Read it.

I had come here expecting that we would find ruin and neglect, toxicity and destitution. I expected Centralia to be an exemplar of the eerie: A place where once there had been a town, place of thriving life, and instead now was only absence, an emptiness, a void.

What we found instead, strangely, was beauty. Centralia, despite everything I’d been led to expect, was thriving.

Visitors find a similar situation at Chernobyl. Nature has ways of compensating for human ineptitude.

Locals see the story a little differently, though their version borrows from similar themes. Phil, a tour guide at Pioneer Tunnel in neighboring Ashland, pointed out that while the grim toil of the mines claimed many human lives, their closure left the valley with little else to offer. He explained how the families that didn’t leave Centralia were harassed, as government forces tried to drive them off their land. Those that stayed had to go to court to defend their right to live on this abandoned land, all because they wanted to keep the mineral rights to their property. So now, people like Phil assume that the government is just waiting them out. Once they’re gone, putting out the fire will be easy enough. “They’ll take all that red hot coals, but also they’re going to get that rich anthracite coal,” he told us. “And I’m sure they’ll sell that. But are the people or the relatives going to get anything? It’s very doubtful. It’ll probably go to the federal government. Or the coal baron, maybe?”

People have been carefully trained over my lifetime that when the government is here to help, it usually means they are her to help themselves to whatever you’ve got.

Read it.

London police confirmed on Sunday, January 25th that 86 protesters were arrested after entering the grounds of Wormwood Scrubs prison in West London during a demonstration supporting the Palestine Action prisoner on hunger strike there.

Demonstrators reportedly refused to leave when ordered by officers, blocked prison staff from entering and exiting the facility, and several were seen inside a staff-only area of a building within the site.

The Metropolitan Police said the arrests were made on suspicion of aggravated trespass and stressed that while security was not compromised, the disruption and threats directed at officers and staff were “deeply concerning.”

The protest centred on support for Muhammad Umer Khalid who, according to advocacy group Prisoners for Palestine, has been on hunger strike for more than two weeks. The Ministry of Justice reminded observers that Palestine Action is banned under UK anti-terrorism law following earlier protests and alleged criminal activity.

Read it.

Last week CPB commander Greg Bovino was asked what makes Minneapolis different from other cities where ICE enforcement operations have taken place. Bovino noted in the Minneapolis region there is no separation between the extremists on the ground and the people in local government. Today, Vice President JD Vance concurs and expands on that sentiment.

What Vice-President Vance says here is very important.  The regional government is a stakeholder in maintaining the chaos on the streets.  Why?  Because for two decades a cancer of rampant financial fraud has been permitted to spread throughout the Minneapolis region and has now reached the stage of visible metastasis.

Shortly after the George Floyd shooting, some of us started looking into a background issue where it seemed like local police and Floyd had a knowledgeable relationship with each other prior to the encounter on the street.  The initial contact between Floyd and police was about Floyd passing off a counterfeit $20 bill to a business that was not part of the approved money laundering operation.

When you follow that trail, you end up in a really weird place where it seemed like millions of counterfeit dollars were entering the country through Mexico, going by rail into the U.S. mainland and then transitioning through the Minneapolis region. I stopped researching it when I discovered that Floyd and police officer Chauvin were friends, and worked together at one of the laundry businesses; a nightclub.

Read it.

First off, if you had a picture of a guy with a five o’clock shadow and a cowboy hat on a wanted poster, I’ll have to disappoint you. I’m talking about a historical practice by governments, most notably Rome and England, of declaring someone outside the protection of law. In US history, the phrase “Wanted Dead or Alive” comes to mind.

What it comes down to is that the government has declared in some official way that a person is outside government assistance: no police protection, no right to trial. In our later, cozier times maybe even no ambulance service.

Someone aware of being in this situation could be expected to behave accordingly. The world becomes a prison yard, and being hyper aware of any threatening behavior by others or, in gang parlance, being “disrespected,” requires an over-reaction to everything if you don’t want to look like a target. You’re in enemy territory and help is not coming. Anyone menacing needs to be made an example.

In Minnesota and elsewhere, the police have been instructed not to assist ICE in any way. The practical impact of this is that ICE agents now have to make arrests expecting to be followed in vehicles and surrounded by hostile crowds, some of whom expect prestige by pushing things that much further. No one’s going to expect the crowds to conform to a Chronic Demonstrator’s Code of Conduct.

