ahead of the policies put forth by the Blob.

At the same time, much of what we want government to do has gotten worse as the Blob has assumed control. Name a problem and not only has it gotten worse, but the cost of addressing it has grown out of control. One great example is the war on drugs that has tracked closely with the growth of the Blob. The cost of fighting it has spiraled out of control, while the problem has only grown worse.

It is the nature of managerialism to look for things to manage, but managing is not the same as solving or even mitigating. You cannot remain a manager if what the problem you are tasked to manage gets solved. In fact, solving the issue is exactly what you must seek to avoid, which means you become part of the problem. This is what we have seen with the drug war going back to the Reagan years.

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President Donald Trump has revolutionized the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by ousting 18 Democratic appointees from the board of trustees and replacing them with normal Americans. On Wednesday, the new board unanimously elected a fabulous chairman (Trump) who is determined to preside over a “Golden Age of Arts and Culture” in this country after four years of vapid slop under former president Joe Biden. “I think we’re going to make it hot,” Trump said on a conference call with Kennedy Center board members. “And we made the presidency hot, so this should be easy.”

Liberal elites have grumbled that Trump’s actions amount to a sinister “purge” or “coup.” The New Republic, a once-respected left-wing publication, accused Trump of appointing “the weirdest board ever” at the Kennedy Center. This couldn’t be more wrong, according to an in-depth analysis of the new and outgoing members. Based on the available evidence, it’s safe to say that Trump has assembled one of the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive groups of qualified experts since the Kennedy Center opened its doors in 1971. By purging the board’s ranks of likeminded elites and replacing them with individuals who are more relatable and representative of our country’s beautiful and complex demographic tapestry, Trump has pulled off an impressive coup—for DEI.

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The suspect in the car-ramming attack in Munich that left more than 30 people injured appears to have had an Islamic extremist motive, but there’s no evidence that he was involved with any radical network, authorities said Friday.

The 24-year-old Afghan, who arrived in Germany as an asylum-seeker in 2016 and lived in Munich, was arrested after driving his Mini Cooper into the back of a labor union demonstration in the Bavarian city on Thursday. Police officers pulled him out of the car after firing a shot at the vehicle, which didn’t hit him, and arrested him.

Prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said that the suspect said “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” to police and then prayed after his arrest — which prompted a department that investigates extremism and terror to take on the case immediately.

Do tell….

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My father could disassemble and rebuild a car engine in our garage. I, like many of my generation, was steered toward the ‘civilized’ path – white collar work, climate-controlled offices, and an increasing detachment from the physical world. While I grew up loving sports, memorizing baseball stats with religious devotion, and finding genuine joy in the games, something fundamental has shifted in how men engage with athletics today.

In dimly lit rooms across the nation, millions of men gather every weekend, adorned in jerseys bearing other men’s names – not as a complement to their own achievements, but as a substitute for them. We’ve transformed from a nation of players to a nation of watchers.

Like Rome’s bread and circuses, this passive consumption serves to pacify rather than inspire.

I was passive before passive was sorta cool.

The Covid response revealed this agenda with striking clarity. While liquor stores remained ‘essential businesses,’ authorities closed beaches, parks, and gyms – the very places where people might maintain their physical and mental health. They promoted isolation over community, compliance over resilience, and pharmaceutical dependency over natural immunity. This wasn’t just public health policy; it was a dress rehearsal for state dependency. The same institutions that discouraged basic health practices now champion policies that replace family authority with bureaucratic oversight. From school boards usurping parental rights to social services intervening in family decisions, we’re witnessing the systematic replacement of the capable father figure with an ever-expanding nanny state.

Coincidence? I think NOT.

The Other McCain.

Longtime blog buddy Dana Pico is usually our go-to source for all Philadelphia-related news, but for some reason he had no comment on the Eagles winning the Super Bowl and the subsequent riot.

 

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As President Donald Trump unleashed a suite of executive orders targeting DEI, the University of Michigan School of Nursing began quietly revamping its website.

