Read it.

For years, the climate movement has been selling itself as the last, best hope to “save the planet.” But as public skepticism rises, elections swing toward climate realists, and economic realities set in, the messaging is undergoing a transparent shift. The latest rebranding effort, as highlighted in an Associated Press report, attempts to reposition green energy as an economic juggernaut, promising jobs and prosperity rather than just lower carbon emissions?.

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

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

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

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

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

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

New bird flu variant found in Nevada dairy cows has experts sounding alarms: ‘We have never been closer to a pandemic from this virus’ (Fortune)

Second bird flu strain found in US dairy cattle, USDA says (Reuters)

New bird flu variant in cattle adds to concerns about federal response under Trump (NPR)

Dairy cows infected with second version of bird flu (Washington Poop)

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After nasty clashes involving character assassinations and a mass resignation, a showdown is drawing closer in Chicago between the most powerful local teachers’ union in the country and the most financially distressed school district.

The growing possibility of a teachers’ strike in a city with a long history of labor upheavals highlights the troubles rocking public schools nationwide. First came drops in academic performance and enrollment from lower birth rates and the pull of charter and home schools promising a better education and sometimes delivering it. Enrollment has plunged 20% in Chicago since 2012, a bigger decline than in many large cities.

After the pandemic hit, a windfall of $190 billion in federal emergency funding helped districts like Chicago paper over years of deficit spending and significantly expand the ranks of teachers, social workers, and counselors. Now that the federal aid has ended, students have only partly recovered from their devastating learning loss while budget deficits have ballooned, prompting widespread education cuts in Houston and upcoming reductions in San Francisco, to name just a few districts facing fiscal woes.

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Flight tracking data from Flightradar24 shows a US Air Force RC-135V/W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft conducted its second signals intelligence (SIGINT) operation near cartel-controlled territories within Mexico this past week. The SIGINT mission coincides with remarks from US Border Czar Tom Homan, who warned on Thursday that he “expects” a hot confrontation between the US military and drug cartels.

Flightradar24 data shows the USAF RC-135V/W Rivet Joint taking off from Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha on Friday evening. The Spy plane arrived at the heavily fortified southern border hours later and flew a SIGINT mission in US airspace from El Paso, Texas, to the Big Bend Ranch State Park, located in west Texas.

The spy plane flew the west Texas route twice, following a figure-8 pattern around the Big Bend Ranch State Park, before returning to Omaha. The SIGINT mission appeared focused on gathering intelligence on drug cartels in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas.

Musk’s team lands at consumer bureau (Politico)

Vance on DOGE Staffer Who Quit Over Racist Tweets: ‘Bring Him Back’

Vance and Trump Call for Rehiring of DOGE Staffer Who Quit Over Racist Posts. Musk Obliges. (New York Times)

NBC Contradicts Itself After Bashing Trump for Saying Air Traffic Control Comments

REVEALED: George Soros Poured $36.8 Million into Apparatus Controlling His Prosecutors

Nevada Gubernatorial Hopeful, Who Once Sponsored Sanctuary State Bill, Now Says He Supports Trump’s Deportation Policies

Anti-Israel Groups Recruiting Celebrities To Sign ‘Unbranded’ $200K NYT Ad Opposing Trump’s Gaza Plan

Trump’s FBI Pick Kash Patel Took Up to $5M in Stock from Chinese Ecommerce Giant Shein (Louise Matsakis/Wired)  Random mud … hope some will stick….

Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Expected to Examine Another Treasury System Next Week (ProPublica)  Good.

Kash Patel Took $25,000 From Russia-Linked Firm to Appear on an Anti-FBI TV Series (Mother Jones)

LINKED: “Linked” in news stories means “there is a strong correlation but we can’t really say that there’s a causal link without being called out for it, but we’re going to write as if there actually was a causal link because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to stir people up and get more clicks”.

Judge to pause Trump administration effort to gut USAID’s workforce by thousands (NBC News)  An Obama-appointed judge, of course.

California Town Explores Installing Cameras To Monitor Migrant Boat Arrivals

Former GOP Director Of FBI, CIA Urges Chuck Grassley To Stop Kash Patel’s Nomination (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)  The Deep State strikes back.

San Francisco sues Trump, alleging ‘authoritarian’ threats against sanctuary cities (Politico)

Judge pauses Trump plan to put USAID staff on leave (Kevin Breuninger/CNBC)

Pluralistic: “The Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets” (07 Feb 2025) (Cory Doctorow/Pluralistic)  Cory Doctorow is a social-justice-warrior masquerading as an author and ‘tech guru’.

Exclusive: Trump Air Force nominee arranged satellite contract in manner that favored Musk’s SpaceX, sources say (Reuters)  Sources say! That proves it!

Trump Signs Order Sanctioning The Hague’s ICC Over Treatment Of Israel

The Elite Lawyers Working for Elon Musk’s DOGE Include Former Supreme Court Clerks (ProPublica)  Republican Supreme Court Clerks, of course.

Twitter Files Extra: Who Were the Players that Painted Trump Nominees As Russian Assets?

MUSK-ETEERS: Legacy Media Melt Down Over Trump Admin Employing Talented Youths

DOJ Issues Directive Ending Biden-Era Task Force Aimed At Seizing Assets Of Russian Oligarchs

OLIGARCH: “Oligarch” in news stories means “a rich person who isn’t on our side.”

AG Bondi to Criminally Prosecute Private Entities for DEIA (Qasim Rashid/Let’s Address …)

Is Donald Trump Afraid of Elon Musk? (Gabriel Sherman/Vanity Fair)  They actually pay people to write this crap.

Trump says he’s revoking Biden’s security clearance, ending intelligence briefings in payback move (Associated Press)

House Democrats denied entry into Education Department (Mackenzie Wilkes/Politico)

Why Trump’s plan to “clean out” Gaza actually matters (Joshua Keating/Vox)

Kash Patel was paid by Russian filmmaker with Kremlin ties, documents show (Washington Post)  Ties! That proves it!

A Constitutional crisis in Washington mixes with a civic information emergency (Alexander B. Howard/CIVIC TEXTS) In other words nobody is buying the Narrative any more.

