Quillette.

On 19 January 2025, following the conclusion of Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Hamas, three Israeli women were released after 471 days of captivity in Gaza. The hostages were transferred to Red Cross vehicles, where they were harassed and taunted by armed “militants” and a menacing crowd that pressed itself against the windows and chanted “Allahu Akbar!” Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did nothing to interfere with this intimidating display of indignity and public humiliation. Instead, uniformed ICRC officials complied when Hamas fighters handed them “certificates of completion to sign.” The three young women were then forced to hold these documents while their pictures were taken, as if they had come to Gaza for university courses.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

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The Navy’s surface fleet has spent the past 15 months taking down hundreds of missiles and drones fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels at U.S. and allied Navies’ ships, as well as commercial vessels in and around the Red Sea. While it has become the most intense sustained combat the sea service’s warships have seen since World War II, the Navy continues to prioritize preparing for a conflict in the Pacific. This begs the question: What lessons does the Red Sea fight offer the Navy when it comes to preparing for conflict with its top pacing threat, China?

TWZ reached out to a range of active-duty and retired military officers to answer this question. They said the Red Sea was a prime stress test for a fleet preparing for war with China, even as it drained finite munitions and further exposed shortfalls in the defense industrial base.

“A lot of these lessons and everything that we are taking from the Red Sea are an incredibly valuable warm-up for us in the high-end fight,” an active-duty surface warfare officer (SWO) who spoke with TWZ on the condition of anonymity said.

Mainly, it’s teaching them that they don’t know as much as they thought they did about what it will take to survive in, much less win, a modern war.

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Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon announced Tuesday that his country will ban UNRWA, a Palestinian refugee agency whose members participated in Hamas’s October 7 massacre, from operating in Israeli territory.

“UNRWA has miserably failed in its mandate. It has failed the people who are supposed to benefit from its services,” Danon said in a press conference. “We reaffirm our readiness to cooperate with other U.N. agencies that are not tainted by terror.”

The ban will take effect within 48 hours.

The United States backed Israel’s decision at Tuesday’s U.N. Security Council briefing, with U.S. chargé d’affaires Dorothy Shea saying that shuttering the agency is a step toward giving Gazans a “brighter future.”

And long past time, too. UNRWA is the chief group responsible for ‘Palestinians’ remaining in tent-city poverty rather than emigrating to a neighboring Arab state where they can stop marinating in their sense of grievance and make a better life for themselves and their children. (The Irish are fatally prone to the same psychological debilitation.)  UNRWA are the ‘community organizers’ of the jihadist terror movement, the Arab equivalent of Black Lives Matter.

Read it.

Atomic scientists on Tuesday moved their “Doomsday Clock” closer to midnight than ever before, citing Russian nuclear threats amid its invasion of Ukraine, tensions in other world hot spots, military applications of artificial intelligence and climate change as factors underlying the risks of global catastrophe

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock to 89 seconds before midnight – the theoretical point of annihilation. That is one second closer than it was set last year. The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 during the Cold War tensions that followed World War Two to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.

“The factors shaping this year’s decision – nuclear risk, climate change, the potential misuse of advances in biological science and a variety of other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence – were not new in 2024. But we have seen insufficient progress in addressing the key challenges, and in many cases this is leading to increasingly negative and worrisome effects,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.

“Setting the Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight is a warning to all world leaders,” Holz added.

If you aren’t familiar with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, then you are fortunate. They are a relic of the ‘peace at any price’ movement that originated after the Soviets got The Bomb and are in turn an outgrowth (one might almost say, an excrescence) of the proglodyte attitude that if we are facing an existential enemy, it’s our responsibility to avoid that situation even if it means surrendering to that existential enemy.

dNeedless to say, this ‘Doomsday Clock’ has absolutely no scientific validity whatsoever; it’s just academics attempting to leverage the respect that everyone has for science to push a pacifist political agenda. The threat of ‘annihilation’ is less now than it has ever been in my lifetime, and that is obvious to anybody with two brain cells to rub together.

DOJ fires officials who worked on Jack Smith’s Trump investigation (Washington Poop) What goes around comes around.

Trump’s DOJ firings are designed to deter future investigations, former officials say (NBC News) Former officials say! That provies it! (One hopes that it will deter future lawfare witch-hunts against people the regime doesn’t like.)

Key career officials at Justice Department reassigned to different positions, AP sources say (Associated Press)

Justice Department fires more than a dozen key officials on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team (Fox News) My schadenfreude floweth over.

White House pauses federal grant, loan other assistance programs (Reuters) The gravy train stoppeth.

Playbook: Trump’s massive power grab (Politico) How is this a ‘power grab’? He’s got the power. Every President does. He’s just choosing to use it, which no other President since Reagan has done.

All federal grants and loan disbursement paused by White House (CNN) The problem with an Imperial Presidency is that sometimes the other side gets to pick the Emperor, and they you’re in trouble.

White House pauses all federal grants, sparking confusion (Washington Poop) Confusion among the pigs at the trough, perhaps.

Federal agents in immigration operations told to be camera-ready as thousands arrested (CNN)

Latin American leaders are learning how to handle Trump. Colombia’s president showed how not to do it (CNN)

Trump got what he wanted with Colombia. But his tactics could come back to bite him. (Politico) On va voir.

Latin America will not put up with Trump’s new Monroe Doctrine (The Hill) They won’t have much to say about it.

JD Vance Offers the Worst Defense Yet of Trump’s January 6 Pardons (The New Republic)

Democrats move to condemn Trump pardons of violent Jan. 6 defendants (Politico) My, what a surprise.

Trump to reinstate service members discharged for not getting COVID-19 vaccine (Fox News)

Trump Puts Latin America and the Middle East on Notice  No more Mister Nice Guy.

The Deportation Nightmare Begins (Paul Krugman) Good idea–let’s deport Krugman. (But who would take him?)