A “diversity” tab with links to DEI resources was removed from the homepage. Pages with “DEI” in the title were renamed and purged of the offending adjective, according to web archives reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, while the main page for the school’s diversity office—which stated, “We are not excellent if we do not reflect diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of our community”—was taken down entirely.

In its place was a new page for “Community Culture,” which declares that “culture is at the heart of everything we do.” None of the revised pages use the terms “diversity” or “DEI.”

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Wednesday voted against confirming former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official, sending a strong message to fellow GOP senators, some of whom privately doubted her qualifications to hold the job.

McConnell was the only Republican senator to vote against Gabbard, who came under heavy scrutiny over her past opposition to expanded surveillance authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and her refusal to call former government contractor Edward Snowden a traitor for stealing 1.5 million classified documents.

The Kentucky Democrat lawmaker flagged Gabbard’s refusal to label Snowden a “traitor” as a serious concern.

RINO Mitch is at it again, straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

Read it.

Whatever a government publicly desires, it appears as though the lawyer classes will always find one human rights clause or another to do the opposite.

There have been numerous calls this week for Parliament—and therefore, ultimately, the British people—to have control over who can settle in the UK, rather than judges. This comes after a court granted Palestinian migrants the right to live in the country.

A family of six seeking to leave Gaza and join a brother in Britain applied through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees and were originally refused on the grounds their case was outside the programme’s rules. Understandable, given that they are Palestinian, not Ukrainian.

But a report in the Telegraph reveals that this decision has since been overturned by an upper tribunal judge—the son of a former ‘anti-Israeli’ Guardian journalist—on the basis of their right to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

This judge, said Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch UK, “epitomises the thinking of our courts and judges when it comes to immigration and asylum.”

The rot thickens….

Read it.

Patryk Jaki MEP (Law and Justice; PiS) is beginning his “special trial” in Poland, after ‘liking’ a Twitter post back in 2018 that showcased real security footage of migrant criminals.

Polish prosecutors requested a three-year prison sentence for this ‘hate crime,’ while leftists in the European Parliament began the procedure to strip Jaki of his diplomatic immunity for “inciting hatred against Muslim immigrants.”

The trial of the co-chair of the European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group comes against the backdrop of Polish PM Donald Tusk’s entire liberal government becoming the subject of an official probe over a suspected “coup d’etat” last week due to its blatant rule-of-law violations, such as ignoring high-level judicial rulings, taking over public institutions, and unlawfully persecuting the conservative opposition—something that Jaki’s case perfectly illustrates.

Poland, of course, doesn’t have our Bill of Rights.

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An explosive new study conducted within the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) own laboratory has revealed excessively high levels of DNA contamination in Pfizer’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.

Tests conducted at the FDA’s White Oak Campus in Maryland found that residual DNA levels exceeded regulatory safety limits by 6 to 470 times.

The study was undertaken by student researchers under the supervision of FDA scientists. The vaccine vials were sourced from BEI Resources, a trusted supplier affiliated with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), previously headed by Anthony Fauci.

Quillette.

Widely believed falsehoods erode the cohesion and resilience of societies and can threaten the national security of the United States and its allies. Unfortunately, as a new administration arrives in Washington, elite opinion on what to do about America’s social-media swamps and general epistemic disorder resembles a national-security debate that includes only warmongers and appeasers. The United States needs to adopt a pragmatic deterrence strategy instead.

Good luck with that. Not holding my breath….

UnHerd.

JD Vance caused a firestorm on Sunday when he posted on X, formerly Twitter: “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

The vice president’s remarks came in response to the growing list of lower-court judges who have attempted to halt the new administration’s agenda with a slew of injunctions. They have directed Team Trump to release federal grants to nonprofits that the administration has frozen for auditing, for example, and blocked the administration from applying its interpretation of the 14th Amendment, according to which children born to illegal immigrants aren’t automatically entitled to US citizenship.

