Watch it.

As is common in Real Life, most of what you ‘know’ ain’t so.

I second that emotion.

Read it.

Reports released by two House committees in December shine a harsh light on the deceptions and oppressive tactics utilized by numerous federal agencies, the Intelligence Community, and leaders of the Democratic Party. During the last year of the first Trump Administration, agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), State Department, and Justice Department (DOJ) initiated improper contacts with media in an effort to censor conservative views. These agencies also took steps to interfere in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden.

The Biden-Harris Administration supercharged the weaponization of the federal government against the American people. With the active participation of the media, the administration followed a whole-of-government effort to collude with, and coerce, the media to suppress and censor conservatives and others who opposed progressive goals. It threatened parents with terrorist “threat tagging” and visits from the FBI for speaking their minds, stretched statutory authority beyond recognition to prosecute Donald Trump and his supporters, harassed and penalized whistleblowers, invaded bank privacy, sent heavily armed federal agents into private homes, and brought an unprecedented barrage of litigation against states to force them into compliance with the administration’s unconstitutional goals.

Read it.

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.”

Read it.

The Biden White House and Senate Democrats have touted their funding for an anti-terrorism initiative they say “has been critical to the security of Jewish institutions.” But the program has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months to mosques whose clerics have preached anti-Semitic hate, cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, and been accused of raising money for terrorist groups.

The Department of Homeland Security has awarded $150,000 in grants since November to Masjid Jamaat al Mumineen, the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent, and the Islamic Center of Bothell as part of its “Nonprofit Security Grant Program,” according to federal records. The program gives taxpayer funds to nonprofits and religious groups deemed “at high risk of terrorist attack” to help enhance security.

President Joe Biden touted the program last year as an example of the administration’s “aggressive” actions to counter anti-Semitism and “protect Jewish institutions.”

We are well rid of this doofus.

The Foundry.

While California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blame this week’s devastating wildfires on climate change or claim that they did all they could to prepare, the evidence tells a different story. Their focus on a woke, climate-driven agenda has come at the expense of practical, effective wildfire prevention measures. The result? Lives lost, homes destroyed, and a state left unprepared.

Read it.

At the heart of this effort is the tokamak reactor design, which uses magnetic fields to confine plasma and maintain the necessary conditions for fusion. A critical challenge has been managing the plasma edge instabilities, but recent breakthroughs in understanding how energetic particles interact with these instabilities suggest promising methods for improving reactor performance.

Yeah, well, call me when it starts pumping electricity into the grid.

Actually, don’t call me until I can put one in my back yard.

Gamers are accusing Elon Musk of cheating at popular video games by allegedly turning to loopholes and hiring better users to play for him (Fortune) Seriously?

What do Greenlanders make of Donald Trump’s advances for their home? (The Guardian)

Trump, the ‘America First’ candidate, has a new preoccupation: Imperialism (Associated Press)

Donald Trump’s 21st-Century Colonialism (The Nation)

Donald Trump Jr.’s visit was ‘staged,’ says Greenland lawmaker (Politico)

Trump’s talk of retaking Panama Canal becomes a GOP bill (Axios)

As Panama remembers bloody past, a message for Trump: the canal is ours (Reuters)

Why Donald Trump is threatening to take control of the Panama Canal (The Conversation Indonesia)

Inside Trump’s Search for a Health Threat to Justify His Immigration Crackdown (New York Times)

CNN Uses Carter Funeral to Bash Trump on FBI, CBS Ties Carter to Wildfires

Elon Musk doubles down on endorsement of far-right German party in conversation on X (USA Today)  For USA Today, there is no right but the far-right.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump spread disinformation as wildfires rage in the LA area (Gaby Del Valle/The Verge)

Trump call to Alito sparks demands for justice to recuse from sentencing case (Justin Jouvenal/Washington Post)

Donald Trump Jr.’s Ridiculous Greenland Trip Just Took a Dark Turn (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)

Ashli Babbitt’s mother says Trump called her and told Jan. 6 rioters to ‘keep their chins up’ (Ryan J. Reilly/NBC News)

Elizabeth May proposes California, Oregon, Washington join Canada after Trump’s 51st state threat (Tristin Hopper/National Post)  I’d vote for it.

