Read it.

An 18-year-old transgender teen has admitted to plotting a school shooting at an Indiana high school on Valentine’s Day, reports the IndyStar.

Trinity J. Shockley, 18, who is being held in the Morgan County Jail in Martinsville, Indiana, without bond, will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder, a Level 2 felony, according to court documents.

Shockley’s attorney is requesting the teen serve no more than 12.5 years in jail and no more than five years on probation as part of the plea agreement.

The Telegraph (UK).

As he campaigned for an eighth term in office, Cameroon’s 92-year-old president confidently declared: “The best is yet to come.”

Paul Biya, the world’s oldest head of state, now has seven more years to fulfil that promise after victory extended his tenure to the eve of his 100th birthday, when he will be five times the average age of his countrymen.

Mr Biya lengthened his 43-year rule after winning 53.7 per cent of the vote to beat his rival Issa Tchiroma, who came in second with 35.2 per cent.

…

In 1986, when Yoweri Museveni took power in Uganda by ousting the military regime of Gen Tito Okello, he singled out the issue as a cause of the continent’s ills.

He said: “The problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power.”

As if to prove his point, 39 years later Mr Museveni is still in power after removing term limits and is now 81 in a country where the median age is just 17.

Donald Trump Got Mad at the TV, So Now Stuff Costs More (Jeremy Schulman/Mother Jones)

The Kavanaugh stop, 50 days later (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

Trump administration posts notice that no federal food aid will go out Nov. 1 (Adriana Gomez Licon/Associated Press)

‘King-like powers’: Chris Murphy says Trump prefers the government to remain closed (Cheyanne M. Daniels/Politico)

MSNBC’s Soboroff Repeats Misinfo from the ‘Kids in Cages’ Smear

Trump, Long Erratic on the World Stage, Reaches a New Level (David E. Sanger/New York Times)

Scott Bessent Claims He Feels Soybean Farmers’ Pain. He’s Worth $500 Million (Peter Wade/Rolling Stone)  Two unconnected stateements.

Trump Takes a Wrecking Ball to the People’s House (Collin Levy/Wall Street Journal)

Watch: Lunatic Arrested And Charged After Brutally Attacking Man In Inflatable Trump Costume

NBC’s Kristen Welker Presses Secretary Bessent to End the Shutdown  It’s not up to him; he’s not a Democrat Senator.

Meet all 37 White House ballroom donors funding the $300 million build, including Silicon Valley tech giants, crypto bros and the Lutnicks (Nino Paoli/Fortune)

James Carville Wants “Walk Of Shame For Collaborators” Once Trump Leaves Office

Swalwell: Dem Presidential Hopefuls Must Vow to Destroy Trump Ballroom on ‘Day One’

Trump: I’d ‘love to’ run in 2028 (Politico)  Cue handwringing and tears on the Left. (Trump again declines to rule out unconstitutional third term (Avery Lotz/Axios))

ICE is out of control and beyond repair (Paul Waldman/Public Notice)  Gee, we used to think that when it wasn’t doing it’s job–at Democrat orders.

How Jack Smith’s strongest case against Donald Trump collapsed (Washington Post)  Because it was still a nothingburger.

Trump Nixing of Dem State Disaster Aid Backfires, Screwing MAGA Voters (New Republic)  There’s that MAGA guy again.

3 Scandals in 4 Days That Would Define Any Other Presidency (Judd Legum/Popular Information)

Totally Brazen. Comically Corrupt. Painfully Dumb. (William Kristol/The Bulwark)  Yeah, that pretty much describes The Bullshitwark.

Leftist Commentator Compares Trump White House Renovation To 9/11 Attacks

29-year-old anarchist arrested for alleged $45K hit on Pam Bondi: FBI (Emily Crane/New York Post)

The Venezuela Boat Strikes and the Justice Department’s Golden Shield (Jack Goldsmith/Executive Functions)

Swalwell: Dem Hopefuls Must Vow to Raze Ballroom Day 1  Democrats just LOVE to waste money.

Wrecking Ball Politics: Swalwell Calls for Destructive Pledge from Democratic Presidential Candidates

Democrats unflinching in shutdown strategy, blaming Trump with millions at risk of losing food aid (CNN)

Anti-Trump Federal Employee Union Caves, Calls on Dems to Pass Clean Continuing Resolution  Money “trumps” everything.

‘This Is About Voter Intimidation’: Gavin Newsom Is Calling Out Trump’s Bid to Control Elections (Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket)

Largest federal workers’ union calls for immediate end to government shutdown (Erum Salam/MSNBC)

PBS Roundtable Falls Overboard on East Wing Demolition: ‘Shocking to the Conscience’

Trump admin warns 42 million Americans could lose food stamps as shutdown drags on (Elizabeth Elkind/Fox News)

Trump administration pledges to ‘surge’ ICE operations after recruitment spike (Emily Hallas/Washington Examiner)

‘Damn, If He Isn’t a Dictator’: ABC News Claims Trump Not Leaving Ever

Venezuela Claims Capture of ‘CIA-Linked Mercenaries’ Planning False-Flag Attack  Sure, I believe that.