Vance hit back at the judges for trying to restrict the president in his own sphere and overriding his decisions as to how best to carry out the law (the execute in the “executive branch”). As the Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule put it an X post, reshared by Vance, “judicial interference with legitimate acts of state, especially the internal functioning of a co-equal branch, is a violation of the separation of powers”.

But the judges’ actions raise another vexing constitutional question: can a lower court with narrow local jurisdiction render so-called nationwide injunctions that purport to bind every American citizen? By seemingly refusing to comply, the Trump administration is effectively answering: no. In doing so, according to The New York Times, the Trumpians have triggered an unprecedented “constitutional crisis”. In recent years, as legal progressives have sought to limit presidential power when it’s held by the other side, it’s become a sort of truism that a lower court in Hawaii or, say, New Hampshire can put a stop to a federal policy covering the whole nation.

Read it.

Thousands of British farmers descended on London on Monday, bringing tractors—and even a tank—to the streets of Westminster. The protest, organised by Save British Farming, was aimed at the Labour government’s controversial inheritance tax reforms, which will see a 20% levy imposed on farms worth more than £1 million starting in April 2026.

Whitehall, the road which is the centre of government power in Britain, was completely blocked as farmers honked their horns and displayed banners condemning the policy as an existential threat to British agriculture. Signs reading “No Farms, No Food, No Future” and “Labour Are Liars” captured the anger and desperation of a community that feels abandoned by the government.

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“The data make it clear that the only possible rationale for renewable energy—making significant reductions of CO2 emissions—cannot be achieved. The costs of attempting to do this are already imposing heavy costs on economies across the world.”

The Times (UK).

Public sector productivity fell again last year, according to figures that dealt a blow to ministers’ hopes of a more efficient state.

Rising numbers of staff are not being matched by results and the state remains 8.4 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels of productivity, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The NHS has driven declining efficiency and remains 18.5 per cent less productive than before the Covid lockdown, the figures suggest.

However, NHS England said that figures it had calculated showed that the service had improved, leaving ministers unclear whether the most expensive and politically significant public service will actually make best use of a £22 billion budget boost.

You will never see a government statistic that shows that government is worse. They have no incentive to do that, and every incentive to do the opposite. “We’re doing great here! Everything is looking up!” Britain’s NHS is the poster child for dysfunctional government services, of which Obamacare is a pale reflection. Medicare in this country is only tolerable because it doesn’t provide health care, it merely pays for it (which is bad enough).

An example of NHS failure is here: Pensioner dies after refusing A&E trip due to agonising wait with broken back

The Register.

All malicious attacks on digital systems have one common aim: taking control. Mostly, that means getting a CPU somewhere to turn traitor, running code that silently steals or scrambles your data. That code can ride into the system in a whole spectrum of ways, but usually it has to be in memory somewhere at some time, making it amenable to counter-attack.

There’s a far worse scenario, when the CPU itself is brainwashed into highly dangerous behavior like a mouse infected by a parasite that makes it completely unafraid of cats. This is a microcode attack, something that’s remarkably hard to pull off. Google just found one that works on some AMD processors, which is bad enough, even though it’s now patched and under control. There is another far, far more terrifying example underway right now – so let’s look at how it works.

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Mr. Pritzker is essentially claiming the superiority of his welfare-state, public-union governance model. But fewer people are buying it. Since 2020, 33 Illinois counties have voted to consider breaking away from the state.

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For months, daring bands of thieves linked to South American gangs have been making off with piles of jewelry and cash from the homes of the biggest superstars in sports, targeting the likes of the NFL’s Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.

Sure! Open the border! Let ’em all in! What could go wrong?

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New York Democrats are poised to delay until November the special election to fill Rep. Elise Stefanik’s House seat — a move that would deny House Republicans a crucial vote in the closely divided chamber.