How Trump Plans To Take On Censors – And They Plan To Take On Trump

Trump Blames California’s Governor, and His Water Policy, for Wildfires (Michael D. Shear/New York Times)

Americans Are More Optimistic About the Economy After Trump’s Reelection, Survey Shows

North Carolina Republicans restart the steal (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)

With Hearings Imminent, Partisan Fight Escalates Over Trump Cabinet (New York Times)

NATO Won’t Back Trump’s Defense Spending Target

“DEI is deadly”: Fox News spin on California wildfires exposes MAGA’s total incoherence (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)

Activists Gear Up to Counter Trump’s Inauguration (Tim Dickinson/Rolling Stone)

Meyers, Lydic Push Climate Alarmism, Attack Trump Amid Wildfires

Donald Trump’s Last Hurrah

How Trump Responded to the New York Sentencing

UK Government Investigating Elon Musk’s Tweets About Muslim Pedophile Gangs

Live updates: Judge sentences Donald Trump in hush money case but declines to impose any punishment (Associated Press) They don’t want him ‘punished’, they just need to be able to call him a Convicted Felon forevermore.

Trump Sentenced to ‘Unconditional Discharge,’ Will Enter Office as Felon (Rolling Stone)  Q.E.D.

Another Fox News alum invited to join the new Trump administration (Myah Ward/Politico)

Speaker: Trump’s N.Y. Case ‘Never About the Facts’

Donald Trump Gets Off Without Punishment in His New York Criminal Case (Jose Pagliery/NOTUS)

Will Trump Just Let California Burn? (Ed Kilgore/New York Magazine)

Biden Issues Sweeping Deportation Protections Before Trump Takes Office (New York Times)

Biden extends time in US for 800,000 Venezuelans, Salvadorans as Trump readies immigration crackdown (Gisela Salomon/Associated Press)

Trump can still vote after sentencing, but can’t own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sample (Associated Press)

We’ve Never Been Here Before: The Zero-Accountability Presidency (Michael Tomasky/New Republic)

Read it.

Who doesn’t know that? Go to Amazon and search for Dr. David Buss.

Read it.

Time to leave.

UPDATE: Nation Gets Preview Of Gavin Newsom Presidency (Babylon Bee)

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

The great global baby bust is telling us something. One is that what we thought we understood about demographics and population is wrong. When what was predicted did not happen, instead you got the opposite, it is time to rethink everything. The other is that there is a combination of forces that have been unleashed leading to what is looking like a great pruning of the human population.

That is the show this week. Everyone has their favorite reason for the population collapse, but those answers are probably wrong for the simple reason they assume a one-to-one relationship. In reality, complex things like human reproduction have highly complex causal relationships. That means the population collapse is most certainly do to a combination of things working in concert.

Read it.

“February was the wettest month in downtown Los Angeles since 1998. With over 12 inches of rain drenching the city, it was the fourth-wettest February — and the seventh-wettest month overall — in the city’s nearly 150-year recorded history,” said Judson Jones’ report on Los Angeles’ weather on March 2, 2024, in The New York Times. Just under a year later, Los Angeles is on fire and the fire hydrants have run dry from a lack of water.

Read it.

Quantum mechanics has long classified particles into just two distinct types: fermions and bosons.

Now physicists from Rice University in the US have found a third type might be possible after all, at least mathematically speaking. Known as a paraparticles, their behavior could imply the existence of elementary particles nobody has ever considered.

“We determined that new types of particles we never knew of before are possible,” says Kaden Hazzard, who with co-author Zhiyuan Wang formulated a theory to demonstrate how objects that weren’t fermions or bosons could exist in physical reality without breaking any known laws.

Fermions encompass fundamental particles that ‘build’ atoms, such as electrons and quarks. In more precise terms, they have a property that prevents them from occupying identical quantum states, effectively ensuring no two matching fermions can fill the same space.

Gothamist.

A rash of burglaries targeting New York City bodegas has led the United Bodegas of America to offer a $5,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the perpetrators.

The crime spree, which the NYPD attributes to a group that bodega owners have dubbed “The Midnight Smashers,” has struck 49 locations across more than two dozen precincts in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens between Sept. 19 and Dec. 26, according to authorities.

Police said the thieves have been using stolen vehicles to break into businesses and remove ATMs, among other property. One such incident, captured on video on Dec. 23, involved the group forcibly entering a commercial property at 75-10 31 Ave. in Queens and fleeing with an ATM in an unknown direction. There have been no injuries reported in the incidents.

The UBA, representing the city’s bodega owners, held a press conference on Thursday to demand stronger action.

Read it.

Every day, the UN, international organizations and the media claim that everyone in Gaza is starving to death because they have no food and every day Israel’s COGAT aid coordination agency lists exactly how many trucks filled with humanitarian aid have actually entered Gaza.

On Jan 2, for example, 189 trucks filled with aid entered Gaza. Only 147 trucks however were collected on the Gazan side with another 800 trucks worth of aid waiting to be collected. Food has been piling up and rotting on the Gaza side because it’s not being delivered by the UN.

Politicians, activists and the media have spent over a year perpetuating a myth that Israel is blocking food deliveries into Gaza when there is actually more aid coming in than the aid groups complaining about Israel ‘blocking aid’ can handle or be bothered to deliver to Gazans.