DOGE-ing Questions in Federal Court (Anna Bower/Default)

Donald Trump Says He’ll Name Himself Chairman Of Kennedy Center And Oust Board Members (Ted Johnson/Deadline)

DOJ orders child safety authority to comply with Trump’s ‘gender ideology’ order (NBC News)

19 states sue Trump, Treasury to halt DOGE access (Politico)

States accuse Trump administration of continuing to block federal climate funding (Politico)  Which is what he was elected to do.

Behind Closed Doors, Trudeau Says Trump Threat to Take Over Canada Is Real (Vjosa Isai/New York Times)

Trump’s New Line of Attack Against the Media Gains Momentum (David Enrich/New York Times)

Falsehoods Fuel the Right-Wing Crusade Against U.S.A.I.D. (New York Times)

California Attorney General Accuses Children’s Hospital of Discrimination for Pausing Sex-Change Drugs for Kids

Education Department Cancels $15 Million in Grants for DEI Programs at Three Universities

Treasury elevates Musk ally to lead government payment system (Michael Stratford/Politico)

Trump fires archivist of the United States, official who oversees government records (Kathryn Watson/CBS News)

STAT+: NIH plans to slash support for indirect research costs, sending shockwaves through science (STAT)  Oh noes! The gravy train has stopped!

Trump Is Unraveling the World Order With Unprecedented Speed (Wall Street Journal)

Deep Cuts to Medical Research Funds Could Hobble University Budgets (Christina Jewett/New York Times)  Oh noes! The gravy train is stopped!

Trump and Musk Attack Journalists by Name in Social Media Posts (Katie Robertson/New York Times)  Why not? They’re attacking Trump and Musk by name. They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

Pete Hegseth Under Fire From Dems Over Alleged $49,000 ‘Emergency’ Paint Job For Government Home (Antonio Pequeño IV/Forbes)

Chemical Companies Ask Trump’s EPA To Hide Potential Disasters (Katya Schwenk/The Lever)

Lawmakers flooded with calls about Elon Musk: ‘It is a deluge on DOGE’ (Washington Post)

14 States To File Lawsuit Against DOGE Access To Government Payment Systems

Trump officials exerting unprecedented control over CDC scientific journal (Alexander Tin/CBS News)

American Personnel Abroad Face Chaos and Confusion as USAID Shuts Down (Wall Street Journal)

Judge denies union demand to block DOGE’s access to Labor Department data (Nick Niedzwiadek/Politico)

Will a Time Magazine Cover Drive a Wedge Between Trump and Musk? (Shawn McCreesh/New York Times)  Something that would matter only to a ‘journalist’.

Trump Signs Order to Kill Federal Agency Investigating Tesla (Allison Walker/International Business …)

With Aid Cutoff, Trump Severs a Lifeline for Millions (Apoorva Mandavilli/New York Times)  Since when are these ‘millions’ the responsibility of the American taxpayer?

In Trump’s actions, opponents see more than cuts – they see a constitutional crisis (Washington Post)

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS: “Constitutional crisis” in news stories means “a Republican is doing something other than the way a Democrat would do it.”

Democrats Take Aim at Elon Musk (Lisa Lerer/New York Times)  This is news?

Trump and Musk Bring Vast Aid Machinery to a Halt in Africa (Declan Walsh/New York Times)  Since when is Africa the responsibility of the American taxpayer?

The real lesson of the DOGE racist tweets scandal (Abdallah Fayyad/Vox)  Your tempests in teapots don’t work any more.

Did Trump Quietly Kill a Sensitive Pentagon Probe into Elon Musk? (Greg Sargent/New Republic)  Greg Sargent loses his shit.

A sample of the government webpages Trump doesn’t want you to see (Washington Post)

Federal workers who took Trump buyout feel fear, regret after judge’s order (Aaron Wiener/Washington Post)

How spending $153M to pay its bills put USAID in DOGE’s crosshairs (Politico)

San Francisco Sues Over Trump Plan to Defund Sanctuary Cities (Malathi Nayak/Bloomberg)

“The greatest threat we’ve ever faced”: US Treasury division classifies DOGE staff as extreme danger (Alex Galbraith/Salon)  The Deep State strikes back.

Firefighter Hiring Stalls at Federal Agencies After Trump’s Freeze (Soumya Karlamangla/New York Times)

Attorney General Bonta Sues Trump Administration Over DOGE’s Unlawful Access to Americans’ Personal Information (State of California)

‘It’s a Circus’: Trump Unleashes Chaos at Key US Science Agency (Bloomberg)

Indirect Costs and Trump’s Attack on Independent Voices (Samuel Bagenstos/Inside/Outside)

Trump’s Gaza proposal strikes fear in his new Arab American supporters (Natalie Allison/Washington Post)

Read it.

Despite my advanced age (almost 69 years), during much of which I have paid at least some attention to politics and government policy, I continue to be baffled by how differently government workers and “private sector” workers view their jobs.

A recent befuddlement is the objection by the (national) government workers to even the offer of a “buyout” incentive to quit in anticipation of possible layoffs to reduce the size of the government workforce.

Befuddled because employee buyout offers are common in private industry, especially when the employer seeks to reduce the size of its workforce. Yet the government workers seem offended by even the offer to an employee buyout as a tool to reduce workforce size.

ZMan:

I think it was Charles Beard who argued that urbanization leads to dependence because people in urban areas grow used to the infrastructure. The daily interface with government supplied services results in those services becoming a part of the person’s conception of their life. They cannot imagine living without them, which leads them to support the politics that defend this system.

It may also cause them to view any threat to those systems, even a temporary one like a snowstorm, as an existential one. Since who they are is tangled up in the ecosystem of urban life, that which threatens changes to that ecosystem, or even parts of it, is the same as a threat on them. The reaction to Covid followed this pattern. Urban areas with lots of services had a greater panic reaction to Covid.

This explains why radicals hate rural people. In their mind, the self-sufficient should not exist, so there is something dangerous about them. The reason that chubby weirdo Matthew Yglesias wants a billion people is so there can be no rural areas and therefore no independent people. His fantasy world is one in which everyone is a helpless child, dependent on the benevolent state.

Get Zman’s green-door content on SubscribeStar.

Read it.

Something truly revolutionary is taking place in Washington.