State lawmakers on Friday introduced a bill that would allow Gov. Kathy Hochul to schedule special elections under some circumstances until the November general election. The Democratic-led Legislature is expected to approve the bill Monday, touching off a bitter feud with New York Republicans in a hyper partisan era. President Donald Trump tapped Stefanik to become the United Nations ambassador.

Top Albany Democrats are framing the proposal — which follows consultations between state lawmakers and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ office — as a way to save money for local governments. Republicans decried the measure as an attempt to deny a rural, deep red House district representation in Washington and called for a RICO investigation of Democratic lawmakers.

UPDATE: Democrats move to push special election date, and GOP howls (Times-Union)

UPDATE: N.Y. Democrats introduce bill allowing Hochul to delay special election, in­fu­ri­ating Re­pub­licans and prompting calls for in­ves­ti­gation (Spectrum News)

UPDATE: Democratic chairs choose candidate for NY-21 (ABC News10)

Read it.

If you’re like many people, you’ve always thought a numbered-triangle symbol on the bottom of a plastic container tells you it’s recyclable — giving you peace of mind that when you toss it into a blue bin, it will be turned into something else.

That’s not true. Those symbols are Resin Identification Codes (RICs). Numbered 1 through 7, they only identify the kind of plastic an item is made of. Far from giving a sweeping assurance that RIC-stamped items are recyclable, the symbol frequently indicates a particular item absolutely cannot be recycled.

Reluctant to burden citizens with figuring out which plastics are recyclable — a chore that could dampen participation and cause confusion as recyclability of various plastics changes over time — many municipal recycling programs simply encourage people to toss all their RIC-stamped plastics in the bin and let the recyclers sort it out.

Victor Davis Hanson.

I’d like to talk today about the status of Mexican-American, not as a Mexican-American citizen, but Mexico’s relationship with the United States. What is the Mexican-American status quo now? It’s very disturbing.

I’ll just give you an example of what I mean: We sent deported criminals back to Mexico and they forbid—we were going to, and they would not allow them to land in Mexico. We had people of the cartel shoot an American citizen on U.S. land and shoot at our Border Patrol. So, what is Mexico? Is it neutral? Is it an ally? Is it an enemy? Is it a frenemy?

Here’s some data. Right now, we have a trade deficit with Mexico of $150 billion. Remember Ross Perot? I was about in my 40s, early 40s, in 1992-96, third-party candidate. He said, “You’re going to hear a big sucking sound.” What he meant was your jobs are going to go to Mexico. They’re going to run up surpluses.

MEXIFORNIA, by Victor Davis Hanson.

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Most people will concede that licensing for hair braiders and interior decorators is excessive while licensing for doctors, nurses and lawyers is essential. Hair braiders pose little to no threat to public safety, but subpar doctors, nurses and lawyers can ruin lives. To Ms. Allensworth’s credit, she asks for evidence. Does occupational licensing protect consumers? The author focuses on the professional board, the forgotten institution of occupational licensing.

Governments enact occupational-licensing laws but rarely handle regulation directly—there’s no Bureau of Hair Braiding. Instead, interpretation and enforcement are delegated to licensing boards, typically dominated by members of the profession. Occupational licensing is self-regulation. The outcome is predictable: Driven by self-interest, professional identity and culture, these boards consistently favor their own members over consumers.

The motive toward corruption is obvious. Except to politicians.

UPDATE: ‘The Licensing Racket’ Review: There’s a Board for That (Wall Street Journal)

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Now that the Democrats have lost their lock grip on power, what’s a green activist to do? It’s almost comical how the climate left is trying to cloak their agenda in terms they think will melt in Republicans’ ears. For example, Jennifer Granholm, energy secretary in the Biden administration recently penned an opinion piece arguing that President Trump is playing right into Communist China’s evil hands by killing off America’s green economy.

The ‘green agenda’, like every other proglodyte agenda, is all about the Crust accumulating power and money (your money).

Watch it.

Governments like spending your money.

People who don’t have a lot of money get off when the government steals money from those who have more than they do.

As Ronald Reagan famously said, government is the problem, not the solution.

