Read it.

Magdeburg is a city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. In the latest instance of enricher vs. enricher violence in Magdeburg, last weekend a Syrian man chased down a Syrian woman and stabbed her to death. Later it emerged that the 59-year-old victim was the ex-girlfriend of her 57-year-old attacker.

Read it.

Conservatives have faced many kinds of hostility, including 96 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and 356 attacks on Catholic churches since the leak of the Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. Democrats, too, have faced attacks—most recently the horrific shooting of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman.

This article, however, focuses on physical attacks on Republican leaders or conservative groups.

Read it.

“In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate,” a terrorist declares on the Flight 93 cockpit recording. That’s followed by the sounds of the terrorists assaulting a passenger.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he pleads. “Oh God.”

As the passengers rush the cabin, a Muslim terrorist proclaims, “In the name of Allah.”

As New York firefighters struggle up the South Tower with 100 pounds of equipment on their backs trying to save lives until the very last moment, the Flight 93 passengers push toward the cockpit. The Islamic hijackers call out, “Allahu Akbar.”

Mohammed Atta had advised his fellow terrorists that when the fighting begins, “Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” He quoted the Koran’s command that Muslim holy warriors terrorize non-believers by beheading them and urged them to follow Mohammed’s approach, “Take prisoners and kill them.”

The 9/11 ringleader quoted the Koran again. “No prophet should have prisoners until he has soaked the land with blood.”

On Flight 93, the fighting goes on. “Oh Allah. Oh the most Gracious,” the Islamic terrorists cry out. “Trust in Allah,” they reassure. And then there are only the chants of, “Allahu Akbar” as the plane goes down in a Pennsylvania field leaving behind another blood-soaked territory in the Islamic invasion of America.

Today that field is marked by the “Crescent of Embrace” memorial.

Read it.

As expected, Democrats are lining up in front of microphones, extending their sympathies to Charlie Kirk’s family, and making heartfelt speeches about the tragedy of violence in America today. They say that there is no place for vicious attacks like this, and they will do everything in their power to end this culture of violence. I should appreciate their kind words. But I don’t. They just make me angry.

My response to that apparently remorseful Democrat would be, “Look, your political party has gained power for decades by intentionally creating aggrieved groups and leveraging their resentments and jealousies to create a divided society that you think helps you in the polls.  You have built this divided, angry society.  Intentionally.  And you have profited from it.  So even if you do feel bad for Charlie Kirk, I suggest you keep that to yourself.  Just shut the %$#@ up.  I don’t want to hear it.  You can’t throw a firebomb into a school, then express regret that innocent children died.  So just shut up.  Please.  You have nothing to say, here.  So you should say nothing.“

Mr. Kirk’s murder is enraging.  But the professed sympathies of Democrats is much, MUCH more enraging.

Read it.

The bureaucratic jungle in Germany is expanding unchecked. According to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, the number of information obligations for businesses has reached a new record high this year.

In private life, state bureaucracy is omnipresent. Whether it’s filing taxes or navigating the paperwork faced by homeowners, the state routinely enlists its citizens to carry out its own administrative work. In essence, the citizen performs a protracted year of social service in administration—without compensation, always under the looming threat of legal coercion.

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

Within 24 hours of Charlie Kirk’s killing, an assistant dean at a Tennessee college, a communications staffer for an NFL team, a Next Door employee in Milwaukee, and the co-owner of a Cincinnati barbecue restaurant were fired after posting about it.

They had all used language or memes their employers deemed offensive or insensitive about the 31-year-old conservative firebrand. Kirk evoked strong feelings along party lines, and the fatal shooting in Utah on Wednesday unleashed parallel outpourings: On the right, there were mostly mournful expressions and demands for retribution; on the left, there was mostly condemnation of political violence and some suggestions that he had it coming.

“Looks like ol’ Charlie spoke his fate into existence,” Laura Sosh-Lightsy, assistant dean of students at Middle Tennessee State University, posted Wednesday on Facebook. “Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy.”

Actions have consequences. Accountability is a stone-cold bitch.

Read it.

Over 100,000 people gathered in London on Saturday for a free speech rally spearheaded by Tommy Robinson which featured an appearance by Elon Musk in a virtual interview broadcast on stage.

“It’s always better with a cat on your lap.” — Scott Adams, September 13 2025

BBC, a Voice of the Crust.

Twenty-six officers have been injured while policing a protest organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson, which saw up to 150,000 people march through central London.

Tensions flared at the Unite the Kingdom rally, with some protesters throwing bottles and other projectiles at police, the Metropolitan Police said – leaving four seriously hurt.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk spoke to protesters on Whitehall via videolink; while 5,000 people joined a nearby counter-protest organised by Stand Up To Racism.