The agents are very much in a hurry: get in, get out, and expect no help from the police. Put yourself in this situation. You’ll respond, “I wouldn’t put myself in this situation.” Okay, understood. But I’m betting you wouldn’t behave as if you were in Dragnet, you’’d more likely act as if you were in Blackhawk Down.

I propose that, if we want everyone safer, it would be good for the politicians at the state and local level to expect the ICE agents to be treated as citizens, and to receive similar protections. That would mean having professional local cops on site, which would pay benefits beyond the immediate increase in safety. It might reset the agents’ expectations of the pace they have to proceed and the aggression they have to bring to the situation. They might even develop working relations with the police, who have thousands of hours’ more street time and might come to serve as the role models I’ve often considered them. There are complaints of ICE’s inexperience — well, here you go. Experience rubs off.

Oh, and it would be nice if the places where they were eating and sleeping received a normal amount of protection also. That is, if we don’t want them to behave as if they’re in a war zone.

Power Line.

The entire establishment in Minnesota has mobilized against ICE’s presence here. Renee Good, who ran her vehicle into an ICE officer, apparently on purpose although we will never know for sure what she was thinking, is treated like a second Joan of Arc. Meanwhile, the local, national and international “news” media consistently lie about the men and women of ICE, smearing them as fascist predators.

A classic instance is the five year old boy whom ICE officers saved from possibly freezing to death after his father abandoned him, whereupon the international press falsely alleged that they had “arrested” or “kidnapped” or “detained” the little boy, or “used him as bait.” Absolutely disgraceful.

Who speaks for the men and women of federal law enforcement? Well, American Experiment for one. Check out our podcast, which has been unapologetically pro-law enforcement from the beginning. Clips from our podcast, which you can see here, have gotten tens of millions of views just since January 1, predominantly on Facebook but also on Instagram and other platforms. We are the most significant outlet supporting federal law enforcement in Minnesota, but the popularity of our products shows that there is a hunger for the truth among a silent majority of Minnesotans.

The Other McCain.

The Saturday morning shooting of an armed anti-ICE rioter in Minneapolis triggered still more mayhem in the city despite below-zero temperatures. It has become obvious to everyone paying attention that the so-called “protests” (which are, in fact, a conspiracy to obstruct federal law enforcement) are being carefully coordinated.

Read it.

“Black Lives Matter was created from a fabrication,” Bill Jacobson, founder of Legal Insurrection and professor of law at Cornell University, tells substitute host Jack Fowler on this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

The two also unravel the shocking hostility Jewish students have faced since the Oct. 7 massacre.

Read it.

Working retail is a great way to lose faith in the collective intelligence of our species.

Ah, those were the days….

The Telegraph (UK).

A 106-year-old Cotswolds private school is to close amid Labour’s VAT raid.
Rendcomb College, near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, announced that it would shut this summer because of “the economic situation facing independent schools across the country”, as well as its current and projected pupil numbers.
It said the school would not be “financially viable in the future”, meaning 380 children will be forced to move elsewhere.
David Tyler, the former chairman of Sainsbury’s, attended Rendcomb College in the 1960s.
Saqib Bhatti, shadow education minister, told The Telegraph: “Labour’s schools tax is an ideological attack on aspiration and on people who work hard to be able to invest in their children’s education.
“Every time a school is forced to close thanks to this tax, it means more children’s lives are disrupted and more pressure on the state sector.”

This is why we can’t have nice things.

SciTechDaily.

“Humans possess a remarkable ability to talk about almost anything, sometimes putting words together into never-before-spoken or -written sentences,” said Morten H. Christiansen, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

According to language scientists, this flexibility comes from internal mental representations that help people recognize patterns in language and combine words into meaningful statements. While this ability is fundamental to communication, scientists are still working to understand exactly what those mental patterns look like and how they function, Christiansen said.

In a new study, Christiansen and co-author Yngwie A. Nielsen of Aarhus University present a different way of thinking about how language is represented in the mind. Their work questions the long-held belief that language depends on highly complex grammatical structures. Although the research focused on English, the authors suggest the results may apply to many languages and could influence future research on how language evolves, how children learn to speak, and how adults acquire new languages.

