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When you as a liberal Democrat have lost CNN’s Abby Phillip and your protest gets LITERALLY laughed at live on CNN air, it may be a sign that your ability to influence coverage of the day’s events is waning. This was the reaction garnered by Congressional Democrats’ protest outside the headquarters of the dying United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

WATCH Phillip describe the protest as “a piñata in search of a stick”, which was met with an outburst of laughter by the guests at the table.

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A climate rule issued during the Biden administration is officially dead after judges on Feb. 3 granted the new administration’s request to drop an appeal.

Three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, acting on a recent request from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), dismissed the government’s appeal of a ruling that found the FHWA administrator overstepped his authority in issuing the rule, which forced states to take steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles.

The judges cited a court rule that lets appealing parties dismiss appeals voluntarily if doing so would not create injustice or unfairness. The states that sued over the rule did not oppose the dismissal.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin J. Beaton ruled in 2024 that the rule went beyond the authority that lawmakers had given the FHWA administrator.

Watch it.

This reaction of a British-born new citizen is very heartening.

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First, we must remind ourselves that wealth does not happen automatically, bestowed from above as if it were manna from heaven. It has to be created through the conscious and deliberate efforts of workers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. Notice one group of people missing from this list: policymakers. Despite their claims to the contrary, policymakers cannot create wealth. Indeed, they cannot do so. However, their role in wealth-creation cannot be understated, for they wield the simultaneous power to foster growth and to inhibit it.

Adam Smith gave us the blueprint for growth all the way back in 1776. He writes, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

Comparing the United States and the EU on these dimensions reveals differences.

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

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

These are the answers we got…

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If it ain’t woke, don’t build it: Hideous monument to 44th president plagued by delays, cost overruns, and racial quotas.

Read it.

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

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

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

Babylon Bee.

News of what USAID had been spending money on has caused quite a stir online. But there’s still a lot of misinformation out there. That’s why we’ve put together this handy quiz so you can test yourself on what’s real and what isn’t.

I couldn’t.

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The boss of the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has described reports that Israeli hostages were held in at least one of its shelters in Gaza as “disturbing and shocking.” Philippe Lazzarini added that the allegation was taken “extremely seriously”—but made no attempt to disprove its validity.

I’m waiting for Trump to list the U.N. as a terrorist organization.

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Oh, the humanity! The wine and cheese set over at Bloomberg has been thrown into full-blown hysteria because—brace yourselves—President Trump turned off the spigot of taxpayer cash that funds their sacred climate cult. Their headline reads like a lost script from The Handmaid’s Tale: “It’s Surreal: Trump’s Freeze on Climate Money Sows Fear and Confusion”?.

“Surreal”? What’s surreal is that these people think they have some divine right to an endless fountain of taxpayer money to fund their political activism disguised as “science.” Imagine a world where these people actually had to produce something of value rather than leech off the federal government. Terrifying, right?

ZMan reads the tea leaves.

that has dominated the world since the Cold War. During the Cold War, this same system came to dominate the West, both as a whole, but also within the discrete parts of each member country. In fact, what happened at the end of the Cold War is this system sought to fill the void left by communism. The system was not liberalism, but rather a form of minoritarianism, minority rule.

Minoritarianism is a term coined by political scientists to describe a condition in which a minority has control of key decision-making processes. For example, the U.S. Senate requires a supermajority for certain things, which gives the minority party the power to veto these issues. This is the filibuster that the Democrats complain about whenever they need to placate their voters. In the case of the Senate, this system is to prevent the majority from abusing the minority.

Since the end of the Cold War, it has been official American policy to control the politics of the rest of the world. The endless yapping about “our democracy” is always about imposing Western systems on the rest of the world. After all, we have reached the end of history and there are no more debates about the morally correct way to organize a society, so everyone needs to fall in line. Even though the overwhelming majority of the world’s people disagree, the minority demands it.

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A second “Greater Idaho” bill was introduced in the Oregon State Legislature on Tuesday. The bill, HB 3844, would create a state taskforce to “document the state and federal legal and legislative processes that must take place to relocate the Oregon and Idaho state boundaries…” The legislature is already considering a bill in the Senate, SJM7, which is a memorial inviting the state of Idaho to begin border talks. The Idaho Legislature passed a similar memorial in 2023.