The Met said 25 people had been arrested for a range of offences in what it described as “wholly unacceptable” violence.

A huge policing operation was put in place in central London with the Met deploying 1,000 officers and drafting in an extra 500 from other forces including Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Devon and Cornwall.

Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said officers had “policed without fear or favour”, knowing it would be challenging.

Read it.

On Aug. 22, young Iryna Zarutska was murdered—not with a gun, but with a knife. The horror in the video circulating online comes less from the weapon than from the killer’s casual comment to a bystander: “I got that white girl.”

Those words reveal this was not simply an outburst of rage. They show a moral framework in which killing “that white girl” was normalized—even justified.

That is also what makes the assassination of Charlie Kirk so alarming. Some want to minimize it as just another “gun crime.”

Read it.

CNN pays former Obama official Juliette Kayyem to be a national security and terrorism analyst, but on Saturday’s Table for Five, she demanded we all “stop looking” for a motive in the assassination of Charlie Kirk because we may never know. Despite the show airing on a different day, at a different time, and having a different name than her daily NewsNight program, host Abby Phillip continued her tradition of not interrupting her liberal guests.

ayyem was set off by GOP strategist Lance Trover, who made a completely reasonable point when he asked, “Well, will the rhetoric get toned down? I mean, again, I go back to what was on the bullet from this kid was fascism. And that’s only coming from one side currently in this debate. And it’s on every placard and every poster around the country. I mean, I think it’s a valid question, but are they going to live up to what they say they’re going to do with the Nazi and fascism and the like?”

Charlie Kirk was assassinated–but it’s still All About Trump.

You Won’t Believe How Trump Just Spun Charlie Kirk’s Death … Twice (The New Republic)

Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning move (The Guardian)

Trump vows to punish critics after slaying of Charlie Kirk (The Washington Poop)

Trump Just Went on Fox and Issued an Unnerving Threat Against Liberals (The New Republic)

Did Trump Just Declare War on the American Left? (Susan B. Glasser/New Yorker)

Trump’s lawyers won’t stop lying in court (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)

Trump Drug Boat Bombing Takes Darker Turn as Damning New Info Emerges (New Republic)

Left Cancels Ezra Klein for Claiming ‘Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way’

No, Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way (David Corn/Mother Jones)

Charlie Kirk Did Not Practice Politics The Right Way (Brian Beutler/Off Message) I guess the memo has gone out.

Lemon, Fanone Blame White Men for Political Violence after Kirk Death

FEMA employee placed on leave for saying flags shouldn’t be at half-staff for ‘racist homophobe’ Charlie Kirk (Fox News)

Gov. Josh Shapiro Puts Trump On Blast For ‘Dangerous’ Response To Charlie Kirk’s Killing (Marita Vlachou/HuffPost)

The Right Wants a Reichstag Fire (Thomas Zimmer/Democracy Americana)

‘Why are yall sad?’ Teachers, firefighters, officials on leave or fired over Charlie Kirk posts (The Hill)

Meet the New Conservative Cancel Culture, This Time With Government Informers (Ryan Cooper/American Prospect)

VOX: ‘Vicious’ Response on Right to Kirk Murder Is Call for ‘Authoritarian Repression’

The View Decries Attention Given to Charlotte Stabbing, Blame Trump

Kavanaugh says no one has too much power in US system. Critics see Supreme Court bowing to Trump (Mark Sherman/Associated Press)

Trump policies to ‘drag’ on economic growth, CBO predicts, offsetting megabill gains (Jennifer Scholtes/Politico)

Secret Service employee who called Charlie Kirk racist, blamed karma for assassination is put on leave (Ryan King/New York Post)

Keystone Kash Kept Kirk Arrest Secret So Trump Could Spill on Fox (Farrah Tomazin/The Daily Beast)

CNN’s Audie Cornish Won’t Say Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Murder Merits Criticism

Charlie Kirk Suspect’s Grandma Says Family Is All MAGA (Amber Levis/The Daily Beast)

How MAGA is abusing Charlie Kirk’s death (Public Notice)

Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning (Elizabeth Spiers/The Nation)

Dowd says MSNBC reacted to a right-wing mob in firing him for Charlie Kirk commentary (David Bauder/Associated Press)

Stephen King Apologizes for False Kirk ‘Stoning’ Claim

Streaming Star Hasan Piker Was Set to Debate Charlie Kirk. Now He’s Warning of a “Reichstag Fire Moment.” (Mother Jones)  These people have a Hitler fixation that won’t quit.

