Read it.

Gerrymandering, the political practice of carving up awkward-looking legislative districts to benefit one party’s political power, has slithered into the public conversation once again.

…

Why has the discussion roared into the public consensus this time? It started with the Texas legislature’s efforts to redraw its state’s districts after a request from the Trump Administration to review the fairness of the districts.

Yes, there is gerrymandering in Texas, but not the way that liberal reformers want to portray the problem. Consider some of the urban, Democratic Congressional districts in Texas: the 29th, 32nd, and 33rd, for example, are obscenely drawn. These contortions are examples of race pandering, or “race-mandering,” which result from the tortured misuse of the Voting Rights Act and fears of ongoing legal challenges from left-wing legal activists demanding more majority-minority districts. This kind of lawfare recently forced Alabama and Louisiana to create gerrymandered districts.

Texas is not alone in this fight, either. Ohio has to redraw its Congressional districts. This opportunity could create three more Republican-leaning Congressional seats, while the Texas legislature advances a map creating five more GOP seats. Of course, Governor Abbott and the Republican leadership have floated increasing the GOP advantage to six to eight seats if absent Democrats refuse to come back to work in their vain efforts to break legislative quorums. Democrats have not helped their cause by fleeing to Illinois, whose districts are so gerrymandered that even Stephen Colbert poked fun at them.

For the record, I’m not against gerrymandering–in fact, I favor it over the alternative, which is having up to half of a District’s population not represented by someone whose views they share. The news media, of course, prefer ‘competitive districts’, because the ‘horse race’ makes for more exciting coverage, i.e. coverage that earns them eyeballs, clicks, and money.

Melania Trump demands Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to Jeffrey Epstein (The Guardian)

Melania Trump demands Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to Jeffrey Epstein (The Guardian)

Trump and Epstein’s Twisted Race to Sleep With Princess Diana: Author (Josh Fiallo/The Daily Beast)

Read it.

We were walking to watch the sunset when a dog started barking at us from a porch. From inside, a voice called out: “Don’t worry, he won’t leave the porch. The electric fence hasn’t worked in years, but he still won’t go past it.”

I stopped mid-step.

A dog, imprisoned by a fence that only exists in his memory.

The next question changed how I see everything: What electric fences do we have in our lives?

Read it.

A Washington, D.C., resident has gone viral for saying President Donald Trump’s crime clean-up in the nation’s capital has her “feeling more safe than I ever felt.”

“Finally able to chill at a red light with my windows down, not worried about if one of them young n***as is coming,” TikTok user bigdawglexi said in the video, before letting out a contented sigh.

“Riding through the city, feeling more safe than I ever felt,” she said in the short clip, which was filmed inside her car at night.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

As he said he would.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott immediately called another special session to pass a new congressional map, after the first attempt failed due to Texas Democrats leaving the state to deny Republicans the ability to carve out additional GOP seats.

When Speaker Dustin Burrows gaveled into the second special session, which began just two hours after the first one wrapped, he announced that the chamber yet again did not meet quorum, thanks to Democrats remaining out of state to protest the redraw. President Donald Trump ordered Texas Republicans to extract five more seats in Congress to increase the odds that Republicans retain the House in the midterms.

Abbott’s proclamation was largely the same as the first one, which lays out 19 agenda items, including redistricting and disaster relief for Central Texas flood victims.

The Foundry.

What if I told you that your tax dollars helped prop up a massive left-wing political influence campaign that fed staff and policy ideas into the Biden administration and is now working to oppose President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration and his reforms to the bureaucracy?

My book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government” lays out the Left’s massive influence campaign that shaped policy in the Biden administration. The research for that book helped inform my reporting as this influence campaign entered political exile, forming an opposition outside the government after it had benefited from federal dollars.

My series “Your Money, Their Agenda: The Left’s Taxpayer-Funded War on Trump” outlines the perverse ways your tax dollars have propped up this influence campaign. I testified before Congress on this research twice, and my book has drawn increased attention to the infrastructure of the Left.

Read it.

An incident that involved youth of migrant background took place on Wednesday at the Stadionbad in the Prater district of the Austrian capital.

The Syrian teen and his 17-year-old Afghan companion tried to climb over a locked gate to access the pool area. A staff member caught them and called over a 55-year-old security guard, as the teenagers started to behave aggressively.