House Bill 3844, introduced by Representative Mark Owens of Crane and co-sponsored by Reps. Bobby Levy, Vikki Breese-Iverson and Emily McIntire, takes a different approach from the Senate bill. While SJM7 would begin border negotiations, the house bill would create a study group comprised of multiple stakeholders from across Oregon, who would then be tasked with attempting to answer some of the detail questions of a border change, like the impact on certain industries.

Greater Idaho Executive Director Matt McCaw praised the new legislation. “We are encouraged to see the representatives of Eastern Oregon coming together to advocate for their voters by bringing these bills to the Legislature. The people of Eastern Oregon have made clear they want to explore moving the border and joining Idaho. If the Oregon Legislature truly believes in democracy, they will honor those voters’ wishes and move forward on making a border change happen.”

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A little boy wearing a kippah was kicked and punched while walking with his mother on a street in Rome. It could have been much worse, because the attacker — an Egyptian culture-enricher — had pulled out a broken bottle, but fled before he could use it against his target. He was later apprehended by police.

Quilette.

As women’s social, occupational, and political engagement expanded in Western nations, social scientists anticipated a great psychological and behavioural convergence of men and women. As Alice Eagly and colleagues wrote, “The demise of many sex differences with increasing gender equality is a prediction of social role theory.” Their perspective is that most sex differences result from adherence to socially imposed norms and expectations. These norms and expectations have changed over the past several generations, as women entered educational, occupational, and political spheres that had been historically dominated by men. Today, in most highly developed nations, women are now the majority in higher education and are on track to become the majority in some formerly male-dominated and high-status professions, such as medicine. Even if one might argue that the gains in gender equality are not complete, social-role theory tells us that we should therefore see the sexes acting and thinking more similarly.

But like many almost-utopian academic predictions, social role and related theories have hit the wall of reality. Instead of convergence of the sexes, we have something closer to a great divergence. To the surprise and dismay of social scientists, many psychological and behavioural sex differences are larger in more gender-equal countries—precisely the opposite of their predictions—which has dealt a major blow to the plausibility of sociological theories of the origin of sex differences. As reviewed by David Schmidt and colleagues, then Marco Balducci, and most recently, Agneta Herlitz and colleagues, the divergence is broad and deep, including aspects of personality, emotional expressiveness, mental health, cognition, and occupational choices and preferences, among others. To be sure, there has been convergence in some areas (for example, intimate partner violence) and no change in others, but the trend is clear—women and men are becoming more different in important ways. Many of the expanding differences are small to moderate for individual traits, but the tableau created is of a substantive divergence.

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

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

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

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

NPR, a Voice of the Crust.

Sweden’s worst mass shooting left at least 11 people dead, including the gunman, at an adult education center west of Stockholm as officials warned the death toll could rise.

The gunman’s motive, as well as the number of wounded, had not been determined by early Wednesday as Sweden — where gun violence at schools is very rare — reeled from an attack with such bloodshed that police early on said it was difficult to count the number of dead among the carnage.

The school, called Campus Risbergska, offers primary and secondary educational classes for adults age 20 and older, Swedish-language classes for immigrants, vocational training and programs for people with intellectual disabilities. It is on the outskirts of Orebro, which is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Stockholm.

Newsweek, a Voice of the Crust.

Delaware has long been considered a business-friendly state due to its corporate tax advantages, and is home to multiple large companies. However, backlash against the First State has intensified after Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s record-breaking $56 billion compensation package was excessive.

Musk, who has become increasingly influential in both the political and corporate world, urged companies to pull out of the Democratic-led state. In February 2024, he announced that SpaceX was relocating its incorporation from Delaware to Texas, following Tesla’s corporate move from California to Texas in 2021.

Illegal Immigrants Helpfully Wave Flags So ICE Knows Where To Send Them  (Babylon Bee)

China targets U.S. coal, gas, Google as Trump tariffs take effect (NPR)

Futures tick lower as China responds to US tariffs (Reuters)

China counters with tariffs on US products. It will also investigate Google (Associated Press)

U.S. tariffs on China take effect, adding 10% levy to imports (Washington Poop)

El Salvador offers to lock up US criminals in its mega-jail (BBC)

Jailbnb: ‘Send me your criminals – for a fee!’ says El Salvador as US looks to outsource prison system (Times of India)

El Salvador agrees to accept US deportees of any nationality following meeting with Rubio (Fox News)

How Elon Musk set off two weeks of chaos across Washington (CNN)  Not really ‘news’.