Read it.

Left-wing nonprofit groups in Minneapolis appear to have moved beyond pressure campaigns targeting ICE agents and federal law enforcement, shifting from street protests/riots toward actions that may disrupt critical infrastructure on Friday. The apparent objective is to target economic chokepoints and critical infrastructure, a pressure tactic consistent with the color revolution playbook previously deployed by dark-money funded NGO networks aligned with the Democratic Party’s protest-industrial complex and financed by left-wing billionaire foundations.

Local media outlet The Minnesota Star Tribune reported on Friday evening that “at a demonstration outside Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport’s main terminal, a Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman said police arrested roughly 100 demonstrators.”

Newsbusters.

Intentionally or not, the PBS News Hour exhibited a liberal double standard in descriptions in a story by Liz Landers from Minneapolis, where residents are apparently being persecuted under ICE.

A long 13-minute Thursday segment, which was capped with two guests, one from the Trump administration and one from the Obama administration, twice underlined that anti-ICE protester Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, but the November murder of another federal law officer in Washington, D.C. was downgraded to a mere “shooting.”

The story did lead with a strong statement from Vice President J.D. Vance from on the ground in Minneapolis.

The Foundry.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent fatally shot an armed man in Minneapolis on Saturday who the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said looked like was about to “massacre law enforcement.”

The incident happened just 17 days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed Renee Good, who had hit the agent with her vehicle, in the same city.

DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation that the most recent shooting occurred when agents were carrying out a “targeted operation” and it appeared the now-deceased man was about to inflict “maximum damage” against law enforcement officers.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a Saturday press conference that the deceased was a 37-year-old white male who lived in the city.

“At 9:05 AM CT, as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here,” McLaughlin wrote in her statement.

DHS shared with the DCNF a photograph of a gun with two magazines. ICE and Border Patrol are both agencies of DHS.

“The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming,” the assistant secretary continued. “Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.”

“The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” McLaughlin added.

Think of it as evolution in action.

UPDATE: Man waving gun at feds attempting to arrest illegal criminal in Minneapolis shot dead by agent, DHS says (New York Post)

The New Neo.

You may have noticed that many people criticize the deportations by saying that overstaying a visa isn’t a criminal act but is a civil offense. They’re right that it’s not criminal – although many of those being rounded up are also guilty of crimes. But let’s just stick with overstaying a visa. The fact that it’s a civil offense does not protect the alien; in fact, it removes the protection afforded to defendants in criminal cases. Nor are those people who’ve overstayed visas (or otherwise entered illegally, but are not criminals) being given prison sentences, as in the criminal system. They are being deported, which is a civil action.

You will no doubt have seen headlines in the Narrative Media about illegal immigrants being deported who ‘have no crimila record’. Whether or not they have a criminal record is irrelevant. They are here illegally, and are subject to deportation when caught.

The government does not need to prove you committed a crime to remove you; it only needs to prove you are removable under immigration law.

Exactly so.

The Other McCain.

And about time.

This is literally true. I’m sure you’ve seen the headline about ICE arresting a 5-year-old. The fact is that the kid’s father, an illegal immigrant, ran away and abandoned the child, which an ICE agent picked up and took to shelter.

E.G.: ‘Disturbing,’ ‘Haunting’; Friday Shows Blast ICE Over Incident With Five-Year-Old

Read it.

Minnesota leftists showed no pangs of conscience after disrupting a Sunday worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul. The church was targeted because one of its lay elders works in federal law enforcement—specifically, serving as the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement director for St. Paul. But, despite sparking national outrage, the anti-ICE demonstrators are only doubling down.

“Today, we are calling for the resignation of so-called pastor David Easterwood from Cities Church,” declared career activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, who led the Sunday demonstration, at a Tuesday press conference organized in front of the Hennepin County Government Center. “We are asking Cities Church to operate in truth and integrity and the true meaning of the gospel and to recognize that David Easterwood’s dual role as a pastor and the director of the ICE office is a most definite conflict of interest, and it cannot stand.”

The change in venue was the only accommodation activists made to public criticism, although it still lacked a reasonable connection between means and ends. On Sunday, agitators demonstrated in a church to protest government action. On Tuesday, they assembled at a government building to protest the church.