Retarded Or Evil? Leftist Arguments Justifying The Murder Of Charlie Kirk

NPR Turns to JERK Who Says Charlie Kirk Was a Racist Promoting ‘White Culture’ Against ‘Equity’

‘A Minute Silence For George Floyd But Not For Charlie Kirk?’ – EU Parliament Leaders Reject Request

Leftists Cheer For Charlie Kirk’s Assassin Then Falsely Claim He Is “Right Wing”

Pelosi: Democrats “Won’t Be Responsible” For Years Of Violent Rhetoric Against Trump

Read it.

Researchers from a large health care system in Michigan found that vaccinated children were more likely to develop a chronic health condition, but never published the findings, according to a copy of the study obtained by The Epoch Times.

Dr. Marcus Zervos, an infectious disease specialist at the Henry Ford Health, and colleagues studied 18,468 children born between 2000 and 2016 who were enrolled in the health system’s insurance plan, drawing data from medical, clinical, and payer records and supplementing with information from Michigan’s immunization registry.

After 10 years, 57 percent of the vaccinated children had a chronic health condition such as asthma, compared to just 17 percent of the unvaccinated children.

“This study found that exposure to vaccination was independently associated with an overall 2.5-fold increase in the likelihood of developing a chronic health condition, when compared to children unexposed to vaccination,” the authors wrote. “This association was primarily driven by asthma, atopic disease, eczema, autoimmune disease and neurodevelopmental disorders. This suggests that in certain children, exposure to vaccination may increase the likelihood of developing a chronic health condition, particularly for one of these conditions.”

Read it.

America’s great cities once symbolized prosperity and culture. Now, many are paying a steep financial price as crime surges and businesses flee. As one line in a new op-ed piece put it, “Crime has a balance sheet. In poorly led cities, that balance sheet is bleeding red ink by the day.”

Retail is bearing the brunt, according to an op-ed by Ted Jenkin at Fox News. The National Retail Federation (NRF) reported U.S. retailers lost $112 billion in 2022 due to theft, up from $94 billion in 2021. Between 2019 and 2023, shoplifting incidents rose 93% and dollar losses climbed 90%. Major chains are pulling back: Target projected $500 million in additional losses this year, Walgreens has shut stores across San Francisco, and Nordstrom left downtown entirely.

“Does it seem insane to you that so many of these retail stores have to lock up much of the merchandise…knowing that they will never be arrested?” the piece asked. The fallout is visible in empty storefronts and shrinking city budgets. San Francisco’s downtown vacancy rate has hit 34.8%, erasing jobs, tax revenue, and foot traffic.

Read it.

George Abaraonye, president-elect of the University of Oxford’s debating union, is facing calls to resign after he appeared to celebrate the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, The Telegraph reported.

Abaraonye sent messages to a group chat saying, “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s [expletive] go” and “Charlie Kirk got shot loool.”

Gregory Stafford, a Conservative MP and former treasurer of the Oxford Union, said Abaraonye has brought the society “into disrepute.”

Read it.

The U.S. Department of Education has stopped awarding grants to colleges based on the share of minority students they enroll, saying it is unconstitutional to use taxpayer dollars to promote “racial or ethnic quotas” at those schools.

As indeed it iw.

Read it.

Unless you live under a rock, you will jnow by now that conservative activist Charlie Kirk (31) was shot dead while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

At the time of writing, the shooter is still at large and a manhunt is underway.

Kirk was an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump and the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative student movement.

In a statement, Trump blamed the rhetoric of the “radical left” for Kirk’s death while politicians on both sides of the aisle shared their condolences.

The shooting adds to a growing list of incidents of politically-motivated violence in the United States, with echoes of an incident last year when Trump was also nearly shot at a rally in front of a crowd.

Despite the major rift that exists between left and right, data shows that such acts of political violence are not tolerated by the vast majority of U.S. adults.

Read it.

A lot of people have noticed that a disproportionate number of teachers have been celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

If you haven’t been following the disastrous state of our public schools and figured out how ideologically captured they are, this might surprise you.

UPDATE: Charlie Kirk’s Murder Cheered Online by Liberal Teachers Across U.S.

The Times (UK).

British nuclear-armed submarines will be detectable in the future with the development of technology designed to make the oceans transparent, a top Canadian military chief has warned.

In an interview with The Times, Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, said the military needed to prepare for a scenario where the oceans are “effectively transparent and submarines are no longer allowed to hide”.

He said such a prospect threatened to “destabilise [the] nuclear deterrent” and that it was “sensible” to have the ability to fire or drop nuclear weapons from other platforms in addition to submarines.’