What is USAID, the foreign assistance agency Trump wants to shut down? (NBC News) Because you’re too stupid to look it up on your own, and besides we want to control the Narrative.

Congressional Democrats denied entry to USAID building (Axios) Preventing them from doing some stupid-shit virtue-signaling performance, like a sit-down or blocking doorways.

Democrats blocked from entering USAID headquarters (The Hill)

Rubio says ‘no choice’ but to bring USAID ‘under control’ after agency takeover: ‘rank insubordination’ (Fox News) AKA ‘resistance’.

Rubio asserts control of USAID, vows to end ‘insubordination’ (Washington Poop)

Judge in nation’s capital extends block on Trump administration federal funding freeze (Associated Press)

Elon Musk Installs Illegal Server to Seize All Federal Workers’ Data (The New Republic)

‘Robbery in progress’: Small group protests at OPM over Musk allies’ access to federal employee personal data (Government Executive) I’ll bet you didn’t know that there was a publication called Government Executive.

People protesting Elon Musk and DOGE gather outside the Office of Personnel Management (Associated Press)

The Elon-ification of the federal government (Axios)

What Trump and Musk are doing could change the American system forever (Andrew Prokop/Vox)  Here’s hoping.

RFK Jr. misled the US Senate on measles deaths, Samoa’s health chief says (Charlotte Graham-McLay/Associated Press)

Trump to pause promised tariffs for 30 days after speaking with Trudeau (John Paul Tasker/CBC News)  You see? It’s just a bargaining. tool. That’s what Trump does–make deals.

EXCLUSIVE: Watchdog Asks Pentagon Chief Hegseth to Pull Security Clearance of Leftist Megadonor Reid Hoffman

Which states may feel the brunt of Trump’s tariffs (Alex Fitzpatrick/Axios)

Trump-Appointed DC Attorney Offers to Protect Musk’s DOGE Staff (Nick Wadhams/Bloomberg)

Key State Department Programs ‘Wiped Out’ After Dozens of Contractors Fired (NOTUS)

The GOP’s meek acquiescence to Trump’s power grabs (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)

Watch: Hornet’s Nest Kicked As Raskin, Omar Throw Public Tantrum Over USAID Hostile Takeover

Trump preps order to dismantle Education Dept. as DOGE probes data (Washington Post)

The Trump Executive Orders as “Radical Constitutionalism” (Executive Functions)

Spoiling For A Fight: Why Challenging Birthright Citizenship May Be A Win-Win Strategy For Trump

‘Paid administrative hell’: Some Department of Education staff put on leave after Trump’s DEI order (Arthur Jones II/ABC News)

‘Fork off’: Protesters gather outside OPM to condemn Elon Musk ‘stealing’ personal data (Cybele Mayes-Osterman/USA Today)

Trump Pausing Tariffs on Mexico, Canada as Both Pledge to Boost Border Enforcement

Top N.Y. FBI Agent Vows to ‘Dig In’ Amid Purge of Top Brass

‘Gender Ideology’ Ban Is Already Harming Health, Experts Say (New York Times)

Musk’s Takeover Of The Government’s Computer Systems Needs To Be Understood As A Cyberattack, Or Worse (Cathy Gellis/Techdirt)

Murphy says tax records ‘potentially compromised’ by Musk (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)

Trump’s Border Deals With Canada, Mexico Avert Trade War for Now (Bloomberg)

Nobody Voted for Elon Musk (Clara Jeffery/Mother Jones)  Just like Kamala Harris!

Restaurants Shutter to Support Migrant Protest  Really? None of the restaurants I go to.