While the aid sits there and rots, the UN and ‘humanitarian’ agencies claim that it’s too dangerous for them to deliver the food. Israel has offered to provide security for aid deliveries, but those offers have been rejected since the UN is coordinating with Hamas.

Read it.

Washington’s Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) is mandating staff attend a four-hour, in-person training featuring the documentary *Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America,* which argues the U.S. was founded on white supremacy.

Some employees have criticized the requirement, claiming it amounts to indoctrination, according to 770 KTTH.

The training, held on January 9, includes a screening of the film followed by a Q&A and dialogue with its producer, Jeffery Robinson, a lawyer and founder of the left-leaning “Who We Are Project.” The AOC describes the nonprofit as promoting awareness of historical anti-Black racism and white supremacy in the U.S. The event costs $5,000.

The KTTH report said that the AOC’s decision aligns with a June 2020 letter from the Democrat-led Washington State Supreme Court, issued during the Black Lives Matter movement.

Read it.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), has reintroduced legislation to make daylight saving time permanent year-round. The proposal is opposed by a coalition of sleep medicine organizations, which advocate for “locking the clock” but in standard time mode.

Read it.

drone’s collision with a water-dropping aircraft fighting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles caused the temporary grounding of all aircraft working that fire and took out one of just the two amphibous planes capable of repeatedly scooping 1,600 gallons of water from the ocean and delivering it onto nearby flames, Cal Fire told The War Zone.

A Canadair CL-415 Super Scooper turboprop plane smashed into a drone around 10 a.m. local time, Cal Fire spokesman Chris Thomas told The War Zone.

The world would be a better place if we didn’t have stupid people. (But, hey, it’s California….)

Greenland important for the US, says Trump’s pick for national security adviser (Reuters)

A reality check for Trump, would-be-ruler of Greenland (Politico)

An American purchase of Greenland could be the deal of the century (The Economist)

Some Democrats open to Trump’s expansionist talk (Axios)

I’m a Canadian listening to Trump. Let’s talk about ‘the 51st state’ (Forxtune)

Canadian leaders say Trump’s talk about Canada becoming the 51st state isn’t funny anymore (Associated Press) Hey could sure use our Bill of Rights.

Here’s how annexing Canada would change American politics (Politico)

Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty ‘unacceptable’ says N.L. premier (Canadian Broadcast Company)

Panama Canal CEO Says Meeting Trump’s Demands ‘Will Lead to Chaos’ (Costas Paris/Wall Street Journal)

LGBT Liberals Discover Second Amendment Over Fears Of Being Thrown In ‘Camps’ By Trump

Mexico President Sheinbaum has dig at President-elect Trump over ‘Gulf of America’ (Associated Press)

Man With Machete Arrested in DC Before Trump Visit

The writing is on the wall for a big immigration bill (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)

Pre-election leaks from the Justice Department have also aided Trump (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

Senate awaits Trump as Republicans plan early moves on taxes and border (Jacob Bogage/Washington Post)

Threatening Canada – Trump posted this last night on Truth Social. – A lot of people went off on him. (Joyce Vance/Civil Discourse …)

Panama Canal Chief Warns Trump’s Demands May Trigger Chaos

Selective Force, Strategic Restraint: Unpacking Trump’s Jacksonian Foreign Policy

House Republican bill would pave way for Trump to acquire Panama Canal for US (Emily Brooks/The Hill)

Hawaii Gov: RFK Jr.’s Anti-Vax Misinformation Left Dozens Of Kids Dead In Samoa (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)

‘America First’? Donald Trump Sets Eyes On Acquiring Canada, Greenland (Igor Bobic/HuffPost)

Trump’s Threat to Take Over Greenland Bewilders the Island’s Population (New York Times)

Watchdog Complaint: RFK Jr. May Have Committed Felonies By Voting in New York After Courts Ruled He Did Not Reside There (Accountable US)

Trump Inauguration, Awash in Cash, Runs Out of Perks for Big Donors (New York Times)

Ozempic, Legos and Hearing Aids: What Trump’s Greenland Plan Could Hit (New York Times)

Blinken Responds To Trump, Says US Won’t Take Over Greenland

DISGUSTING: Joy Reid, Adam Schiff Politicize L.A. Fires to Bash Trump

Danish officials fear Trump is much more serious about acquiring Greenland than in first term (CNN)

Germany’s Scholz Warns Against Greenland Takeover

Taking Trump’s imperialist trolling seriously (for a moment) (Public Notice)

As L.A. burns, Trump blames Newsom – and California governor pushes back (Washington Post)

Trump Is Poised to Turn the DOJ Into His Personal Law Firm (Bob Bauer/The Atlantic)

