The Foundry.

Contrary to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ nutty claim that Republicans are trying to “steal the midterm elections” by redistricting in Texas, state legislators there are trying to correct what the Justice Department correctly calls “unconstitutional racially based” gerrymanders.

Their fix will ensure that the over 2 million new residents of Texas get what they are entitled to in Congress: fair representation.

The claim that engaging in mid-decade redistricting is somehow illegal is complete nonsense. No federal or state law, constitutional provision, or court precedent limits states to redistricting just once every 10 years. More frequent redistricting is simply rare because it often results in brutal political fights and years of litigation by those unhappy with the results.

Not only that, but Texas is acting to bring its districts in line with federal law and court decisions.

The Foundry.

Despite a popular Texas phrase, “Don’t California my Texas,” and a song about the phenomenon, Californians are increasingly relocating to Texas.

Roughly 100,000 Californians are moving to Texas a year—the equivalent of the population of Santa Barbara, according to a new study by StorageCafe.

“This makes California the largest source of newly-minted Texans, accounting for about 16% of all state-to-state migration into Texas, followed by Florida and Louisiana,” the report states.

Six of the top 10 California-to-Texas moving routes began in Los Angeles County, the report found.

Read it.

When President Trump fired the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, most people considered it an instance of Trump’s petulance. This is how Trump himself explained it:

In 2024, it was believed by many people–including me–that the BLS was trying to help first Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris, by releasing good jobs numbers, which would get a lot of publicity, and then quietly revising them downward when the next month’s numbers–again positive, but wrong–came out. If that was deliberate, it was a reprehensible practice.

But what is happening now is the same thing, only more so: an excellent jobs report, followed by a downgrade. Stephen Moore puts it in graph form that is easy to understand:

Read it.

Sauce for the Donald is sauce for the weasel.

Read it.

Italian police arrested 13 people in a nationwide sweep against Chinese organized crime groups, striking what authorities called a “double blow” to criminal networks accused of drug trafficking, labor and sex exploitation, and money laundering.

Multiple coordinated operations conducted across a total of 25 provinces, including Milan, Rome, Florence, Prato, and Catania, targeted Chinese clans operating with mafia?style intimidation and territorial control, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry and remarks by anti-organized crime police official Andrea Olivadese.

“On one front, the State Police carried out a ‘high?impact’ action in 24 Italian provinces targeting entrenched Chinese criminal groups engaged in illegal trafficking, exploitation of prostitution and labor, product counterfeiting, drug dealing, and international money laundering,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Read it.

The amount of cash being sent home by Mexicans living in the United States cratered in the first half of 2025 – with June marking the third consecutive monthly increase.

According to Banxico, Mexico’s national bank, remittances from the United States have fallen by nearly 6% since January, and 16.2% during the month of June – when only $5.2 billion was sent back to Mexico, vs $6.207 billion in the same month in 2024.

I’d love to see some research on how much of the U.S. GDP gets sent overseas in the form of “remittances”. This practice effectively makes us one big colony of the Turd World.

Read it.

A stabbing at a Michigan Walmart on Saturday was stopped by an armed man, a Marine veteran, who went to the shooting range but “forgot to take his pistol off his hip.” The New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, NPR, NBC News, BBC, and many others completely ignored the gun used to stop the attack. But an eyewitness described how others who had tried to stop the attacker were stabbed, but it took the Marine with a gun to stop the attack. The attack was stopped several minutes before the first responders were able to arrive. One thought is that this hero might get some coverage in the legacy media simply because he is black and the attacker is white.

Nope. Having a gun costs more Wokemon Points than being a Negro gains.

This case was far from unusual. Between January 2021 and December 2024, concealed handgun permit holders stopped 37 attacks that police said would have turned into mass public shootings if not for their intervention. But they rarely get national news attention.

Remember: When seconds count, police respond in minutes … if you’re lucky.

Read it.

Believe The Science! Until it changes….

(Sometimes the old ways are best.)

Epstein victims blast Justice Department over lack of transparency (NBC News)

Epstein Was Still a Member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Long After He Was Indicted (Tom Latchem/The Daily Beast)  The Daily Beast and the Rolling Stone are going ot beat that dead horse until it’s fertilizer.

