Read it.

Vice President JD Vance says he believes that government subsidies provided under the Affordable Care Act contribute to waste and fraud in the insurance industry.

“The tax credits go to some people deservedly,” he said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

But he added that the subsidies create problems.

Every government program leads to fraud, which is why they ought to be few, scrupulously overwatched, and not subsidies that attempt to put the government in the place of consumer choice.

Read it.

An Arkansas man charged with killing his 14-year-old daughter’s rapist is now running for sheriff, reports the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Aaron Spencer, 37, made the announcement in a video posted to his Facebook page Friday.

“I’m the father who acted to protect his daughter when the system failed. I’m also a husband, combat veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, a contractor, and a farmer,” Spencer said.

I’d vote for him.

The Telegraph (UK).

Hamas has carried out a mass execution in the streets of Gaza as part of a series of bloody reprisals following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from key urban areas.

Footage has emerged appearing to show around eight kneeling, blindfolded men, bearing signs of beatings, being shot dead in front of a crowd.

The Palestinian terror group, although still capable of inflicting casualties on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), had largely been overwhelmed on the battlefield.

But since the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza’s cities, under the framework of the Trump peace plan, Hamas has quickly reasserted its presence and is seeking to re-establish control.

This has involved targeting “clans”, the non-Hamas-aligned family-based armed groups that gained strength during the later stages of the conflict.

New York Post.

New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani’s wife publicly mourned the death of a Palestinian influencer who openly glorified the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.

Rama Duwaji, an animator who tied the knot with the socialist in a February civil ceremony, posted four broken-heart emojis on Instagram Sunday to grieve Palestinian influencer Saleh al-Jafarawi.

“Beloved Jafarawi,” she wrote on her Instagram story.

Jafarawi, who documented the war in Gaza, was confirmed killed Sunday in clashes between Hamas and other Palestinian factions, according to reports.

Newsbusters.

ince Hamas’s barbarism on October 7, 2023, one of the worst broadcast network correspondents has been CBS’s Debora Patta in sucking up to the Palestinian cause (read: Hamas). It was thus unsurprising her lead-off segment on Monday’s CBS Mornings actually gave equal time in the three-minute-and-24-second segment to the 20 living Israeli hostages and the nearly 2,000 Palestinians being released from Israeli jails for a slew of offenses, including some serving life sentences.

Read it.

Of the 251 hostages seized in the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas raid on Southern Israel, 20 came out alive today, all men. The shockingly low number of survivors altogether should tell you something about the moral disposition of Hamas. World opinion has not processed this in the heat of this moment, with the Gaza War ostensibly resolved, for now. . . or so we’ll see. Soon, the captives’ stories will be told.

Of course, world opinion is not what it used to be even a few years ago. These days, it oscillates around the poles of sane / insane. The Lefty-Woke wine-ladies of the Boston suburbs and their nose-ring Ivy League daughters must have the blues today over the implicit surrender of their heroes, Hamas. The keffiyeh is headed out as a fashion accessory. Who will be their next pet oppressed minority? (The Eskimos? The New York Times will put out a whole cooking section on blubber.) Note to the men (so-called) in their orbits: the gals will be loading up on Paxil and Klonopin, on top of all that Chardonnay. Consider hiding the cars keys.

Meanwhile, over at Conflict Central, the action shifts to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, today for a “peace summit” among the various party’s involved in a war settlement, many of them Arab nations of the region, plus key Euroland players. Somebody will have to police the joint, probably some combo of Gulf State soldiers and American troops. The UK, France, and Germany will have to content themselves with pretending to participate, as they have their hands full just now pretending to ignite a war with Russia. Turkey could be in the mix, too, though the odor of pre-1918 Ottoman subjugation lingers on in that corner of the world. Don’t expect a whole lot to be sorted out quickly.

Newsbusters.

The New York Times scrambled to run cover for leftist billionaire George Soros after a groundbreaking report exposing his pro-terrorism funding served as the pretext for the Justice Department launching an investigation into his Open Society Foundations (OSF).

The Times tried October 10 to attack the Capital Research Center’s investigative report showing that Soros had funneled at least $80 million into “groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence” both in the U.S. and abroad. The headline: “Report on Soros Cited by Justice Dept. Does Not Show Funding for Terrorism.”