Hedge Fund CIO: If Trump’s Agenda Succeeds, It Will Force Foreign Leaders To Adopt Pro-Growth Policies

Democratic lawmakers slam Trump for not making good on promise to ‘immediately’ lower food prices amid egg shortage (Elizabeth Chuck/NBC News)

Navajo Nation leaders raise alarm over reports of Indigenous people being questioned and detained during immigration sweeps (Alaa Elassar/CNN)

Trump expected to sign executive orders to reshape the military, including banning transgender troops (CNN)

Why Trump won’t be deporting “millions” of criminals (Russell Contreras/Axios)

Elon Musk Is Giving Europeans a Headache (Anne Applebaum/The Atlantic)

Democrats flip the script, eyeing debt limit to block Trump’s agenda (Jacob Bogage/Washington Post)

Trump Says He ‘Immediately Halted’ Hiring Of New IRS Agents

Trump to order end to DEI in military, reinstate troops who refused COVID vaccines, Hegseth says (Reuters)

Miami man claims wife was detained in one of several Florida ICE raids: “They snatched her” (CBS News)

LA Times owner Soon-Shiong finds his MAGA whisperer (Max Tani/Semafor)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Kash Patel’s Cringe Documentary Teases What Could Be in Store for the FBI (Nikki McCann Ramirez/Rolling Stone)

Trump’s Flaming Turd of an Argument for Ending Birthright Citizenship (Garrett Epps/Washington Monthly)  Still waiting for these guys to grow up.

‘X’ Sex-Marker On US Passports Scrapped, Outstanding Applications Suspended

Trump, Vance vault FEMA overhaul high on agenda (Andrew Freedman/Axios)

Maine Law Firm Tells Public Schools to Resist ICE Enforcement by Destroying Immigration Records (Steve Robinson/The Maine Wire)

TdA invitation-only party: DEA raid in Adams County ends in 49 arrests, including some Venezuelan gang members (Denver 7 Colorado News)

Trump’s Lumber Tariffs and Disaster Recovery (Wall Street Journal)

“Blood, Feces, & Terror”: The Trump Pardons Trigger Judicial Rage

ABC, CBS, NBC Give Trump’s Pardons 15x More Time than Biden’s  My, what a surprise.

Top US Firms Abandoned DEI Before Trump’s Return  Because it’s stupid.

Gov. Abbott Deploys Texas Military to Join U.S. Border Patrol

Trump Just Broke the Law. Blatantly. And He Might Get Away With It. (Michael Tomasky/New Republic)

Wall Street Journal labels RFK Jr. ‘dangerous to public health’ ahead of hearings (Dominick Mastrangelo/The Hill)

In Exacting Retribution, Trump Aims at the Future as Well as the Past (New York Times)

Gangster’s Paradise – Today we’re going to the Bad Place. I’m sorry in advance. (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)

Democrats Introduce Resolution Condemning Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons (HuffPost)

Charles Koch’s network launches $20m campaign backing Trump tax breaks (Ed Pilkington/The Guardian)

Oil Companies Embrace Trump, but Not ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ (Rebecca F. Elliott/New York Times)

Denmark and Other Nations Under Pressure Seek Lobbyists With Trump Ties (Kenneth P. Vogel/New York Times)

Trump Seeks to Assert More Control Over California’s Water (New York Times)

Daily ICE Arrests Under Trump Already Surpassing Biden-Era Numbers

Chief Corruption Prosecutor Resigns From Justice Dept. (New York Times)

Hegseth Refers to 2 Forts by Old Confederate Names

Behind the Colombia Blowup: Mapping Trump’s Rapid-Escalation Tactics (David E. Sanger/New York Times) “If they put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the morgue.”

Ex-inspector general on Trump firings: ‘We’re looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy’ (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)

Trump’s crackdown on trans troops: New order nixes preferred pronouns and restricts facility use (Fox News)

GO AWAY: Paul Krugman Struggling Post-NYT, Cries ‘Trump Wants You to Die’

Donald Trump Ignores Federal Laws As He Moves To Reshape Washington (Igor Bobic/HuffPost)

CDC ordered to stop working with WHO immediately, upending expectations of an extended withdrawal (Mike Stobbe/Associated Press)

Trump Rocks Latin America as Leaders Adjust to Deportations, Tariff Threats

Trans Inmate Challenges Trump’s 2-Sexes Executive Order

Colombia to Send Planes to Honduras to Pick Up Migrants

CNN, MSNBC Bemoan Deportation of People Whose ‘Only Crime’ Is Entering US Illegally  Still a crime.

Dems Rip Trump for Not ‘Immediately’ Lowering Food Prices  And how exactly is he supposed to do that? Immediately?

DOJ fires officials involved in Trump prosecutions by special counsel Jack Smith (Dan Mangan/CNBC)

Trump Justice Department fires officials who investigated Trump and launches ‘special project’ into January 6 cases (CNN)

Trump Administration Live Updates: Prosecutors Who Aided Special Counsel Investigations Are Fired (New York Times)

Trump administration fires DOJ officials who worked on criminal investigations of the president (NBC News)  There’s an echo in here.

BETRAYAL: Soros-Controlled Station Unmasks Vehicles of ‘Undercover’ ICE Agents in San Jose

US: Order Halting Foreign Aid Work Puts Lives at Risk (Human Rights Watch)

We All Lose in Trump’s War Against Trans Americans (Giselle Donnelly/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew goes full Woke at last.

Polls show views souring on Elon Musk as Trump’s wingman (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)

House Opens Investigation Into Four Sanctuary Cities

Trump rescinded a half-century of environmental rules. Here’s what that could mean. (Dylan Matthews/Vox)  More personal freedom, for a start.

‘It’s a Shake Up’: Sharpton Uses MSNBC Platform To Promote Corporate Shakedown of Companies that Ditch DEI

Trump Paralyzes Independent Rights Watchdog, Firing Members Selected by Democrats (Charlie Savage/New York Times)

Top USAID career staff placed on immediate leave (Politico)

Trump’s Victory Over Colombia Now Looks Less Clear Cut (Eric Martin/Bloomberg)

Scott Bessent Eclipses Buttigieg To Become Highest-Ranking Gay Official in Nation’s History  That Trump is SUCH a homophobe….

DOJ Official Resigns Over Move to Probe Sanctuary Cities

Google says it will change Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of America’ in Maps after government updates (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)

Memos to Federal Employees Were Written By People With Ties to Project 2025, Metadata Shows (Samantha Cole/404 Media)

Detained Migrant Children Get a Higher Standard of Care. That’s Now in Legal Limbo. (Jose Pagliery/NOTUS)

‘It will kill people’: Chaos, confusion after Trump halts US foreign aid (Politico)

Trump Fires 3 Democrats on Privacy Oversight Board

CNN Analyst: Trump Deporting Those Who ‘Don’t Look Like the Trump Family’  Works for me.