Elon Musk Suggests Getting Rid Of All Regulations In Midnight Call (Matt Shuham/HuffPost)

Musk Says He’s ‘Deleted’ Popular Free IRS Tax Filing Program (Nandika Chatterjee/The Daily Beast)

Trump II Punishes Fed Workers For Attending Trump I Diversity Training (Josh Kovensky/Talking Points Memo)

Trump appoints speechwriter fired for attending conference with White nationalists to top State Department role (CNN) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government (New York Times)

Treasury Secretary Sued by Unions Over Disclosures to Musk

‘What is happening here is illegal’: Dem senator confronts security at USAID headquarters (David Edwards/Raw Story)

State Dept. Fires About 60 Contractors Working on Democracy and Human Rights (New York Times)

Trump administration finalizing plans to shutter Education Department (Juan Perez Jr/Politico)

Top ’60 Minutes’ Producer Says He Will Not Apologize Over Trump Lawsuit (New York Times)

The trade war in Trump’s mind (Politico)  As if anybody who writes for Politico has a clue about Trump’s mind….

A Coup Is In Progress In America (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)  Somebody just woke up and read a Voice of the Crust.

Jan. 6 conspiracy theory promoter named to a top State Department job (NBC News)

Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

Republicans take a back seat as Trump steamrolls Congress with flurry of unilateral moves (NBC News) And they’re passing the popcorn.

Elon Musk Is President (Jonathan Lemire/The Atlantic)  If only….

Statement by AFSA on Decision to Dismantle USAID (afsa.org)

CONSTITUTIONAL STANDOFF – *Special Alert from The Contrarian* – Public opposition … (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

The ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’ of the United States Government (Charlie Warzel/The Atlantic)  Stand back — you don’t want to get any of that stuff on you.

How Trump’s Novel Legal Theory Made Mexico and Canada Cave Under Pressure

Elon Musk Is an Existential Threat to Big Tech (Joan Westenberg/The Index)

Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Still Blocking HIV/AIDS Relief Exempted From Foreign Aid Cuts (Kate Knibbs/Wired)  Because curing negligent homosexuals offshore is a core U.S. interest.

DOGE’s access to federal data is ‘an absolute nightmare,’ legal experts warn (Politico)

Dem Lawmakers Urge RFK Jr. To Recuse From All Vaccine-Related Decisions  Translation: “We don’t have the votes to stop you, but we’re hoping we can talk you into putting on your own handcuffs.”

MSNBC’s Obeidallah Slams ‘Racist Piece of Garbage’ Trump’s ‘Fascist Spectacle’

Democrats flood the zone with acts of anti-Trump resistance (Andrew Solender/Axios)

The Resistance Media Frantically Scramble to Save USAID

Musk, Trump Prosecutor Targeting People Who Divulge Identities of DOGE Staff (Miles Klee/Rolling Stone) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

Progressive Democrats accuse Trump and Musk of ‘a plutocratic coup’ (Joan E Greve/The Guardian)

Unmasked: Elon’s Secret DOGE Goon Squad–Every One Under 26 (Josh Fiallo/The Daily Beast)  Unlike the aging hippies that constitute Democrat goon squads.

A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System (Wired) Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

Affirmative action for white men (Judd Legum/Popular Information)  He says that like it was a bad thing.

President-unelect Musk pushes US democracy to the brink (Stephen Robinson/Public Notice)

Trump’s obsession: He can’t quit bashing Biden (Erin Doherty/Axios)  Much like Doherty’s obsession: She can’t quit bashing Trump.

Trump’s other immigration strategy: Looking tough for the cameras (Axios)  He looks tough because he is tough.

How Trump Is Reshaping U.S. Government, Just 2 Weeks Into His Presidency (Peter Baker/New York Times)

The worst thing Trump has done so far (Dylan Matthews/Vox)

About 20,000 federal workers took “buyout” so far, official says (Marc Caputo/Axios)  I guess it’s working, slowly but surely.

What the Musk is Happening? – When writing posts for this newsletter, I like to have a clear focus … (Paul Krugman) But you’re Krugman, so that’s not gonna happen.

The Familiar Arrogance of Musk’s Young Apparatchiks (Michelle Goldberg/New York Times)  Because it’s just like the arrogance of Democrat young apparatchiks.

Trump’s plan to kill offshore wind is paying off (Politico)  Another win.

‘Scared and betrayed’ – workers are reeling from chaos at federal agencies (The Verge) They can dish it out but they can’t take it.