The younger teen allegedly said, “I’ll stab you,” and suggested he might have a knife in his pants.

Read it.

The latest political scandal in France is just as absurd as it seems: residents of Muslim background had a free public screening of ‘Barbie’ shut down for being offensive to their cultural sensibilities, and anyone who thinks this is problematic is labeled an Islamophobic far-right extremist.

The incident happened in the ‘ethnically-diverse’ Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec, where the local council had the idea of providing free film screenings to poorer neighborhoods during the summer. The program would have been successful were it not for the apparently ‘poor’ movie choice for last weekend, featuring Greta Gerwig’s 2023 Oscar-winning feminist comedy Barbie.

After a group of around 15 Muslim youth threatened council workers and reportedly moved to destroy the equipment, local mayor Olivier Sarrabeyrouse ordered organizers to pull the plug and cancel the event.

When will the Left wake up to the fact that Muslim beliefs are everything they purport to be against?

UPDATE: France Is Being Held Hostage by Islamism

Read it.

A new report on Syrian refugees in Austria has ignited political controversy after suggesting that some migrants are deliberately failing the exam after completing German courses to avoid low-paying jobs.

The findings, published in daily Kronen Zeitung and based on the Austrian Labour Market Service’s (AMS) study, have prompted sharp criticism from opposition politicians, particularly the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).

The report highlights challenges in integrating refugees into the labour market, with learning German identified as a key barrier.

The Foundry.

On Aug. 11, President Donald Trump, invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act passed by the United States Congress, declared a “crime emergency in the District of Columbia” and ordered the deployment of 800 National Guard troops, 200 of whom are earmarked to assist Washington law enforcement, to the city. The president named Attorney General Pam Bondi and Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Terry Cole to work with the Metropolitan Police Department.

The Washington Police Union is cheering. It cited major management and staffing shortages, including over 800 vacancies in the 3,100-officer department. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, an unapologetic law-and-order mayor, questioned the move as “unsettling and unprecedented,” underscoring her support for Washington statehood.

CNN, a rapidly disappearing Voice of the Crust.

Teachers from “liberal” states who have relocated to Oklahoma and are seeking to work there must take a controversial new assessment, given for the first time today, that “keeps away woke indoctrinators,” according to Oklahoma’s top education official.

Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent for public instruction, told CNN that if applicants do not pass the test, they will not earn a teaching certificate to be able to teach in public schools in the state this school year, which begins for some Oklahoma districts on Monday.

The decision to use the assessment, developed by PragerU, a conservative media company whose teaching materials are now approved for use in public schools in ten US states, opens a new front in the education culture wars just days before schools are to open their doors.

Of course, they’ll just lie, as Communists did during the forties, fifties, and sixties. But at least somebody is trying.

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

Told you so. Cities in Red states concentrate Democrats and their ‘base’, so naturally it concentrates the criminal behavior for which Democrats are so famous.

Reuters, a Voice of the Crust.

A British councillor was on Friday acquitted of encouraging violent disorder for saying far-right activists should have their throats cut amid riots last year, drawing claims from right-wing politicians of a hypocritical “two-tier” justice system.

Which it is.

Ricky Jones made the comments at a counter-protest in London after three girls were murdered in the north English town of Southport and was suspended by the ruling Labour party.

…

Misinformation on social media said the teenager who committed the murders at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event was an Islamist migrant, fuelling days of violent riots including attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers.

Jones, 58, was cleared by a jury following a trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court. He had made the remarks to a crowd gathered near an immigration advice centre in London after reports that far-right supporters were planning a protest.

“They are disgusting Nazi fascists … We need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all,” he said, running a finger across his throat.

How is this not “hate speech”. (Which is even more illegal in Britain, with no First Amendment, than in the U.S.)

UPDATE: “Two-Tier Justice”: Labour Politician Cleared Despite Violent Threats

Read it.

Technology, immigration, and growing inequality reportedly have contributed to create a crisis for young men and boys in the U.S.

Suicide rates among young men have risen by a third in the past 15 years and now are higher than they are among middle-aged men, The New York Times reported Friday.

Among boys and men aged 15 to 34, 25% told Gallup they had experienced loneliness “a lot” on the previous day. That was significantly higher than the national average (18%) and the share of young women (18%).