Coalition of Jewish groups say they’re leaving X over Musk’s behavior (Russell Contreras/Axios)

Trump’s two-by-four foreign policy gets early wins (Axios)

Google’s Donald Trump-Inspired Move Has Critics Navigating Outrage (Lee Moran/HuffPost)

Congressional Republicans’ coming war on poor people (Matthew Yglesias/Slow Boring)

MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart Frets Trump Would Take Citizenship from Blacks  Which, of course, can’t happen.

Mette Frederiksen’s diplomatic dash to save Greenland from Trump (Ali Walker/Politico)

The MAGA terror has begun (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

Make America 1897 Again – Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg and MAGA’s new Gilded Age. (New York Times)  Those were good times.

Trump’s fake crime wave (Rebecca Crosby/Popular Information)

Trump Threatens Tariffs Over Immigration, Drugs and Greenland (New York Times)

The Strategy Behind Trump’s Policy Blitz (Jonathan Lemire/The Atlantic)

Chaos On Border: Mexican Cartels Fire At US Border Patrol Agents

He Did It: Trump Calls for Ending the Federal Income Tax! (Matt Margolis/PJ Media)

The Birthright Citizenship Clause Too Many Forget, but Trump Is Right to Question

Trump Ousts Top Labor Board Leaders Who Backed Broader Worker Rights (Josh Eidelson/Bloomberg)

Donald Trump Says He’s Too ‘Busy’ To Play Golf, Then Guess What Happens (Ron Dicker/HuffPost)  Still waiting for these people to get out of high school.

By killing remote work, DOGE will only bleed taxpayers dry (The Hill)  Democrats have been doing that for decades.

Trump’s Dictatorial Theory of Presidential Power – What the Executive Orders, in the Aggregate, Tell Us (Adam Cox/Just Security)

National Faculty Union Urges Resistance To Trump Efforts: “Vigorously And Loudly Oppose”

Trump’s perceived enemies brace for retribution with plans, dark humor (Washington Post)  And juvenile insults.

Hegseth Praises Military Integration, But CNNer Says He Sounds Like An Old Segregationist!  If you hear the dog whistle, then you’re the dog.

USAID officials put on leave for allegedly not abiding by executive order (NPR)

Trump Administration Payment Freeze May Delay Money For Critical Preschool Program (Jonathan Cohn/HuffPost)  The one to convince boys that they’re actually girls?

Trump’s Most Lawless Action Yet (David Dayen/American Prospect)

“Monday Afternoon Massacre”: USAID Employees Placed On Leave For Allegedly Circumventing Trump’s Orders

Trump and the Dr Strangelove experiment (Edward Luce/Financial Times)

Democrats question legality of Trump’s freeze on all federal grants (Washington Post)  Of course they do.

Trump Is Ignoring the Law – and Congress Doesn’t Care (Ankush Khardori/Politico)

Democrats declare ‘constitutional crisis’ on funding freeze (Politico)

Trump administration targets thousands of programs in funding freeze (Jennifer Scholtes/Politico)

Unlawful Funding Freeze Sows Chaos (David Super/Balkinization)

Lawsuit alleges new Trump administration email system for federal employees raises privacy concerns (Tierney Sneed/CNN)

States Plan to Sue to Block Trump’s Federal Grants Freeze (New York Times)

Trump’s beef with the World Health Organization is personal (Carmen Paun/Politico)

Caroline Kennedy warns senators of ‘predator’ RFK Jr. in searing letter (Washington Post)

SNL Claims Trump’s ‘King Era’ Is Remaking America ‘Very Whitely’

Oklahoma Board of Education votes to approve proposal requiring parents to prove citizenship when enrolling students (Eric Levenson/CNN)

Non-profits, health groups sue over Trump’s freeze on grants, loans (Nate Raymond/Reuters)  Pigs getting kicked away from the trough.

Nevertheless, CNN Persists in Smearing Elon Musk With the Ridiculous Salute Hoax

Pittsburgh Mayor Gainey Vows to Oppose ICE  So arrest him for misprision of felony.

Republican congressman suggests some children receiving free school lunches should work at McDonald’s instead (Rebecca Shabad/NBC News)

Trump Hit With New Lawsuit for Funneling Sensitive Info to Elon Musk (Hafiz Rashid/New Republic)

What Just Happened: The “Invasion” Executive Order and Its Dangerous Implications (Ilya Somin/Just Security)

Sunny Hostin Scoffs at Woman Burned to Death By Illegal Immigrant

Huh? MSNBC Warns ‘Gestapo Raids’ Are Turning U.S. Into ‘East Germany’

Trump fires senior labor board official in ‘unprecedented and illegal’ move (Michael Sainato/The Guardian)

Six Service Members File Lawsuit Over Trump’s Trans Troop Ban

Europe’s leaders plot to stop Trump from taking Greenland (Politico)

BEASTMODE: WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Says All Illegal Immigrants Are Criminals (Because They’re Illegal Immigrants)

WATCH: MSNBC Pundit Compares ICE Deportations—Supported By Most Americans—To ‘Gestapo Raids’

Read it.

What did President Donald Trump learn during his four-year hiatus from the White House? For one thing, he seems to have learned how to listen. But also, to judge by the first week of his second term, Trump 2.0 seems more focused, mission-driven, and prepared to get things done at warp speed.

Read it.

Leta’s see … Democrats hate democracy, so calling them Democrats is false advertising.

They really love taxes, though, so I suggest that we call them Taxocrats.

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

Of course they are. So much for the Green Agenda,.

‘Quad-demic’ Hitting US With Flu, COVID-19, RSV, Norovirus Surging (Forbes)

7 Charged In America’s Biggest COVID Tax Credit Fraud Scheme

The Largest Tuberculosis Outbreak in U.S. History Is Happening Right Now in Kansas (Charles P. Pierce/Esquire)

“No Consistent Patterns”: Scientists Find No Evidence That Closing Schools Materially Reduced Transmission

Kansas’ tuberculosis outbreak is now the largest in the U.S. since the 1950s (Bek Shackelford-Nwanganga/KCUR)

Senator Ted Cruz is trying to block Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolchildren (Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica)

Scoop: Trump offering buyouts to all federal workers, source says (Axios)  Sure, I believe that.

D.C. federal judge temporarily blocks Trump plan to pause federal aid spending (Daniel Barnes/NBC News)

MSNBC’s Katie Phang Equates Trump on DEI to Woodrow Wilson on Segregation  Forgetting, perhaps, that Wilson was a … Democrat.