Are you scared yet? That appears to be his plan.

Finally, at the NINTH PARAGRAPH, we get some actual information:

European defence companies are already developing technology designed to track enemy submarines posing a threat to the West. Autonomous mini-hunter submarines that can lurk under the sea for months on end will be able to use artificial intelligence to detect and identify sounds that could betray the presence of a sub — part of the new Lura system, developed by Helsing, a European defence company. Experts believe this system will effectively “illuminate” the oceans and make the hunt for Russian submarines much easier.

Experts believe! That proves it!  Actually, sound has been the vulnerable point for submarines for decades, and everybody is working to make subs quieter and quieter. Those efforts will not cease.

And, of course, the Israelis were banned from participating because … well, reasons.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

The Claremont Institute has been located in Southern California since its founding in the late 1970s. From its perch in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, it has become a leading intellectual center of the pro-Trump right.

Without fanfare, however, some of Claremont’s key figures have been leaving California to find ideologically friendlier climes. Ryan P. Williams, the think tank’s president, moved to a suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in early April.

His friend and Claremont colleague Michael Anton — a California native who played a major role in 2016 to convince conservative intellectuals to vote for Mr. Trump — moved to the Dallas area two years ago. The institute’s vice president for operations and administration has moved there, too. Others are following. Mr. Williams opened a small office in another Dallas-Fort Worth suburb in May, and said he expects to shrink Claremont’s California headquarters.

“A lot of us share a sense that Christendom is unraveling,” said Skyler Kressin, 38, who is friendly with the Claremont leaders and shares many of their concerns. He left Southern California to move to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 2020. “We need to be engaged, we need to be building.”

Newsbusters.

The federal government owns about a third of America.

Since we’re on a path to bankruptcy, it would be smart to sell some unused property.

President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary says it may be worth as much as $200 trillion. Selling just a fraction of it would reduce our enormous debt.

Not just that — since government doesn’t manage things well, selling or leasing some would leave it in better condition.

Federal bureaucrats have been slow to do controlled burns and remove deadwood that becomes fuel for fires.

“Fires on federal lands accounted for more than half of the acres burned,” says the Congressional Budget Office.

But whenever a politician suggests selling any land, environmental activists freak out.

Newsbusters.

Forget commemorating the thousands of lives lost on 9/11. The Economist is instead pushing readers to float the idea of socialism firmly being established as the left’s bulwark against Trumpism in New York. Talk about completely butchering your priorities.

In a crazy September 11 piece, the British magazine sought to downplay communist Democratic New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s affiliation with the radical Democratic Socialists of America party. In “Who’s afraid of the Democratic Socialists,” the outlet was giddy over the fact that they could “prove to be the left’s populist alternative to Trumpism.” For Mamdani, The Economist tried to help his illusory “centreward” rebrand of himself by distancing him from the DSA’s nutty platforms like defunding the police and closing jails.

How did the outlet achieve this? According to The Economist’s spin, the DSA “no longer officially holds those positions.” No, you didn’t misread that.

Read it.

Democrats are not only the party of enmity but also the enemies of liberty and justice for all. Enmity consumes the Democrat Party, based not on hostility to certain ideas but hatred of certain individuals, chief among them President Trump and his friends and advisers. Among the latter is Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, whose new book, I Went to Prison So You Won’t Have To, details Democrats’ efforts to criminalize politics. Navarro writes from experience and about his experiences as a political prisoner, enjoining us to defend the Constitution.

Read it.

For much of the past century, in both the United States and elsewhere, the inexorable trend has been for people to move from rural areas and towns to ever larger cities, particularly those with vibrant downtown cores such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and dozens of other iconic American cities. Most visions of the future still view urban cores as the uncontested centers of production, consumption, and culture, with rural areas, small cities, and suburbs relegated to the backwaters of modernity.

A RealClearInvestigations analysis has found that we may be on the cusp of a new era. Urban cores have started to shrink, losing first to the suburbs, then to ever further exurbs, and now to small towns and even rural areas. For the first time since the 19th century, America’s growth pattern favors smaller metros – Fargo, North Dakota, as opposed to Portland, Oregon – many of which once seemed out of favor.

This transformation can be hard to detect because demographers often discuss metropolitan regions, which put city centers at their cores. But this method of classification masks the trend that much of the growth is at the edges of these areas. In virtually all the fastest-growing metros, it has been the further-out exurbs, themselves until recently rural areas, that have experienced most of the expansion. While Raleigh, North Carolina – a sleepy state capital for much of its history – continues to draw migrants from across the country, the most explosive growth is not occurring in the city center but the surrounding “countrypolitan” towns of Apex, Fuquay-Varina, and Zebulon that offer land and a relaxed rural environment along with access to modern amenities.