Think of it as evolution in action. (Yeah, that’s cold, but I’m a cold guy.)

“What does not kill me makes me stronger.” And what does kill me makes the species stronger. Win-win.

Read it.

President Donald Trump brought up his prospects of winning a Nobel Peace Prize last month in a phone call to Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister.

The call reportedly came as Stoltenberg was walking in Oslo and included other U.S. officials. While tariff discussions dominated, Trump brought up the Nobel during the exchange.

“It is true that President Trump called me a few days before his conversation with Prime Minister [Jonas Gahr] Støre. Several of the president’s staff members also participated in the conversation, including Treasury Secretary [Scott] Bessent and Trade Representative [Jamieson] Greer,” Stoltenberg, the former NATO secretary-general, told Politico.

Ah Ah Ah Ah Yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

It must be fun to be Trump, to be able to wake up in the morning and ask himself “Who on the Left’s day can I ruin with just a phone call?” and then actually do it. No wonder he’s smiling all the time.

Rather like being Andrew Tate, but with more money and influence.

Read it.

Talks on a treaty to address the global crisis of plastic pollution in Geneva ended without an agreement Friday as the session was adjourned with plans to resume at a later date.

Nations were meeting for an 11th day at the United Nations office to try to complete a landmark treaty to end the plastic pollution crisis. They remain deadlocked over whether the treaty should reduce exponential growth of plastic production and put global, legally binding controls on toxic chemicals used to make plastics. Most plastic is made from fossil fuels.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said despite challenges, despite the disappointment, “we have to accept that significant progress was made.”

The problem with all of these manufactured crises (Climate change! Pollution! Fossil fuels! Greenhouse gases! Dogs and cats sleeping together!) is that Chicken Little has a very large following but that following is heading off in all directions. A serious problem has an obvious solution–not an easy one, but an obvious one– but no one is willing to be the first to bite the bullet.

Read it.

Democrats and allied advocacy groups are set to launch a series of protests on Saturday, Aug. 16, targeting Republican-led redistricting plans they say are designed to secure long-term control of the U.S. House.

The “Fight the Trump Takeover” National Day of Action, organized by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Texas for All coalition, and dozens of national and state partners, will feature nearly 150 rallies in at least 34 states.

Demonstrators plan to gather at state capitols, city halls, and community spaces, with the largest event to be held outside the Texas Capitol in Austin, according to organizers.

It’s easy to organize a Democrat demonstration outside of the Texas state capitol, which is in Austin, the Blue pustule of Travis County. It doesn’t mean anything, any more than such a demonstration in L.A., N.Y, Chicago, or San Francisco–Democrats yelling at other Democrats.

“They can’t do that to our districts! Only WE can do that to our districts!”

Read it.

The number of violent knife crimes in Germany has risen sharply once again, with newly released Federal Police figures confirming a worsening trend.

In the first half of 2025, 730 cases were recorded under Federal Police jurisdiction, a 17 percent increase compared to the same period last year.

The data, provided by the German government in response to a parliamentary query from Alternative for Germany (AfD) domestic affairs spokesman Martin Hess and obtained by Junge Freiheit, show a marked overrepresentation of foreign suspects.

Out of the recorded offenses, 278 involved German suspects and 270 involved non-Germans. While foreigners make up just under 15 percent of Germany’s population, they accounted for over 36 percent of knife crime suspects. Among them, Syrians formed the largest group with 29 cases, followed by Afghans with 23 and Poles with 20. Algerian and Afghan suspects were among the most likely to use a knife rather than merely carry one, with 83 percent of cases involving actual use.

The Federal Police recorded the majority of incidents at train stations, with 409 cases.

Read it.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Friday, August 15th condemned an act of “antisemitic hatred” after a memorial tree planted in tribute to a young French Jewish man tortured to death in 2006 had been cut down outside Paris.

On January 20, 2006, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was kidnapped by a gang of youths and tortured in a housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux. Found three weeks later, he died on the way to hospital.

An olive tree, planted in 2011 in Halimi’s memory, was cut down, probably with a chainsaw, overnight Wednesday to Thursday in the northern Paris suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine, officials said.

The move stoked fresh concerns about an increase in antisemitic acts and hate crime against Jewish people in France.