All undocumented immigrants are “criminals,” Trump administration says (Axios)  Which they are. A simple statement of fact.

Exhausted Media Begs Trump To Take A Day Off (Babylon Bee)

Read it.

Virginia Beach resident Jacob Hiles is a charter boat captain arrested for crimes related to the protests on J6. He ultimately plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. In exchange for Hiles’ guilty plea, the Department of Justice dropped the remaining three misdemeanor charges against him. He was given two years probation.

However, Hiles says there’s a lot more to the story that he could not tell the public until he was officially pardoned by Donald Trump last week.

The boat captain tells a local NBC affiliate, WAVY-TV 10 that he has video proof of capitol police acting to incite the riots. At least 9 minutes of his video is posted to WAVY-TV 10, though it appears to be heavily edited.

Read it.

Connecticut’s governor and attorney general, both Democrats, have publicly embraced illegal immigrants in their state amid President Donald Trump’s mission of mass deportations and securing of the nation’s borders.

“It is the policy of the state of Connecticut to respect, honor, and protect immigrants and immigrant families in full compliance with the law,” said Attorney General William Tong, CT Insider reported Friday. “We’re going to do what we can for immigrants and immigrant families because they’re important to us.”

Tong’s office issued a memo last week detailing protections against deportation in state law, including the Trust Act, passed in 2013 and updated in 2019, which prohibits state and local authorities from working with federal immigration enforcement in most situations. The memo, according to CT Insider, emphasized there is nothing in state law to prevent Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents to detain an illegal immigrant.

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In the latest indication that President Trump’s new administration is dead-serious about securing the border and sweeping up those who already waltzed across it, federal agents raided a Sunday morning party in Denver on and nabbed nearly 50 illegal aliens, including members of the notorious Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang.

The congregation of gang-related revelers made for an inviting target — rather than picking up two or three border-violators at a time, the party at an abandoned warehouse served up dozens of suspects on a single platter. Officials described the site as a “makeshift nightclub” and said the event was only open to invited guests. Around 3 am on a frigid Denver night, armed agents crashed the party, including members of the DEA, ATF, Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Read it.

Read it.

The Washington Post cited the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an anti-Semitic organization under U.S. sanctions for providing material support to terrorists, in a sympathetic piece highlighting the “Palestinian prisoners” freed as part of the Israel-Hamas hostage deal.

The Post described Samidoun as an “activist network supporting Palestinian prisoners” and linked to a blog post on the group’s website titled, “90 Palestinian prisoners liberated by the Resistance on the first day of the Flood of the Free.” The blog included photos from Gaza featuring Hamas flags and photos of the terror group’s deceased leader, Yahya Sinwar. It also noted that “90 Palestinian prisoners were liberated from the jails of the Zionist occupation regime in the first day of the Flood of the Free (Toufan al-Ahrar) prisoner exchange, achieved by the Palestinian Resistance as part of the first stage of the ceasefire agreement imposed by the occupier.”

The Washington Post cited the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an anti-Semitic organization under U.S. sanctions for providing material support to terrorists, in a sympathetic piece highlighting the “Palestinian prisoners” freed as part of the Israel-Hamas hostage deal.

The Post described Samidoun as an “activist network supporting Palestinian prisoners” and linked to a blog post on the group’s website titled, “90 Palestinian prisoners liberated by the Resistance on the first day of the Flood of the Free.” The blog included photos from Gaza featuring Hamas flags and photos of the terror group’s deceased leader, Yahya Sinwar. It also noted that “90 Palestinian prisoners were liberated from the jails of the Zionist occupation regime in the first day of the Flood of the Free (Toufan al-Ahrar) prisoner exchange, achieved by the Palestinian Resistance as part of the first stage of the ceasefire agreement imposed by the occupier.”

Read it.

Prosecutors in California have reached a plea deal to end a nearly decade-long court fight with an anti-abortion activist and journalist who together exposed Planned Parenthood for allegedly trafficking fetal body parts.

David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, and journalist Sandra Merritt, said Monday the criminal cases against them have ended, with the California Attorney General’s office agreeing to a plea deal that includes no prison time or fines, Live Action reported Monday.

Videos taken by Daleiden and Merritt exposed the scandal after they went undercover at various locations, including the National Abortion Federation’s 2014 and 2015 convention and trade shows. The videos, some of which were also taken from inside Planned Parenthood offices, showed executives discussing price negotiations and sales of human body parts.

In a properly ordered society, such people would be celebrated, not prosecuted. But we don’t have that.

After some videos were released, former Vice President Kamala Harris, then California’s Democrat attorney general, met with Planned Parenthood officials in 2016, Live Action reported, after which she ordered criminal investigations into Merritt and Daleiden, including a search of Daleiden’s home.

Harris’ successor as attorney general, Democrat Xavier Becerra, who would become Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden, charged them both with violating California’s recording law. The state had never criminally prosecuted undercover journalists for recordings made in the public interest, according to Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group that represented Merritt.

Merritt and Daleiden were each charged with 14 felony counts of unlawfully recording a conversation and one felony count of criminal conspiracy.

No good deed goes unpunished–by Democrats.

Read it.

As the tide of totalitarian wokeness recedes from the swamp, some of its ugliest and most toxic creatures will find refuge as employees or grantees of tax-exempt nonprofits. In our pluralist and democratic society, we must, to some degree, tolerate organizations with intolerant, inhuman, or wicked purposes, not least because we should have the intellectual humility not to judge every cause on our present knowledge. Who knows what valuable chemotherapy will come from the poison mushroom the Sierra Club is fighting to save?

True, we need, or at any rate must suffer, the plague of foundations—for fear of an unhealthy political monoculture in which our own miscues and misdeeds go unchallenged. That does not mean these foundations’ current powers and privileges should go unscrutinized. The Ford Foundation was set up in 1936 and now controls about $17 billion in assets, and long since passed out of the effective control of the Ford family. The Rockefeller Foundation controls a mere $6 billion but is so alienated from its roots in Standard Oil money that it is divesting from fossil fuels.

These foundations, and the endowed nonprofit sector more broadly, have been captured by a set of woke officers largely unsupervised by equally woke boards of trustees. They are globalist and frequently antihuman, but they benefit from tax privileges at the expense of the American people. The Ford Foundation has given hundreds of millions to Black Lives Matter and similar causes, and nothing to those whose homes and businesses were destroyed by BLM rioters. The Rockefeller Brothers Foundation pays anti-Semitic protestors on Ivy League campuses while claiming to be balanced because it funds the no less murderously intentioned astroturf organization, the Orwellian-monikered Jewish Voices for Peace.