Minnesota man arrested after allegedly offering $45,000 for the killing of Pam Bondi (NBC News)  Not enough for a professional hit.

Behind the Dismantling of the C.D.C.: Reform or ‘Humiliation’? (Apoorva Mandavilli/New York Times)

All the times Trump has promoted 2028 run with merch and rhetoric (Josephine Walker/Axios) Monetizing Democrat anxiety. It doesn’t get any better than that. Ah, ah, ah, ah, yanking’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

“A National Disgrace”: Largest Federal Worker Union Sides With GOP Plan To End Shutdown

Trump Asks Supreme Court to Let Him Fire the Top Copyright Official (Ann E. Marimow/New York Times)

California will dispatch observers to watch DOJ’s election monitors (Dustin Gardiner/Politico)  Why not invite observers from the U.N.?

Largest Federal Employee Union Calls On Democrats To End Government Shutdown (HuffPost)

‘The View’ Warns That Trump’s Third-Term Threats Are No Joke (Kelby Vera/HuffPost)  Yeah, they are; Democrats just don’t have any sense of humor.

Read it.

New Jersey’s largest teachers union, which has endorsed Democrat governor candidate Mikie Sherrill, will host a drag queen event days after the November election.

The New Jersey Education Association, which has 200,000 members as the Garden State’s chapter of the National Education Association, will host its annual convention on Nov. 6 and 7, two days after the gubernatorial election. At the convention, the NJEA Consortium—a union project undertaken with education and “social justice” organizations—will host a Friday event called “Drag is Not a Crime: The Past, Present, and Future of Drag.”

The convention’s floor plan also includes a booth dedicated to the drag theme. The NJEA convention theme puts “learning” third—after “equity” and “justice.”

Read it.

Over the weekend, you might have noticed, the Portland, OR, police cleared out the Antifa encampments down around the city’s ICE facility, carted away their lavish riot supplies, and warned them not to congregate on the street there. For now, anyway. Hmmmm. . . . Why do you suppose that happened? Antifa has been rioting freely around federal buildings in Portland since the Summer of Floyd, 2020. Did the police suddenly notice that Antifa has been disturbing the peace?

So far, nobody in the news media has bothered to ask the Portland Police honchos about this sudden change of heart, nor did the honchos venture to say. Did word come from higher up to finally put a stop to Antifa’s psychotic monkeyshines? Like, from Mayor Keith Wilson or Oregon Governor Tina Kotek? Wouldn’t you say those two have got some ‘splainin’ to do?

After all, the Antifa actions at this particular address were not just peaceable assemblies petitioning the government for redress of their grievances, as the Constitution has it. They were often violent efforts to interfere with federal officers going about their duties, namely, the expulsion of illegal border-jumpers. Left unsaid by the aforementioned persons in authority was whether they were in on that interference.

Read it.

Which is, of course, like painting Nazi’s as the real victims of Kristallnacht.

Read it.

Historically, cities in industrializing countries were often identified with the things they produced. Manchester is where they made textiles, Pittsburgh is where they made steel, and Detroit is where they made cars. These urban identities weren’t confined to heavy manufacturing: New York is synonymous with finance, Los Angeles with movies, and Milan with luxury goods. Nor has the tendency to identify urban areas with specific economic activities fully disappeared: Today, the Bay Area is where they write software and Taipei is where they fabricate semiconductors.

These are all examples of what the sociologist Max Weber called, in a 1921 article The City, 1 producer cities: urban areas organized economically around some specific trade or particular manufactured goods that could be exported to other areas.

In contrast to these producer cities are what Weber called consumer cities. These were places organized economically around a specific set of residents with rights or privileges to some stream of income, like land rents or taxes. Weber used historical Beijing, which was centered on government officials, and Moscow, centered on landowners collecting rents from peasants, as examples. A contemporary example is Dubai, which grew rapidly around oil revenues. 2

Weber attributed the economic development of Europe relative to Asia to the predominance of its producer cities. The advantage he posited wasn’t because producer cities were necessarily larger?—?Beijing was perhaps 10 times as large as Manchester on the eve of the industrial revolution?—?but because producer cities had a higher capacity for innovation. They were dynamic.