One heavily Soros-funded group, Al-Haq, is “a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in the West Bank” that has been “long accused of ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the European Union and the United States designate as a foreign terrorist organization.” But The Times picked an obvious strawman and went to town with it by claiming the report “does not show evidence that Mr. Soros’s network knowingly paid for its grantees to break the law, which legal experts said would be necessary to build a criminal case.”

Read it.

Princeton University announced this week that it will be reinstating the requirement for undergraduate applicants to submit standardized test scores in the 2027–28 admissions cycle. It is only the latest reversal for an ill-conceived and poorly supported movement to achieve greater equity and diversity by eliminating standardized testing in higher education.

Read it.

I have no difficulty in believing that Israeli hostages were treated better by Hamas that Hamas treats the average Gazan,.

Newsbusters.

As President Trump himself articulated on Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the legacy, liberal media have been surprisingly respectful and tonally correct in expressing admiration for the peace deal between Israel and Hamas and capturing the emotion from Israelis as the 20 living hostages reunited with their families.

But in the middle of the night here in the U.S., one NBC international correspondent celebrated the Palestinian prisoners being released as “hostages” because some were merely “minors, doctors, nurses, journalists who have never been charged” but jailed by Israel under “administrative detention.”

Daniele Hamamdjian told senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson that the nearly 2,000 Palestinians being turned over from Israeli prisons are “freedom fighters” and “hostages” in the eyes of “many Palestinians”:

Jewish Chamber Defends RFK Jr. Over Circumcision, Antisemitism Claims

Religious leaders denied request to deliver communion to detainees at Broadview facility (Violet Miller/Chicago Sun Times)

NY Times Blames ‘Conspiracy Theorists,’ ‘Right-Wing Influencers’ for Antifa Violence

Maduro Doubts Trump Will Do Anything in Venezuela

Trump’s 100% tariff threat sparks defiance from Beijing (Phelim Kine/Politico)

Democratic lawmaker decries strikes on Venezuelan boats as ‘illegal killings’ (Faith Wardwell/Politico)

Trump’s Addiction to Watching Fox Is Killing American Democracy (Asawin Suebsaeng/Zeteo)

Denmark Commits $4.2B to Arctic Defense, Backs Trump’s Security Vision

Trump’s claims about violence are falling apart in court (Aaron Blake/CNN)

J.D. Vance Tried to Evade Journalists’ Questions. It Did Not Go Well (Peter Wade/Rolling Stone)

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility (Marcela Rodrigues/The Boston Globe)

CDC purge hits 600 workers in key offices despite reversals (Axios)

Why Republicans’ attempts to kill Obamacare keep backfiring (Washington Post)

Inside Trump’s “funny numbers” on mass deportations (Brittany Gibson/Axios)

Amid shutdown, Trump administration guts department overseeing special education (Cory Turner/NPR)

The White House and Republicans want to intimidate Democrats like me. They’ll fail. (Rep. Robert Garcia/MSNBC)

Republicans embrace hardball moves as shutdown enters Week 3 (Politico)

How Trump Is Making China Great (Paul Krugman)

Historic wave of retirements is putting huge strains on the government (Washington Post) And relieving a lot of strain from taxpayers.

Republicans are completely full of it on healthcare (Paul Waldman/Public Notice)

Obama rips concessions that businesses and others have made to Trump (Edward-Isaac Dovere/CNN)

Trump Cuts Dem Federal Programs: ‘They Made a Mistake’  Nothing is more common than a dozen different government programs, each supposedly dealing with the same “problem” and each with its attendant plethora of bureaucrats who all naturally vote Democrat. Don’t think that this is by accident.

Vice President Vance Calls Out NBC News for Noting Bibi Boos, Skipping Trump Applause

It Turns Out, Americans Don’t Want a Police State (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin is so wrapped up in her own little fantasy world that she can’t tell what’s actually going on.

Federal immigration operations target San Diego neighborhoods, sparking community resistance (Laura Acevedo/KGTV-TV)

Naked bike riders demonstrate against federal troops in ‘quintessentially Portland’ protest (Associated Press)  Tom Lerer: “They may have won all the battles/But we had all the good songs!”

Trump’s Guilt-By-Association Law Enforcement (William Kristol/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew succumb to Progressive Projectionism.