Hey Erica, Nobody Cares! NYT Journo Cries ‘Racist’ at Trump Dismantling Woke DEI

Trump’s impending massacre of the federal workforce will destroy his second term (The Hill)  We’ll find out.

To Save Democracy, Start Filing Cases (Peter M. Shane/Washington Monthly)

E.P.A. Demotes Career Employees Overseeing Science, Enforcement and More (Lisa Friedman/New York Times)  Emphasis on ‘enforcement’.

USAID Pays the Terrorists Who Kill Us (Victoria Taft/PJ Media)

Trump personally ordered firings of special counsel prosecutors (Hugo Lowell/The Guardian)

Terrible Nominees, Terrified Americans: Senators Could Actually Make a Difference This Month (Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew go full-on proglodyte.

Watchdog Sues West Point for Withholding Records About Its False Claims Against Pete Hegseth

“Hitler actually had some good ideas”: Musk’s covert coup is guided by internet trolls (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Amanda Marcotte loses her shit.

Trump 2.0: A Survival Guide for Democrats (Ruy Teixeira/The Free Press)

Hoping to “Trump Proof” Students’ Civil Rights, Illinois Lawmakers Aim to End Police Ticketing at School (ProPublica)

MAGA Senator Goes on Weird Rant About Sex and Omelets (Philippe Naughton/The Daily Beast)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Elon Musk’s Midnight Takeover (Anna Merlan/Mother Jones)

Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)

Exclusive: how NSF is scouring research grants for violations of Trump’s orders (Nature)

White House preparing executive order to abolish the Department of Education (NBC News)

The seven techies barely out of college helping Musk to slash billions from federal government (The Independent)

‘F**k That’: Federal Workers Say They’re Scared But ‘Digging In’ Amid Trump’s Chaos (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)

Trump Claims Victory Over Canada, Mexico After Getting … Basically Nothing (Nikki McCann Ramirez/Rolling Stone)

FBI agents sue to block DOJ from compiling list of officials who worked on Jan. 6 or Trump cases (Politico)

Here are the words putting science in the crosshairs of Trump’s orders (Washington Post)  Or at least what passes for ‘science’ in the Deep State.

Doctors Sue Over Trump Health Agencies’ Removal of Online Data (Zoe Tillman/Bloomberg)

U.S. Begins Migrant Flights to Guantanamo Bay (Wall Street Journal)

NFL to remove ‘End Racism’ messaging in end zone ahead of Super Bowl: Sources (Michael Silver/New York Times)

Trump’s Attack On The Deep State Is Spectacular And Almost Certainly Legal

Scoop: Senate Dems plot USAID revenge on Trump (Stephen Neukam/Axios)

Inside Trump and Musk’s Clumsy, ‘Exhausting’ Hunt for Leakers (Rolling Stone)

‘Stop Playing Nice,’ Says AOC as Senate Dems Help Approve Yet Another Trump Nominee (Julia Conley/Common Dreams)

‘Beyond betrayal.’ Venezuelans in Florida are angry at Trump immigration policy (Greg Allen/NPR)

Venezuela Agrees to Take Back Its Citizens, Releases US Prisoners

Ocasio-Cortez: Musk ‘one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met’ (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)  Harsh words coming from Occasional-Cortex.

Half of Wisconsin Head Start programs can’t access needed funds after federal freeze (Richelle Wilson/WPR)  Good, since Head Start has been shown to be totally ineffective except in spending taxpayer dollars.

Elon Musk’s Power Grab Is Lawless, Dangerous, and–Yes–a Coup (Slate)

Trump Admin Reopens Millions of Acres for Oil Drilling in Rollback of Biden Climate Agenda

Jake Tapper Lets Dem Senator Spew Anti-Musk ‘Heil Hitler Salute’ Hoax

Illegal Executive Spending Decisions Are Happening Now (David Dayen/American Prospect)

Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law (The Bulwark)

The Register.

Scientists analyzing samples from asteroid Bennu have found something remarkable: Despite being a cold, lifeless rubble pile that formed around 65 million years ago, it holds a rich inventory of organic molecules – key ingredients for life.