President Donald Trump not only won an election; he’s fundamentally changing the way the federal government does business. Unlike the early days of his first term, Trump is directly targeting the nodes of real power in the nation’s capital. He’s launching a multifront assault on the Regime.

Even Politico, a curiously reliable regime-defending publication, lamented Trump’s ruthless effectiveness.

Read it.

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

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

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

Victor Davis Hanson.

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

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

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

MEXIFORNIA, by Victor Davis Hanson.

Read it.

The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Bowdoin College, a highly selective liberal arts school in Maine, launched an anti-Israel encampment overnight, taking over the school’s main student union. Protesters already face disciplinary hearings.

The SJP members entered the Smith Union building around 10 p.m. Thursday, set up tents and a “community library,” and renamed the building the “Shaban-Al Dalou Union,” photos and videos show. Bowdoin security officials entered the building around 1 a.m. Friday to take the names and student IDs of participants. They told students who stayed in the building that they were “on a path to no longer be Bowdoin students.”

Read it.

Congresswoman Bitter Beer Face gets her comeuppance.

Read it.

If you wondered since 2016 how come the blob and the Democratic Party were aligned so exquisitely in their operations to destroy populism (personified by Mr. Trump) and to permanently entrench single party power in America for all time to come, it’s because an endless font of taxpayer money was streamed into countless non-governmental orgs creating a shadow civil service of Democratic Party activists that melded seamlessly with the big policy-making agencies.

The money was laundered through manifold layers of these orgs and their sub-orgs to pay for an ongoing “color revolution” in the USA — lawfare, election fraud, propaganda, censorship, career cancellation, medical fuckery, open borders, and other totalitarian ploys — while enriching political players at all those manifold layers from multi-millionaire congressmen and senators to thousands of NGO officials making six-figure salaries to street hustlers like Patrisse Cullors of Black Lives Matter and “anti-racism” racist Ibram X. Kendi and his $50-million Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University (recently axed) — and, of course, ultimately the former Potemkin president “Joe Biden” and his family.

It was all this money that drove eight years of sponsored insanity. Mainly, it kept the hands of the Democratic Party firmly on the levers of power so that nothing could be done about the insults and injuries they were inflicting on our country. So, is it a mystery now that nobody was prosecuted for burning the cities in 2020, or for magically creating millions of extra “Joe Biden” votes out of nowhere that year, or setting up the kickback machine from Ukraine to Congress, or forcing millions to get a janky vaccine?

Read it.

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

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

The motive toward corruption is obvious. Except to politicians.

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

Tyler Cowen.

The White House just issued an executive order on South Africa that includes admitting Afrikaner South Africans as refugees to the United States

Here is one of many reports. Let me first say that I am happy to have more Afrikaners in the United States. It reminds me of my “open borders for Belarus” proposal — numbers are limited and assimilation is not going to be a problem.

That said, the symbolism here can only be described as…grotesque. South Africa is a poorly governed country, so you can find many examples of bad policy decisions foisted on Afrikaners. But, if one is going to make generalizations about classes, blacks in South Africa suffer far more from that poor governance. This Executive Order, taken in context, is a deliberate attempt to invert the actual reality of the situation, and make a subset of the whites the supposed real victims. You don’t even have to get into apartheid history to see the outrageousness of this framing.

Read it.

If the Biden administration’s green energy agenda were a bus, it would have no wheels, a dead battery, and a $160 million price tag. Enter Lion Electric, a Canadian electric school bus company that was handed nearly $160 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies—only to collapse into bankruptcy, leaving school districts across America high and dry?.

Now, watchdogs like EPA administrator Lee Zeldin are demanding answers, exposing yet another mismanaged, wasteful, and completely avoidable green energy failure.

As part of Biden’s $5 billion Clean School Bus program, Lion Electric was awarded $159 million to produce 435 electric buses. The administration touted it as a hallmark of its climate agenda, with Kamala Harris herself front and center, gushing over the initiative?.

The Other McCain.

Wow, what a week it’s been, huh? Elon Musk’s young wizards at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have applied their superpowers — weaponized autism — to the simple question: Exactly who has the federal government been giving our tax dollars to? The resulting revelations, especially at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have been shocking — the biggest scandal of my lifetime, and perhaps the biggest since Teapot Dome.

Read it.

This latest attempt to link climate change to urban rat infestations is yet another example of the decline in journalistic integrity at WaPo, sadly a growing problem for the mainstream media in general, especially when reporting on climate change. Rather than investigating the real causes of urban rodent problems — mismanagement, weak policies, and neglect — WaPo chose to push a climate change narrative lacking any basis in fact. This is not just bad reporting; it is deliberate misdirection. The public deserves better than climate hysteria masquerading as news.

Read it.

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

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

Read it.

During the odious Senate reign of Harry Reid (D-NV), the normal processes for budgeting and appropriations were effectively terminated. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), then chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, once opened hearings on the next federal budget, apparently out of some weird, archaic adherence to law, process and procedure. His Majority Leader promptly ordered it shut down.

Continuing resolutions, omnibus bills and absurdly disparate collections of provisions (recall Nancy Pelosi’s infamous remark that her health care bill had to be passed before we could see what was in it) seem to be the norm. The dung beetle paradigm of rolling many things into one big ball is how we are governed. It takes a lot for a single issue or event to get meaningful attention.

I would mind less about funds going to Peruvian LGBTQ comic books or to travelling non-binary street puppet climate theater troupes if such expenditures were actually expressly listed in the authorizing legislation and we could see who actually voted for it.

The American Mind.

If 21st-century Republicans have an idol, a graven image we collectively worship, it is Gross Domestic Product. All discussion about the flourishing of our nation is reduced to GDP, and its increase is seen as an ironclad refutation of anyone who questions whether America is, in fact, flourishing. But GDP, as today calculated, is largely fake, disconnected from the actual production of value. Worse, flourishing-as-quantity is a destructive way to view our society. It was once commonplace that the value of very many things, a mother’s love or a scarlet sunset, was immense, but unmeasurable. We have forgotten this, to our detriment. To truly make America great again, a crucial first step is dethroning GDP as a measure of our greatness.