Billy Long, Trump’s pick to lead IRS, pushed a tax credit that raises red flags, Sen. Warren says (Aimee Picchi/CBS News)

Musk examines how to oust Starmer as UK prime minister before next election (Financial Times)

CNN Panel Fixates on Trump Social Media Post, Ignores Causes of LA Wildfires

Musk to host German far-right leader on X, stirs angst about election meddling (Reuters)

Newsom Prepares To Battle Trump 2.0 With $25M Infusion

Trump and Alito, two men who disdain ethical constraints, chatted on Tuesday (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

Trump is laying out his legal takeover this week – before he even takes office (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

Dems bash Meta for scrapping fact-checks: ‘Genuflecting to Donald Trump’ (Mike Lillis/The Hill)

Google Caught Rigging Trump Nominee Searches by Massive Margins – Again

Google donates $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee (Drew Harwell/Washington Post)

The Final Act – At just under two weeks to go before the inauguration, Trump … (Joyce Vance/Civil Discourse …)

“Threat to Democracy”: Hysterical MEPs Want To Clamp Down on Musk

Trump’s Greenland Stunt Leaves Brussels Speechless

NY immigration and housing groups, girding for Trump, offer their own policy protections

Trump’s Ugly, Hateful Eruptions Over CA Wildfires Hint at Darker Story (New Republic)

Can Trump buy Greenland? Technically, yes. Here are his options. (Jack Detsch/Politico)

More than 15,000 doctors sign letter urging Senate to reject RFK Jr. as health secretary (Brandy Zadrozny/NBC News)  Which is what percentage of all the medical doctors in the U.S.? Pretty small, I’m thinking.

Fact check: As wildfires rage, Trump lashes out with false claims about FEMA and California water policy (Daniel Dale/CNN)  Whenever you see someone in the Narrative Media use the term ‘fact check’, substitute ‘opinion alert’.

Elon Musk is the new emperor of misinformation (Kevin Drum)  Did Google and Facebook and YouTube go away and I didn’t get the memo?

Pressure on China and pure ‘trolling’: Why Trump is pushing an expansionist agenda (NBC News)

Democrats Are About to Surrender to Trump in a Hugely Damaging Way (Greg Sargent/New Republic)

Professor Walks Back Calling It “Karma” After Trump-Supporting Actor Loses Home In LA Wildfires

Sen. Warren: Trump US Expansion Talks a Distraction

Climate Hustle: EPA Advisor Admits Sending Billions To Climate Groups Before Trump Takes Office

Reality bites Trump (Zachary Basu/Axios)

U.S. National Science Foundation.

In less time than it will take you to read this article, an artificial intelligence-driven system was able to autonomously learn about certain Nobel Prize-winning chemical reactions and design a successful laboratory procedure to make them. The AI did all that in just a few minutes — and nailed it on the first try.

“This is the first time that a non-organic intelligence planned, designed and executed this complex reaction that was invented by humans,” says Carnegie Mellon University chemist and chemical engineer Gabe Gomes, who led the research team that assembled and tested the AI-based system. They dubbed their creation “Coscientist.”

The most complex reactions Coscientist pulled off are known in organic chemistry as palladium-catalyzed cross couplings, which earned its human inventors the 2010 Nobel Prize for chemistry in recognition of the outsize role those reactions came to play in the pharmaceutical development process and other industries that use finicky, carbon-based molecules.

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

Read it.

Five people have died, more than 2,000 building structures have been destroyed, and 29,000 acres have been scorched as wildfires rage out of control across Los Angeles County. With over 130,000 residents under evacuation orders, concerns are growing about the very real possibility of arsonists intentionally starting some of the fires.

According to an LA County fire chief earlier this week, the Palisades Fire began “as a very small fire in a backyard,” then spread up a ridge, was carried by high winds, and created an ember cast that ignited fires throughout the Palisades.

Apparently the homeless of L.A. figure that if they’re homeless everybody else ought to be homeless as well, certainly the rich people who live downwind.

Time to leave….

Read it.

NBC senior reporter on all things internet, Brandy Zadrozny, joined MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Thursday’s edition of The 11th Hour to discuss Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to revise the company’s rules of what constitutes acceptable speech. Zadrozny was not there for subtlety or nuance as she suggested the door is now open for a Myanmar-style genocide.

Ruhle began by declaring, “The internet is your world. You don’t just cover this, you have faced extraordinary abuse online. Tell us what this is going to look like now that we’re not going to have guardrails.”

Read it.

A federal district court in Kentucky issued a decision Thursday blocking the Biden administration’s attempt to change the meaning of “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identity.”

The Department of Education under the Biden-Harris administration issued new rules reinterpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education.

Read it.

This is how Germany got Hitler.

Read it.