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By pausing foreign funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, President Donald Trump has dealt a major blow to the ecosystem of nonprofits that promote woke ideology against America’s interests.

It is no accident that USAID’s funding has dovetailed with the grantmaking of leftist billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations—and the foreign funding pause will undermine his efforts.

Trump placed a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance on his first day in office. This weekend, agents of the Department of Government Efficiency entered the USAID facility and the USAID website shut down. On Sunday, Trump named Secretary of State Marco Rubio acting head of the agency.

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

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The Los Angeles wildfires estimates have hit $40 billion and may continue to rise. These are four times the losses of the most recent destructive fires and that is likely to convince even more insurance companies to leave the state and make homeowners even more uninsurable.

The exodus of insurance companies led to a 123% increase in the number of California homeowners relying on the state’s FAIR Plan. The FAIR Plan, a government gimmick that seemed good at the time, has $458 billion in total exposure and $4.8 billion in exposure from the current fires, but only has $377 million to cover claims. Once that’s exhausted, the state is likely to hit up insurance companies and homeowners to make up the difference. With mudslides expected to arrive after the rains, the chain of disasters may just be getting underway.

While the state’s worst insurance crisis was going on, Sen. Susan Rubio, the former chair of the Senate Insurance Committee, was fighting for illegal aliens while under suspicion of bribery.

Illegal aliens like her.

“We do not let Trump harass, intimidate, and push our immigrant community,” Sen. Susan Rubio threatened at a ‘healing circle’ convened by the state legislative building to protest Trump.

Rubio, who varyingly claims to have been deported when she was 4 or 6 years old, has made that her claim to fame. That and also having her sister serve in the assembly. And being caught up in the wave of FBI corruption investigations hollowing out the California Democratic Party.

Over the last decade, 576 California officials were convicted on federal corruption charges.

Read it.

As they do.

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All the chickens will come there to roost … and peck.

ZMan does a deep dive.

The most surprising and most consequential event of the President Trump sequel has been the USAID scandal. No one thought that part of his revenge tour would be a direct assault on one of the main centers of the foreign policy hive. Until now, few people had any knowledge of this entity. Now it is in the center of the news because Trump has shut it down and put Musk and his whiz kids to the task of auditing the organization while the staff paces outside in the streets.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was sort of created by Congress in 1961 as a way to regulate foreign aid. Congress did not actually create an organization to do this. It directed the White House to create an organization, which is how the independent, not-for-profit entity called USAID came into existence and how it has operated ever since. It gets money through the State Department for its various programs, but it also raises money on its own.

To this point, there has been no oversight of USAID. It has been free, for example, to give money to George Soros organizations that do things like back candidates for state prosecutor in the United States. That seems like an odd use of foreign aid, but it really is the tip of the iceberg, which is why Trump is closing it down. That lack of oversight plus decades of existence created an organization that was operating like a government outside the government that financed it.

Vox, a Voice of the Crust.

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

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

At least, that’s what was expected.

Read it.

There is no greater love than this: The Democrat-Left’s blistering passion for illegal aliens, even those with yards-long rap sheets choked with violent crimes.

President Donald Trump is busy keeping his solemn promise to the American people: Mass deportation of illegal aliens, starting with “the worst first.” He has placed dangerous thugs at the head of a reverse invasion across the border that an estimated 10 million breached during President Joe Biden’s mercifully concluded tenure.

Democrat-Leftists are catatonic. They act as if Trump were frog-marching illegal-alien kindergartners at riflepoint through the desert southwest and then flinging them over the border wall with bayonets.

Read it.

Hey, they don’t call it Brown University for nothing.

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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced a bill with 10 other Senate Republicans that would allow victims of migrant crime in sanctuary cities and/or states to file suit against those jurisdictions.

Tillis introduced S 185, Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act of 2025, on Jan. 23.

“For far too long, we have watched local jurisdictions in North Carolina and across the country ignore the lawful notification and detainer requests made by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents and instead release dangerous criminals back into their communities, putting innocent lives at risk,” Tillis said in a release. “I am committed to working with President [Donald] Trump to end illegal immigration and fight sanctuary cities that prioritize reckless, lawless policies over public safety.”

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California’s Democratic-dominated Assembly endorsed up to $50 million in funding Monday to defend the state’s progressive policies against challenges by the Trump administration.