Between 2010 and 2020, the suburbs and exurbs of the major metropolitan areas gained 2 million net domestic migrants, while the urban core counties lost 2.7 million. The pandemic, which normalized remote work and encouraged people to keep their distance, turbocharged this movement to smaller, less crowded, less expensive housing markets. Through the first four years of this decade, the urban core counties of the major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) lost 3,259,000 net domestic migrants, three times the rate of loss in the last decade. In contrast, 2.3 million net domestic migrants moved outside the major metros.

Read it.

New refrigerators, ovens and dishwashers come with all sorts of novel features — you can see your vacation photos on a screen on your fridge door, remotely monitor food temperature or connect your dishwasher to the internet. They’re also less expensive and more efficient than in decades past.

But many of the latest models of kitchen appliances have shorter life spans than those of yesteryear. Thanks to how complex they are, they require maintenance sooner, and the cost of repair often rivals the price tag of a new appliance altogether. Plus, it turns out a lot of people simply aren’t using most of the newfangled features.

Probably nobody knows the particular limitations of new appliances better than the people tasked with repairing them.

“We used to be able to tell people a dishwasher could last 15 years. And now you’re lucky to get five to seven out of a dishwasher,” says David Costanzo, owner of Appliance King of America in Boynton Beach, Fla.

Read it.

Do androids dream of executing routines?

We are stuck in a world of routines: Wake up, answer email, go to a meeting, then another meeting, check off an item from a todo list, and repeat. The “hustle culture” of the internet tell us to add even more to the routine: Grind more hours, wake up at 5am and do yoga, remember to meditate, work out an hour a day, and so on. There’s endless tips on what successful CEOs do with their mornings, making us feel bad for not executing core loops with machine-like efficiency.

You’ll get none of these ideas here. This is the anti-routine essay, in which I refute the paradigm of fitter, happier, more productive routines as the secret to success. Our careers are defined by the highest moments of its biggest upside swings. The question is how to create the most opportunities at achieving that, not how to execute perfect little habits. That is: Reject the core loop, the checklists, and all the email. Embrace serendipity!

The Telegraph (UK).

A Jewish tourist couple have been assaulted by a group of 10 migrants in the latest in a series of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.

The American and Israeli pair were surrounded by the North African men shortly before midnight on Strada Nuova, one of the main shopping thoroughfares near the Rialto Bridge in the northern Italian city.

The couple, wearing Orthodox clothing, tried to flee but were chased and surrounded by the group, who chanted “Free Palestine”

One then set his unmuzzled rottweiler on the tourists, while another slapped the man and a glass bottle was thrown, shattering and injuring the woman’s ankle.

Officers from the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial crimes unit, saw the attack and intervened.

The Telegraph (UK).

The suspected gunman who shot Charlie Kirk was handed into police by his father, ending a two-day manhunt.

Donald Trump announced the arrest, and called for the death penalty for the 22-year-old accused of assassinating the president’s close friend and political ally.

“I think we have him,” Mr Trump said during an interview with Fox and Friends.

College drop-out Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested on Thursday night and is expected to be charged with murder.

The Times (UK).

Thousands of supporters of Tommy Robinson have gathered in central London to attend a “free speech” march and rally organised by the far-right activist.

The protesters, many of whom waving Union flags and crosses of St George, are due to set off at 1pm from near Waterloo train station to the bottom end of Whitehall, where they will be addressed by Robinson and a string of other populist speakers.

Thousands of people are also expected to attend a counter-protest organised by the Stand Up To Racism group. They will march from Russell Square to the top end of Whitehall, via The Strand, under conditions laid out by the Metropolitan Police

John Derbyshire used to say that there was nothing wrong with New York City that adding about a million ethnic Chinese couldn’t fix.

Navy Matters.

As you know, the F-35 does not yet have its full combat capabilities.  Those were part of the incremental Block software upgrades and should have happened years ago.  Now, the Block 4 upgrade effort has been delayed yet again.

The Pentagon now anticipates the F-35’s Block 4 modernization won’t be complete until 2031 at the earliest, a five-year delay from its original timeline, even as the department rescopes the effort to include fewer capabilities than originally envisioned … [1]Note the phrases,
“at the earliest”
“include fewer capabilities than originally envisioned”
You know, beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, that the even the much delayed 2031 date will slip further still and the already downgraded capabilities of the Block 4 will be further downgraded.  Honestly, at the rate we’re going, Block 4 isn’t going to deliver much in the way of new capabilities, at all.  Many features have already been deferred to a nebulous, non-existent. Unfunded, future upgrade instead of the Block 4.