Coal Miners With Black Lung Say They Are ‘Cast Aside to Die’ Under Trump (Lisa Friedman/New York Times)  Because, AS WE ALL KNOW, coal miners are TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government–and the Federal taxpayer. (Maybe they could hit up George Soros; I hear he has some loose funds available.)

Is America on the brink? Political violence isn’t new in America. But the reaction to it today feels different. (Sean Illing/Vox) Of course it does. “MOMMMEEE! Donald hit me back!”

Shutdown polls show Democrats’ economic messaging still falling flat (Lisa Kashinsky/Politico) Only the Democrat base is as stupid as Democrats expect everybody to be, and that isn’t enough any more.

Obama: ‘Inherently corrupting’ for a president to use military ‘against their own people’ (Max Rego/The Hill)  When Democrats won’t enforce the law, there is little choice.

The Nobel Peace Prize Just Surrendered to Trump (Jeet Heer/The Nation)

Moment Heckler Interrupts Trump Knesset Speech

Donald Trump Heckled During Speech in Israel

People Who Have Been Calling For A Ceasefire For Two Years Denounce Ceasefire  (Babylon Bee)

Newsbusters.

For those of you wondering how CNN’s brand has fallen so deep into the toilet, the strange attitudes divorced from reality of many who work at that network might offer one of the significant reasons.

An example comes in the form of CNN’s Science and Wellness writer, Madeline Holcombe, who wrote an overlong boring rant about her neurotic hangup with the ‘male gaze’ on Saturday, “After years of progress on gender, the male gaze is back.”

The “male gaze” is back? If you even knew it ever existed as a major problem in the first place, then YOU are probably the one with the problem for even noticing. And one who has definitely noticed and can’t stop thinking about it is Holcombe who one could argue causes the male (and female) glaze — as in their eyes glazing over in utter boredom while attempting to read a rant that seems like entering an unending wormhole into an alternate universe obsessively concerned about something that never appears as a problem on the radar screens of normal people.

Read it.

FBI agents are seeking the public’s help identifying four people seen near a mass shooting in a Mississippi Delta town that left six killed and more than a dozen injured over the weekend.

The FBI’s Jackson Field Office late Sunday released photos of the four — one female and three males — shown in surveillance video and identified in an FBI poster as “unknown suspects.” Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive for the shooting in Leland, but the FBI said the gunfire appears to have been “sparked by a disagreement among several individuals.”

The shooting, which came as people celebrated homecoming weekend in downtown Leland shortly after a high school football game, was the deadliest of several shootings across Mississippi on Friday night. Four of the victims died at the scene, where abandoned shoes were left and blood stained the pavement of a downtown street the following day.

The town in question, Leland, is about 70% “African American”.

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

Read it.

Every election season, mayors and governors step before cameras to boast that crime is down.

Charts are waved, statistics cited, and carefully crafted talking points deployed to assure anxious citizens that their streets are safer than ever.

Yet when you leave the press conference and walk the sidewalks of Baltimore, Chicago, or Los Angeles, the reality feels far different.

Numbers are only as trustworthy as the people who collect them.

Read it.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) claimed that “nobody” knows what the left-wing terrorist organization Antifa is and that it does not exist, despite promoting an Antifa “handbook” in a 2018 social media post.

Ellison was reacting to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s remarks at a recent White House roundtable on political violence during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC when he said, “There really is no Antifa as an institutional organization… Nobody even knows what it is.”

He went on to claim that “the first person I ever heard use the word Antifa was Donald J. Trump when he was going on about Charlottesville.”

A since-deleted X post made by Ellison in 2018 while he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives shows him holding Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, authored by Rutgers University “antifascist historian” Mark Bray. The caption stated that the book would “strike fear in the heart” of President Donald Trump.

Read it.

British anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, went on trial on Monday accused of refusing to give police his phone PIN when stopped under counter-terrorism laws, and said billionaire Elon Musk was funding his defense.

Yaxley-Lennon, better known by his pseudonym Tommy Robinson, has become a flag-bearer for some British nationalists and one of Britain’s most high-profile anti-migration campaigners, recently organizing a large rally in London attended by about 150,000 people.

He said in a video posted on social media before his trial at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court that Musk, who often reposts his messages on X and appeared at the rally by videolink, had “picked up the legal bill for this absolute state persecution.”

Musk keeps doing things that I would do if I had his money. (He also keeps doing things that I wouldn’t do if I had his money, but there it is.)