The legislation sets aside $25 million for the state Department of Justice to fight legal battles against the federal government, and another $25 million for legal groups to defend immigrants facing possible deportation.

The proposals won approval on party-line votes after Assembly Democrats delayed an expected vote last week. They now head to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’ s desk.

Fortunately they don’t have anything better to spend the money on … like all the people left homeless by the fires in L.A.

UPDATE: California lawmakers approve $50M for Trump lawsuits, immigrant aid (Politico)

Read it.

New Jersey Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy’s office on Monday walked back remarks he made during an event live-streamed on his YouTube channel, where he appeared to challenge immigration officials to raid his multi-million-dollar property and implied he might be sheltering a person in the country illegally, New Jersey 101.5 reported.

Murphy, speaking Saturday at an event hosted by “Blue Wave New Jersey” at Montclair State University, dared ICE to come after someone he suggested had uncertain immigration status. But his office told New Jersey 101.5 that the governor’s words were “misinterpreted,” adding that no one was residing on his property in Middletown, New Jersey 101.5 reported.

Murphy’s spokesperson said the individual in question is a legal U.S. resident who was “consumed by fear” amid heightened immigration enforcement.

UPDATE: Can NJ’s Governor Legally Harbor an Illegal Alien Above His Garage?

UPDATE: Tom Homan to ‘seek prosecution’ against Phil Murphy if he is harboring illegal immigrant (Jenny Goldsberry/Washington Examiner)

UPDATE: NJ Governor Taunts Tom Homan With Claim He’s Housing An Illegal; Homan Calls His Bluff; Murphy Admits It Was All A Lie

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Jonathan Zou, a second-year student at the University of Michigan, was among the thousands of students who joined pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses nationwide this past year. Although the campus protests have subsided, the repercussions for students like Zou remain.

Since his arrest by university police last Oct. 7 after using a megaphone during a pro-Palestinian march, Zou has been banned from all University of Michigan campuses, except for attending class or seeking medical care.

Zou is one of five individuals facing similar bans who the American Civil Liberties Union is representing in a lawsuit that accuses the University of Michigan of violating their right to free speech. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the ACLU in federal court, also argues that the university “abused its authority to ban people from public property.”

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

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

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

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Despite the Biden-Harris administration’s “whole of government” attempt to increase unionization, the percentage of American workers belonging to unions notched down each of the past four years of their administration.

Marking yet another record low, 9.9% of American workers belonged to unions in 2023. This follows a steady decline from 13.4% at the turn of the century in 2000, and from a high of about 33.5% in the mid-1950s.

While the media reports have documented new unionization efforts—including some successes—in recent years, those newly-unionized jobs haven’t been enough to replace unionized job losses and other workers choosing to ditch their unions.

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

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

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

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

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

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

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

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

Bloomberg, a Voice of the Crust.

Former President Joe Biden re-signed with Creative Artists Agency, returning to the talent representatives who managed him after eight years as vice president.

While a CAA client, Biden published his memoir Promise Me, Dad, launched the 42-date American Promise tour, selling more than 85,000 tickets nationwide, and headlined numerous speaking engagements, CAA said Monday in a statement.

Creative Artists is one of the top talent agencies in the world, with clients that include personalities in film and entertainment, sports and music.

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An activist group is suing an Oregon city over its public camping policies after the city prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed municipalities to enforce homeless camping bans.

The new lawsuit comes after the Supreme Court in June 2024 upheld a local ordinance banning public camping, which activists claimed criminalized being homeless. The court rejected 6-3 the novel argument that the local law in Grants Pass, Oregon, violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The new legal complaint in Disability Rights Oregon v. City of Grants Pass was filed on Jan. 30 in the Circuit Court for the State of Oregon for Josephine County. Grants Pass, with a population of 39,000, is in southwest Oregon near the California border.

The city has one overnight shelter that adults may access, called the Gospel Rescue Mission.

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Many ‘degrees’ are stuff you can actually learn on your own, and nobody is going to pay extra for your ‘degree’.

And a lot of bachelor level degrees are useful only to qualify you for some graduate program.

“I don’t want to Make a Difference. I want to Make Money.”