Yes, there is some benefit to having in our quiver of analytical tools an aggregate way to view additions to economic value, the production of new goods and services. Think of 20 men and women who do nothing except eat and drink what is at hand. They produce no value; the GDP of their little society is zero. If, however, they begin to produce anything, goods or services, they produce value. How to measure such production has, however, generated different approaches, and the method we use today, while it serves our desire for simple ways of viewing the world, conceals truth in order to serve political ends.

Read it.

Ladies and gentlemen, no matter how often the climate doomsday cult appears to have officially reached peak absurdity, along comes another “journalist” saying: Hold my beer! No longer content with blaming hurricanes, wildfires, and bad hair days on climate change, TIME magazine has now decided that football—yes, the sport where 300-pound men slam into each other at full speed—is somehow under siege from slightly warmer weather.

MIT Technology Review.

In trying to make sense of the wrecking ball that is Elon Musk and President Trump’s DOGE, it may be helpful to think about the Evil Housekeeper Problem. It’s a principle of computer security roughly stating that once someone is in your hotel room with your laptop, all bets are off. Because the intruder has physical access, you are in much more trouble. And the person demanding to get into your computer may be standing right beside you.

So who is going to stop the evil housekeeper from plugging a computer in and telling IT staff to connect it to the network?

What happens if someone comes in and tells you that you’ll be fired unless you reveal the authenticator code from your phone, or sign off on a code change, or turn over your PIV card, the Homeland Security–approved smart card used to access facilities and systems and securely sign documents and emails? What happens if someone says your name will otherwise be published in an online list of traitors? Already the new administration is firing, putting on leave, or outright escorting from the building people who refuse to do what they’re told.

No mention, of course, of the Evil Housekeepers with which the Deep State has populated the governmental bureaucracy since FDR.

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

A group of centrist House Democrats met privately with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and asked him to give them room to vote for GOP messaging bills, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Democrats see an opportunity to win back the House majority in 2026, but the swing-district lawmakers who are key to that effort feel they need to be able to break away from their party at times to secure reelection.

State of play: Jeffries huddled for about 30 minutes Friday with the 10-member Blue Dog Coalition, a group of the most centrist Democrats in the House.

Read it.

Two states advanced proposals this week to amend their constitutions to require citizenship for voting.

The South Dakota Senate voted 33-2 on Tuesday for an amendment banning noncitizen voting.

Two days later, the Kansas House of Representatives voted 90-28 for a similar amendment to its state’s constitution.

Read it.

Read it. And by all means watch the video.

Closed-circuit television video has emerged offering a new very up-close and personal view of the large-scale and highly-coordinated Israeli strike on Hezbollah’s command bunker in Dahieh, a southern Beirut suburb and a stronghold of the militant organization, on September 27th, 2024. GBU-31/B Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs with BLU-109/B bunker-busting warheads were the primary weapon used for this attack that killed Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as other top officials. It has been reported that dozens of civilians were killed and hundreds more were wounded in the attack.

The decapitation strike aimed at the large bunker buried beneath a residential area was one of the key operations that sent the Iranian-backed militant group far off kilter, allowing for Israel’s air and ground operations to have a far greater effect than they would have otherwise while limiting Hezbollah’s ability to respond in kind. The pager and walkie-talkie sabotage operation that preceded this strike was another.

Hezbollah remains heavily degraded today with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, a key ally outside of Tehran, being another massive blow that came months later.

Trump administration demands lists of low-performing federal workers (CNBC)

Abandoned in the Middle of Clinical Trials, Because of a Trump Order (New York Timos)

CBS Tugs at Heartstrings, Uses Starving Kids in Sudan to Demand We Keep USAID

Trump administration sues Chicago, state of Illinois over sanctuary laws — and vows more lawsuits to come (New York Post)

N.C.A.A., Following Trump’s Order, Excludes Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports (New York Times)  And that’s all it took.

Scoop: Trump orders key government agency to cancel all media contracts (Axios)

J.K. Rowling Praises Trump EO Protecting Women’s Sports, Slams Leftist Gender Ideology

Trump’s second term so far: I guess this is what “draining the swamp” looks like (The New Neo)

Panama Rejects WH Claim on Dropped Fees for Government Vessels

Judge Orders Overnight Pause on Potential Naming of Jan. 6 FBI Agents

Border Czar Tom Homan Says Venezuelan Gang Members Were Tipped Off Ahead of Aurora Deportation Raids

Not Kidding: Michigan State Rep Says She Sterilized Herself To Protest Trump And we encourage her to do so.

Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew (ProPublica)

Democrats’ Superlawyer Elias Leads Litigation Fighting Trump’s Buyout of Feds

ACLU demands access to Guantanamo immigrant detention center (Lauren Villagran/USA Today)  Good luck with that.

‘In a real sense, US democracy has died’: how Trump is emulating Hungary’s Orbán (The Gardian) We certainly hope so. (Apparently ‘U.S. democracy’ means ‘rule by proglodytes’.)

Hyper-Hypocrite Scarborough, King Of Nazi Analogies, Rips Trump For Criticizing Dems

14 States To File Lawsuit Against DOGE Access To Government Payment Systems

Democrats demand investigation into Musk’s alleged ‘conflicts’ over billions in fed contracts (John Parkinson/ABC News)  Alleged! That proves it!

Mike Johnson says Democrats ‘unresponsive’ ahead of shutdown deadline (Politico)  Dead, for a ducat, dead!

Trump administration agrees not to publicly identify FBI agents on Jan. 6 cases without advance warning (Politico)  A Democrat administration wouldn’t hesitate.

Report: UK Demands Access to Apple Users’ Accounts  Uh, no.

Lost In Today’s Job Revision Chaos: Over 1 Million Foreign-Born Workers Found A Job… And No Native Borns

Judges curb Trump’s sweeping executive actions (The Hill)  Or try to.

Trump Wants Him Fired! The Worst of Eugene Robinson

Staffer with Elon Musk’s DOGE amplified white supremacists online (Reuters)  The swine!@

Democrats try to enter Department of Education amid outrage over possible DOGE cuts (Rachel Wolf/Fox News)

Young Aides Emerge as Enforcers in Musk’s Broadside Against Government (New York Times)  Not all young people are proglodytes.