Just weeks before five wildfires engulfed the City of Angels, Los Angeles fire chief Kristin Crowley warned that Mayor Karen Bass’s (D.) budget cuts to her department “severely limited” its response to wide-scale emergencies—including wildfires.

In a memo dated Dec. 4, Crowley wrote that Bass’s $7 million reduction to the Los Angeles Fire Department’s overtime budget “severely limited the department’s ability to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires, earthquakes, hazardous material incidents, and large public events.” All told Bass cut more than $17 million from the fire department this year, according to the enacted budget, although she initially proposed slashing nearly $23 million.

“These budgetary reductions have adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations,” such as training and fire prevention, Crowley wrote in her memo to the Board of Fire Commissioners, which is comprised of mayoral appointees. “Specialized programs and resources, such as Air Operations, Tactical EMS Units, Disaster Response, and Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT), which rely heavily on [overtime], are now at risk of reduced effectiveness.”

Steve Graham.

I saw some interesting stuff today, related to the California fires that are destroying the homes of entertainment people and other wealthy individuals. It looks like I was right to think leftism is the fundamental cause of the destruction.

Prager University posted a very interesting video. They say California has forced one of its big power companies to waste a huge amount of money on “renewable” boondoggle projects while failing to improve existing infrastructure. According to the video, failing power lines cause a lot of the fires, and one of the worst fires was caused by a power line built in 1921. So around 104 years ago.

I’ll embed the video, and you can judge for yourself.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

Wednesday’s firestorm in a wealthy area of Los Angeles could be the final straw that breaks California’s insurance market.

The state’s insurance market has been teetering on the edge of insolvency for years thanks to catastrophic wildfires that have driven many insurers to stop writing new policies and drop existing ones. Wednesday’s wind-driven wildfires in a part of Los Angeles packed with multimillion-dollar homes could accelerate its collapse.

“It’s obviously going to be bad,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, the Democrat who represents the neighborhood between Malibu and Santa Monica where the Palisades Fire — one of six burning uncontained across the region — had destroyed more than 1,000 buildings as of Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve already seen big increases. And we’ve seen these increases not only in houses that are close to the brush, but in areas where you’re surrounded by other homes.”

Ane why is that: How long does it take to get approval for prescribed burns in California?

UPDATE: Los Angeles Fire Budget Cut, Hundreds of Hydrants Stolen for Scrap Before Fires

“These fire hydrant thefts are yet another sign of how crime is out of control in Los Angeles County,” said Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman to The Center Square before his November election. “Thieves know they’ll face little or no consequences if they are caught, so they’re willing to risk the public’s safety for a small profit.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has been away on a taxpayer-funded trip to Africa as a member of a Biden administration delegation, recently cut the fire department’s budget by $17.6 million.

Sarah Hoyt.

The problem with totalitarian states is a problem of information, or lack thereof. No one wants to tell the boss that things didn’t turn out the way he planned. And there’s a hierarchy of bosses before the ultimate boss. At each level, the information is corrupted.

Suppose that you manage a factory making boots for the army. You were asked to make 4000 pairs of boots, but you only managed ten, because the leather for the boots never got to you. When the big boss asks for the boots, of course you tell him it’s on the way, the because you know the leather providers lied and said they got it to you. The guy in charge of transport, in turn, will tell his boss the trucks are fueled up and full of boots. The fact is no only doesn’t he have boots, but also no fuel and possibly no trucks.

This is why totalitarian regimes make wrong decisions and why they lose wars. Also why they’re absolutely convinced they’re the strongest, etc. until they lose.

Now I’m going to blow your mind: this is not exclusive to totalitarian states. It’s in fact endemic in any system where truth imposed from above and no redemption is possible. In fact, most centralized organizations of a certain size, with no countervailing culture.

ZMan points the finger.

One example of this is the digital grifter. These are people who have many of the qualities we associate with conmen, but they also have qualities unique to the digital age and therefore could not exist before it. The analog grifters did not seek unrestricted attention, because they feared getting exposed. The digital grifter lives on attention and has no fear of being caught. In some cases, being labeled a grifter is viewed as an asset to the overall grift.

The difference between the digital grifter and the old fashioned grifter who may ply his trade online is that the money aspect of the grift is secondary. The old fashioned grift is all about separating the mark from his money. The digital grifter is not directly trying to scam people out of money. Instead, he wants a crowd that will operate as social proof for others who may buy something from him or sign up for a service like his YouTube channel, which is heavily monetized.

…

The professional troll is a genuinely new thing made possible by the novelty of the internet, which makes it possible for a man and his phone to irritate millions of people with the push of a few buttons. While the public nuisance is not new, his elevation to a public figure is a novelty. In the analog age, Nick Fuentes was selling used cars and James Lindsay was that guy in accounting who talked about model trains. In this age they are getting rich as annoying weirdos.