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Even before the Los Angeles wildfires broke out, 6 in 10 Californians said the state was heading in the wrong direction. Add in the blazes that have since exposed Gavin Newsom’s incompetent governing, and it’s clear that Newsom’s flacks have their work cut out for them.

We can almost sympathize, then, with the Newsom administration’s pathetic response to a deeply sourced report from our Andrew Kerr and Susannah Luthi that detailed Newsom’s decision to disband a volunteer firefighting unit known as Team Blaze.

The move left the California National Guard without a complete firefighting force in L.A. for 10 days. We’re not the only outlet on the story. And yet Newsom’s press team responded not by disputing the facts but by calling Kerr—an award-winning reporter—a “pizzagate peddler.” They also called the firefighting unit “inadequately trained.”

“That’s weird,” our editors write, “because the Newsom administration tapped the group to help fight the 2021 Dixie Fire, the largest single-source wildfire in California state history, according to the transcript of a September 2021 National Guard press briefing, and the volunteer unit, which was funded by generous donors, met federal standards for combating wildfires set by a little-known federal agency known as the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.”

Watch it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Follow the money!

ZMan rings the Passing Bell.

In certain circles the triumph of Donald Trump is being viewed as either a sign that liberalism is dying out or the sign that it is dying and the forces opposed to it are finally on the ascendant. Still others, stuck in the thinking of the last century, see the victory of Trump as a sign that the forces of darkness are ready to turn out the lights on the liberal order they are committed to defend. In both cases, there is that old problem of language in that no one seems to have the same definition of liberalism.

This confusion is not helped by the fact that for about a century the people at the retail end of politics have used the word “liberal” as a label. In the United States, people we call the left also use the term liberal. In fact, they often use the term left to mean super-liberal or radically liberal with liberal simply meaning pro-government. Liberals for example, want Medicare for all, while the left wants single payer. To confuse things even more, the right wants government regulated healthcare.

Putting aside the retail use of the word liberal, there is confusion as to what is meant by liberalism in modern discourse. The civic nationalists continue to insist it means the moral and political systems based on things like individual rights, equality before the law and the consent of the governed. Critics tend to view it as the collection of bourgeois cultural and social fads that have ripped through the West. One imagines liberalism as John Locke and the other as John Rawls.

The Antiplanner.

Scientific American blames the Los Angeles fires on climate change. A Yale University publication agrees. An article in Quartz predicts that climate change is going to make housing “uninsurable.” Instead of insurance, a New York Times op-ed by a former California insurance commissioner argues that oil companies should be forced to pay for fire damages.

It’s a neat argument that appeals to homeowners eager to blame the loss of their houses on anything other than their own decisions to buy or build flammable homes with flammable landscaping in a fireplain. Yet there are valid reasons to believe that climate change is not the issue, and that even if climate change is occurring, it won’t make homes uninsurable. In fact, people who believe climate change is the problem should be all the more interested in making sure that homes and landscaping are fireproof.

A key weakness in most of the arguments for anthropogenic climate change is that they rely on data that goes back only about 55 years or so. The 1970s were one of the coolest decades in the 20th century, so any data that start from there will make it appear that temperatures are rising. The Yale article cites one study that uses data back to 1971 and another that goes back to just 2001.

Read it.

Standing in line at a Target, I glanced at the books for sale. Every work of fiction, with the exception of those two elderly stalwarts, James Patterson and Stephen King, came from a female author. While older male writers still have a large presence on bestseller lists and in the book world, newly published male fiction authors have become rarer than blue moons.

This phenomenon reported on in stories like NPR’s “Women Now Dominate the Book Business” and “Women Are Now Publishing More Books Than Men” (which describe it as a sign of progress) helps shed light on another phenomenon that the media has been rubbing its head over in articles like The Atlantic’s “How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time” and Psychology Today’s “Why Aren’t College Students Reading?”

There is a generational decline in reading across Gen Z, but it’s also a gender divide. While there’s always been a gender reading gap, by 2018, 44% of girls loved to read, while only 24% of boys did. One study found that adult women were reading 39% more than men did.

Read it.

As I reported earlier this month, a young culture-enriching “Frenchman” named Zaheer Hassan Mahmood has been on trial for attacking two people with a meat cleaver. The incident occurred in 2020 outside the former office of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, which the misguided youngster mistakenly thought was still the headquarters of the blasphemous publication. The two victims fortunately survived the attack.

Note: the incident had a Mohammed Coefficient of 100%.

Last Thursday Mr. Mahmood was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Paris court. Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this article from French daily Ouest-France:

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

The Guardian.

That’s because the Crust keep trying to make it like Britain’s NHS or the Canadian mandatory government-provided health care, both of which are abject failures.

UPDATE: Since 2018, Over 75,000 Canadians Died Waiting For Health Care

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The biggest scientific con of the century is finally being exposed. But will any politicians or government officials ever be held responsible for the carnage they unleashed on Americans?

In early 2020, when the Covid pandemic was starting to ravage America, federal bureaucrats and politicians rushed to suppress any suggestion that the pandemic originated from a Chinese government lab bankrolled by US government agencies. Key Biden administration officials effectively exonerated the Chinese government even though the Chinese completely stonewalled any outside investigation into the origin of the Covid virus, as the Wall Street Journal recently revealed in a front-page scoop.

The FBI’s top expert concluded that the virus leaked from the lab but he was derailed by the Biden administration, blocked from presenting his evidence at a key White House meeting in August 2021. Three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, part of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, concluded that Covid leaked from a lab but they were muzzled. The Inspector General is conducting an investigation to determine why those experts were silenced. The Department of Energy also concluded that Covid originated in a lab. In September 2023, a senior CIA analyst told a Congressional committee that six key CIA analysts had been bribed by the agency to abandon their conclusion that Covid originated in a lab leak.

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We’ve been documenting evidence which strongly suggests Hamas is far from being eradicated even after 475 days of war in the Gaza Strip. For example, on Saturday when four Israeli female captives were finally freed in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners, Hamas crowded a large city square with a well-armed battalion-sized force.