Bessent Misled Congress About DOGE Access, Senate Democrat Says (Ted Mann/Bloomberg)

Dem States Sue Trump Nixing Gender Transition Care Funds

US Judge to Weigh Blocking Trump From Dismantling USAID

Now Will We Believe What Is Happening Right in Front of Us? (Katherine Stewart/New York Times)

MAGA’s Sickening Hypocrisy: From ‘Save The Children’ To ‘Defund The Org That Actually Saves Children’ (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

The death of American soft power (Axios)

‘Just causing havoc’: Transportation Department suspends EV charger program (Washington Post)

A US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as ‘Insider Threat’ (Wired)  The Deep State strikes back.

Trump DEI crackdown targets books in Pentagon schools (Dan Lamothe/Washington Post)

Lawfare Live: Discussing Litigation over President Trump’s Executive Actions (Default)

Trump makes an outrageous choice for his White House Faith Office (Steve Benen/MSNBC)  Somebody who is actually religious, I’ll bet.

A House Democrat warns against making ‘everything Defcon 5’ (Washington Post)

USAID and George Soros’ Foundation Bankrolled a News Outlet That Spurred the First Trump Impeachment

This Ain’t The Apprentice. Stop Calling Them Firings. They’re Purges. (David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo)

Watch it.

Governments like spending your money.

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

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

Elizabeth Warren ought to be deleted from the gene pool.

Read it.

One factor that truly sets the Trump Administration apart from all other modern Republican Presidencies is the acknowledgment of the culture war. The leftists have been waging this war for at least 50 years and GOP leaders have mostly dismissed it as trivial compared to politics. It’s the reason why we came within a razor’s edge of total moral relativism and degeneracy under the Biden Administration. The left has been normalizing the hatred of basic American principles for generations.

Part of that effort has been the introduction of open borders ideology and mass illegal immigration. I consider this a kind of “final stage” of the leftist/globalist agenda – If you can demonize western culture to the point of self hatred, then people won’t care when you saturate the west with third-world migrants and put the final nail in the coffin.

Illegal aliens don’t want to assimilate, they want to pillage and if possible to conquer. This is why you see hundreds of Mexican flags flying at every migrant protest march; they have no interest in becoming American, they only want access to American wealth. They look at the US citizenry as rubes and easy targets for plunder.

There is also the danger of cultural replacement. Many migrants from Latin American identify with the Marxist “La Raza” ideology, which asserts that America is “stolen land” that they have an ethnic claim to. The globalists know this and use mass migration as a weapon, opening the gates and making it easy for the invasion to happen. As we have seen in Europe and the UK, migrant hordes are like a mercenary army perfect for oppressing native citizens and preventing future rebellion against multicultural erasure.

Migrants who come from countries with a more extensive welfare state than the U.S. (but which maybe can’t afford the level of benefits that the U.S provides) are a natural constituency for the Party of Free Stuff, which (consciously or unconsciously) presents a strong motive for Democrats (and other socialists, like Britain’s Labour Party) to open the border and welcome all comers.

Read it.

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

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

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

Victor Davis Hanson.

Hanson argues that Trump tariffs aren’t intended to support inefficient American industries, but rather to put pressure on other countries that are profiting from trade with the U.S. but pursuing anti-U.S. policies politically. We’ve seen this work with Mexico, and it appears to be working with Canada. Can the E. U. be far behind?

Read it.

Iran has finally shown a drone taking off and landing on – in the latter case with the help of arresting gear – the deck of the country’s unusual new ‘drone carrier,’ the Shahid Bagheri. Newly emerged imagery also shows various drones and crewed helicopters on the flight deck, which has a ski jump at the bow end, including the appearance of ‘drones’ styled after the infamous Qaher 313. Officially touted as a sea base-like ship, Shahid Bagheri has now been shown launching a small missile boat and is armed itself with cruise missiles along with weapons for self-defense.

The new pictures and videos of the Shahid Bagheri were released around a ceremony earlier today marking its formal entry into service with the naval arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The conversion of the ‘carrier’ from a commercial container ship reportedly started in May 2022, and it began sea trials in its new configuration in November of last year.

The imagery from today’s ceremony includes footage showing a modified Ababil-3 drone with an arresting hook, which does not appear to retract or otherwise be capable of being stowed during flight, launching from the Shahid Bagheri‘s 590-foot (180-meter) flight deck. What is presumably the same drone is seen in another clip recovering on the deck by catching an arresting wire with its hook. The Ababil-3 also has two small turbojet engines installed, one under each wing, which could provide valuable additional performance for operations from a short flight deck without the aid of a catapult.

Inside the Elon Musk-Jim Jordan ‘mind meld’ shaking up Capitol Hill (Hailey Fuchs/Politico)

Elon Musk says DOGE will make ‘rapid safety upgrades’ to the air traffic control system following deadly plane crash (Business Insider)

Trump signs executive order banning trans women from women’s sports (NBC News)

Judge appears likely to block DOGE from accessing Treasury Department records (Peter Charalambous/Reuters)

As Trump shuts down USAID missions, officials warn Ebola outbreak in Uganda will spread (Alexander Tin/CBS News)  Since when is it the job of American taxpayers to deal with Ebola (or anything else) in Uganda?

How Trump arrived at his stunning idea to ‘take over’ the Gaza Strip (CNN)

Phil Murphy hands Republicans an attack line with immigrant housing gaffe (Politico) Democrats appear to love stepping on their own dicks.

Trump says transgender athletes will not be permitted entry to 2028 Olympic Games (Brooke Migdon/The Hill)

Musk Vows to Eliminate ‘Wasteful’ Politico Subscriptions for Federal Employees

Democrats focus on Elon Musk as they search for a message to fight Trump (Washington Post) An acknowledgement that they haven’t any room to attack Trump directly.

We’re Living in a New Age of Robber Barons (Zeb Larson/Dame Magazine) Proglodytes always drag out the ‘robber baron’ smear when they want to bash businessmen. It was a lie when it was invented 150 years ago by The Atlantic (which continues to be a Voice of the Crust) and it’s a lie now. The real ‘robber barons’ are the corrupt Democrat legislators, like Nancy Pelosi, who use their official positions to feather their own nests through insider information.

The Real Reason Musk Is Mad at Us (Sarah Longwell/The Bulwark)  I’d guess it’s because you’re assholes. But that’s me.