This is leading to another novelty. The digital platforms that made these people possible are now transforming to encourage them. The Twitter monetization scheme is based on the number of people who engage with your post. The monetized users get paid for getting your attention and the best way to get attention is to be controversial, so it is not hard to see where this is heading. It is why Musk reinstated Fuentes. He may not get monetized, but his opponents do get paid to make noise.

Read it.

The world is full of people who want you dead. It’s an unpleasant and sometimes unavoidable truth.

Early on New Year’s Day, a terrorist drove a white pickup through a celebratory crowd in New Orleans. As of this writing, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar murdered 14 people and injured 35. After he crashed, police officers heroically returned fire and killed him.

FBI special agent Alethea Duncan initially said, “This is not a terrorist event.” That claim didn’t last long. Shortly afterward, the FBI said in a statement they were investigating it “as an act of terrorism.”

That shouldn’t have been hard to figure out. Jabbar had a rolled-up ISIS flag on the back of his truck.

UnHerd.

In a surreal cascade of events, the internet personality Andrew Tate has launched a political party. He has done this seemingly in response to a resurgence of interest in the scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs”, as these are euphemistically known; a fact made somewhat ironic because Tate himself, a self-declared Muslim convert, is alleged by Romanian authorities to have himself used the “loverboy” method to recruit young women into sexual exploitation.

I’ll spare you further analysis of his proposed programme for the “BRUV Party”, aka Britain Restoring Underlying Values, save to say that “BBC Punishment” merits an essay on its own. But his foray into politics is perhaps less a serious proposal than a symptom of the accelerating collapse of legitimacy across almost all of mainstream British institutional politics. More profoundly still, the shake-up now underway isn’t just of political parties or ideologies, but of the mechanisms themselves: a tectonic shift, in which ancient forms of power are re-emerging, and the terms of political engagement are suddenly radically up for grabs.

Mary Harrington has a great future ahead of her as a writer of science fiction.

Read it.

Greater torque and power. Lower cost and weight.

It will be interessting to see whether these things work out in practice. If they do, it could be huge.

Read it.

A major California city is suing the state over its sanctuary law, arguing that it violates the Constitution and prevents local officials from protecting their community.

The City of Huntington Beach filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against SB 54, otherwise known as the California Values Act, which dramatically restricts how local and state law enforcement can cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The lawsuit argues that the policy not only violates the Constitution, but also directs city officials to violate federal immigration laws.

“We are fighting the Sanctuary State Law because it obstructs our ability to fully enforce the law and keep our community safe,” Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns said in a public statement. “When the stakes are currently so high, with reports of increases in human trafficking, increases in foreign gangs taking over apartment buildings in the U.S., killing, raping, and committing other violent crimes against our citizens, we need every possible resource available to fight crime, including federal resources.”

UPDATE: Canadian Lawmaker Urges US States to Join Canada

Read it.

The two Democratic senators representing Laken Riley’s home state of Georgia remain noncommittal on legislation bearing her name nearly a year after she was murdered by an illegal migrant.

The Senate is slated to hold a procedural vote on the Laken Riley Act, legislation that requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement to detain illegal migrants who commit theft-related crimes, as early as Friday. Most Senate Democrats, including Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, have refrained from supporting the bill, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s multiple inquiries to every Democratic lawmaker on whether they back the Laken Riley Act’s passage.

The Laken Riley Act is named in honor of the 22-year-old University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an illegal migrant while out on a run near her college campus in February 2024. The legislation is notably backed by members of Riley’s family and is sponsored by the entire Senate Republican conference as well as Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

Ossoff and Warnock have notably refrained from expressing support for the bill despite Riley previously being one of their constituents.

Read it.

Following the August 2024 release of a U.S. government report linking higher levels of fluoride in drinking water to lower IQ in children, a new review conducted by the National Institutes of Health appears to confirm those findings.

Read it.

Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue may have raked in millions through fraudulent donations, according to the testimonies of elderly Americans who said federal election records do not reflect their giving.

Eighteen registered Democrats in Connecticut, all over the age of 70, appear to have donated $1.9 million to Democratic causes, including ActBlue, through hundreds of thousands of small donations from 2016 to 2024, according to a review of Federal Election Commission filings by Dominic Rapini, cybersecurity company CEO and a former Connecticut Republican candidate for office.

Curious about the donation patterns, Rapini tracked down some of the Connecticut residents and asked them if they really did make thousands of small donations, sometimes multiple in a day, through ActBlue.

Read it.

Of course he is . (Or his handlers are, anyway.)

Read it.

A lot of people (notice that Narrative Media trick I just pulled there?) will be indulging in a bit of schadenfreude at California’s expense.