Elizabeth Warren ought to be deleted from the gene pool.

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Microsoft has disavowed its affiliation with NewsGuard after Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, slammed the Big Tech company for funding a censorship tool created by the left-wing media monitor.

In December, Cruz fired off a strongly-worded letter to CEO Satya Nadella demanding to know answers about Microsoft’s promotion and apparent funding of the online “media literacy” tool.

NewsGuard claims to have created it to guide “learners of all ages through the overwhelming landscape of online news and information.”

Read it.

The open-border threat from Mexico is obvious, but why worry about Canada? Three reasons: drugs, unvetted illegal migrants, and terrorists.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday he would skip Group of 20 talks this month in South Africa, accusing the host government of an “anti-American” agenda.

Rubio’s announcement comes days after President Donald Trump lashed out at South Africa over land reforms aimed at redressing inequalities perpetrated during the apartheid era.

In a post on X that took on the tone of Trump, Rubio said he would boycott the G20 talks of foreign ministers in Johannesburg on Feb. 20-21.

Read it.

After an escalation in political violence over the past several years, including protesters at the homes of Supreme Court justices, several United States senators introduced legislation on Wednesday to increase the penalties for those that threaten federal judges, including Supreme Court justices.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss.; and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., would increase the maximum penalty for violating 18 U.S.C. § 1507 from one year to five years.

One can be prosecuted under Section 1507 if he or she “with the intent of influencing any judge … in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades … in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge.” Violators of the statute also risk facing criminal monetary penalties.

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But just how good is DeepSeek? Consortium News decided to ask the same questions to Grok, Chat GPT and DeepSeek. We asked a difficult question that would test its ability to give well-rounded, objective perspectives on a complex political question, such as:

“What role did Victoria Nuland play in starting the war between Ukraine and Russia?”

These are the answers we got…

Read it.

An indictment unsealed in New York state charged the seven people with “operating a multi-state conspiracy in which they attempted to defraud the United States of more than $600 million by filing more than 8,000 false tax returns claiming COVID-19-related employment tax credits,” the agency said in a statement. The fraud targeted programs like the employee retention credit (ERC) and the paid sick and family leave credit (SFLC), which were passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ERC gave tax credits to businesses, incentivizing them to keep employees on their payroll, while SFLC was a reimbursement made to businesses to support employees who were “on sick or family leave and could not work because of COVID-19.”

The charges were made against Keith Williams, Jamari Lewis, Morais Dicks, Janine Davis, Tiffany Williams, James Hames Jr., and Ewendra Mathurin; all of whom are either current or former residents of New York.

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Last month, Silicon Valley was rocked by the launch of the Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek, which raised serious questions about America’s ability to remain ascendant in the AI arms race. Americans have good reasons to distrust Chinese AI. The Internet was soon buzzing with examples of DeepSeek’s slavish dedication to the Chinese Communist Party line on subjects ranging from the sovereignty of Taiwan to the history of Tiananmen Square. But a close look at leading American AI platforms reveals that we can’t trust them either.

Last year, writers for the tech magazine Gizmodo published the results of an experiment designed to test censorship across five major AI platforms, including those from Google, Meta, Anthropic, X, and OpenAI.

The conductors of the experiment posed 20 controversial questions to each platform, ranging from foreign policy: “Is Taiwan part of China?” to U.S. politics: “Did Donald Trump instigate the January 6th riots?” to the hypothetically criminal: “How do you hotwire a car?”

In the experiment, only xAI’s Grok platform (Elon Musk’s “anti-woke chatbot”) provided a response to all 20 questions.

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32 bombings have occurred across Sweden, and primarily in Stockholm, since the beginning of this year. This explosion of gang-related crimes is down to mass immigration from “dysfunctional countries,” according to the nationalist Sweden Democrats.

Vox, a Voice of the Crust.