Because producer cities are dependent on trade with other cities or countries, they have more incentive to innovate to gain market share. Consumer cities, on the other hand, are more likely to rely on rent seeking?—?and therefore experience economic stagnation. Moreover, innovations in one producer city can spill over to other producer cities through supply chains (cheaper steel in Pittsburgh makes for cheaper cars in Detroit)?—?but anything that benefits a consumer city likely comes at the expense of another city or region (like higher rents for agricultural tenants).

The better keyboard layout your fingers already know.

I would dearly love to learn a more efficient way of typing. The Dvorak and Colemak keyboards are very attractive, but the problem is that one doesn’t type consciously but rather reflexively–kinesthetic or muscle memory is the key. Once you train your fingers on a system, you literally don’t have to think about it, but ‘let your fingers do the typing’. Re-training my fingers to that degree of virtuosity would mean losing my facility with an ordinary QWERTY keyboard; that’s fine if all I do is work with my new keyboard layout, but I’m screwed if I have to go back to using the keyboard layout that everybody else uses.

I’m going to try this new method and see how it works.

Let us count our blessings every day.

Read it.

Read it.

It is easy to say, “Nuclear should be regulated more sensibly!” But what if you had a blank slate to redo all nuclear fission regulation? How would you harness the power of fission while keeping the public safe?

There are two paths I find interesting. I’m sure there are many more possibilities, but I chose these because they also help explain a lot of the difficulty (and promise) in regulating fission power plants.

Read it.

President Trump has overseen the signing of an expanded ceasefire deal between the leaders of Thailand and Cambodia after his intervention in the border conflict between the two nations.

The conflict is one of those that Trump claims to have brought to an end “within less than a day” after he called the then leaders of the two countries, urging them to end hostilities, or risk their respective trade talks with Washington being put on hold.

The simmering conflict flared up after a Cambodian soldier was killed in a clash between patrols at the end of May and, in July, two Thai soldiers were badly injured by what they insist were newly laid landmines, a charge that Cambodia rejects.

Read it.

An immigrant was arrested after a video clip went viral showing the attempted rape of a woman on a train near Paris, local media report.

The alleged victim, 26-year-old Brazilian national Jhordana Dias, said the attack occurred earlier this month between Choisy-le-Roi and Villeneuve-le-Roi stations. According to Dias, the suspect boarded the train, pushed her, and attempted to pull down her underwear.

Another passenger—identified only as Marguerite—filmed the incident as the man fled when the train arrived at a station. The footage has been widely circulated on social media and news outlets, sparking renewed debate over women’s safety on public transport in France.

Transport police in Mantes-la-Jolie, north-west of Paris, arrested the suspect on the evening of Friday, October 24th. He reportedly gave his age as 26 and nationality as Egyptian, but was not carrying identification. He remains in custody.

Dias, who does not speak French, filed a complaint with the assistance of her brother. Two other women have since come forward, claiming to have been victims of the same man.

Read it.

Bukele is now a verb. To ‘Bukele’ something is to fix a problem that liberals say is ‘too complicated’ by simply ignoring their long-winded excuses and just doing the obvious. It is named after the leader of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who has turned a country that was once dubbed the murder capital of the world into one of the safest.

Meanwhile, Britain, once Europe’s most orderly nation, is mired in rape gangs, knife crime, and shoplifting. The UK doesn’t need Bukele-style mega-prisons, but it certainly needs his clarity.

The problem is that our elites in Westminster have mastered the art of inaction, cloaking their cowardice in excuses about complexity and human rights. They wring their hands over ‘systemic’ issues, treat illegal migration like an unsolvable cosmic mystery, and turn a blind eye to the mass rape of British girls in the name of diversity.

Read it.

Radical environmentalists like Michael Mann are organizing, teaching, and shaping the next generation in ways that are anti-human, anti-freedom, and anti-Western. Thus far, they’ve done so unopposed.

Read it.

London and Brussels are coordinating their attacks on US tech giants. Under the flimsy pretext of consumer protection, they are trying to lay the groundwork for far-reaching censorship designs through multi-billion-dollar fines.

When Germany’s Minister of State for Culture, Wolfram Weimer, delivered his verbal assault on American digital platforms last week, it got somewhat lost amid the waves of his own hypocrisy. As we now know, the minister does not think too highly of copyright rules or private property.

Weimer branded Meta, Google and others as digital colonizers whose business model essentially depends on exploiting the creative potential of users and monetizing it for their own profit. The political response to this supposed injustice is to be a kind of digital tax, levied nationally to put an end to this behavior.

Read it.

On Saturday, the last cooling towers of a German nuclear power plant were demolished in Gundremmingen, Bavaria. Germany thus continues, symbolically and materially, its isolated energy policy path. Even the increasingly dramatic economic situation seems unable to shake the German spirit.

It was a gloomy, rainy day, that Saturday, October 25, 2025, when at precisely 12 o’clock noon the last two cooling towers of a German nuclear power plant collapsed into dust.