Apparently Trudeau is coasting by providing re-runs from the Bush2 era.

John C. Wright.

It’s always fun to revisit predictions made by prominent science fiction writers and see how they held up.

Both Heinlein and Asimov made predictions. I’ve not seen an analysis like this one for Asimov’s picks. That would be well worth reading.

The Foundry.

There’s a reason he should be upset. California companies are pulling up in droves and moving to the Lone Star State and elsewhere.

But that isn’t what’s bothering him. Newsom cares about politics and power, not markets and business.

He’s upset that the Texas Legislature is moving to redistricting that could add up to five Republican seats in 2026. So, Newsom wants to redistrict, which could add another five Democrat seats in California.

California’s congressional districts are already gerrymandered to death to favor Democrats—17% of the State’s 52 congressional seats are held by Republicans in a state in which Donald Trump garnered 38% of the popular vote in 2024.

One would think that the situation wouldn’t offer much room for Newsom to do anything. Maybe he’s just going to make it even more blatant than it is–like, say, Illinois.

Read it.

Yemen’s Houthis are not letting up on their attacks on Israel or Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea, on Thursday once again launching a ballistic missile targeting Ben Gurion airport international airport in Tel Aviv.

The Shia militant group’s spokesman said it launched a “Palestine 2 hypersonic ballistic missile” targeting the country’s lone major international hub, the group’s military spokesman Yahya Saree described.

Pure terrorism. A civilian airport is not a military target. Why the ‘Western powers’ don’t just carpet-bomb that section of Yemen escapes me.

Newsbusters.

Tonight’s CBS Evening News attempted to instill in viewers a scary mental image of ICE agents bursting into Los Angeles schools in order to conduct immigration raids. In so doing, they omit a critical detail that would crumble the narrative they are attempting to craft.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

More details on California Democrats’ proposed overhaul to the state congressional map are coming to light in advance of the official release of the new boundaries.

State lawmakers were briefed Wednesday evening on the expected partisan tilt of all 52 congressional districts, providing the clearest view yet of which Republican districts they are targeting. The changes, which are not yet final, were detailed in a chart obtained by POLITICO and confirmed by multiple legislators and staffers.

Read it.

A new report from the State Leadership Initiative (SLI), released Wednesday, is sounding the alarm on how conservative states are quietly adopting woke policies, driven by little-known national bureaucratic organizations.

The report, first reported by Fox News, details how a web of well-funded national associations, often posing as nonpartisan or professional groups, is behind this trend, pushing what SLI calls “shadow governance.” These groups set policy frameworks, control federal funding, and offer “best practices” that lean heavily into left-leaning priorities, according to Fox News.

Among the organizations exposed in the report are the National Association of State Treasurers (NAST), the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD), and the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). SLI’s report examined 23 of the largest associations and found widespread embrace of DEI initiatives, transgender ideology policies, and ESG principles.

As I have often said, bureaucrats tend toward Wokery even in Red states. Proglodytes love national organizations of paper-pushers because it means they don’t have to trudge around from state to state doing the real grass-roots work that democracy requires, but can just focus their efforts on a small group of leaders who are by their nature amenable to political and financial pressure. The Long Walk Through The Institutions demonstrates how effective this can be: Capture the professoriate and you mold a generation of college graduates, who then spread out and ruin life for everybody.

UPDATE: Radical U – Part 2: How Students Turned their Professors’ Words into Deeds

Read it.

Texas Democrats on Thursday moved closer to ending a nearly two-week walkout that has blocked the GOP’s redrawing of U.S. House maps before the 2026 election and put them under escalating threats by Republicans back home.

The Democrats announced they will return provided that Texas Republicans end a special session and California releases its own redrawn map proposal, both of which were expected to happen Friday.

Democrats did not say what day they might return.

Abbot has already said that he will call special sessions repeatedly until they get their redistricing scheme passed. I suspect that this ‘flee the jurisdiction’ trick was just a virtue-signaling stunt.

Israel courts MAGA influencers amid Gaza backlash (Tal Axelrod/Axios)

We Found It! The Flimsiest MAGA Conspiracy of All Time. (Will Sommer/The Bulwark)  Well, invented it, actually.