The New York Post (Jonathan Turley).

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison famously wrote that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” He believed that members of each branch of government would jealously protect their own institutions from the other branches.

Of course, Madison never met Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). Goldman is an example of how the wrong type of ambition can destroy Congress if it becomes widespread among members.

This week, both Republican and Democratic members raised alarm over the disclosure that special counsel Jack Smith tracked the telephone calls by members of both houses of Congress.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) stated, “On the surface of it, it would strike me as a significant invasion of the right of senators to conduct their jobs, so this is something that needs urgent follow-up.”

But one member leaped to dismiss such institutional concerns as much ado about nothing. Goldman attacked the victims as legitimate targets to help “confirm Trump’s effort to overturn the election.”

Goldman has long been viewed as the face of rage politics in Washington. He often uses hearings to attack witnesses and political opponents. His signature style involves heaping insults on witnesses and then immediately “reclaiming his time” to prevent them from answering his accusations.

Dunno–soinds like a typical Democrat to me. Can’t see how he differs that much from Schumer, Nadler, Schiff, or Pelosi.

Read it.

Imagine a leftist group with ties to Antifa puts conservatives and Christians on a “hate map” with defunct chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, and that map inspires an act of terrorism and would go on to contribute to the demonization of Turning Point USA ahead of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

Now, imagine that, rather than investigating such a group, the Justice Department sidles up to it—asking these radical leftists for direction on how to track “civil rights matters.” Imagine the feds host quarterly meetings with this group, cultivating close relationships with its leaders, and inviting its staff to train prosecutors on combatting “hate crimes.”

It strains credulity, doesn’t it? How could federal law enforcement become so blind to the obvious bias and destructive influence of such an organization? How could the American people put up with an administration that would weaponize justice against conservatives in this way?

Read it.

The far-left extremist portal “Indymedia,” associated with Antifa, was used to target three politicians of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Hamburg, including the publishing of their home addresses and calls to take action against the “fascists.” The information was published both on the platform but also on stickers, which were put up all over the neighborhoods where the three politicians live.

Two AfD city council members were targeted, as well as a district council member, with the stickers distributed in the neighborhoods of all three individuals. The stickers featured the address and photos of all three politicians, along with a message that read: “Attention, AfD fascists in your neighborhood.”

The same information was published on the Indymedia website, which is well-known for publishing manifestos and calls to action for Antifa terror groups. Recently, a left-wing group took responsibility on the platform for a series of attacks on Berlin’s electrical grid, which resulted in the longest-running blackout in Berlin’s history since the end of the Cold War.

Read it.

In my previous article I suggested that the UK’s proposed “mandatory” digital ID, called the BritCard, was a bait and switch psyop. I posited that the arguments presented by Keir Starmer’s purported Labour government, to supposedly justify the BritCard rollout, coupled with the timing of the announcement, the apparent inability to understand public opinion, and the lack of necessity for the BritCard, indicated that there was something amiss with the so-called government’s BritCard proposition.

It seems to me that the purpose of the BritCard gambit is to frame the Overton Window for the public debate about digital ID in the UK.

People can accept or reject it, imagining the BritCard represents the totality of digital ID infrastructure. If the population rejects the BritCard they may well do so under the misapprehension they have defeated digital ID in the UK.

Read it.

Chinese coast guard ships used powerful water cannons on Sunday and rammed and slightly damaged an anchored Philippine government vessel off an island inhabited by Filipinos in the disputed South China Sea, the Philippine coast guard said.

There were no injuries among Filipino crewmen of the BRP Datu Pagbuaya, part of the fisheries fleet that provides support to Filipino fishermen. The Chinese coast guard targeted Pagbuaya off the Philippines-occupied Thitu island in the latest flare-up of the long-simmering territorial disputes involving Manila, Beijing, and four other governments.

Two other Philippine fisheries vessels were hit with water cannons in Sunday’s faceoff at least 1.6 nautical miles (nearly 3 kilometers) from Thitu island. There were no damages or injuries, Philippine coast guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela said in a news briefing on Monday.

UPDATE: 7 foreign missions condemn China’s ramming, water cannon attack near Pag-asa (Cristina Chi/Philstar.com)

Read it.

n a dramatic escalation of the economic standoff between China and the United States, Beijing has moved to intensify its control over rare earth minerals and magnet technologies — a strategic gambit to block trade and open a new front in the trade war.