And now newly revealed US intelligence has indicated that Hamas, a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, has actually been able to embark on a successful recruiting drive since the Israeli offensive began in Gaza in the wake of October 7.

“The Palestinian militant group Hamas has recruited between 10,000 and 15,000 members since the start of its war with Israel, according to two congressional sources briefed on U.S. intelligence, suggesting the Iran-backed fighters could remain a persistent threat to Israel,” Reuters reports.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

UnHerd.

He came from Afghanistan through Bulgaria, where he had registered his claim for asylum. In 2022, he travelled through the EU’s open borders to Germany where he settled in the north-western Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg. Last Wednesday, the man, now 28 years old, walked into a park in the city centre where he knifed a two-year-old boy to death, injured two other children, and then killed the 41-year-old man who had tried to stop him. He was finally intercepted by the police at a nearby rail track after a short chase.

The shocking attack has reignited the debate about immigration only weeks before the German federal elections on February 23, and exposed the weakness of its political elites. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU opposition and front-runner in the race to be chancellor, will propose legislation this week to permanently end free movement across all of Germany’s borders. Radical enough in itself, such a change would signal the end of the political firewall, or Brandmauer, his party had erected against the far-Right Alternative for Germany. The firewall is a pledge among the mainstream parties that there would be no co-operation with the AfD under any circumstances — no coalition, no confidence and supply agreement, and no joint legislation at federal level.

James Lileks.

Weddings are not vacations. Right? For men especially. We’re remoras on the Girl Ship.

No man enjoys going to a wedding, and will avoid it when he can get away with doing so.

Women love weddings, and consider them the functional equivalent of going to a party.

Why is that? Think about what that says about the way our society is structured.

How Trump coerced Colombia to accept deportees by threatening US tariff war (Al Jezeera) They say that like it was a bad thing. These are not just random Hispanics that Trump is dumping in Columbia; these are Columbian nationals that were in the U.S. illegally.

After forcing Colombia to back down, White House claims America is respected again (CNN) Certainly feared again, which it wasn’t under Biden, and that’s good enough.

Trump’s Late-Night Purge Suddenly Becomes Bigger Scandal (The New Republic) Jennifer Rubin losing her shit apparently is enough to make a ‘scandal’ bigger.

Inspector general fired by Trump has a warning for Americans (CNN) The gravy train is over!

Trump defends ousting at least 15 independent inspectors general in late-night purge (Washington Poop) First it was twelve, then seventeen, now it’s back to fifteen. These people don’t seem able to count. Perhaps if they took their shoes off….

Trump firing government watchdogs is ‘clear violation of law’, says Adam Schiff (The Guardian)

‘People are scared’: Fear permeates every aspect of life in Chicago, under threat of mass immigration deportations (Chicago Tribune)  They could always leave.

Sen. Adam Schiff says Trump ‘broke the law’ by firing 18 inspectors general (Alexandra Marquez/NBC News)

Trump Fires ‘Virtually Worthless’ Inspectors General, Liz Warren Freaks Out Over ‘Purge’

Visa Processing Suspended at US Embassy in Bogota

Watch: Angry Migrant Mob Blocks Dallas Traffic In Protest Of ICE Raids

Colombian president orders increase of import tariffs on US goods after Trump order (Elvia Limon/The Hill)

UnHerd.

The buzzy Apple show Severance depicts a group of office drones trapped in a cubicle hell called Lumon Industries. It’s a workplace drama in which suspiciously little is revealed about the actual work done by protagonist Mark Scout (played by Adam Scott) and his colleagues. It appears to be a Sisyphean task of sorting random numbers — but we have no idea why, and neither do they. Do any of these people hunched over screens do anything of use?

Many of us have wondered the same thing about the tens of thousands of consultants and paper pushers embedded in America’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” complex. According to data compiled by the research firm Coresignal, nearly 43,000 people were employed in DEI-related roles last year, up from 35,000 in 2022. That means America was on track to have more DEI specialists than commercial airline pilots (56,000) in the coming years.

But we know what pilots do. What exactly do DEI apparatchiks do all day in Anno Domini 2025? We may soon find out.

Read it.

The latest spotlight on the crisis in American manufacturing may be on steel, but our nation has traded its manufacturing might for financial gains across all sectors – making the same fateful mistake that has befallen great civilizations throughout history. As a founder, CEO, and advocate for American industrial renewal, who’s building the world’s most advanced, efficient factories to counter China’s chokehold on manufacturing, I can tell you that America has just three years – not 10 – to rebuild our industrial base before falling critically behind.

Gothamist.

It’s a tough town. Where is Snake Pliskin when you really need him?

Trump says Jordan, Egypt should take more Palestinians from Gaza (Reuters) Starting in 1948. It is the propensity of UN relief agencies to keep ‘Palestinians’ in camps, and the refusal of neighboring Arab countries to shelter ‘Palestinians’, that has caused the perennial problems.

Trump says he wants Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza (BBC)

Trump proposes Jordan, Egypt take in Gazans so decimated Strip can be ‘cleaned out’ (Times of Israel)

Trump suggests Palestinians leave Gaza and ‘we just clean out’ territory (The Guardian)

Panic and defiance in Panama after Trump threatens to ‘take back’ canal (The Guardian)

Trump says China controls the Panama Canal — but here’s how it really works (NBC News)

What to know about Trump’s day-one promise to take back the Panama Canal (Atlantic Council) Get yer Narrative, right here.

Trump’s Panama Canal ambitions gain traction in GOP-led Senate (Washington Poop)

Musk tells Germans to get over ‘past guilt’ in speech to far-right AfD rally (Politico) For Politico, there is no right but the far-right.

Elon Musk speaks at Germany’s AfD campaign launch as thousands protest the far-right party (SNN) For CNN, there is no right but the far-right.

Thousands in Germany protest the rise of the far right ahead of next month’s election (Associated Press) I guess they’re against democracy. (For the AP, there is no right but the far-right.)

Elon Musk Addresses Germany’s Far-Right AfD Party In Surprise Rally Appearance—Amid ‘Nazi Salute’ Controversy (Forbes) Why not just come out and admit it: The Nazi Salute Hoax. And the witch-hunt continues. (For Forbes, there is no right but the far-right.)

Resistance isn’t futile, as Seattle reminds the nation once again (Seattle Times). Anti-Trump vaporings from the Left Coast.