Bombshell New Report Casts More Doubt on Trump’s Epstein Claims (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)

Epstein Survivor: Would Be ‘Huge Error’ to Pardon Maxwell

First lady Melania Trump puts Hunter Biden on $1B notice over ‘false, defamatory’ Epstein comments (Brooke Singman/Fox News)

Oversight Chair: Bill Clinton Is “Prime Suspect” In Epstein Investigation  Surprising no one.

Jeffrey Epstein battle set to reignite in Congress (The Hill)

Trump Privately Dismissed Epstein Victims as ‘Democrats’ (Rolling Stone)  And therefore pro-pervert and presumably down for Epstein’s degeneracy.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a Voice of the Crust.

Over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security’s X account appeared to reference an antisemitic dog whistle. And it wasn’t the first time that happened this summer.

“Which way, American man?” the department’s official page posted Sunday, over a political cartoon from 1936 called “Uncle Sam at the Crossroads.”

The post, a recruitment ad for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alluded to the phrase “Which way, Western man?” — the title of a 1978 book steeped in antisemitic conspiracy theories and explicit threats against Jews. As a social media meme, the phrase has been used to ridicule the “woke,” feminism and immigrants.

In its own X post Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League called the “Which way” reference “the latest problematic ICE recruitment post from the X account of the Department of Homeland Security.” The ADL cited several problems with it, including the reference to the 1978 book by William Gayley Simpson, whom the organization calls a “white supremacist and antisemite.”

Somehow, only Woke journalists can hear these ‘dog-whistles’. Doesn’t that make them the dog?

Read it.

The Justice Department said Thursday it will seek the death penalty against a member of the cultlike Zizians group accused of killing a Border Patrol agent in Vermont in the latest Trump administration push for more federal executions.

 

Tje Investigative Project on Terrorism

In the span of a few years, American academics have escalated their support for the Palestinian “resistance” from rhetorical to material.

For decades, academics have fostered friendly territory for radical groups and fertile ground for anti-Israel propagandists, but few have endorsed terrorism. It’s safer to massage the language, twist a metaphor or two, and figure out a way to excuse violence without actually endorsing it, or at least use language, often abstruse or cryptic language, to provide a degree of deniability. But that has changed.

October 7 triggered something in many academics who suddenly no longer felt constrained. Rather than stopping just short of applauding terrorism against Israel, they adopted Hamas’s slogans and defended its attacks. Today, colleges and universities have effectively taken the place of the Palestinian terrorist organizations as the primary disseminators of anti-Israel propaganda to Americans. Middle East studies departments and programs in particular have transformed academia into the vanguard of anti-Zionism in a sick perversion of John Stuart Mill’s vision for higher education – turning students into “capable and cultivated human beings.”

Read it.

My, what a surprise.

Three leaders of an anti-police group protesting President Donald Trump’s crackdown on violent crime in Washington, D.C., have criminal records in the district.

Free DC advisory council member Darrell Gaston served sentences of community service for two cases involving violence and threats in the past nine years, while the group’s executive director Keya Chatterjee and campaign director Alex Dodds both have misdemeanors on their records that were dismissed after they paid bond, court records show. Free DC organized a protest downtown on Monday and encouraged residents to “get visible,” “get loud,” and “bang pots and pans” in response to Trump’s law enforcement agenda in the nation’s capital.

Read it.

Violence is always the go-to methodology for the Left.

Bloomberg.

Note the weasel being a weasel.

• No “US” criminal records? How many have non-U.S. criminal records? A bunch, I’ll wager.
• “Criminal records”? Anybody who is here illegally is a felon ipso facto and liable to deportation, “criminal record” or not.

The Narrative Media take such hair-splitting pettifoggery to absurd levels, in the sure and certain knowledge that their moronic mobs will take it and run with it. “Burn the witch!”

Read it.

Seth Rich was murdered in July 2016 in DC Ward 5. His assailants did not take his wallet and valuables, leading to speculation that it was a planned murder of a leaker of embarrassing emails from the DNC. It generated a great deal of what turned out to be unsupported speculation and litigation. The police said it was a botched robbery which was also not entirely believable.