Read it.

The ultimate in status differentiation is the slave relationship. The slave has no agency, while the slave-owner has full agency for two. Leaving aside the special case of contract slavery, the general point about enslavement is that it reduces human freedom to the point where only death can exceed it in terms of general freedom reduction.

The anti-slavery movement is one of the very, very few good causes which the sane majority in civilised countries almost unanimously supports. The mystery for most people is that we are told the worst slavers were the Europeans who transported slaves from Africa to America for three hundred years when in fact slavery in the Islamic world has lasted since the time of the Prophet, which was fourteen hundred years ago. Over the piece, many more people were enslaved by Arabs and Turks than by Europeans. So why have we heard so little about Islamic slaving?

I cannot answer that question, but I can point to an excellent book which tells the story: Captives and Companions: a History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, by Justin Marozzi. Published in July this year, it could hardly be more up to date. The author is an experienced Islamologist and traveller in Arab lands. Marozzi’s base is the University of Buckingham where he is “Senior Research Fellow in Journalism and the Popular Understanding of History.” For myself, I never knew that there was any significant popular understanding of history—otherwise how could the slavery issue have become so distorted in the public mind?

I have to laugh every time I see a black person with an Arabic name.

Protesters Call Out Trump as He Dines Out in Washington (Tyler Pager/New York Times)

Is the signature Trump’s? Epstein birthday book feeds speculation. (Matt Viser/Washington Post)

Melania, Please Talk To Donald About Epstein

Activists Protest Trump At DC Restaurant, Call Him ‘Hitler Of Our Time’ (Li Zhou/HuffPost)

How to Exploit Trump’s Weaknesses (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Usually this boils down to Make Shit Up And Act As If It’s True.

MAGA Melts Down at Secret Service Over Trump’s Humiliating Dinner (Ewan Palmer/The Daily Beast)

Schumer moves to force Senate vote on Epstein files (Jordain Carney/Politico)  If Trump weren’t (putatively) involved, no Democrat would give a shit about Epstein.

Hey, Donald: The Red Carpet Didn’t Work (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

The real reason Trump will never fire RFK Jr. (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Mainsream media mind-readers are at it again.

Schumer moves to force vote on Epstein files release in brazen breach of Senate protocol (CNN)

Schumer to force a vote in the Senate compelling DOJ to release Epstein files (NBC News)

The Epstein Birthday Book Is Even Worse Than You Might Realize (Jessica Winter/New Yorker)

Reporter Suspended After Question About Charlie Kirk Enrages MAGA Congressman (Ron Dicker/HuffPost)  Is MAGA a ‘race’, like Muslim, in the lexicon of the Left?

Trump’s Dangerous Response to the Kirk Assassination (Jonathan Chait/The Atlantic)

Why Charlie Kirk Mattered So Much to the Right (Will Sommer/The Bulwark)  Yet more mainstream media mind-reading.

“This is existential”: MAGA’s siege mentality deepens after Kirk killing (Tal Axelrod/Axios)  Proglodytes don’t see individuals, merely functionally identical instances of a class. Therefore, ‘MAGA’ can have only one opinion, which is automatically shared by everyone that proglodytes label “MAGA”.

Let’s Not Forget Who Charlie Kirk Really Was (Joan Walsh/The Nation)  The term of the day is “despicable”.

Stewart Suggests ICE Heading To Chicago Is Like a Nazi Invasion

Far-right commentators echo Trump in calling for ‘vengeance and retribution’ for Charlie Kirk’s death (Tess Owen/The Guardian)

Rep. Moulton: If Serious About Violence, Trump Should Rescind Pardons

Democrat: Trump could show he’s ‘serious about stopping political violence’ by ‘rescinding’ Jan. 6 pardons (Tara Suter/The Hill)  Sure, rescind the pardon for Fauci.

Read it.

When a High Court judge wishes a convicted terrorist “all the best,” something has gone badly wrong in our legal system.

Justice Robert Jay made the remarks when approving the release of Haroon Aswat, the al-Qaeda terrorist who, in 2015, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the U.S. for setting up a terrorist training camp. He was deported to the UK, his country of birth, in 2022 and has been detained under the Mental Health Act ever since. During his hearing prior to his release this week, Justice Jay appeared to sympathise with Aswat, saying, “It could not have been too pleasant being in American custody all that time.” He then advised Aswat that “the way forward is to keep on your medication, listen to the advice you are going to get, and keep out of the sort of things you were doing.”