UPDATE: Prepare to Be Shocked: Los Angeles’ Fire Chief Is a DEI-Obsessed ‘LGBTQ’ Woman Who Wasted Millions (Bonchie/RedState)

Read it.

Fortunately, the existence of Barack Obama and (especially) Joe Biden will keep Jimmuh from going down in history as America’s worst President.

Read it.

The U.S. Navy’s Flight III Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) class destroyers are facing cost increases and delays, jumping from an average of $2.1 billion per ship to $2.5 billion per hull, with even steeper cost increases coming in the future, according to a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report. The report analyzes the Navy’s 2025 shipbuilding plan, which calls for a 390-battle force ship fleet by 2054, and includes nine more vessels than in last year’s plan.

Beyond destroyers, the versatile workhorses of the Navy’s combat fleet, the CBO’s assessment notes cost hikes among other platforms, as well as systemic American shipbuilding industry shortfalls that could impede the service’s fleet size goal. All this long-term planning comes as the sea service races to prepare for a near-term war with China if Beijing invades Taiwan in the coming years. These destroyers and their anti-air, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare capabilities would be crucial to such a future fight.

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Health officials in Louisiana announced Monday the first bird flu death in the United States. The elderly individual, who had underlying medical conditions, was exposed to the virus from a backyard flock and wild birds.

There have been 66 reported cases of bird flu in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the risk remains low, the CDC’s former director has urged Americans to take the virus seriously.

Robert Redfield, who led the CDC during the first Trump administration, spoke with The Daily Signal last year about bird flu. He predicted bird flu, also known as H5N1, would be “much more catastrophic than the COVID pandemic.”

I guess it’s time to PANIC!

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The United States is a nation built on the principle of law and order. But today, we face an urgent threat from illegal alien criminal gangs infiltrating our communities and undermining the safety and security we hold dear. The rise of transnational criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua, originally from Venezuela, highlights the chaotic border situation and the urgent need for decisive action.

Reports of human trafficking, drug smuggling, and violence linked to these gangs are becoming all too common. In Colorado, the Tren de Aragua gang has already been implicated in crimes ranging from jewelry store heists to shootings. Disturbingly, over 60 gang members were identified by U.S. Customs and Border Protection between 2023 and this summer. These are only those caught; many more have likely entered unchecked due to the Biden administration’s ineffective border policies.

A task force was set up in Aurora, Colorado, to identify if the gang had criminally taken over apartment complexes within the city. It’s a fact that criminal illegal alien gangs and organizations prey on migrant communities. As the illegal immigrant community grows, there has been a spike in crime by the criminal element that exists within it.

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faces “Trump-proofing” efforts in Washington and in the states—and in some cases, from familiar foes.

Democrat governors and attorneys general in California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York declared their intentions to challenge Trump’s efforts on multiple fronts, from enforcing immigration laws to protecting minors from so-called transgender treatments.

Governing magazine noted, “We might well see the most direct confrontation between federal and state power since the 1963 crisis when President John F. Kennedy’s deputy attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, challenged Gov. George Wallace over desegregating the University of Alabama.”

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The House of Representatives has passed the Laken Riley Act with a vote of 264–159. Almost all Republicans and 48 Democrats united to push the bill through the lower chamber of Congress.

The legislation requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants who have committed certain crimes, such as theft, burglary, or shoplifting.

It also allows states to sue the federal government for injunctive relief over “certain immigration-related decisions or alleged failures” if they resulted in harm to that state.

These can include the failure to detain an individual who has already been ordered to be deported, or neglecting to fulfill vetting requirements for immigrants seeking to enter the United States.

Trump repeats musings about taking control of Canada and Greenland (EuroNews)

New York judge denies Donald Trump’s request to halt sentencing in hush money case (ABC 7 New York)

Judge denies Trump’s bid to delay sentencing in hush money case (WBAL TV Baltimore)

Trump files motion to stay ‘unlawful sentencing’ in New York case (Fox News)

Why the road to Trump’s sentencing could be a wild ride (MSNBC)

Congress certifies Trump’s 2024 victory four years after Capitol riot (Axios)

Danish king changes coat of arms amid row with Trump over Greenland (The Guardian)

January 6th was Successful (John Ganz/Unpopular Front)

He Got Away With It – Donald Trump instigated a violent attack on the Capitol. (Asawin Suebsaeng/Rolling Stone)

The Bogus Case Against Birthright Citizenship for the Children of Undocumented Immigrants (Paul Gowder/The UnPopulist)

Trump, Who Incited Insurrection, Accuses Biden Of Making Transition ‘As Difficult As Possible’ (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)

The fate of nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants depends on Donald Trump (Washington Post)

The oppressive goal at the top of Speaker Mike Johnson’s to-do list (Katelyn Burns/MSNBC)