He had defensive wounds which, to my way of thinking, made both the planned hit and botched robbery scenarios unlikely. The killer(s) had a gun. The most efficient way to do a street armed robbery is to make the gun visible to eliminate resistance (and I say that as a former DC resident and armed robbery victim and attempted robbery victim). Nor would a planned execution involve preliminary fisticuffs. The evidence suggests to me that it was a spontaneous attempted beatdown of a white man walking at night. He was shot in the back while grappling with one of his assailants as the attack escalated and the thugs left quickly after the gunshots.

It is highly likely that it was just that pointless, vicious and mindless.

Read it.

English singer-songwriter Louise Distras has been banned from a music streaming service for her allegedly ‘transphobic’ views, she announced on Thursday, August 14. Her exclusion came just one day after signing up for Ampwall, with company executive Charles Shapleigh emailing to explain the decision:

we received complaints about your presence. You’re probably aware that your anti-rhetoric has made you a public figure …. If you ever change your attitude and public positions about trans women we’d be glad to have you back.

Distras called this “not just a petty ban [but] full blown cultural terrorism” and said she was not a “programmable drone who will abandon biological facts and common sense just to scrape by.”

Her removal from Ampwall follows a similar ban from the larger platform Bandcamp in 2023. Loss of access to music streaming services is a serious threat to working musicians, as other record industry-based revenues are drying up amid a shift to digital platforms.

The platform’s conduct comes at a difficult time for the singer-songwriter, who was investigated then cleared by police in 2023 over three separate ‘gender critical’ public comments she made, including a GB News interview, before being ‘stalked’ by a trans activist.

In 2025, the same interviews were used as part of a new criminal case against Distras, alleging she poses a threat of harm to … her alleged stalker. At the time of writing, this allegation had been scheduled for a pre-trial hearing at Leeds Crown Court in July, but remains unresolved.

This latest spiteful campaign against Distras coincides with ongoing attempts to force John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006), off the longlist for the Polari Prize literary award, also because he has criticised transgender ideology.

Read it.

The families of three hostages have filed a NIS 20 million ($5.9 million) lawsuit against the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan.

“The International Criminal Court has become a branch of Hamas,” stated Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder and president of Shuran-HaDin Israel Law Center, the NGO representing the families.

“Through its direct actions, it has given the terror murderers tremendous backing,” she continued. “Khan’s goal is to prevent Israel from achieving the war’s objectives – the destruction of Hamas and the release of the hostages – by portraying it as a criminal state.”

My Go-To Guy when I Need To Know.

Read it.

The majority-Druze city of Suwayda in southern Syria has been cut off from essential supplies for more than a month after forces from the al-Qaeda-linked Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured Damascus in December 2024 and moved south.

On July 13, HTS fighters, led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani (Ahmed al-Sharaa) and backed by Turkey, attacked Suwayda and nearby villages. Local leaders say hundreds of civilians were killed, women and children abducted, and homes burned in targeted assaults on Druze and Christians.

Power and water infrastructure was destroyed, trade halted, and fuel deliveries blocked. Hospitals have been forced to operate with minimal diesel, while independent doctors report severe shortages of medicine and equipment. The Syrian Red Crescent’s local branch lost its main warehouse and vehicles, and aid now covers only about 10% of daily needs.

More than 100,000 people fled during the assault, straining host communities and exhausting food and water supplies. Many remain homeless after the destruction of over 30 villages.

In a July 18 appeal, Metropolitan Antonius of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Bosra Horan urged the international community to open humanitarian corridors: “We have no water, no food, no electricity — nothing at all.”

HTS, designated a terrorist group by the UN, US, and EU, was formed in 2017 from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusrah Front. Human rights groups warn Suwayda faces famine unless aid is allowed in.

Read it.

The return to the political season could turn into a veritable powder keg in France. Since mid-July, the slogan “Bloquons tout!” (“Let’s block everything!”) has spread like wildfire on social media, calling for a total shutdown of the country on September 10. The spark: the drastic cuts announced by Prime Minister François Bayrou, which include a €43.8 billion adjustment, the freezing of social spending, the elimination of two public holidays, and other austerity measures that have lit the fuse of public discontent, primed for years.

This is not just about numbers in a budget. Many French citizens see these cuts as confirmation that they are being asked to make more sacrifices. At the same time, the state has spent enormous sums on mass immigration policies and subsidies that rarely benefit the native population. For large sectors of society, especially in areas hardest hit by crime and unrest, the Islamisation of the country has not come cheap: it has been financed by their taxes, leading to the deterioration of entire neighbourhoods and increasing the feeling of abandonment.