Comer subpoenas the Clintons, Trump’s DOJ in House Oversight’s Epstein probe (Elizabeth Elkind/Fox News)

Epstein scandal broadens as trove of letters from famous figures published (Anna Betts/The Guardian)

Ghislaine Maxwell Lawyers Oppose Unsealing of Epstein Transcripts  I’ll just bet they do.

Never-Before-Seen Photos Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Creepy Mansion

Comer issues subpoenas for DOJ’s Epstein files, depositions with former officials (Politico)

Read it.

A group of migrants was intercepted by holidaymakers as they tried to reach the shore in southern Spain, with several tackled and held until police arrived.

The incident occurred on Sunday afternoon at Sotillo Beach in the Andalusian town of Castell de Ferro. According to local authorities, 13 men believed to be from North Africa jumped from a boat just offshore and swam toward the crowded beach, prompting an immediate reaction from those present.

Video shows bystanders, including both locals and tourists, restraining some of the migrants until officers from the Civil Guard arrived. Lifeguards had raised the alarm after spotting the vessel heading for the beach.

Police confirmed that nine individuals were taken into custody and are now being held at a nearby migrant facility. The whereabouts of the remaining four are unknown, with officials suggesting they may have fled into the town.

Read it.

United Nations officials delight in bashing U.S. and Israeli efforts to distribute aid in Gaza as a failure. But figures from one of the agency’s own reports reveal that its own work is being undone on a vast scale.

Close to 90% of the more than 2,000 U.N. food trucks sent to the strip since May 19th have been “intercepted,” either “peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors,” according to in-house monitoring.

Israeli officials have long accused Hamas terrorists of using stolen aid as a “means against the population” in Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post also reported late last week that aid hasn’t been making it to its destination because of “United Nations policies” and “delays.” All this after Jens Laerke, spokesman for a UN humanitarian agency, dismissed the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as a “failure” because “they are not doing what a humanitarian operation should do, which is providing aid to people where they are, in a safe and secure manner.”

By dliberately starving their own people, Hanas plays all of the bleeding-heart leftists in the Crust. By monopolizing the distribution of ‘food aid’, they lock in their control of the people of Gaza who might be inclined to resist the war against the Jews.

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Federal immigration agents escaped an arson attack at their office in Yakima, Washington, over the weekend, the New York Post has reported.

The Left Coast lives up to its name.

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The Russiagate scandal has long been one of the most convoluted, hard-to-follow news stories of all time. It even has multiple names thanks to its peculiar chronology. From 2016 until April 2019 — while Democrats still held out hope of “presidency-wrecking” revelations that would topple Donald Trump — it was generally known as the Trump-Russia scandal. After Special Counsel Robert Mueller broke the hearts of MSNBC audiences by issuing a report without new indictments, attention began to be cast on the scandal’s fraudulent construction, how it was propped up by political spying, illegal leaks, and WMD-style intelligence fakery. Trump and others began to call it Spygate or the Russia hoax, but the name that stuck was Russiagate.

Read it.

I guess Putin wants a new Cold War.

Read it.

Jim Acosta, the former CNN hack who President Trump notoriously said “YOU are fake news” to at the White House is now LITERALLY living up to the description after he put out an ‘interview’ with an AI generated avatar of a deceased Parkland shooting victim as a way of pushing gun control.

You can’t make this stuff up.

UPDATE: Acosta Ghoulishly Chats with A.I. Zombie of Dead Parkland Student

Read it.

Democrats: Hating America First.

Read it.

Nearly 60% of Germans would likely not take up arms to defend their country if attacked, according to a new survey conducted for German broadcaster RND, The Telegraph reports.

The way Germany has been going for the last fifty years, I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t either.

Read it.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Aug. 4 that it has ended a decree initiated more than 44 years ago, which imposed across the federal government hiring practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) theories.

This is not the end of anti-white racism. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning.

Read it.

Many people in the rational sphere have been promoting Lumina/BCS3-L1, a genetically engineered bacterium, as an anti-cavity treatment. However, none have brought up a major negative interaction that may occur with a common genetic mutation.