Alan Dershowitz: Lawfare Against Trump & Allies “Worse Than Stalinism”

Trump says he’ll replace National Archives leader (Tara Suter/The Hill)

Elon Musk’s Dishonest Demagogy on Grooming Gangs (Michelle Goldberg/New York Times)

No, John Roberts, You Are Not a Civil Rights Hero (Dahlia Lithwick/Slate)

TDS MEDIA: NBC, CBS Blame Trump for Trudeau Resignation

Virginia Holds the First Elections of the New Trump Era (Reid J. Epstein/New York Times)

10 corporations that kept their promises after January 6, 2021 (Popular Information)

How Democrats should talk about Trump’s corruption (Public Notice)

Trump’s one-bill two-step perplexes GOP senators (Politico)

Donald Trump’s Worldwide Election (Real Clear Politics)

UK-US ‘Special Relationship’ Under Threat Due To Musk’s “Incendiary” Rhetoric On Grooming Gangs; BBC Claims

Musk plays politics abroad as world leaders brace for Trump’s return (Stephen Collinson/CNN)

Pressure mounts on EU to use legal weapons against Musk’s interference (Politico)

Late Night Tries To Hail The ‘Irony’ Of Trump’s Election Certification

Trump pushes “president-elect immunity” to fight hush money case sentencing (Ivana Saric/Axios)

No one is above the law – except Trump (James D. Zirin/The Hill)  Hunter Biden could not be reached for comment.

WashPost Seeks Advice on Trump Coverage from Katie Couric, Don Lemon, and Lyin’ Brian!

FTC Chair Khan hopes Amazon, Facebook won’t get ‘sweetheart deal’ from Trump in antitrust cases (Kevin Breuninger/CNBC)

Trump could be setting himself up for a ‘powerful’ early failure (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)

European leaders denounce Elon Musk’s influence on the continent (David Ingram/NBC News)  He’s not ‘interfering’, he’s just voicing his opinion. Unlike in Europe, you can do that in the U.S.

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As we reported, New Year’s Eve on the streets of major cities in Germany went by in the manner Germans have become accustomed to: young men wreaked havoc by launching fireworks in public areas, setting buildings ablaze, and attacking emergency services.

Though major news agencies failed to name the perpetrators, it was clear that, like in recent years, migrant men were primarily to blame. Rainer Wendt, the head of the German Police Trade Union (DpolG) said “there are areas where young, highly violent young men, many with migration backgrounds, have claimed control of the public space for themselves.”

According to information leaked to media outlet Nius.de, out of the 670 suspects named in the Berlin police files, 406 people have German citizenship, while 264 are foreigners. This means that 39.4% of the perpetrators were foreigners—mostly Turks, Syrians, and Afghans—which is a high representation in itself, seeing as the proportion of the foreign population in Berlin is 24%.

Delving deeper into the details, however, Nius.de revealed that a staggering 65% of the German perpetrators had non-German first names, and most of them were typically Arab or Muslim names—such as Mohammed, Hassan, Ali, and Yussuf. Taking that into account, the tally of foreigners and Germans with a migrant background comes to 80% at the least—meaning that people with a migrant background are overrepresented in the crime statistics.

Zman looks ahead.

One of the more interesting things to occur while waiting for Trump to be installed as the new ruler of America has been Elon Musk taking on Europe. First, he wrote an essay in support of the political party Alternative for Deutschland, which sent the German political class into a panic. Then Musk attacked the British government for covering up the Pakistani rape gangs. He also demanded the release of Tommy Robinson and said Nigel Farage should quit and let a real man take over the Reform Party.

Stupid people said he was doing this to distract from the dustup over H1B visas, but stupid people say stupid things like this. The world’s richest man, close confident of the new ruler of the American empire, does not need to distract from anything and he does not take aim at the provincial leaders in Europe to hide from a meaningless internet spat over immigration policy. It is safe to assume that what Musk is doing is both deliberate and with the support of Trump.

The first thing to note is that Trump does not like Keir Starmer. No one likes Starmer, but Trump has reasons beyond that to attack him. Starmer was on the anti-Trump train, and he sent people to help Harris in the election. This was a huge blunder that Trump will never forgive. Given that Starmer is as popular as rectal cancer right now, Trump can easily put his government in crisis. We already see this with the Musk attacks on Starmer over the rape gangs.

Keep in mind, that this is happening against the backdrop of Justin from Canada resigning from office after Trump made fun of him. Trump started talking about tariffs on Canada and Trudeau immediately flew to Mar-a-Lago to patch things up only to have Trump call him the governor of Canada. This kept up until the Trudeau government essentially collapsed, forcing Trudeau to resign. The collection of pipsqueaks that make up the European political class certainly noticed this.