U.S. industries and policymakers are scrambling to respond to what some analysts warn is Beijing’s increasing ability to weaponize its near-monopoly over critical minerals.

Since at least April 2025, China has imposed strict export licensing requirements on seven rare earth elements and magnet materials — among them samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium — citing “national security” and dual-use concerns.

Newsbusters.

nother Sunday has passed, and with it another cycle of omissive bias from the major legacy media political affairs shows. Two major political stories went undiscussed- both the ongoing fallout over the Jay Jones text scandal currently roiling the Virginia gubernatorial election, and the arrest of the Red Mass bomber exactly one week ago.

With regard to Jay Jones, the only Sunday show mention remains former Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short on the 10/5 broadcast of NBC’s Meet the Press. And this is an instance where he forced it on to the panel discussion, rather than something produced as a standalone segment on the show.

Read it.

Your daily hot cocoa might do more than warm you up – it could also prevent heart disease and the inflammation that drives it, according to a recent study.

Read it.

Lawyers for accused assassin Luigi Mangione asked a Manhattan federal judge Saturday to throw out some of his criminal charges – including the lone charge that could put him on death row in the December assassination of UnitedHealthcare chief Brian Thompson outside a Midtown hotel, court papers say.

The defense also wants Mangione’s statements to cops and his backpack with a gun and ammo kept out of trial, arguing he wasn’t read his rights and that officers searched the bag without a warrant after collaring him days later, according to the filing.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal raps in the Dec. 4 killing, which stunned Wall Street and sent corporate security teams scrambling. Thompson was gunned down as he arrived for his company’s annual investor conference, a murder that triggered a multistate manhunt. The suspected shooter ditched the scene on a bicycle to Central Park, then hopped a taxi to a bus depot, investigators say. He was grabbed five days later after a McDonald’s tip in Altoona, Pa., roughly 233 miles from Manhattan, and has been held without bail since.

Read it.

After years of waging a subversive war against the western world, radical leftists think they can polish their image overnight and pretend as if they were always an amicable movement of civil rights advocates. Much like the “fiery but mostly peaceful” BLM, Antifa is facing a political optics crisis and they are desperate for some spin. With the help of the establishment media and Democrat politicians, they think they have found the solution.

Like any other well organized network, Antifa activists in the Portland epicenter have changed tactics almost overnight. They are pulling back from their typical black-bloc outfits, physical assaults and intimidation and donning inflatable cartoon animal costumes instead.

Read it.

Defense attorneys representing the man accused of assassinating conservative commentator Charlie Kirk last month filed a court motion on Thursday asking a judge to allow him to attend in-person court hearings wearing plain clothes and without shackles.

During his first court appearance, Robinson was seen wearing jail clothing and what appeared to be an anti-suicide smock. He made his first court appearance virtually.

In the motion submitted to Judge Tony Graf, his attorneys argued that the change in clothes is needed to ensure that potential jurors are not impacted by seeing Robinson in jail garb and with shackles. They cited interest in the case, including 18,000 search results for his first court appearance.

Read it.

Barack Obama shared a post expressing relief that the conflict between Israel and Hamas is coming to an end, but left out one vital detail.

Couldn’t find space for President Trump’s name?

Read it.

Thanks to the Marcellus Shale formation, natural gas made Pennsylvania a net exporter of electricity. Fracking enabled Pennsylvania to power homes and industry not just here, but across the entire Mid-Atlantic. The state’s natural gas built modern power plants, attracted investment, and helped America move toward energy independence.

So how is it that Pennsylvanians are still paying more for electricity every year?

Over the past five years, electricity prices in Pennsylvania have risen 45%. It is a tick lower than the national average of a 46% price increase. However, that is hardly comforting when neighbors across the border, in states that import electricity from Pennsylvania, have seen smaller increases.

Read it.

Gray hair often shows up before anything else about you feels older. Your hair keeps growing just fine, but the color fades thanks to the cells in the hair follicles.

That switch doesn’t happen because your whole body suddenly “gets old.” It starts inside each follicle, where pigment stem cells are supposed to leave their safe zone, catch a cue, and become the color-making melanocytes that dye each new strand.