Protestants—making trouble for the rest of us for 500 years and counting.

Read it.

Read it.

In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 1A, giving the green light to start planning a high-speed railway connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles, which would be built by 2020 and cost around $35 billion. Well, it’s 2026, and the Golden State’s “Futureland-esque” project is woefully over-schedule and over-budget, now projected to cost around $135 billion.

Lee Ohanian, a Hoover Institution senior fellow, joins Jack Fowler on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” to discuss California’s Tomorrowland disaster and more:

“It was Disney’s future land. It was trains that would travel as fast as 220 mph. They would move people from LA to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes. LA to San Francisco was supposed to have been finished about five years ago, and as you noted, [cost] $35 billion. The price tag could be as high as $135 billion [today].

“Now the project is woefully over budget—woefully behind schedule. And you know, Jack, in 2019, when Gov. [Gavin] Newsom gave his inaugural speech right after he was elected, he noted the problems that were happening with high-speed rail at that time. And he said, in a very interesting way, we don’t have the money to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles. And the project has been subject to not enough oversight and not enough accountability.

“And he was absolutely correct about that.”

Newsbusters.

Politico, leaning entirely on the results of a focus group consisting of nine (count ’em, NINE) people has been able to somehow determine what they see as a big political trend out there reflected in the title of this story on Friday by Samuel Benson, “These Gen-Z Trump voters don’t want JD Vance in 2028.”

The subtitle reinforces what looks to be a dire (as projected by Politico based on the focus group NINE) political future for Vance: “A recent focus group of 18- to 24-year-old Trump voters suggests weaknesses for Vance among young Republicans.”

Read it.

A labor and delivery nurse in Boca Raton, Florida, has been fired after posting a profane social media message hoping for harm to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt during childbirth.

Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital said Friday that Alexis “Lexie” Lawler is no longer employed after posting that it would bring her “great joy” if Leavitt suffered a severe childbirth injury known as a fourth-degree tear.

A fourth-degree tear is extensive muscle and tissue damage that can lead to lasting medical complications.

UPDATE: Unhinged Florida nurse fired after foul TikTok rant directed towards Karoline Leavitt goes viral (Rachel del Guidice/New York Post)

Read it.

In the last election, Democrats again campaigned as moderates, including Abigail Spanberger.

Once in control of the Governor’s mansion and the legislature, however, Virginia Democrats have moved quickly to fulfill the worst stereotype of a tax-hungry, economy-crushing party.

The Democrats introduced an array of new taxes on every aspect of life.

At the same time, Spanberger moved to take control of Virginia universities and colleges after years of trying to move those schools to the center.

Now, members are pushing rent control legislation and defining landlords as “gougers” if they raise rents by as little as 3%.

Read it.

The following story concerns an instance of Muslim-on-Muslim violence that occurred last night in Antwerp. The Kurds who were on the receiving end of the attack identify the “terror” against them as being perpetrated by mujahideen for the Islamic State. Under other circumstances, however (e.g. Mullah Krekar in Norway), Kurds are the ones who promote and carry out terrorism. So this was just an intramural skirmish amongst Muslim factions, and also a reminder that any Muslim who devoutly studies his religion’s scripture may well take up “terrorism”.

It makes me mutter to myself: “Why can’t they both lose?”

And it also makes me say in exasperation: “Why in the world is there a ‘Kurdish community’ in Antwerp?”

Import Turd-World people, get Turd-World problems.

Read it.

Saw this on Red State, and it seems like a pretty easy tactic to implement – mislead the ICE protestors into going to the wrong places, and just generally waste their time. It’s sort of an update on the old “let’s order twenty pizzas and have them delivered to our friend’s house” prank, without victimizing the poor pizza workers. The idea of sending a coven of screeching gelatinous broads and boys in the throes of soy-psychosis (is that a thing? Maybe not) to a biker bar is quite satisfying. And maybe, just maybe, with a few calculations and burned quantities of midnight oil, we can come up with even funnier scenarios.

One of the difficulties with crowd-sourcing an activity is that you’re not the only crowd out there.

Read it.

Arizona’s Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes’ public advice that people in Arizona could use the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law to justify shooting federal officers – especially masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents – has been roundly condemned by the Arizona Police Association (APA).