SecDef Hegseth Declares Record Army Recruiting Under Trump After Years Of Decline  Gee, I wonder why?

Senate Democrats promise all-night marathon of speeches in protest of Vought’s nomination (Morgan Rimmer/CNN)  It’s not as if they have anything more important to do.

Trump administration evicts former Coast Guard leader from her house with 3 hours notice (NBC News)

Guatemala Agrees to Accept More Deportees During Rubio’s Visit (Bloomberg)

Collins: Trump has empowered Musk ‘far beyond’ what is appropriate (Alexander Bolton/The Hill) RINOs assemble!

California Attorney General Issues Warning On Trump’s Buyout Offer

‘Reflecting Biological Reality’: Education Department Publishes New College Student Aid Form

FCC’s Brendan Carr Launches Investigation Into Soros-Backed Radio Station That Outed Undercover ICE Agents

Pritzker Warns Federal Workers in Illinois Against Musk Buyout (Shruti Singh/Bloomberg)

Inside Trump’s Hastily Written Proposal to ‘Own’ Gaza (New York Times)

Pam Bondi issued a flurry of orders on Day 1 as Trump’s attorney general (Politico)

Kinzinger says Democrats ‘suprised and flat footed’ after Musk actions on federal government (Tara Suter/The Hill)

NOAA Employees Told to Pause Work With ‘Foreign Nationals’ (Dell Cameron/Wired)

Meet The Pro-Life Activists Set Free By Trump’s Pardons

Trump Considers Labeling Migrants a Measles, Tuberculosis Risk (Wall Street Journal)

Democrats’ phones bombarded with calls to “fight harder” (Andrew Solender/Axios)

White House tries to soften Trump’s mass displacement proposal for Gaza (Washington Post) ‘Soften’ means ‘explain the truth in the face of media lies’.

Mass. Officials Warned on Obstructing ICE Arrests

Trump’s AG Says Lawyers Who Refuse Orders Could Be Fired

Fetterman: ‘I Fully Support’ US Troops in Gaza

Next for DOGE: Medicare and Medicaid Agency, NOAA

West Point Disbands Gender-, Race-Based Clubs  And the wins just keep on comin’.

State Dept: No Fees For US Govt Ships at Panama Canal And the wins just keep on comin’.

IRS workers can’t take Trump’s “buyout” until after tax season (Axios)

The Madness of Donald Trump (David Remnick/New Yorker)

Doge v USAid: how Elon Musk helped his acolytes infiltrate world’s biggest aid agency (Andrew Roth/The Guardian)  Acolytes! Infiltrate!

OPM Says Federal Unions Are Misinforming Workers About Voluntary Resignation Contracts  As they do.

Republicans Lose Their Minds After Democrats Try to Subpoena Elon Musk (Hafiz Rashid/New Republic)

Democrats To Take Over Senate Floor All Night To Oppose White House Budget Office Nominee (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)

The US is ‘no longer the America we used to know,’ warns Germany’s Merz (Politico)  Thank God.

Trump Has Paralyzed Renewables Permitting, Leaked Memo Reveals (Jael Holzman/Heatmap News)

A 25-Year-Old Is Writing Backdoors Into The Treasury’s $6 Trillion Payment System. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

‘Every Night’: MSNBC Seems to Have Found a New OBSESSION in Elon Musk

Michigan’s Arab American community offers muted response to Trump’s Gaza takeover plan (Associated Press)

Senate Democrats vow rare overnight session to protest Trump’s ‘most dangerous nominee’ (Aris Folley/The Hill)

Pam Bondi Instructs Trump DOJ to Criminally Investigate Companies That Do DEI (Slate)

The World’s Richest Men Take On the World’s Poorest Children (Nicholas Kristof/New York Times)  Jerk those tears! Wring those hands!

“This Is Where The Big Money Fraud Is Happening”: DOGE Dives Into Medicare Payment Malarkey

‘Blow this place up’: Frustrated Democrats want the Senate to fight harder (Politico)

FDA Dysfunction Rewards Chinese Black Marketeers At The Expense Of Kids

Justice Dept. Says It Will Not Bring Charges in Investigation of Project Veritas (New York Times)

More Than 40,000 Federal Workers Have Resigned So Far, Short of Target (Wall Street Journal)

Trump rescinds $4B in US pledges for UN climate fund (Karl Mathiesen/Politico)

NBC, CBS OMIT Reporting Massive Immigration Raids in Aurora, Colorado

“What’s the point of having Congress?”: Even some conservatives now say it’s a constitutional crisis (Russell Payne/Salon)  Congress has been pointless for decades.

NFL To Remove “End Racism” End-Zone Message For Super Bowl

Left-Wing Militant Group Pushing Anti-ICE Protests in LA Teaches ‘Self-Defense’ Classes To Fend Off Deportation Raids

DOGE Teen Owns ‘Tesla.Sexy LLC’ and Worked at Startup That Has Hired Convicted Hackers (Wired)

Anti-Trump Protesters Across the U.S. Gather to Condemn White House’s Policies (Sara Ruberg/New York Times)

Trump moves to shutter environmental offices across the government (Washington Post)

As Washington reels from Trump’s first actions, his voters like what they see (Natalie Allison/Washington Post)

Most Americans Support Trump’s Use of Tariff Threats Against Colombia in Deportation of Illegals, Poll Finds

The anti-Trump opposition might finally be waking up (Christian Paz/Vox)

“We Feel Terrorized”: What EPA Employees Say About the Decision to Stay or Go Under Trump (ProPublica)  Welcome to what your victims feel.

CNN Touts Efforts to Help Illegal Aliens Hide from ICE

Health agencies sued after taking down data following Trump order (Ali Bianco/Politico)

Musk aims to hobble federal workers ahead of ‘buyout’ deadline (Holly Otterbein/Politico)

Trump policies sow chaos, confusion across scientific community (Washington Post)  The gravy train has stopped! Whatever shall we do?

Why CBS stands at the epicenter of Trump’s assault on the media (David Folkenflik/NPR)

Democratic polling finds Elon Musk is unpopular (Ally Mutnick/Politico)  My, what a surprise.