The New Republic, a Voice of the Crust.

I spent almost a decade covering the United States Senate. So, believe me when I tell you that I do not want to be a United States senator. Imagine having a job where your mere existence in the role is a symbol of democratic backsliding, where your leaders torture you by forcing you to watch five-year-old videos of your co-worker microwaving canned tuna, and where you literally hold the same title and standing as Tommy Tuberville—an anthropomorphized ChatGPT answer to the question of “What if we gave a supposedly important position of public trust to someone too ignorant to know the three branches of government and too incompetent in his previous role to beat Vanderbilt in football?”

But two weeks into the Trump administration—which is just as lawless, destructive, and inhumane as anyone who lived through the last one could have imagined—it is clear that Democrats on Capitol Hill are failing so spectacularly to confront a constitutional crisis (which their own political incompetence helped create) that I am willing to channel the anger coursing through my body and finally put my country before my own personal well-being.

Today, it brings me no pleasure to announce that I am launching an exploratory committee for a Senate run to replace the senior senator from my home state, Dick Durbin. And I think anyone of good conscience should join me in what’s known as “testing the waters” to run against their sitting members of Congress too. There is very little entailed; anyone can do it. All it takes is not accepting or spending $5,000, not saying outright that you’ve decided to run, and a dream that we can break through to some of the most feckless, dense politicians history has ever seen.

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World Health Organization member states will discuss cutting part of its budget by $400 million in light of President Trump’s move to withdraw the United States, its biggest government funder, from the agency, a document released on Monday showed.

Opening the agency’s annual executive board meeting, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also defended the agency’s work and recent reforms and reiterated a call for the U.S. to reconsider its exit and enter into dialog with the WHO about further change.

“We would welcome suggestions from the United States, and all member states, for how we can serve you and the people of the world better,” he said.

And especially how we can get better access to your taxpayers’ money.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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First they came for your cars, then your gas boilers, travel, food and farms. Now the Net Zero nutters, using their preposterous and invented climate emergency scare, have medicines, anaesthetics and painkillers in their crosshairs. Moves are afoot to reduce the use of popular, cheap, safe and effective nitrous oxide in the UK and replace it with substitutes such as methoxyflurane, a gas long banndhat disputes climate Armageddon is of little intertest to political activists, but the rest of us might be interested to note recent findings that found any ‘global warming’ caused by gases used by anaesthetists was “negligible and cannot be measured or felt”.

Nitrous oxide, sometimes known as laughing gas, is in common use in dentistry and maternity wards. It is carried on ambulances and is considered a very safe and effective analgesic medicine. But the UK National Health Service (NHS) has made a very silly pledge to be carbon Net Zero by 2040. According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), the use of anaesthetics, which also include isoflurane, desflurane and sevoflurane, has been identified as a “carbon hotspot“. The NHS Long Term Plan is said to highlight these gases “as an area for action” and the RCEM says consideration should be given to the use of alternatives “where feasible and safe to do so”. The Royal College of Anaesthetists recently reported that many practitioners had moved away from routine nitrous oxide use in general anaesthesia, including in previous “high-usage” areas.

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Last week Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, a scathing letter accusing him of, among other things, “dangerous views on vaccine safety” and “false hysteria that vaccines cause autism.”

The letter included 175 questions that she said he should be prepared to answer at his Senate confirmation hearings.

But in her letter, she exposes her own ignorance of federal vaccine policy and the laws passed by her own legislative branch.

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In the wake of its general election beatdown, the party that’s dedicated to smashing America’s “white heteronormative patriarchy” has elected a lily-white, heterosexual man to its top position. Hitherto unheard-of Minnesota Democratic Party chair Ken Martin will be the new national “chairperson,” while skinny 24-year-old gun-grabber and general-purpose ignoramus David Hogg is among three vice chairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

From a commenter on a podcast that I follow:

I was in the gym and asked my trainer, ‘What is the best machine to use to maximize my attractiveness to women?’ and without saying a word he just pointed to the ATM.

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Is fruit good for you or bad for you? Why is everybody bad-mouthing High Fructose Corn Syrup?

I am currently doing a ketogenic diet, and I move fruit, so I had Questions. This podcast gave me answers.