The “sort of things” Aswat has been doing is assisting literal terrorists.

Read it.

Around 200 migrants who arrived in the UK illegally by crossing the Channel from France could collectively receive millions of pounds in compensation—paid for by the taxpayer—for being kept in “inhumane” conditions.

Lawyers representing the asylum seekers have lodged legal claims against the Home Office for the alleged unlawful detention and mistreatment of migrants at the Manston migrant holding centre near Dover, citing the favourite weapon of the pro-open borders crowd, the European Convention on Human Rights.

Read it.

Angry protesters took to the streets of Paris, confronting police and adding to the escalating political pressure on President Emmanuel Macron’s government.

At least 50 people were taken into custody in the capital as part of the ongoing “Block Everything” campaign, aimed at halting transport links nationwide. Protesters attempted to obstruct roads and key rail hubs, including the Eurostar at Gare du Nord, on Wednesday morning.

It would appear that the French are getting fed up as well.

Power Line.

Under Article II of the Constitution, the President is the executive branch. But over the years, Congress has tried to limit the power of the President by establishing a number of “independent” agencies–the SEC, the FDIC, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and so on. In many cases, Congress has purported to limit the President’s ability to fire employees of those “independent” agencies, even though they are part of the executive branch and nominally under his control.

Democrats like this arrangement, since the agencies are staffed overwhelmingly by Democrats. They have served to undermine every Republican president of the last generation. Until now, Republican Presidents have generally put up with the fact that they do not effectively control the executive branch, but President Trump has moved to assert his proper constitutional authority in several ways.

Most notably, in February he issued an executive order which we wrote about here. It asserted, in several ways, his authority over the “independent” agencies. He has also fired a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve for cause, and, more importantly, he has fired other executive branch officials without cause, as should be his prerogative under Article II.

Read it.

A federal appeals court ordered Vermont to let a Christian school compete in state-sponsored sports events—even though the school doesn’t support the state’s view of “transgender” ideology.

That decision allows the school to finally participate in athletics again after suffering a yearslong ban for forfeiting a game that would have forced girls on its team to compete against a male playing on the opposing girls’ team.

In an opinion released Tuesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that state officials likely “displayed hostility toward the school’s religious beliefs” by banning it, and it instructed Vermont to let the school compete while the case continues.

Read it.

Later this month, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk will issue a report calling for massive reparations from the West for the alleged harms wrought by colonialism. It will be the culmination of a long-gestating effort within the U.N. and by Third World nations to squeeze money and demand other goodies from former colonial powers in the name of “reparatory justice.”

In addition to being historically ill-informed, the effort is racist. What began as a simple extortion effort has since been supercharged into an all-out assault on European cultures. Since being appointed in 2022, Türk has transformed his office. It now issues daily muezzin calls for uncontrolled mass migration to the West and the erasure of white cultures. His report should cause Western nations to abandon every U.N. agency that pursues this sick agenda.

The genesis of the colonial reparations movement (and the adjacent slavery reparations movement) that Türk is building on began as a fringe cause among Western Marxists in the 1970s. It was taken up by African nations following the first major conference on the topic in Lagos in 1990. The U.N. joined the chorus in the 2000s. It mustered political support for a renewed “Big Push” of development aid to Africa (most former colonial Asian nations want nothing to do with this backward agenda). The clamor grew by merging with the “racial justice” movement that erupted in the 2010s, reaching its crescendo on the streets of Minneapolis in 2020. “Behind today’s racial violence, systemic racism and discriminatory policing lies the failure to acknowledge and confront the legacy of the slave trade and colonialism,” Türk’s predecessor said at an “urgent” U.N. meeting at the time.

The Foundry.

Crime in Charlotte, North Carolina, spiked under a left-leaning district attorney before the August stabbing death of a woman on a public train thrust the city into the national spotlight.

Violent crime in Charlotte was 13% higher in 2024 than in 2018, despite decreases after a COVID-19-era crime surge, according to FBI data that records homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Left-wing officials such as Democrat Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather, who has focused on promoting racial equity in the justice system, are now under renewed scrutiny since the Aug. 22 arrest of a mentally ill suspect with a lengthy criminal history in the murder of Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska.

Read it.

From the Associated Press (AP): Charlotte leaders criticized over killing of Ukrainian woman as Trump, MAGA target another Dem city.

From the New York Times: A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right.

From BBC News: Fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina ignites crime debate.

From The Hill: Duffy: Rise in public transit violence an ‘epidemic’

From Axios: Stabbing video fuels MAGA’s crime message.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times the horrific stabbing of that 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee on a Charlotte NC light rail train last month. Until clear video emerged of the event, the murder remained a local news story.