In short, the treatment works by replacing lactic acid generating bacteria in the mouth with ones that instead convert sugars to ethanol, among other changes. Scott Alexander made a pretty good FAQ about this. Lactic acid results in cavities and teeth demineralization, while ethanol does not. I think this is a really cool idea, and would definitely try it if I didn’t think it would significantly increase my chances of getting oral cancer.

The Scot Alexander FAQ has Fashionable Web Site Design Disease, a combination of background color and type colors that are probably artistic but make it almost impossible to read, unless you use Safari Reader or actually print it on paper first. You have been warned.

Extract from the FAQ:

To move beyond the demographic of people willing to fly to Prospera and pay $20,000, Lantern will need FDA permission. The FDA has already set unreachable standards for any drug approval study, so Aaron wants to try a different route.

The FDA has lower standards for probiotics than for drugs. And technically, a bacterium which you take in order to change your natural microbiome is a probiotic. The genetic modifications are no disqualification; a few genetically-modified probiotics have already been approved. Some are almost as creative as Lumina: Zbiotics is a genetically engineered Bacillus species which sits in your stomach and (supposedly; I have not investigated this claim) prevents hangovers by metabolizing alcohol byproducts for you.

ALSO: Updates on Lumina Probiotic

ALSO: More thoughts and information from Yishan Wong

I have purchased a dose of this and once my current dental machinations are finished and I have had my next Thorough Cleaning I intend to try it.

Read it.

Imagine if every moment is filled with a high-pitched buzz or ring that you can’t turn off.

More than 25 million adults in the U.S., have a condition called tinnitus, according to the American Tinnitus Association. It can be stressful, even panic-inducing and difficult to manage. Dozens of factors can contribute to the onset of tinnitus, including hearing loss, exposure to loud noise or a viral illness.

There’s no cure, but there are a range of strategies to reduce the symptoms and make it less bothersome, including hearing aids, mindfulness therapy, and one newer option – a device approved by the FDA to treat tinnitus using electrical stimulation of the tongue.

Gallup.

A view long held in American political philosophy is that working for oneself is a more desirable state than working for others.

New research on entrepreneurial insights from Gallup, supported by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, finds empirical evidence to support such ideals about entrepreneurship. Adults who employ others score higher than other groups, including employees and non-employer owners, on a variety of measures — income, wealth, life evaluation and work engagement.

Power Line.

It is commonly believed that the Russia collusion hoax was the worst scandal in American history, and certainly it has a strong claim. But if smearing Donald Trump with Hillary-concocted lies was a major scandal, how about trying to put him in prison?

Alex Marlow, editor in chief of Breitbart News, has written a book titled Breaking the Law: Exposing the Weaponization of America’s Legal System Against Donald Trump. It hits bookstores tomorrow. Marlow’s theme is that the multiple criminal and civil cases that were brought against Trump before the 2024 election were coordinated from the Joe Biden White House. The whole thing was a Democratic Party put-up job.

Of course it was. Obvious to the most casual observer.

Read it.

Of course they do. Let not reality intrude on proglodyte fantasies.

Labour activists are openly defying a Supreme Court ruling that defines ‘woman’ as a biological category under UK equality law—reigniting internal party tensions over sex and gender.

This is despite PM Keir Starmer publicly accepting the ruling and the ‘clarity’ that comes with it. Back in April 2025, it was already apparent that some of his MPs—including ministers—had started plotting to overturn the judgement.

Read it.

It used to be that the French government forbade the inclusion of ethnicity in its statistics on violent crime, but it seems that the rule no longer applies, based on recent statements by the prefect of Rhône.

I feel compelled to point out an important fact: the ethnic group that is overrepresented in the crime statistics in Lyon — the Algerians — is the same group whose government is refusing to allow their repatriation.

There was a time when the French government would have taken the necessary steps to solve such an issue, regardless of what the Algerian government or any human rights groups might say, but that time is long gone. Like all the other nations of Western Europe, France is supine in the face of the absurd demands made by politically correct multiculturalism. It can do nothing to stop the headlong rush towards civilizational suicide, and is required to usher in a real-time instantiation of The Camp of the Saints.

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Jewish passengers aboard a flight from Buenos Aires to Madrid encountered the phrase “Free Palestine” scribbled on their kosher meals on Tuesday, an Argentine Jewish group said.