For PBS, MLK Day and Trump’s Inauguration Are a Disturbing Coincidence

Trump admin tells agencies to start firing DEI staffers (Emily Peck/Axios)

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s embattled pick for defense secretary, wins Senate confirmation (Tom Bowman/NPR)  Embattled!

Trump Officials Pause Programs to Let In Immigrants, Including Ukrainians (Hamed Aleaziz/New York Times)

Trump Reinstates Longstanding Republican Anti-Abortion Policy (Sheryl Gay Stolberg/New York Times)

White House Office Of Gun Violence Prevention Webpage Goes Dark On Trump’s 2nd Day

Trump reverses Biden actions intended to protect abortion access (Washington Post)

Trump ousts at least 12 independent inspectors general in late-night purge (Washington Post)  Who haven’t been doing their jobs, captured by the Deep State.

Trump fires 17 independent inspectors general at federal agencies, source says (Reuters)  Which is it, twelve or seventeen?

Trump fires independent inspectors general in Friday night purge (Politico)

Trump fires 17 independent watchdogs at multiple agencies in late-night move (ABC News)

Trump Fires at Least 12 Inspectors General in Late-Night Purge (New York Times)  There’s an echo in here….

Ben & Jerry’s Accuses Unilever of Muzzling It Due to Trump No, it’s just because you’re far-left assholes who can’t keep politics out of business.

Republican Proposes Renaming Dulles Airport After Trump  This is getting silly.

I Prosecuted the Capitol Rioters. They Have Never Been More Dangerous. (Brendan Ballou/New York Times)

Trump Deploys Military Force to Launch Migrant Crackdown (Bloomberg)

RESISTANCE EMERGING: Alex Soros Vows to ‘Fight Back’ Against Trump, Even as Many Elites Begrudgingly Embrace New President

Trump’s Dismantling of DEI Is Deeper and Bigger Than You Even Know

Trump’s Crypto Venture Divides the Industry He Aims to Support (New York Times)

Scientists at NIH can’t purchase supplies for their studies after Trump administration pauses outside communications (CNN)

CBP One App Shutdown As Mass Deportations Of Illegal Aliens Begins

Deportation Fears Spread Among Immigrants With Provisional Legal Status (New York Times)

Playbook: Trump’s play for LA (Debra Kahn/Politico)

Plans for Trump’s border mission include combat vehicles, infantry (Dan Lamothe/Washington Post)  The coyotes and cartels are well-armed.

How Pete Hegseth’s nomination came back from “90% dead” (Axios)  Maybe the Narrative Media were wrong?

Let’s Get to the Marrow of What Trump Just Did (Ezra Klein/New York Times)  Come get yer Narrative, right here.

Trump’s Early Actions Mirror Project 2025, the Blueprint He Once Dismissed (Nik Popli/Time)

Trump’s canceling of 50 security clearances is unprecedented and partisan, experts say (Dan De Luce/NBC News)  Experts say! That proves it!

Through the blizzard of edicts, see Trump for what he is: an autocrat reaching for limitless power (Jonathan Freedland/The Guardian)

‘There’s Not Just Two Sexes’: Maher Laments Trump Didn’t Find ‘Middle Ground’  Yes, there are. Follow The Science.

The Tech Arsenal That Could Power Trump’s Immigration Crackdown (New York Times)

Trump’s calls with British leaders reportedly left staff crying from laughter (Andrew Feinberg/The Independent)

Bureaucrats Privately Fume About Trump Abolishing DEI, Go Into Full Conspiracy Mode

Trump Frees Up 2,000-Pound Bombs for Israel After Biden Halt (Stephanie Lai/Bloomberg)

Politico seems to be trying out a new stance on Trump

Republicans try to look ‘forward,’ but Trump forces them back to Jan. 6 (Paul Kane/Washington Post)  Not Trump, but the Narrative Media.

Trump Was Right to Yank Security Clearances of the 51 ‘Spies Who Lie’

Trump’s first-week strategy: ‘Flood the zone.’ Repeat. (Washington Post)  And it works.

5 ways Project 2025 appeared in Trump’s presidential directives (Clara Ence Morse/Washington Post)

Federal DEI Officials Try To Disguise To Keep Their Jobs, But There’s Nowhere To Hide

‘I am terrified’: Workers describe the dark mood inside federal agencies (Politico)

Florida man arrested for allegedly making ‘violent’ threats against President Trump (New York Post)

After his executive order on sex, is Trump legally the first female president? (Arwa Mahdawi/The Guardian)  How silly can they get?

They Were Waiting for Flights. Then Trump Closed a Door for Afghan Allies. (David Zucchino/New York Times)

Trump Doesn’t Get to Decide What the Constitution Means (Jamelle Bouie/New York Times)  Nor does the Narrative Media.

Rubio Tells Chinese Counterpart That US Interests Come First  Shocking!

Trump’s Moves to Upend Federal Bureaucracy Touch Off Fear and Confusion (New York Times)  Heh.

New York Times Loses It With Prominent Anti-Trump Video: ‘How Tyranny Begins’

On MSNBC, Elie Mystal Lambasts Whites for Voting for Trump: ‘Great Job, White Folks’  And Democrats were racist every age.

Young Weather Anchor CANNED for Mocking Elon Musk: Screw That Old Nazi!

Trump’s executive actions have more muscle this time around, but many are just posturing (Politico)

‘People Will Be Shocked’: Trump Tests the Boundaries of the Presidency (Peter Baker/New York Times)

White House tells Republicans to get behind Trump’s nominees – or face political ‘consequences’ (NBC News)

Massachusetts Governor Says She Won’t Obstruct ICE Efforts To Deport Criminals, But Cops Won’t Help

Trump Administration Puts Immediate Pause On FDA, CDC, & HHS Reports And Posts

Cracking Down on Illegal Immigration Would Raise Wages for Lower-Income Americans

Trump: Maybe We’ll Move Biden’s IRS Hires to Border

Trump wiped January 6 convicts’ records clean. Now his DOJ is wiping evidence of rioters’ crimes from the internet (CNN)

The immunity decision does not mean that Trump can do anything now (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

As the Media Mock Trump, Top Biden Official Backs POTUS on Big Bank Bias

Scoop: How Trump’s “black box” limits outside influences (Marc Caputo/Axios)

Trump’s federal DEI purge puts hundreds on leave, nixes $420M in contracts (Fox News)

Border Czar Homan: Deportation Flights Heading Out Daily

Trump Officials Waste No Time in Justice Department’s Rightward Shift (Wall Street Journal)

Democrats Threaten “Righteous Litigation” Over Trump’s Shutdown Of DEI Offices  Bring it on.