California farmers still love Trump, even after he dumped their water (Politico)

Trump goes full colonialist (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

Trump’s Attacks on DEI Get Approval From Some in the Left Wing (Noam Scheiber/New York Times)

Treasury Sought to Freeze Foreign Aid Payments, Emails Show (New York Times)

Israel defense minister tells army to prepare to relocate Palestinians from Gaza (NPR)

Trump’s Gaza Plan Has Many Pitfalls, Hamas Among the Biggest (Steven Erlanger/New York Times)

Trump Administration Prioritizes High-Birthrate Areas for Transportation Funds (New York Times)

Memory-Holing Jan. 6: What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish? (Alec MacGillis/ProPublica)  The struggle to keep the hoax alive….

Democrats hold Senate floor overnight to protest Trump’s OMB nominee (Niels Lesniewski/Roll Call)  And it had no practical effect; it didn’t matter a damn. It was just virtue-signaling in front of the Usual Suspects.

US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations (Dara Kerr/The Guardian)  Just like a Democrat!

Trump: Dems Used USAID Money as ‘Payoff’ to Media

RFK Jr. and the MAGA Death Trip (Paul Krugman)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Judge Blocks Trump’s Order To Transfer Men Who Identify As Women To Male Prisons

Trump’s Tariff Critics Are Trading on Overblown and Unfounded Fears

Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses (Daniel Wu/Washington Post)  Shed a tear for the Foreign Aid-Industrial Complex.

Musk’s Brazen Cost-Cutting Campaign Is Annoying GOP Senators, Treasury Staff (Bloomberg)

Musk a ‘coward’ if he won’t testify before Congress: House Democrat (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)  Only a stupid man goes somewhere to get mugged. Musk is not stupid.

Shellenberger: USAID Paid for Trump Impeachment Effort

The DOGE Rampage Is Also a Bailout for Elon Musk (John Herrman/New York Magazine)  Just like a Democrat!

Trump and Musk Are Pushing an Absurd Lie About Government and the Media (Ryan Bort/Rolling Stone)  Huh, must be getting close to the truth.

It is Elon Musk who is now running the United States. Not Donald Trump (Moira Donegan/The Guardian)  No, it’s not. All this hand-waving is trying to avoid the obvious fact that Trump is kicking their asses.

Trump: ’60 Minutes’ should be ‘immediately terminated’ after Harris transcript release (Dominick Mastrangelo/The Hill)

America’s Unions Sue DOGE, Launch the ‘Department of People Who Work for a Living’ (Lucas Ropek/Gizmodo)  “… and vote Democrat.”

Trump to sign an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court (Garrett Haake/NBC News)

Scaremongering Scarborough: USAID Shutdown ‘Literally Killing People Across The Globe!’

The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler (Timothy W. Ryback/The Atlantic)  Well, I see we’re back to Hitler again….

Justice Department sues Illinois and Chicago over immigration enforcement (Washington Post)

Musk’s DOGE Youngins Are Terrorizing Senior Gov Staffers (Joey McFadden/The Daily Beast)  Good–they could use getting treated the same way they treat taxpayers.

Trump Education Dept to probe SJSU, UPenn for potential Title IX violations after trans athlete scandals (Jackson Thompson/Fox News)  Nothing scares the shit out of the Crust like equal enforcement of the law.

Treasury Targets Oil Network Generating Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Iran’s Military (U.S. Department of the Treasury)

Musk’s Treasury Incursion Puts Entire Financial System at Risk (Bloomberg Law)  Oh, no! The gravy train stopped! Whatever shall we do?

Ending the Taxpayer-Funded Blue Pipeline

WikiLeaks: USAID Has Been Funding Over 6,000 Journalists Worldwide Across Nearly 1000 Platforms

White House says it will cancel $8 million in Politico subscriptions after a false right-wing conspiracy theory spreads (Liam Reilly/CNN)  They have to put ‘false’ in the headline so you’ll know what the Narrative is.

Trump Administration Sues Chicago Over Sanctuary Laws

Trump taps televangelist kook to run new White House ‘faith’ office (Daily Kos)

Judge in Seattle accuses Trump of trying to change the Constitution (David Gutman/The Seattle Times)

All the ways Elon Musk is breaking the law, explained by a law professor (Andrew Prokop/Vox)

Trump and Musk Are Strangling the Government (Sam Stein/The Bulwark)

Aspiring autocrats like Trump are always more dangerous the second time in office (The Guardian)  Just like Democrats!

UnHerd.

I’m not talking about whether or not the disease existed, that’s moot, because the pandemic was fake.

The photos of dead bodies on the street in Wuhan were fake.

The refrigerated morgue trucks were fake.

The overcrowded hospitals were fake.

The “cases” and “deaths” were fake.

The dancing nurses were fake.

The research papers and peer review was fake.

The fear was fake. They told you that. They said you weren’t in danger and trusted you not to hear them.

Read it.

The image of Athens as one of Europe’s safest capitals is threatened by a wave of lawlessness, misogyny, and extremism imported by recent immigrants, many of them from Muslim-majority countries, primarily from Pakistan. Local analysts say that the increased number of Muslim migrants poses serious threats to the safety of women and overall national security in the country of 10 million.

The sexual assault of a Greek woman by a mob of foreign-born Muslim men during the New Year’s celebration in Athens’s historic center, Syntagma Square, is just one of the episodes that indicate that the safety of women is under particular threat. Most of the participants of the celebration were men from Muslim-majority countries. The victims were, ironically enough, from a pro-Palestinian women’s group that calls itself “Purple,” reported the news website Mea Culpa. According to the report, the assault took place when women from the group raised a flag expressing solidarity with the Palestinians.

“Several men sexually assaulted a woman holding the banner,” Mea Culpa said. “At the same time, some tried to pull the banner out of her hand and one person punched her in the face and head.” This attack is clearly reminiscent of numerous mass sexual assaults (taharrush gamea) that have taken place several times in Cologne in 2016, Egypt in 2020, and Milan in 2022 and 2025. It is also similar to the abuse of young girls and women perpetrated by Pakistani immigrants in England over the course of several decades.

Read it.

President Trump’s suggestion that the population of Gaza should leave while Gaza is turned into “a middle eastern Riviera” has provoked the predictable outcry from Palestinian advocates around the world of ‘ethnic cleansing.’ More interesting was the statement from the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, who said Gazans wanted to return to their homes in Gaza and rebuild “because this is where they belong and they love to live there.”