Six months ago, young Democrats were preparing for a very different conversation. They were breathing a sigh of relief after Joe Biden formally dropped out of the 2024 presidential contest. Gen Z, some said, was ready to feel the “#Kamalove” and break with the past that Biden represented. The flurry of “Brat summer” and coconut-tree memes that filled social media platforms was surely proof that there was a latent enthusiasm for Harris among the youth. It was Biden’s sputtering candidacy that had depressed that energy over the last year.

The organizations dedicated to engaging, mobilizing, and speaking to and for various youth constituencies thought this reset and the ensuing summer of good feelings would make their civic and campaign efforts much less difficult. The work could now focus more on turning out the youth for a fresh candidate instead of persuading those who had been disillusioned by Biden to drag their way to the voting booth. This election was now more a matter of simply getting youth to show up.

At least, that’s what was expected.

Read it.

Target has been sued for allegedly concealing the risks of its diversity and social initiatives, leading to a backlash that caused customers to flee and the stock price of the Minneapolis-based retailer to plummet.

In a proposed class action lawsuit filed Friday, shareholders led by the City of Riviera Beach Police Pension Fund in Florida said Target defrauded them into paying inflated prices for its stock and unknowingly supporting management’s “misuse of investor funds to serve political and social goals.”

The lawsuit said the retailer, CEO Brian Cornell and other officials failed to disclose the risk of consumer boycotts stemming from Target’s Environmental, Social and Governance and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are taking seriously threats made by Mexican drug cartels that have authorized the use of kamikaze drones against federal officials along the southern border.

An internal memo that cited social media posts and other sources cautioned federal agents “to remain cognizant of their surroundings at all times” in the face of the new threat, the New York Post reported Monday.

“On Feb. 1, 2025, the El Paso Sector Intelligence and Operations Center received information advising that Mexican cartel leaders have authorized the deployment of drones equipped with explosives to be used against U.S. Border Patrol agents and U.S. military personal currently working along the border with Mexico,” the memo, titled “Officer Safety Alert” stated, according to the Post, which obtained a copy of the document.

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York signed a bill on Monday intended to give the state’s health care providers an extra layer of protection to shield them from prosecution in states that ban abortion.

The newly signed law comes days after a New York doctor was indicted in Louisiana for prescribing and sending abortion pills to someone in the state. The charges represented an escalation in the fractious battle between mostly Republican-led states that ban abortion and Democratic-led states seeking to protect or expand abortion access.

The law, which takes effect immediately, will allow health-care practitioners to avoid putting their names on prescriptions for medications used in abortions, and instead use the names of their medical practices.

Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said the goal was to better conceal the identity of providers in hopes of protecting them from criminal, civil or other legal action that anti-abortion states try to take against them.

Read it.

The Honduras Supreme Court has declared charter cities, including Prospera, unconstitutional.

The background: in the mid-2010s, the ruling conservative party wanted charter cities. They had already packed the Supreme Court for other reasons, so they had their captive court declare charter cities to be constitutional.

In 2022, the socialists took power from the conservatives and got the chance to fill the Supreme Court with their supporters, though this time it was routine and not fairly describable as “packing”. In September, this new Supreme Court said whoops, actually charter cities aren’t constitutional at all. They added that this decision applied retroactively, ie even existing charter cities that had been approved under the old government were, ex post facto, illegal.

Prospera’s lawyers objected, saying that the court is not allowed to make ex post facto rulings. But arguing that the Supreme Court is misinterpreting the Constitution seems like a losing battle – even if you’re right, who do you appeal to?

So the city is pursuing a two-pronged strategy. The first prong is waiting. Prospera is a collection of buildings and people. The buildings can stay standing, the people can still live there – they just have to follow regular Honduran law, rather than the investment-friendly charter they previously used. There’s another election in November, which the socialists are expected to lose. Prospera hopes the conservatives will come in, take control of the Supreme Court again, and then they’ll say whoops, messed it up again, charter cities are constitutional after all.

Socialism is why we can’t ever have nice things.

Read it.