DAIA, the umbrella group of Jewish communities in Argentina, wrote on X that one Jewish passenger aboard flight IB0102, Salvador Auday, received the full phrase written in black ink on the label of his kosher meal, whereas others had only the initials, “FP” written on it.

“We condemn this discriminatory act and have contacted the airline’s authorities to demand explanations and immediate actions,” wrote DAIA, which also called the case a “serious antisemitic incident.”

UPDATE: Iberia Apologises After Kosher Meals Labelled ‘Free Palestine’ 

As my Aged Granny used to say: “Apologies make poor poultices.”

Read it.

Labor and the Greens have blocked debate on legislation that would have provided a clear definition of a man and a woman in Australia.

Of course they have. Never let reality intrude on proglodyte fantasies.

Read it.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has vowed to protect the cadre of Texas Democrats who fled to his state to prevent the Legislature from redrawing the Lone Star State’s congressional map.

At least 57 Democrats have left Texas for Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts to thwart legislation in the Texas House on the redistricting that could net Republicans five more congressional seats in next year’s midterms.

“They’re here in Illinois. We’re going to do everything we can to protect every single one of them and make sure that — ’cause we know they’re doing the right thing, we know that they’re following the law,” Pritzker told reporters at a press conference Sunday.

Funny how one never sees Republicans do this sort of adolescent shit. “Mooommmeee! Johnny hit me BACK!” Democrats really need to grow up.

Newsbusters.

Democrats may have just realized that having “orange man bad” as their sole political message for the past 10 years was a really bad idea. In a surprisingly blunt segment on CNN News Central, the show’s hosts acknowledged what many Americans have long suspected: the Democratic Party was “a complete and utter mess” as they looked toward the 2028 presidential election. With no frontrunner, deep internal disarray, and record-low favorability ratings; you knew things were bad when even CNN sounded the alarm.

The analysis was sparked by former Vice President Kamala Harris’s return to the national stage to promote her book on her campaign for president in 2024. While co-anchor Kate Bolduan made sure to note that Harris had not ruled out a future presidential run, CNN’s senior data reporter Harry Enten wasted no time in downplaying her chances. “The chance that Kamala Harris is going to be the 2028 Democratic nominee. They don’t look too good right now, to be perfectly honest with you,” he asserted.

The Telegraph (UK).

Migrants attempting to land on a beach in Spain were tackled to the ground by locals and tourists before being taken into custody by police.

Footage showed 13 men diving off a boat and swimming to the shore, where they were immediately met with fierce resistance from beachgoers in a tourist town in Andalusia, in the south of the country.

When those charged with law enforcement fail to act, ordinary people have to step up — and will.

The Telegraph (UK).

Russia has formerly pulled out of a treaty prohibiting the deployment of short and medium-range nuclear missiles, warning the West to “expect further steps”.

As missiles continued to rain down on Ukraine, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, blamed Nato countries for their withdrawal from the Cold War-era agreement.

Medvedev, who has been exchanging barbs on social media with Donald Trump, made his comments after Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow no longer considered itself bound by the moratorium on the deployment of short and medium-range nuclear missiles.

“The Russian foreign ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of Nato countries’ anti-Russian policy,” Medvedev posted in English on X.

“This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.”

UPDATE: Russia Abandons INF Missile Limits in Wake of NATO, Trump Moves

The Telegraph (UK).

‘Travellers’ are groups of wandering vagrants, typically ‘gypsies’ and the like, that increasingly infest the British (and Irish) countryside because law enforcement is too busy enforcing the ThoughtCrime laws.

Furious farmers have sprayed squatters with manure in a bid to drive them off their land in eastern France.

A convoy of tractors spread a mixture of faeces and water across fields where caravans were parked in Hautes-Vosges after reportedly receiving no help from police to remove what they described as an “illegal gypsy camp”.

Footage posted to YouTube shows the farmers’ tractors circling rows of white caravans, leaving a trail of slurry in their wake. Some people from the caravans can be seen chasing the tractors, trying to halt the stinking onslaught.

…

Local media reported that about 400 travelling caravans had set up camp in the area without permission at the beginning of July.