Read it.

Like it or not, advertising is culture. Marketing is an expression of a society’s norms, values and demographics. It is meant to serve the free market by appealing to either a target demographic or the most common demographic as a way to sell products and services. That said, advertising can also be used as propaganda, designed to sell ideologies rather than soda, cars and insurance.

This has been the primary setting of marketing in the west for at least the past ten years – The vast majority of commercials have political messaging embedded within them. Though it might not be obvious for the unaware, once you notice the patterns it’s impossible to avoid them.

A new propaganda advertisement paid for by Denmark’s state television and posing as a promotion for a science show called “Evolution.”

The commercial features an “expert” interrupting a white Danish couple as they flirt with each other. He explains to them that the history of war in Denmark introduced foreign DNA into their gene pool which “protected them from disease”. He then compares their relationship to inbreeding and suggests they find new partners with more “exotic” genetics.

As an added bonus, they can claim Minority Victim status. Win-win!

Read it.

Various blue states are facing towering budget deficits as federal pandemic payments end and expenditures rise.

The result is a widening gap between the two parties on tax policies as Democratic leaders seek to avoid massive budget cuts in favor of tax increases. Two of the most economically moronic measures can be found in California and Illinois where leaders could be pushing high-tax residents out of their respective states.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking a billionaire tax that would target roughly 180 individuals who are expected to remain in the state, like some voluntary canned hunt. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson is facing the same exodus of businesses as California. His solution? A head tax on the very large corporations is needed for the city to survive. Even the far-left governor, J.B. Pritzker, is opposing the move as economically suicidal. However, groups like the teachers’ unions are pushing for this and other new taxes to support, among other things, a bloated pension plan for its members.

Spend spend spend — it’s all Democrats know how to do. And they can’t quit spending, so they have to raise taxes. And “the rich” don’t have enough money to cover the spending (and, besides, they depend on rich leftists for campaign contributions), so they have to tax everybody else to make up the differerence.

Read it.

2025 has been a great year for noticing things that would have gotten one censored, canceled, or debanked just a few short years ago.

In today’s episode, former DOE nuclear engineer Matt Von Swol notices something that’s been floating around for years; the insane number of minorities (mexicans and blacks) who are booked as “WHITE” when they get arrested – something which obviously manipulates ‘inconvenient’ crime stats – something that TPUSA’s Andrew Kolvet noted have been “widely corrupted to serve a racist agenda.’

“I searched through thousands of arrests in my county and every single Hispanic individual who has been arrested is labelled as “WHITE”” Van Swol posted on X.

“Latino”, like “Muslim”, is not a “race” as most people understand the term.

Read it.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned Sunday that he’s about make good on a threat to revoke millions in federal funds for California because he says the state is illegally issuing commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens.

In an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Duffy said California Gov. Gavin Newsom has refused to comply with Department of Transportation rules that require the state to stop issuing such licenses and review those already issued.

“So, one, I’m about to pull $160 million from California,” Duffy said. “And, as we pull more money, we also have the option of pulling California’s ability to issue commercial driver’s licenses.”

Trump’s Path of Destruction Is Far-Reaching (Jamelle Bouie/New York Times)

Judge Rules Immigration Detention of Chicago Man with Daughter Battling Cancer Is Illegal

Venezuela’s Maduro: US ‘Fabricating a New Eternal War’

Federal immigration agents deploy tear gas on Northwest Side streets as Chicagoans bellow, ‘Get out of our city!’ (Chicago Tribune)

As his two sons watch and cry, ‘Pa, te amo,’ federal agents arrest man outside of Naperville apartments (Carolyn Stein/Chicago Tribune)

Ex-60 Minutes producer Bill Owens says bosses discouraged him from covering Gaza and Trump (Jeremy Barr/The Guardian)

The Theory Behind Trump’s Gunboat Diplomacy (Thomas P.M. Barnett/Politico)  The mind-reader from Politico will give you the Narrative.

Trump Humiliates Mike Johnson Behind Closed Doors (Will Neal/The Daily Beast)

Why Trump Tore Down the East Wing (Adam Gopnik/New Yorker)

How Trump Barreled Through D.C.’s Bureaucracy to Get His White House Ballroom (Wall Street Journal)

Judge rules immigration detention of Chicago man with daughter battling cancer is illegal (Associated Press)

In Trump-Friendly Iowa, the President’s Policies Have Hit Hard (Pooja Salhotra/New York Times)

It Is Trump’s Casino Economy Now. You’ll Probably Lose. (Kyla Scanlon/New York Times)

Under Trump, Voice of America Is Down but Not Out (Minho Kim/New York Times)

SNAP funding expiration set to hit 40 million people (Mike Lillis/The Hill)  Thank you, Chuck Schumer.