When those cells, known as melanocyte stem cells (McSCs) stop moving on schedule, the color step gets skipped – even though the hair still grows.

Read it.

The body clears medicines within hours to weeks. However, a recent study suggests that drugs you took years ago may continue to affect your gut—and the more frequently and the longer they’re used, the greater their effect.

Nearly nine out of 10 commonly used medications leave permanent changes in gut bacteria – including drugs never before linked to digestive effects, according to the study.

This holds true not only for antibiotics but also for drugs used to manage high blood pressure, anxiety, and stomach hyperacidity.

Gothamist.

Democratic nominee for mayor Zohran Mamdani has made universal childcare a centerpiece of his campaign.

The governor and Democratic mayoral nominee differ on raising taxes.

Fact check: Trump’s ‘$17 trillion’ investment figure is fiction (Daniel Dale/CNN)  “Face check” in Media-speak actually means “Narrative gaslighting”.

Rep. Claudia Tenney: Create Trump Peace Prize

Purge Politics: Jeffries Pledges Legal Retaliation When Democrats Take Power

Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs, union says (Zachary Schermele/USA Today)

‘CDC is over’: RFK Jr. lays off over 1,000 employees in Friday night massacre (Brandy Zadrozny/MSNBC)

Signs popping up around D.C. note: ‘ICE kidnapping happened here’ (Anthony J. Rivera/Washington Post)

Trump slashes mental health agency as shutdown drags on (NPR)

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him (Antonio María Delgado/Miami Herald)

‘The damage is beyond repair’: The CDC is facing another round of deep staff cuts (Brenda Goodman/CNN)

Trump escalates his use of federal power to target Democratic states (Naftali Bendavid/Washington Post)

‘Cavalier and aggressive’: why are border agents flooding into US cities? (Maanvi Singh/The Guardian)  How stupid are the people who write for The Guardian?

Purge, Merge, and Surge (Don Moynihan/Can We Still Govern?)  Since the author is evidently a Democrat, I would say “No”.

European far right follows Trump in calling for antifa to be declared terrorists (Jennifer Rankin/The Guardian)  To The Guardian, there is no ‘right’ but the ‘far right’.

Trump’s Dodgy Plan for TikTok (David Frum/The Atlantic)

Maga figures back Bukele’s call for Trump to crack down on US judges (Jason Wilson/The Guardian)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

More than half of CDC staffers recently fired by Trump administration have been reinstated (CNN)  Yeah, theu re-hired the ones they actually wanted to keep, avoiding lawsuits from those they wanted to get rid of..

‘Using us as political pawns’: federal workers reel over threats of firings and withheld back pay (Michael Sainato/The Guardian)  The Democrats certainly are.

Trump loves his tariffs. Too bad he’s wrong about them. (Glenn C. Altschuler/The Hill)

Black Unemployment Is Surging Again. This Time Is Different. (Lydia DePillis/New York Times) “Federal layoffs and an end to diversity initiatives have weakened a historically strong labor market for Black workers.” Yeah, getting rid of special treatment will have that effect.

Kilmar Abrego’s court victory could end Trump’s reign of retaliation (Nick Akerman/The Hill)

MSNBC Spreads Fake News That ICE Zip-Tied Children, Fox Debunk

Read it.

A mass shooting at a crowded bar on an idyllic South Carolina island has left four people dead and at least 20 injured, officials say.

The shooting occurred early Sunday at Willie’s Bar and Grill on St. Helena Island, officials said. A large crowd was at the scene when sheriff’s deputies arrived and found several people suffering from gunshot wounds.

“Multiple victims and witnesses ran to the nearby businesses and properties seeking shelter from the gun shots,” the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on the social media platform X.

Blacks make up the largest ethnic group on the island at 31.5%

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

Read it.

A major UK political party leader just went on TV and seriously argued that women can have penises. How on Earth did we get here?

During a recent episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, the host engaged in a bizarre debate with Zack Polanski, the newly elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. What started as a discussion on topics like the Israel-Hamas conflict and pro-Palestine protests quickly devolved into a surreal exchange on gender identity.

Polanski, representing one of the UK’s long standing political parties, boldly affirmed that a woman can have a penis, dismissed biological sex as “not necessarily” binary, and even claimed superior knowledge over the UK Supreme Court on the matter.