The caption on the video said the farmers had sprayed manure on the fields around the encampment to prevent it expanding further.

Pascal Claude, the mayor, said the travellers returned every year despite repeated requests to leave.

“The problem is that we find ourselves alone, powerless. They come back every year. We asked them to leave, but they won’t. There have been clashes with the farmers. We understand why they are not happy,” Mr Claude said.

The Telegraph (UK).

Leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have asked the Taliban for access to a leaked list of Afghans who helped Britain so they can hunt down MI6 spies.

The Tehran regime hopes to examine the list of nearly 25,000 Afghans who worked with British forces as they seek leverage with the West ahead of nuclear negotiations this autumn.

The so-called “kill list” contains the names of Afghans who were applying for asylum, including soldiers who had worked with the British Army, intelligence assets and special forces. Some are believed to have subsequently fled to Iran.

In a sign that the two sides are already collaborating, at least one Afghan whose name was allegedly on the list has been deported from Iran to Kabul in the past few days.

The Telegraph (UK).

Parents at Britain’s top private schools have defied Labour’s VAT raid by paying fees in advance.

Telegraph analysis shows the most expensive private schools received hundreds of millions of pounds in fees upfront last year as parents scrambled to avoid the 20 per cent tax raid, which came into force on Jan 1 2025.

The scale of the advance payments has stunned tax experts, who warned it posed a challenge to Labour’s revenue-raising plans. Sources suggested that the Chancellor would consider ways to claw back the lost VAT.

This is how the Deep State operates: (1) Socialists in government come up with a scheme to ‘soak the rich’; (2) The prospective victims very rationally change their behavior to avoid getting ‘soaked’; (3) This behavioral change, which the simple-minded apparatchiks never seem able to anticipate, although any normal person could see it coming, throws their More Money to Spend plans into disarray; (4) government bureaucrats plot new ways to ‘claw back’ the money they would have gotten if only the sheep had stood by to be fleeced.

Rinse, repeat. (Thta screech you hear in the background is the voice of Professor Umbrage–Elizabeth Warren–whining about people who won’t stand still and allow themselves to be robbed. The swine!)

The Times (UK).

Nigel Farage’s Summer of Crime is now into its third week, and we’ve reached the point in the plot where the boss recruits the other members of the gang, Ocean’s Eleven style.

This was his third press conference on as many Mondays, all done behind his no-longer brand new “Britain is Lawless” lectern. It’s not hard to work out why he’s doing it. Capturing the attention of the British public in the month of August is one of the easiest heists out there. You just have to say something, anything, and, for want of an alternative, people will listen.

Unfortunately, one of the first things Farage had to say was to urge the TV news channels that had shown up to please, please broadcast the press conference in full, because, yes, they might be about to discuss an extremely controversial crime that had allegedly happened recently in which court proceedings are very much currently active, but, don’t panic, they absolutely definitely wouldn’t be committing any sort of contempt of court.

Sadly, they did panic. Sky News and others chose almost this exact moment to play it safe and cut away, an editorial decision that would prove to be utterly vindicated, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
This time, he brought with him his two newest recruits. Yes, Farage has managed to once again break into the Tory vaults and this time he’d managed to bundle in to the awaiting getaway vehicle none other than the Leicestershire and Rutland police and crime commissioner Rupert Matthews.

The War Zone.

Overall, the upgraded Mogami class frigate would represent a massive improvement over the Anzac class design, the first of which entered Australian service in 1996 and the youngest of which are now pushing 20 years old. The final selection of the winner of the SEA 3000 competition comes at a time when Australia is facing growing demands to safeguard its own maritime interests, including being able to keep highly strategic maritime trade routes open, particularly amid growing regional competition with China. There is also the prospect of becoming involved in a major conflict in the Pacific with China, alongside allies like the United States and Japan, where naval capabilities would play key roles. With all this in mind, Australia is separately in the process of acquiring its first-ever nuclear attack submarines with the help of the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as looking to bolster its surface and subsurface fleets with new uncrewed capabilities.