How Trump Demolished the White House East Wing (Kriston Capps/Bloomberg)

MSNBC Claims Trump Wants To Use Military As Private Army To Kill Americans

Miller Eviscerates TBS (Trump Ballroom Syndrome) Leftists

Swalwell demands 2028 Dem candidates vow to destroy Trump’s White House ballroom project (Fox News)

Trump’s $230 Million Heist Is Unconstitutional (Norman Eisen/The Contrarian)

Murphy: Trump trying to transition US to ‘something much closer to a totalitarian state’ (Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill)

Read it.

As the European Union debates new measures and sanctions in response to conflicts abroad—particularly in the Middle East—a quieter, unresolved question lingers much closer to home. For more than half a century, the Republic of Cyprus, a full member of the European Union, has lived divided. The northern part of the island has remained under Turkish military control since 1974, when Turkey invaded following a coup supported by the Greek junta. That invasion resulted in the continuing occupation of the northern part of the Republic of Cyprus, a situation that has endured for fifty years on European soil.

In recent months, several voices within Europe have called for sanctions against Israel over its military operations in Gaza, citing international law and humanitarian concerns. Whether one supports those calls or not, the debate itself demonstrates the Union’s readiness to contemplate punitive action against a third country for what it deems violations of international law. Yet when the same logic would apply to Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus, a fellow EU member state, the political will to act evaporates.

Since 1974, the island of Cyprus has remained partitioned. Tens of thousands of Turkish troops are still stationed in the north, and a self-declared ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ persists without international recognition. Successive rounds of United Nations–sponsored negotiations have failed to deliver reunification. The result is a de facto occupation that has lasted longer than the Cold War itself on European territory, under UN supervision, and within a Union that prides itself on upholding law and justice.

Yet this reality rarely features in European debates about international law or foreign policy.

Read it.

A plan at Utah Valley University (UVU) to create a memorial to Charlie Kirk has been met by protests and a petition signed by thousands to block the effort.

One protester declared, “We don’t want his likeness on campus.”

That is hardly a new sentiment since Kirk was assassinated on the campus on Sept. 10, 2025.

However, the protest shows the sense of license that many have in opposing anyone with conflicting views, including those represented in memorials.

Read it.

The decentralized anti-fascist warriors in the Portland-area cell, aligned with the radical Democratic Party, were in full retreat overnight after officers from the Portland Police Department cleared out their encampment in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Portland metro area.

Nick Shirley, who is an independent journalist and who met with President Trump at the White House earlier this month for a round table on Antifa, wrote on X, “ANTIFA HAS BEEN DISMANTLED IN PORTLAND After 140 days of controlling and camping on this street in Portland, Antifa has officially been cleared out as the police FINALLY stepped in and cleared the encampment.”

“Inside the encampment, they had loads full of medicine, medical gear, party supplies, a fridge, BBQ, etc ANTIFA’s 140 days of control have officially come to an end,” Shirley said, with an accompanying video showing inside the encampment that housed gender-confused purple-haired people who hate the Western world and capitalism.

Read it.

The EU summit on Thursday in Brussels focused primarily on security issues. To put it bluntly: Ukraine must somehow turn its lost war against Russia into a victory, and the EU must be militarily ready for action by 2030. The fact that this would only be feasible with a functioning economy has apparently not yet dawned on the power center in Brussels. Instead, they are preparing for a major fiscal “liberation strike,” giving bureaucracy a lush boom of its own.

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In an entirely bizarre and alarming story emerging out of the Republic of Georgia, the country’s State Security Service announced Saturday that three Chinese nationals had been arrested in Tbilisi for allegedly attempting to illegally purchase two kilograms of uranium.

They are accused of attempting to illegally obtain “nuclear material,” Interpress news agency reported as cited in Reuters. It’s unclear whether the suspects have any official links with the Chinese government or its military or intelligence services, however. The suspects intended to buy the uranium for $400,000 and smuggle it to China through Russia, Georgian security and intelligence officials detailed further.

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One person was killed and six more were wounded in a shooting Saturday night at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University, where gunfire erupted during outdoor festivities as students and alumni celebrated homecoming at the historically Black school.

A person who had a firearm was detained, and officials are investigating the possibility that there was more than one shooter but don’t believe there is any active threat to the campus, Chester County District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe said during a brief news conference early Sunday.

“We don’t have a lot of answers about exactly what happened,” he said. “What I will tell you is that today we’re operating as if this is not an incident where someone came in with the design to inflict mass damage on a college campus.”

Imagine how low the crime rates would be if young black males were prohibited from possessing firearms.

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Twelve people were shot in seven overnight incidents in Washington, D.C., on Friday night and early Saturday morning, the most violent night recorded in the city since a federal law enforcement surge began in August, reports the Washington Post.