Trump Hits Colombia With Tariffs in Feud Over Military Deportation Flights (New York Times)

SNL comedian uses five words to explain why ‘Elon Musk is not a Nazi’ (Greg Evans/The Independent)

Trump’s gutting of federal DEI programs will hit rural poor communities (Rachel Ramirez/CNN) Not rural poor white communities.

Read it.

The decision to bring back Mt. McKinley’s name touched off outrage from those who insist that Mt. Denali was the original ‘indigenous’ name for Mt. McKinley.

But which “indigenous” name?

The National Park Service notes that, “no fewer than nine Native groups… used unique names for the mountain. There are five Athabascan languages surrounding the park, each with its own oral place name.”

And Mt. Denali is not even the right tribal name.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who co-sponsored the bill to change Mt. McKinley’s name to Mt. Denali, attacked President Trump’s decision to rename the mountain because Mt. McKinley “must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.”

But the Athabascans don’t call themselves that, they use the name ‘Dena’. Athabasca is actually a lake in Canada. The name was wrongly applied by Albert Gallatin, President Jefferson’s brilliant but erratic French immigrant Treasury Secretary.

But ‘Dena’, like ‘Denali, has no great significance. Dena means ‘people’ and Denali means ‘tall one’. The Koyukon were giving pragmatic names to the world around them. It’s Westerners who romanticize them as exotic and spiritual antidotes to industrialization and development.

No one ‘stewards’ a 20,000 foot mountain and “time immemorial”, a phrase often used in land acknowledgements, would only date back to the tribal crossings across the Bering Strait. The history of this group of the Athabaskans traces back around a thousand years, “time immemorial” turns out to be around less than 500 years before the European discovery of America.

The fact that the Wicked Witch of the North is pig-ignorant is no surprise.

Read it.

Sure, open up the border! Let ’em all in! What could possibly go wrong?

Read it.

Two former Politico reporters revealed how “cowardly editors” at their former publication carried water for Joe Biden in the 2020 election by actively working to suppress stories that were unflattering to Biden.

My,  what a surprise.

UPDATE: New Documents: Hunter Biden’s Name, Signature Tied To $60 Million Fraud Investigation

Read it.

Migrants from Guatemala, Venezuela, and other countries attempting to cross the border into the United States have found themselves stuck in Mexico after the Trump administration closed the asylum system at the border, The Washington Post reported.

On Monday Trump scrapped the program known as CBP One that allowed asylum seekers to schedule appointments on their phones before arriving at the border.

Also this week, the Trump administration began shutting down the processing offices in Latin America that the Biden administration had created to give migrants legal immigration options to dissuade them from crossing the U.S. southern border illegally, CBS News reported.

They could always go back where they came from — or just stay there in the first place — and try to make things better there,  rather than leech off of our successful efforts to create a great country.

Read it.

After years of “unprecedented man-made global boiling” propaganda pushed by woke scientists, far-left corporate media outlets, grifting ‘green’ billionaires, and climate change warrior non-profits, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg have a lot of explaining to do after this January across the Lower 48 could shape up to be one of the coldest in years if not decades.

“With an average temperature running 3.6 degrees below normal, this is currently the coldest January nationally (lower 48) since 1994,” meteorologist Kevin Williams and founder of private weather forecasting firm Weather-Track, wrote on X.

Still rooting for a new ice age….

Read it.

Critical race theory, social and emotional learning, DEI, social justice, and other forms of wokeness are nothing new to the American education system.

Some buy into the divisive concepts, but most parents simply want their children to be proficient in math, reading, science, and other subjects when they graduate high school.

The past four years saw the public square become overtly obsessed with sexual and gender rhetoric. News cycles have been dominated with divisive education issues, such as attempted changes to Title IX, transgender rights, and the use of locker rooms and restrooms.

Read it.

As long as Islam exists, ‘jihadis’ will be a problem. It’s been that way for 1400 years, and there is no indication that it will change. Whether our Ruling Class will continue prating how ‘peaceful’ Muslims are while ignoring the mass murder, or whether they will wake up and decide to do something about it, is an exercise left for the reader. (Exercise that doesn’t raise a sweat–my favorite kind.)

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

UPDATE: As Four Israeli Hostages Released, Hamas Displays It Has Entire Well-Armed Battalion

Read it.

‘You basically have auto workers across the nation subsidizing these trust fund graduate students’

Unions are run by activists, whose lives revolve around politics. This is not a surprise.

Read it.

My, what a surprise.

Moral: Quit electing Democrats and expecting competence.

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

The NYT, of course, thinks this is a Bad Idea.

Since 1793, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request by President George Washington to offer legal guidance on foreign relations, the court’s justices have steered away from weighing in outside the context of a formal lawsuit.

That has not deterred lawmakers in Idaho, however. This week, a State House committee overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to undo Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that gave same-sex couples the right to marry, and to hand the power to regulate marriage back to the states.

The resolution would still need approval by the full House and the Idaho Senate before any request could be sent to the Supreme Court. Both chambers in Idaho are controlled by Republicans.

So you know that they’re all, you know, racists, sexists, homophobes, and probably white supremacists.

Read it.

delman has once more released its annual Trust Barometer, capturing a snapshot of how people around the world feel about today’s leaders.

The findings are hardly positive, with survey data revealing that an increasing proportion of respondents across the 28 polled countries worry that government and business leaders as well as journalists and reporters are purposely misleading people by saying things they know are false or are gross exaggerations.

Read it.

“Roy’s theory goes something like this: In the age of the internet, and the global-liberal marketplace of goods, ideas, and cultural touchstones it ushered in, local cultures are subsumed into a global culture with its own lingo, assumptions, and norms. That culture may be dominated by American exports—more precisely the contributions of American tastemakers—but we are not hegemons. Young people who grow up on the Web inherit an admixture of cultural inputs with no authority capable or qualified to tell them how to make sense of it all. Culture—implicit understandings of what is and what ought to be, shared by members of a community—has globalized, commingled, and diluted to the point of disappearance. All culture, in the traditional sense, is gone.

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Sweden’s integration minister has decided that the most effective way to deal with the alarming incidence of rape by migrants is to introduce mandatory courses for “New Swedes” that teach them how bad rape is, and that it runs counter to the values of their adopted country.