But since then, left-leaning media first tried to ignore the story, then frame it under “Republicans pounce,” “crime statistics are dropping,” “the mental health crisis,” and other distracting narratives.

Power Line.

I have written several posts on California Federal District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s temporary restraining order more or less preventing ICE from operating in California’s Central District — the district covering the seven counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. The counties’ population of nearly 20 million people is the largest of any federal judicial district in the country. I wrote about Judge Frimpong’s crimping of ICE in posts that are accessible here. It’s crazy, baby. That’s my view.

Heather Mac Donald took up the case and the mysteries of Judge Frimpong herself in the City Journal column “Using a Double Standard on Race to Handicap ICE.” Subhead: “A federal judge ruled that agents impermissibly used race in questioning suspected illegal aliens—but she’s hardly color-blind in her own courtroom.” As one would expect from Ms. Mac Donald, it is an excellent column.

The government appealed Judge Frimpong’s order to the Ninth Circuit. The appeal remains pending, although the government has not received the emergency relief it sought from the court while the appeal is pending. The government therefore took its request for relief to the Supreme Court.

Read it.

And France does nothing to stop it. This is a prima facie act of war.

Read it.

Molenfest 2025 as a run-up for their bid to become one of the EU’s cultural capitals in 2030 (ECOC30).

The festival celebrates the diversity of the town’s population (140 nationalities make up the almost 100 thousand inhabitants), but many now dare ask the question whether that is a good thing.

Fatima Zibouh, member of the organizing commission of Molenfest2025, said the dream of becoming a cultural capital in the future started to improve the image people have in their minds about Molenbeek.

Read it.

A major police operation was launched in Vienna’s Brigittenau district on Tuesday morning after a 16-year-old girl was injured in a knife attack near a local school.

The teenager was quickly taken to a hospital and is reported to be out of life-threatening danger. Authorities are actively searching for the suspect.

The attack occurred near a high school on Karajangasse. Police spokesperson Julia Schick told APA that a thorough search of the school building was conducted but did not yield any further leads. The search was concluded shortly after noon, though the manhunt for the perpetrator continues.

Classes at the high school were temporarily suspended during the police operation but resumed in the early afternoon. Students, parents, teachers, and local residents had gathered outside the school as news of the attack spread.

The exact motives and circumstances surrounding the attack remain unclear. The press office of the State Police Directorate initially refrained from further comments, while the State Criminal Office has taken over the investigation.

Authorities deployed a large presence at the scene, including the Vienna Emergency Response Group and Security Dog Unit to secure the area and support ongoing investigations.

Read it.

The Bouches-du-Rhône juvenile court sentenced two men to long prison terms for the rape of an 18-year-old woman near the SNCF train station in Aix-en-Provence in December 2021.

“It’s a brutal rape par excellence,” said the victim’s lawyer, Maud Bertrand, to Le Figaro.

The court handed Mohamed Annabi, a 29-year-old Algerian, a 17-year sentence that includes a two-thirds security period, a permanent ban from French territory, and registration in the FIJAIS (automated judicial file for perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses). His accomplice, Amen-Allah Handiri, a 20-year-old Tunisian who was 17 at the time of the crime, received 15 years.

The attack took place on one December night in 2021. Around 3 a.m., the victim, referred to as Anissa, left the Shakespeare Club on Place Ramus. Walking home alone, she was approached by the two men, then aged 17 and 25, who spoke to her in Arabic. Sensing their pursuit, Anissa called her boyfriend in an attempt to scare them off. “Stop, I don’t know you!” her boyfriend shouted through the phone, before hearing crying and then silence.

Read it.

When I served as an Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadet at Fordham University in New York City, the Department of War paid for my degree in American Studies. During my coursework, I read books like The New Jim Crow and was bombarded with the claim that the country I had signed up to defend was irredeemably racist and broken. My civilian classmates and professors were overwhelmingly liberal, and the university was in the capital of liberalism. I spent most of my time in that milieu as opposed to dedicated environments conducive to military formation.

ROTC should be nowhere near Fordham University. In fact, the Trump Administration should end ROTC programs in blue states, leftist cities, and anti-American universities, focusing instead on institutions that actually love America. Training military officers in environments that serve the national interest is a critical step toward restoring the U.S. military as a whole.

No longer should ROTC programs be benefactors of the woke and weaponized higher education system. The colleges and universities that ROTC cadets attend—and that the federal government pays for—shouldn’t feature Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) quotas, the teaching of Critical Race Theory and other divisive ideologies, and the promotion of gay and lesbian lifestyles.