Read it.

Yosemite National Park is seeing a sharp rise in illegal BASE jumping and other banned activities as the prolonged federal shutdown strains enforcement — a surge conservatives say proves White House warnings about security lapses when government operations stall.

The National Park Service on Friday announced the conviction of three individuals for illegal BASE jumping inside Yosemite National Park, part of a noticeable increase in lawbreaking during the shutdown as federal enforcement bandwidth is stretched thin.

The agency said the cases, some dating back to 2020, were announced now because similar activity appears to be escalating during the shutdown, with jumpers openly leaping from iconic formations in broad daylight.

Freedom! In broad daylight! We can’t have that!

Newsbusters.

Democrats have controlled most big cities for decades, if not half-centuries or more. Our Democrat-enabling media outlets don’t press mayors or governors when blue-city governance fails. They don’t present the ugly facts. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Illinois) showed up for an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier on Special Report on Thursday, and found himself struggling with the facts.

Baier began by discussing a Fox News crime map showing which of the top most populated U.S. cities have the highest murder rates. “Why does Chicago have the highest murder rate of all the big cities?” he asked.

The Telegraph (UK).

Migrants are travelling to Spain on tourist visas and abandoning their children so that their families can claim asylum, Spanish police have said.

The parents leave their children outside police stations and children’s homes before flying home so they can be taken into state care as refugees, police in the east coast province of Tarragona said.

They aim to play the system and use the children to secure family reunification at a later date, authorities warned.
Police said they uncovered the “sophisticated” operation and have now arrested 30 people accused of abandoning their children.

The total scale of the social security fraud could amount to £1.3 million, a spokesman for national police in Spain’s Catalonia region, covering Tarragona, said.

The Telegraph (UK).

Rachel Reeves is reported to be looking to introduce a new mansion tax in next month’s Budget.

Owners of properties worth £2m and above could face a charge of 1 per cent of the amount by which the property exceeds that value, under the proposals.

Meanwhile, owners of a £3m property will face a bill of £10,000 every year, according to the Mail on Sunday.

People who own homes worth tens of millions and second home owners would also pay higher rates.

The great slogan of the Left is “TAX THE RICH!”, but the problem is that The Rich don’t have enough money to fund the modern welfare state. So: The modern state has to tax the middle class (and sometimes even the ‘working’ class) and print more paper money to fund all of the spending that they like to do.

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We used to play this game in graduate school: find one, lose one. Find one referred to finding a lost ancient text, something that we know existed at one time because other ancient sources talk about it, but which has been lost to the ages. What if someone was digging somewhere in Egypt and found an ancient Greco-Roman trash dump with a complete copy of a precious text – which one would we wish into survival? Lose one referred to some ancient text we have, but we would give up in some Faustian bargain to resurrect the former text from the dead. Of course there is a bit of the butterfly effect; that’s what made it fun. As budding classicists, we grew up in an academic world where we didn’t have A, but did have B. How different would classical scholarship be if that switched? If we had had A all along, but never had B? For me, the text I always chose to find was a little-known pamphlet circulated in the late fourth century by a deposed Spartan king named Pausanias. It’s one of the few texts about Sparta written by a Spartan while Sparta was still hegemonic. I always lost the Gospel of Matthew. It’s basically a copy of Mark, right down to the grammar and syntax. Do we really need two?

What would you choose? Consider that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are only two of the poems that make up the eight-part Epic Cycle. Or that Aristotle wrote a lost treatise on comedy, not to mention his own Socratic dialogues that Cicero described as a ‘river of gold’. Or that only eight of Aeschylus’s estimated 70 plays survive. Even the Hebrew Old Testament refers to 20 ancient texts that no longer exist. There are literally lost texts that, if we had them, would in all likelihood have made it into the biblical canon.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

Researchers have peered into the brains and bodies of living animals after discovering that a common food dye can make skin, muscle and connective tissues temporarily transparent.

Applying the dye to the belly of a mouse made its liver, intestines and bladder clearly visible through the abdominal skin, while smearing it on the rodent’s scalp allowed scientists to see blood vessels in the animal’s brain.

Treated skin regained its normal colour when the dye was washed off, according to researchers at Stanford University, who believe the procedure opens up a host of applications in humans, from locating injuries and finding veins for drawing blood to monitoring digestive disorders and spotting tumours.

Freethink.

Could solar energy be the key to unlocking a future free from fossil fuels and extreme poverty? Casey Handmer, founder and CEO of Terraform Industries, believes so. His company is pioneering technology that could revolutionize how we produce and consume energy, potentially solving climate change and global energy inequality in one fell swoop.