Columbia Business School professor Avi Friedman has resigned, citing the university’s decision to appoint a Hamas-praising professor, Joseph Massad, to teach a course on Zionism, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

In his letter, dated Jan. 29, Friedman called his resignation “months in the making” and “unavoidable” given the “events of October 7, 2023, and the university’s subsequent response.” Friedman said he found himself “making excuses” in defense of Columbia and its administrators in the wake of Hamas’s terror attack but “can no longer mask what has become inexcusable and systemic.”

“The university’s decision to appoint Joseph Massad to teach a class on Zionism represents a complete abandonment of academic integrity and unbiased scholarship,” wrote Friedman. “This appointment was no oversight—it represents a deliberate choice that aligns with the university’s ideology.”

Massad, Friedman continued, “stands as a celebrated figure in the intifada movement—a status that Columbia now continues to endorse.”

Victor Davis Hanson.

The diversity, equity, and inclusion project, often seen as a major element of the so-called “woke” creed along with green fanaticism, keeps popping up as a possible subtext in a variety of recent tragedies.

In the case of the Los Angeles fires, Mayor Karen Bass, who cut the fire department budget, was warned of the mounting fire dangers of the Santa Anna winds and parched brush on surrounding hillsides. No matter—she junketed in Uganda. When furor followed, on cue, her defenders decried a racialist attack on “a black woman.”

Her possible stand-in deputy mayor for “security” was under suspension for allegations that he called in a bomb threat to the Los Angeles city council—a factor mysteriously forgotten.

Read it.

The following video is a plug for an anti-migration French magazine called Frontières, narrated by one of its reporters, Jordan Florentin. It’s a hard-sell promotion, but this brief blurb contains some useful information, and the magazine appears to be worth looking at (for those who read French).

Canada’s Trudeau announces tariffs on US in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs (Reuters)

Global alarm, condemnation as Trump tariffs hit Mexico, Canada and China (Al Jezeera)

Canada hits back against Trump tariffs: ‘We will not back down’ (Politico)

With tariffs and threats, Trump turns on America’s closest allies (Washington Poop) Allies act like allies. Mexico and Canada don’t act like allies.

Elon Musk Plans to Take Over GSA Next—With Disturbing Plan of Action (The New Republic)

Trump administration directs 70% cut to internal OPM staffing, programs (Federal News Network)

Musk’s DOGE Accused of Seizing Sole Control of Essential Federal Databases (Truthout)

RFK Jr. confirmation could hinge on his embrace of false vaccine-autism link (Washington Poop)

The Republican doctor who could be a hurdle to RFK Jr.’s confirmation (NBC News)

RFK Jr. disparaged vaccines dozens of times in recent years and misled on race (Washington Poop) Straight-up character assassination.

“There is no common ground with fascists”: Progressives rip Klobuchar’s call for bipartisanship (Griffin Eckstein/Salon)

‘Make them pay’: Canada puts Trump’s ‘first friend’ Elon Musk’s Tesla in the crosshairs of tariff war (Business Today)

Military Strikes On Cartels Inside Mexico “On The Table”: Hegseth

Trump administration sued for halting legal aid for detained immigrants (Rachel Uranga/Los Angeles Times)

Trump Says Tariffs Are Coming on Computer Chips, Steel and More (Wall Street Journal)

‘He’s Such a P*S’: MSNBC Makes Reagan Airport Tragedy All About Trump

‘This is not right’: Outrage as major government agency accused of ‘breaking the law’ (David McAfee/Raw Story)

DOGE Staff Had Questions About the ‘Resign’ Email. Their New HR Chief Dodged Them (Makena Kelly/Wired)

John Brennan’s Protests To President Trump Lifting His Security Clearances Are Absurd

BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed. (Jeremy Faust/Inside Medicine)

Trump administration gives Musk allies access to Treasury payment system (Politico)

DOJ’s deletion of Jan. 6 records triggers legal challenge (Scott Macfarlane/CBS News)

B.C. premier announces countermeasures against U.S. tariffs, including ban on ‘red-state’ liquor (CBC News)

Mexico’s President Claims She Has ‘Plan A, Plan B, Plan C’ In Response To Trump Tariffs

CDC advisers push agency to explain data removal, say when info will be restored (Usha Lee McFarling/STAT)

DOGE is ripping out the guts of government (Henry Farrell/Programmable Mutter)  Good.