“Law enforcement is inherently dangerous work. Recent public comments by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes have the potential to make it even more dangerous,” APA explained Thursday in a statement denouncing Mayes’ comments in a local television news interview.

The Foundry.

I don’t expect much from the Episcopal Church, but it still speaks volumes when a bishop refuses to condemn the invasion of a church service.

Last weekend, a group of agitators invaded Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, taking over the sanctuary, terrifying children, and chanting, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!”

It wasn’t a peaceful protest. It wasn’t a demonstration. It was a horde of Vandals entering the sanctuary and coopting it for their political agenda.

Such an attack reminds me more of the sack of Rome than Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read it.

The media has been giving quite a lot of attention to Aimee Bock, the head of a Minnesota nonprofit at the center of the largest pandemic relief fraud in the nation’s history – which she now says Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison had to have known about.

in federal funds meant to feed underprivileged children in Minnesota roughly 125 million nonexistent meals. According to prosecutors, as little as 3% of the funds were actually used to feed children. Bock, 45, was charged with signing off on reimbursement claims for the unserved meals, as well as collecting bribes. She maintains her innocence, while one Somali community leader told a local reporter that Bock was “a modern-day Robin Hood.”

Feeding Our Future was a “sponsoring organization,” meaning it approved meal sites, approved meal counts, and distributed the reimbursements to hundreds of sponsored food sites across the state which were mostly operated by Somalians that submitted fraudulent claims. However, in exchange for Bock’s sponsorship and approvals (she sued the state for discrimination in November 2020, claiming the Department of Education was unfairly targeting minority-led programs), the Somalians paid kickbacks to Bock and other Feeding Our Future employees, prosecutors said.

So far, 98 people have been charged in the fraud, 85 of whom are Somalians – unlike Bock, who is white. Hence the media focus on her. Over 64 of those charged have either pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.

Read it.

Jack Smith’s testimony before Congress did more than expose weaknesses in his own case against President Trump. It also laid bare just how partisan the entire January 6th investigation had become—and how willing Democrats were to elevate sensational claims they knew could never survive real scrutiny.

The Foundry.

Republican Reps. Chip Roy and Keith Self of Texas voiced their support for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to crack down on Islamic groups accused of having ties to terrorist organizations.

On Wednesday, Abbott urged an independent school district to sever ties with the Council on Arab Islamic Relations after administrators planned to hold the “Islamic Games” sporting event. In 2025, he signed legislation to designate CAIR as a terrorist organization over their ties to Hamas and blocked Islamic Sharia Law only developments in Texas.

CAIR announced that they aspire to take Abbott “to a court of law” for “crossing every line of basic decency” through his “campaign of hate.”

But Roy and Self believe Abbott was right to act.

Watch it.

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) reviews the growing cultural clash that approaches.

Watch it.

Nick Norwitz (Harfard MD, Oxford PhD in metabolism) does a deep dive.

Good evidence for not blindly trusting “experts”.

Exhausted White Liberal Women Clock In For Another Long Day Protecting Migrant Sex Offenders (Babylon Bee)

‘Sinners’ Nominated For ‘Best Movie We Have To Nominate Or Else We Will Be Called Racist’ (Babylon Bee)

The American Threat: Three Words I Never Imagined Typing (Nicholas Kristof/New York Times)

Trump’s Greenland Gambit Has Broken Brains Across Washington (Nahal Toosi/Politico)

Trump steps back from the brink on Greenland. But the damage has been done. (Politico)

Jack Smith makes first public defense of Trump indictments (Julianna Bragg/Axios)

Few Voters Say Trump’s Second Term Has Made the Country Better, Poll Finds (New York Times)

Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn (Wall Street Journal)

Has Trump Pushed the Supreme Court Too Far? (New York Times)

Courageous Carney vs. Demented Donald (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks.

The Voters Who Have Taken a U-Turn on Trump (Nate Cohn/New York Times)

‘Our American Dream is dead’ (Politico)

Jimmy Kimmel Exposes Proof Trump, 79, Has Reached ‘Dementia Con 5’ (Meera Navlakha/The Daily Beast)

We Are Witnessing the Self-Immolation of a Superpower (Garrett M. Graff/Wired)  Is Obama back?