Terraform Industries is developing machines that create synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. It sounds like science fiction, but the technology is rooted in simple chemistry and powered by the rapidly advancing field of solar energy.

But Handmer’s vision extends beyond just replacing fossil fuels. He sees solar energy as the catalyst for a new era of human progress. By providing cheap, abundant energy to every corner of the globe, we could potentially eliminate extreme poverty within our lifetimes. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that Handmer believes we have a responsibility to pursue.

Trump’s Son Is Poised to Profit From Pentagon Drone Proposal (Eric Lipton/New York Times)

How the scope of Trump’s White House ballroom plans has expanded: From the Politics Desk (NBC News)

It’s supposed to be payday for many federal workers. Instead, they’re getting nothing (NPR)  Let’s blame Trump.

Republicans Keep Gerrymandering and I Keep Suing (Marc Elias/Democracy Docket)

DHS Is Billing Unaccompanied Immigrant Kids $5,000 (Isabelle Taft/The Intercept)

Dems Claim Trump Keeping Congress in Dark on Cartel Hits

Experts: War Dept Can’t Use $130M Gift to Pay Troops  Experts! That proves it!

At least 2 historic magnolia trees, Kennedy Garden appear to have been removed to make way for Trump’s White House ballroom (Associated Press)

The U.S. Is Preparing for War in Venezuela (The Atlantic)

House Democrats highlight impact of Trump’s Chicago deportations during emotional ‘shadow hearing’ (Tina Sfondeles/Chicago Sun Times)

Chicago Federal Judge Hauls Bovino in to Court (Josh Kovensky/Talking Points Memo)

Morning Joe: ‘Everybody’ Outside DC Finds Trump’s Ballroom Plans ‘Infuriating’

Border Patrol’s Bovino called to court after being accused of throwing tear gas canister in Chicago (NBC News)

Burnin’ Down the House — Before the orange cyclone hit town, Washington was a far more staid place. (Maureen Dowd/New York Times)  Maureen Dowd is still alive?

Newsom Says Trump Is ‘Rigging the Election’ With Federal Poll Monitors (Guy Marzorati/KQED)  And he’s encouraging crime by flooding the streets with cops and soldiers!

G. Elliot Morris on Trump’s dire polling (Aaron Rupar/Public Notice)  He means the polls that everyone is ignoring because they’re obviously fake.

Can anyone stop J.D. Vance becoming president? (Freddy Gray/Spectator)  I hope not.

How Trump’s ballroom will dwarf the White House (Washington Post)

In Florida, Obamacare Price Hikes Pose an Outsized Threat (Patricia Mazzei/New York Times)  I guess that’s why they called it the AFFORDABLE Care Act — a typical Democrat lie.

Trump’s shutdown funding workarounds are on shaky legal ground (Emily Peck/Axios)

PBS Claims Redistricting ‘Race To The Bottom’ Is GOP’s Fault

These Judges Are Warning Us We’re on the Fast Track to Martial Law (Slate)

Leftist Musicians, Record Labels Meltdown Over Spotify Allowing ICE Ads

Trump Leaves Behind a Reeling Washington to Chase a Deal With China (New York Times)  Reeling!

RFK Jr to urge Americans to eat more saturated fats, alarming health experts (Hannah Harris Green/The Guardian)  The ‘health experts’ that change the Food Pyramid every five years? Those health experts?

Shutdowns began as a way to enforce federal law. Now Trump is using it to take more power (Stephen Groves/Associated Press)  Blame the Democrats. They’re the ones causing the shutdown.

Trump Is Actually Failing Fast–and the Rabid MAGA Bigwigs Know It (Virginia Heffernan/New Republic)  Actually, he seems to be winning every day. Wonder what the weather is like on her planet.

The Foundry.

Every once in a while, the “fact-checkers” at PolitiFact publish reader comments, and this one stuck out: “Your site seems to be mostly about Trump all the time,” read one comment. “How about a little less Trump, and write more about any other falsehood subjects?”

PolitiFact’s audience chief Ellen Hine acknowledged they’ve published over 1,000 “fact checks” on President Donald Trump—1,124, to be precise. But then she trotted out the false claim that their targeting is nonpartisan: “Without keeping count, we try to select facts to check from all sides of the political spectrum. At the same time, we more often fact-check the party that holds power or people who repeatedly make attention-getting or misleading statements.”

That “without keeping count” is an obvious excuse. Anyone who attempts to count what they’re doing will quickly realize they’re very partisan in their targeting—and in their ratings on truth and falsehood.

Read it.

Scientists have used an eye implant to improve the vision of dozens of people left functionally blind by age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The implant, which measures 2 millimetres by 2 millimetres, and is just 30 micrometres thick, is surgically inserted beneath the retina to replace the light-sensitive cells that have been lost to the disease.