Purchasing Mogami class frigates from Japan also deepens Australia’s ties with an important ally, and vice versa. For Japan, a sale of warships would represent a major entry into the global arms market that the country has been building toward for years now. Japanese authorities and defense contractors have clearly been looking to sweeten the offer to Australia. In February, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced plans to expand its facilities in Canberra. The month before, Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida, Chief of Staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, had said Australia could skip ahead of his country in the production queue if it picked the Mogami offer.

ALSO: The Combat Information Center In Japan’s New Frigate Is Like A Starship’s Bridge

Read it.

The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on a Democratic fundraising list. It’s a relentless cacophony of bizarre texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last, promising that your immediate $15 donation is the only thing standing between democracy and the abyss.

The main rationale offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it’s a necessary evil—that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at raising the money needed to win. But an analysis of the official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising model is not a brutally effective tool for the party; it is a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of every dollar it raises.

We all have that one obscure skill we’ve inadvertently maxed out. Mine happens to be navigating the labyrinth of campaign finance data. So, after documenting the spam tactics in a previous article, I told myself I’d just take a quick look to see who was behind them and where the money was going.

That “quick look” immediately pulled me in. The illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread—tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying—to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to serve the firm at its center: Mothership Strategies.

Babylon Bee.

Socialists of a feather clump together .

Poll Shows Widespread Disapproval and Suspicion of Trump’s Handling of Epstein Files (Peter Wade/Rolling Stone)

Charlamagne Tha God: Trump Should Focus on Economy, Epstein And what’s-his-name should focus on whatever it is that he does and leave politics alone.

Epstein Victims Express Disgust, Fear at Handling of Files (Chris Dolmetsch/Bloomberg)

Victim in Epstein case decries ‘political warfare’ in effort to release grand jury transcripts (Casey Gannon/CNN)

The Foundry.

What has happened to Trump Derangement Syndrome? Has there been some new cure discovered or are we just developing herd immunity? Saturday, Aug. 2, was supposed to be the 50x50x1 organization’s ninth day of action in protest of the Trump administration policies. They called it “Rage Against the Regime,” borrowing from the metal band’s name and a word the Left used to revile when it was applied to President Barack Obama’s administration. The event was so poorly attended that posts on the group’s own Facebook page complained about it.

“Hey Folks, we’re [sic] your numbers in attendance for the street rally down today? I’m asking because I’m seeing in our CA Dist 20 there was a low turnout. In more than one place,” wrote a Facebook user calling themselves ‘Anita O Pinion.’ A respondent to their post reported: “Low turnout in Ellensburg WA. I think we need to ask 50501 and Indivisible to coordinate with each other for protests. Don’t need to merge, just coordinate with the protests.” Is that the issue?

It was the same sparse story throughout Virginia.

Read it.

Before Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and 50 other intelligence analysts deceived Americans in the run-up to the 2020 election by warning that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the earmarks of a classic Russian information operation” – and before Obama, Brennan, Obama’s FBI Director James Comey, and National Intelligence Director James Clapper falsified an Intelligence Community Assessment in December 2016 to destabilize Donald Trump’s first term – there was Hillary Clinton.

The media’s focus these days is on President Trump’s possible cameo in the so-called “Epstein files” and Obama’s role in advancing the Russia collusion hoax. These stories crossed when DNI Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe released compelling evidence that six weeks before his term concluded, Obama pressed the intelligence community to ignore its previous assessments and instead rely on the sham Steele dossier and an ambiguous and unverifiable sentence fragment to smear Trump and undermine his presidency before it began.

But let’s not forget the Clinton campaign’s role in this kabuki dance.

Clinton, not Obama, was Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election. As we learned last week from the declassification of reports issued by Gabbard and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, the weight of the heretofore concealed evidence is that if Putin had a preference, it was most likely Clinton – not the wildcard first-time officeholder who surprised the world by winning.

I’d still like to see that toad behind bars.

Read it.

Johanna Nichols, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, has used her pioneering work in the field of language history to learn more about language development in North America. She has found that it can be traced back to two language groups that originated in Siberia. Her paper is published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology.

Read it.

On Saturday, August 2nd, Erik Tegnér, editor-in-chief of the conservative investigative magazine Frontières, was violently attacked by far-left activists while on holiday with his family in a small village in Brittany.