But hold on. According to the UN, nearly 80% of the population of Gaza are refugees. Now, I may have a wrong idea of what a refugee is, but I assume that it is somebody who, by definition, is not living in the place that they belong. Whereas somebody who is living in the place that they belong is not a refugee.

So how is it that Gazans can be both refugees and not refugees? It is because, unlike any other displaced people in the world, the residents of Gaza inherit refugee status. There are hardly any people left alive from the original population displaced during the war with Israel in 1948, yet millions of Palestinian Arabs have, under a UN mandate, the right of return to places in Israel.

To maintain that the population of Gaza, and the West Bank, and some in Jordan, are both refugees and not refugees at the same time can only prolong any settlement in the Middle East and bring endless strife. If it is the case that Gazans wish to stay “where they belong” then they will have to do something about Hamas, because nobody is going to invest in a place run by armed terrorists.

Preserving this ‘inherited refugee status’ was the chief function of UNRWA.

ZMan casts aspersions.

One of the things that is becoming clear to everyone as the USAID scandal unfolds is that much of what has been presented to us over the last several decades, as far as politics, has been an illusion created by the blob. The media was part of the blob, underwritten by the government and cultivated with government access, so they presented a version of political reality that favored the blob. Even the debates over policy were staged by the blob.

That is what is clear in the release of the CBS tapes of the 60 Minutes interview of then candidate Kamala Harris. Calling it an interview is an assault on the language because it was nothing like an interview. It was one part screen test, one part coaching and one part editing to produce what was presented as an interview. Everyone involved knew it was fraud and said nothing. In other words, what we have been seeing is not media bias, but an orchestrated fraud on the public.

As an aside, the corruption was so deep and so normalized that it appears that most people in these media companies were unaware of much of it. The staff at Politico only became aware of who was actually paying their salaries when the USAID money was halted, and Politico could not make payroll. How many people at the BBC knew that USAID was the second largest source of funding to the BBC? Did anyone at the Financial Times know that management were on the pad?

Read it.

Old hands Carville and Axelrod have warned Democrats not to make USAID a hill to die on for the simple reasons that (a) voters do not love foreign aid programs and (b) the USAID funds distribution looks like an elite inside scam.

Read it.

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

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

Another chapter in a generational battle over the future of the Democratic Party appears to be taking shape in San Francisco in a fight for the seat now held by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Saikat Chakrabarti, a former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced Wednesday that he would challenge Pelosi in the primary, citing the former speaker’s efforts to prevent the progressive New York congressmember from becoming the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

“I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago,” Chakrabarti, a 39-year-old former tech worker, said in a social media post. “America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face.”

Pelosi, who stepped down as speaker in 2022 after nearly 20 years in the position, easily won reelection to her deep blue San Francisco seat last year. Her office declined to comment on Chakrabarti’s announcement.

Other than to perhaps laugh uproariously.

Read it.

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

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

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

Read it.

Wikipedia has been accused of favoring left-leaning media sources while almost completely blacklisting major conservative outlets, according to a new report by the Media Research Center (MRC) released Monday.

The report reveals the self-proclaimed online encyclopedia disproportionately dismisses right-leaning news organizations as unreliable while granting credibility to liberal sources.

Wikipedia, one of the world’s most widely used online information sources, faces scrutiny over claims of political bias in its treatment of news organizations.

Read it.

When the Biden administration resumed funding to the United Nations relief agency for Gaza, it penned an internal memo aimed at defending UNRWA over its production of childhood “educational materials” that encourage violence and demonize Israel. Some of those materials included references to “jihad” and Israeli “occupation”—terms that the Biden State Department wrote are “in line with U.N. principles” and only “viewed as inappropriate by some other audiences.”

The memo, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon through a records request from watchdog group Protect the Public Trust, came roughly two weeks after the Biden administration restored tens of millions of dollars in funding to UNRWA in April 2021 following a pause during President Donald Trump’s first stint in the White House. Written by deputy assistant secretary Nancy Izzo Jackson for Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it addressed “examples of criticism” targeting UNRWA and laid out the State Department’s “response.”

The first section, titled, “Educational Materials,” notes that UNRWA made “home-learning ‘cards,’ based on the Palestinian Authority’s educational curriculum, to supplement textbooks sent home” during the COVID pandemic. Some of those cards, according to a January 2021 report from research firm Impact-se, included the “encouragement of violence” and accused Israel “of deliberately dumping radioactive and toxic waste in the West Bank.”

Read it.

A new national survey has found that nearly half of Germans feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods thanks to mass migration, with 81% believing the country has taken in too many refugees.

which shows a massive increase in Germans saying they fear for their safety.

“According to the survey, around half of Germans say they feel unsafe in their own neighborhood and would not go outside alone at night,” reported the news network.

Read it.

A French doctor in the city of Pau serving as a gynecologist has now been sanctioned for declaring himself “incompetent” to treat a man who had transitioned to a woman, which triggered the rage of LGBT associations.

The case dates back to August 2023, but the doctor, Victor Acharian, has only been sanctioned now by the Order of Physicians with a one-month ban on practicing medicine. In total, Dr. Acharian was given a six-month ban on practicing medicine, but five of the six months are a suspended sentence. If he were to violate the sentence, the gynecologist would be suspended for the full six months.

The trans patient had scheduled an appointment though Doctolib and went to the doctor’s office with a partner.

“The lady explained to me that she was in transition,” the secretary of the doctor’s office told Le Figaro newspaper. “I immediately notified the doctor by internal messaging. He replied: ‘I don’t deal with that; there are specialists in Bordeaux or Toulouse,’ a message that I forwarded to them. But they became very aggressive and called me ‘transphobic.’”

The fantasy is strong in this one….

Read it.

Máté Kocsis, the leader of the Fidesz faction, announced after a meeting of the National Security Committee that, according to information obtained by the Hungarian secret services, the Ukrainian state had launched a smear campaign against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“It is not news that a Ukrainian intelligence operation has been launched to discredit Viktor Orbán, as the Hungarian intelligence services reported on it at the meeting of the National Security Committee of the Parliament,” ??Levente Boros Bánk, director of political analysis at the Néz?pont Institute, told Magyar Nemzet.