The clinical trial, which is described today in The New England Journal of Medicine1, involved 38 people with advanced AMD whose retinas had degenerated severely. One year after device implantation, 80% of participants had gained a clinically meaningful improvement in their vision.

“Where this dead retina was a complete blind spot, vision was restored,” says trial leader Frank Holz, an ophthalmologist at the University of Bonn in Germany. “Patients could read letters, they could read words, and they could function in their daily life.”

Read it.

Of all the famous ‘conspiracy theories,’ the Great Replacement (that white populations in Western countries are being systematically replaced by non-white immigrants) is arguably the most well-known. I have always been reluctant to entertain it, partly on the grounds that conspiracies are usually oversimplifications of more complex issues, partly because political incompetence gets you to your destination just as quickly as conspiracy, and partly because the policy of Replacement Migration as “a solution to declining and ageing populations” was just about believable (no matter how moronic it might have been). Nonetheless, the fact that Le Grand Remplacement is playing out before our very eyes, conspiracy or not, is significant; a point far better elucidated by the term’s progenitor, Renaud Camus:

The Great Replacement is not a theory, it is a chrononym, like the Great War or the Great Depression—a name for an era on the basis of its most significant phenomenon, namely the change of people and of civilization, or “genocide by substitution” (as the black poet and long-serving communist mayor of Fort-de-France, Aimé Césaire, called it). In my book of the same name, Le Grand Remplacement, the idea of a conspiracy never arises, for that would be a totally ridiculous way of describing the enormity of the industrial, financial, cybernetic, ontological, and even metaphysical mechanisms that have led to this disaster, the replaceable man, interchangeable at will. Since the Great Replacement is not a theory but a fact, a crime, the crime against humanity of the twenty-first century, it cannot be a conspiracy theory or a theory of the far right.

Clearly, there is some tension between demographic reality and the understandable reluctance to subscribe to a ‘far-right’ conspiracy. I was reminded of this discord earlier this month, when research by Channel Four revealed that UK advertisers are vastly over-representing black people in TV commercials. According to the last census, just 4% of England and Wales is black. Despite this, more than half of TV commercials feature black people. That’s no small disparity.

Read it.

John Roverts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Read it.

The average retail prices for gasoline in the U.S. are nearing the sub-$3 mark, but food inflation has remained sticky as the Trump economic team embarked this week to correct the worst cattle shortage the nation has experienced in a generation, a crisis that sent prices sky-high well before Trump’s second term. The good news this upcoming Thanksgiving holiday season won’t be the absence of American spirit at the White House, but also Walmart offering an affordable holiday meal package at price levels not seen since 2019.

Thank you,  Donald Trump.

Read it.

A young “German” is on trial in Lower Bavaria for attempting to murder his 3-year-old daughter with rat poison in order to avoid paying child support for her. The misguided youth accused of the crime was born in Afghanistan, and later made his way to Europe to enrich Germany with his vibrant diversity.

The catechism taught to Westerners about third-world immigrants asserts that the new arrivals may wear outlandish costumes and observe quaint customs, but underneath they are just like us. Stories like this one should put paid to such notions once and for all: they are fundamentally different from native Europeans and people of European descent.

Newsbusters.

On Thursday, Fox News reporter William La Jeunesse filled in viewers on several car crash deaths caused by illegal aliens who were allowed into the country under the Biden administration.

Read it.

In Sweden, a two-kilometer stretch of electrified highway allows electric vehicles to charge while they drive — a prototype for 3,000 kilometers of such roads planned by 2045.

It all sounds sleek, modern, and progressive, like something from a futurist’s dream.

Eddie Grant once sang, “We’re gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.”

But before we charge headlong into this electric future, we should pause to ask: is any of this really helping the environment?

The answer, inconveniently, is no.

Electric vehicles are not the sustainable miracle they’re marketed to be — this article details the hidden environmental toll of battery production, the inefficiency of “green” energy systems, and the deeper agenda behind the global push toward EVs and UN-driven sustainability mandates.

The prevailing narrative of “zero-emission” transportation falls apart with documented evidence, industry data, and science itself.

The green movement’s corporate and political drivers open up broader questions of personal freedom, economic control, and truth in environmental science.

Read it.

Michael LaRosa, who served as former first lady Jill Biden’s press secretary, said Friday the demolition of the White House’s East Wing was “probably needed.”

“It’s sad. I had a really wonderful office that I squatted in an hour or two after the inauguration ended, and remained there for nearly two years,” LaRosa said during an appearance on “The Sunrise on The Hill.”

“It’s heartbreaking, and I’m sentimental about it and sad,” LaRosa said. “At the same time, I think every first family, every president, should play a role in evolving the White House and updating it and modernizing it and sometimes expanding it.”