While on holiday with his fiancée’s family in Plouha, a small town in Brittany, and attending the village festival with her, the journalist was recognised and targeted by a dozen young left-wing activists—or, as they like to call themselves, ‘anti-fascists.’ He and his fiancée were subjected to insults, threats, and violent shoving, he explained in a video post on X. “They called us Nazis. They said, ‘We recognise you. You’re a fascist; you have no business here,’” said Erik Tegnér, who was also “grabbed by the neck” by one of the attackers. The Antifa members also attacked the young woman who was with him: “They said to my fiancée, ‘We know where you live. We’re going to chase you out of here,’” Tegnér said.

The journalist had to go and ask for help from police officers who were a few hundred metres away to calm the situation, which could have escalated.

The American Mind.

At least on paper, DEI in the federal government is dead. On the very first day of his second presidency, Donald Trump issued a presidential action, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” ending all diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility “mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.” Employees in DEI-specific positions were fired; DEI positions and offices were dismantled; and DEI training programs, newsletters, and promotion criteria were scrapped.

But it would be beyond naive to think that just because federal agencies are not currently promoting DEI that their workforces do not still widely hold the opinions they were encouraged to hold. Thousands of current federal employees participated in or supported DEI programs. Even those who might disagree were coerced to back DEI if they wanted to keep their jobs.

This means that the problem of getting rid of DEI in the federal government is multi-dimensional. For one, the federal bureaucracy recruits from institutions that are overwhelmingly liberal in composition—with twice as many professors identifying as liberal than conservative—that ideologically forms each new generation of the workforce.

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Since the beginning of this year, fourteen suspects from the Netherlands have been arrested. Most of the detainees are Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent. The police have published photos of the alleged perpetrators, including two women.

The criminals used stolen cars or vehicles with fake license plates to drive to ATMs late at night, blow them up with explosives, and steal as many banknotes as possible.

During joint raids by Dutch and Austrian police at twelve locations in both countries, 16 scooters, more than 50 mobile phones, nearly half a kilo of explosives, various drugs, and €39,000 in cash were seized.

Although the group operated in Austria, similar attacks have occurred in Germany. Between 2022 and 2023, more than 800 ATM explosions were reported there. German authorities are calling for stricter penalties for the use of explosives in such crimes.

Read it.

What happens when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rescues 14 children from labor exploitation and exposure to sex offenders in marijuana fields? Surely, this would be a moment for mental clarity and political cohesion, where federal law enforcement officials are recognized for their good work.

That was not what happened. Instead, Democrat leaders rushed to their soapboxes to condemn the agents. They decried the raid as “militarized,” “traumatizing” and “disproportionate” and framed ICE’s enforcement effort as the problem.

What ICE found when it raided two marijuana farms in Ventura County, California, on July 10 was not a peaceful agricultural operation; it was a crime scene where they were met with hostility and violence.

Fourteen children were found working in the fields (the youngest was 14), along with more than 360 illegal alien workers, including multiple felons convicted of crimes involving kidnapping, rape and child molestation.

Protesters at the scene responded by throwing rocks and asphalt at ICE vehicles. A masked demonstrator even fired a gun at agents before fleeing.

Yet Democrats focused not on the horrible working conditions and threats to children but rather on condemning the ICE raid.

Democrats have never forgiven Republicans for freeing their slaves.

Try doing that without breaking a nail.

Read it.

On Friday, August 1st, UN Secretary-General António Guterres presented a report from his UN80 reform initiative, which examined how UN staff carry out the thousands of mandates assigned to them by bodies such as the General Assembly and the Security Council. He highlighted that last year the UN system supported approximately 27,000 meetings across 240 entities and produced 1,100 reports—a 20% increase since 1990.

Guterres warned, “The sheer volume of meetings and reports is pushing the system—and all of us—to the breaking point.” He added that many reports receive limited attention: the top 5% are downloaded more than 5,500 times, yet one in five reports sees fewer than 1,000 downloads. Furthermore, a download does not guarantee the report was actually read.

As part of his recommendations, Guterres called for “Fewer meetings. Fewer reports, but ones that are able to fully meet the requirements of all mandates.”

No surprises here. Mandates, meetings, and reports–the heart of a bureaucrat’s day.