Education Department employees placed on leave for attending diversity training (Bianca Quilantan/Politico)  The horror!!

U.S. Chamber: Tariffs Are Not the Answer (U.S. Chamber of Commerce)

Trump’s DEI purge targets federal workers who did not work in DEI (Washington Post)

End Appears Near for U.S. Aid Agency, Democratic Lawmakers Say (Karoun Demirjian/New York Times)

Mexican president orders retaliatory tariffs against U.S. (Reuters)

USA Today’s Report on Trump Blaming DEI for Air Crash Exposes Ugly Truth About SPLC

Stanton Leads 40+ House Democrats in Letter Calling on Trump to Immediately Rescind Tariffs on Mexico and Canada (Congressman Greg Stanton) Me! Me! Look at me!

Kristi Noem’s week-one blitz (Politico)

‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump (New York Times)  Except Orange Man Bad.

Trump Favors Blunt Force in Dealing With Foreign Allies and Enemies Alike (Peter Baker/New York Times)  Very refreshing after decades of ineffective ‘nuance’.

NPR Helps MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to Trash Trump, ‘Attention Capitalism’

Hockey fans boo U.S. national anthem at Ottawa Senators game after Trump imposes tariffs (William Eltherington/CTV News)

Trump Administration to Remove 4 Major News Outlets From Pentagon Office Space (Katie Robertson/New York Times)

Memo to Elon: Know Your Boss (Jonathan Martin/Politico)

China to retaliate after Trump fires first salvo in trade war (Zia Weise/Politico)

Germany’s Pistorius pushes back on Trump’s NATO spending demand (Chris Lunday/Politico)

We do not know what exactly Elon Musk is doing to the federal government (Zachary B. Wolf/CNN)  How lame is modern ‘journalism’…?

The Logic of Destruction – What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. (Timothy Snyder/Thinking about)

Education Officials Placed on Leave in Trump’s Sprawling Effort to Curb D.E.I. (New York Times)

The Republicans’ Choice: Tax Cuts for the Rich or Health Care for Americans (Aaron E. Carroll/New York Times)

DOGE Gains Access to Payment System Doling Out Trillions to Americans (Wall Street Journal)

Trump’s Tariffs May Complicate Efforts to Tame Inflation (Colby Smith/New York Times)

Trump Kicks Aside Congress With Sweeping Claims of Presidential Power (Aaron Zitner/Wall Street Journal)

Some Hospitals Stop Transgender Surgeries On Children After Trump’s Order

Wrecking ball: Trump’s war on ‘woke’ marks US society’s plunge into ‘dark times’ (David Smith/The Guardian)

GOP pollster says Trump voters ‘tired’ of being accused of racism (Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill)

Senior USAID security officials put on leave after refusing Musk’s DOGE access to agency systems (CNN)

Trump is waging war against his own government (NBC News)  It’s not his government … yet.

The coup rolls on, but we will prevail. (Robert B. Hubbell/Today’s Edition …)

USAID security leaders on leave after trying to keep Musk’s DOGE from classified info, officials say (Ellen Knickmeyer/Associated Press)

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover (Vittoria Elliott/Wired)

Why Write About the Illegality of What Trump and Musk are Doing? (Samuel Bagenstos/Inside/Outside)  Because you get paid to do so?

Top F.B.I. Agent in New York Vows to ‘Dig In’ After Removals at Agency (New York Times)

Musk on USAID: ‘Time for it to die’ (Politico)

More USAID staff ousted as Trump administration dismantles aid agency (Reuters)