Power Line.

The continuing crisis, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune,

Minneapolis hit by another round of car break-ins; at least 125 vehicles vandalized in two precincts.

That’s 125 vehicles in a single night.

Power Line.

Granted, not a high bar.

In 2019 we advanced our understanding of the frauds in which Ilhan Omar is mired thanks to the Minnesota campaign finance board investigation and findings against her for penny-ante violations of applicable law. Among other things, we learned as a result of the investigation that Omar had filed joint tax returns in 2015 and 2016 with Ahmed Hirsi, to whom she was not married, while she was still married to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. We believe that Elmi is her brother and that the marriage was a sham, which is how Omar treated it. It’s a scandal for the ages, or at least something new under the sun of political scandal.

One of Omar’s Republican colleagues in the state legislature — Steve Drazkowski — had filed complaints initiating the campaign finance board investigation. In an important story dated October 27, 2018 (published the following day, nine days before the election), Omar discussed Drazkowski’s complaints with former Star Tribune reporter Stephen Montemayor. Montemayor’s story appeared in the paper on the penultimate Sunday before the election under the headline “On the edge of making history, Ilhan Omar confronts fresh wave of scrutiny.”

Read it.

The United States Navy is testing industrial-scale 3D printing systems it says could reshape the way it supplies and repairs its ships, aircraft and other equipment, particularly in remote or contested environments where weeks-long waits for parts are not an option.

The demonstrations took place during Trident Warrior, an annual exercise in which the Navy trials advanced technologies under operational conditions. The event is designed to ensure only proven systems advance toward procurement, and it draws heavily on feedback from fleet personnel.

Working alongside the Marine Corps, the Navy showcased 3D printing capabilities that are already in use, some installed in shipping container-sized mobile labs that can be deployed aboard vessels or sent to forward bases. The printers can produce parts ranging from a small hinge to a load-bearing titanium component, and in some cases deliver them off-site via drones or unmanned surface vessels, TheDefensePost.com reports.

Read it.

An ‘elite police division’ has been assembled by the Home Office to monitor remarks made by social media users on immigration, at a time when the provision of over two hundred hotels for illegal migrants is causing rising tension in communities.

Of course, the Daily Mail article meant specially-skilled officers, but it is also true that the ‘elite’ is being protected.

For Britain is not being run for the good of the ordinary people, but for a predatory class that is solidifying its power in an emerging global technocracy.

Is it too late for citizens to resist?

Much depends on a minority of dissidents, while the majority of the populace appears docile and blissfully ignorant of the prison being built around them.

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

House Democrats are looking on in agony as Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) appear destined to duke it out for a single congressional district.

And there you have the Dramacrat party in a nutshell. A 36-year-old going up against a 78-year-old. If they were motivated by principle, the old guy would retire and let the new guy carry the torch. But it’s not about principle. It’s about power, perquisites, and status. The new guy is going to have to pry that seat out of the cold dead hands of the old guy, because it’s all about power and money, and nobody (especially a Democrat) gives up power and money without one hell of a fight.

Casar and Doggett would share a single Austin-based district under the new congressional map that Republican state legislators in Texas are proposing.

Even Axios, Voice of the Crust, realize that the Republicans are going to win this redistricting fight, so all of this “flee the jurisdiction” play-acting is just virtue-signaling for the Narrative Media, because that’s all fhey’ve got. Performance art is the scraping from the bottom of the Democrat barrel. To quote the late great Tom Lerer: “They may have won all the battles/But we had all the good songs.”

Doggett, who has been repeatedly targeted by Republicans in redistricting during his over 30 years in Congress, currently represents much of Austin and its suburbs.

Casar, a former Austin city councilman first elected to Congress in 2022, represents parts of southern and eastern Austin in a district that snakes down to San Antonio. Under the new map, the Austin portions of his district would be merged with Doggett’s.

So this re-arrangement would actually un-gerrymander the district that Casar now represents. But no Voice of the Crust like Axios is going to mention that, because it doesn’t fit the Narrative. “Austin and its suburbs” is one of the five or six Blue pustules on the rosy Red butt of Texas, a place where all of the proglodytes in the Lone Star State go to enjoy California-without-the-taxes.