The interview’s pivotal clash came when Morgan posed a straightforward question: “Can a woman have a penis?” Without hesitation, Polanski responded, “Yes.” He elaborated that gender is a “spectrum” and that biological sex is “complicated,” insisting that people are not always born strictly male or female.

“A woman is a gender,” Polanski decreed, framing the issue as one of “nuance.” Morgan, visibly incredulous, laughed and called the response “absolutely ridiculous,” accusing Polanski of not understanding what a woman is—a fundamental problem for someone aspiring to lead a national party.

Read  it.

An anarchist threat, posted online, targeting federal aircraft with lasers reportedly forced emergency medical helicopters to divert from Oregon Health & Science University Hospital in Portland on Saturday night, putting lives at risk.

“Every night for weeks we are forced to listen to the threatening rhythm of helicopter blades as the federal regime spies on us,” the Rose City Counter-Info website flyer read. “The only limit power knows is our refusal to submit.

“This Saturday, October 11th, you are invited to fight back. All you need is a laser. Leave home – they can see where the laser is coming from.

Read it.

They appear to be transitioning from male to female.

Watch it.

Andrew Henderson, the Nomad Capitalist, is delightfully dyspeptic here. He likes to Say The Quiet Part Out Loud.

Watch it.

Carl Benjamin (“Sargon of Akkad”) does a great takedown of Tony Blair and the “digital ID” proposal in Britain.

This has obvious relevance to the U.S., because Britain has a habit of adopting every stupid idea about five years ahead of when the U.S. (read: Democrats) undergoes a push to adopt that same stupid idea.

I highly recommend watching the video series PERSON OF INTEREST. My public library had a set of the discs; check your public library. If they don’t have it, recommend that they purchase it.

The Financial Times. a Voice of the Crust

(The FT is the British analog of the Wall Street Journal–if the Wall Street Journal were published by the staff of Mother Jones.)

The US has moved to cancel what would have been the largest solar project in North America, as the Trump administration expands its attack on the embattled renewable energy industry.

Late on Thursday the Bureau of Land Management scrapped approval for Esmeralda 7, a 6.2 gigawatt project that could have powered nearly 2mn homes. It had begun the permitting process under the Biden administration.

The high-profile Nevada solar project backed by NextEra Energy, the largest renewable energy company in the US, is the latest to become a casualty of the Trump administration. The American president has called renewable energy projects a “scam”.

Read it.

The U.S. Department of State said on Saturday, October 11th, citing multiple reports, that Cuba has sent hundreds of men to Ukraine to fight alongside the Russian forces.

Havana rejected the U.S. claims, stating that it “does not have accurate information about Cuban citizens” who may be participating in the Russo-Ukrainian war “on their own initiative” or “within the armed forces of either side.”

The Cuban Foreign Ministry said 26 Cubans had been sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to 14 years for mercenary activity since September 2023, when reports circulated of Cubans being sent to the front in Ukraine.

Relatives of Cubans who left for Russia in 2023 told reporters at the time that their loved ones had been deceptively recruited through ads on social media.

In May, when a Ukrainian initiative encouraged foreign combatants to surrender, Kyiv said more than 1,000 Cuban mercenaries had been recruited by Russia since early 2023. “We have reliable information on the names and personal details of 1,028 Cubans who signed contracts with the Russian armed forces in 2023–2024,” said the ‘I Want to Live’ project at the time.

Read it.

Two “Belgian” culture-enrichers have been busted in Antwerp for planning terror attacks using IEDs and drones. Among the intended targets were the Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, and Geert Wilders, the leader of the PVV in the Netherlands.

In the following video press conference the Belgian federal prosecutor Ann Fransen provides background information on the case.

Read it.

30 years too late, but its a start.

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Citizenship by investment programs give wealthy individuals the chance to secure a second passport by making significant financial contributions. The requirements vary by country, but these programs typically seek investments in businesses, development funds, or direct donations.

In return, obtaining a second passport offers benefits like visa-free travel, tax advantages, or a backup plan in the event of political or economic turmoil.

In this visualization, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu breaks down the required contributions across 13 countries offering citizenship by investment, showing how much applicants need to spend to qualify.

Go Where You’re Treated Best.

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Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are drawing up detailed plans to evacuate vast numbers of their citizens to the countries’ west in the event of a Russian invasion, with officials warning that Moscow could attempt to overrun all three Baltic states in less than a week.