Fed’s Favorite Inflation Indicator Refuses To Show Any Signs Of Runaway ‘Trump Tariff’ Costs

Minnesota Judge Blocks Federal Charges Against Don Lemon Over Anti-ICE Church Disruption

Leftist CNN Pundit Smears Trump as a Pervert, Is Forced to Issue Humiliating Retraction

Trump’s Weird Bruise Looks Worse Than Ever (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)  Fortunately, they don’t have anything more important to write about.

People are dying in Trump’s squalid concentration camps (Will Bunch/The Philadelphia Inquirer)  Will Bunch loses his shit.

Sunny Hostin Claims Trump Is Constructing ‘New World Order’ to Conquer the Globe

The Dark Ideology Behind Stephen Miller’s Immigration Crusade: Part II (Greg Sargent/The UnPopulist)  Greg Sargent loses his shit.

Our Narcissist in Chief Has Exceeded Putin’s Wildest Dreams (John Harwood/Zeteo)

‘12 Essential Facts’ About Jack Smith and the History of His Dubious Ploys to Get Trump

Read  it.

Virginia Democrats have proposed a bill to permanently embed and test “inclusive history,” including racial and LGBTQ+ topics, in children’s classrooms across the state.

The state House bill was introduced on Jan. 13 and would require all public elementary and secondary schools to adjust history and social science classes to include “the contributions, perspectives, and experiences of historically marginalized communities, including racial and ethnic minorities; immigrants and refugees; women; individuals with disabilities; individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+),” and others.

The bill states this is necessary “in order to affirm such communities and promote a more holistic understanding of history” and “to ensure comprehensive, accurate, and inclusive education.”

Read it.

The former superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district is expected to plead guilty in federal court Thursday to two charges, including falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen, which could result in a lengthy prison sentence and increased risk of deportation.

Ian Roberts, a native of Guyana in South America and a former Olympic runner, ascended as an exuberant and inspiring leader over a two-decade career in urban education. For two years, he was superintendent of the Des Moines public school district, which serves 30,000 students.

Just weeks into a new school year, Roberts was detained by federal immigration officers. The Sept. 26 arrest stunned community members and drew national attention to his history of criminal charges and falsified credentials.

Roberts in October initially pleaded not guilty to one count of making a false statement for employment and one count of unlawfully possessing a firearm while being in the country illegally. Roberts is now expected to plead guilty to both charges, according to a plea agreement he signed Wednesday.

Read it.

“Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken, may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris.”

That was Treasury Secretary Steve Bessent at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, delivering a remarkably on point put down of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

And the put down was warranted given that Newsom was hopping from camera to camera at the conference, painting himself as the leader of the American resistance against the American president, and generally acting the fool.

I always thought Newsom looked like how the Devil’s lawyer would be portratyed in a movie, but a mix of the main villain from “American Psycho” and Barbie’s boyfriend certainly seems spot on.

Read it.

On Wednesday, January 21st, the French High Council for Equality published a new report on sexism, identifying “masculinism” as one of the new dangers to national security.

Masculinism constitutes a “real threat” and must be recognised as a public security issue, according to the report. This hateful and anti-feminist ideology, spread on social media, is likely to generate violence and radicalisation and, according to the document’s recommendations, should be the subject of a national strategy to combat it.

The High Council for Equality, which reports to the prime minister’s office, even refers to “misogynistic terrorism” and calls for intelligence services to be trained to deal with this new danger. According to the report, 17% of French people subscribe to “hostile sexism,” which “devalues women” and could lead to violence against them.

The report expresses alarm at France’s delay in addressing this public danger, compared to other countries that are much more ‘advanced’ in this area, such as Canada and the United Kingdom.

Unsurprisingly, once it has identified the masculinist enemy, the High Council for Equality is careful not to define the terms precisely. It notes a radicalisation against women that could lead to violence or terrorist acts but never questions the possible origins of such a social drift. Immigration of Muslim origin and the importation into France of predominantly male immigrants from cultures that traditionally place women in a position of inferiority or even encourage the habitual use of violence against them is obviously not called into question here.

Read it.

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian protest organizer whose immigration arrest last year made national headlines, will be re-arrested and deported to Algeria, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on Newsnation.

Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, was arrested by federal immigration officers last March after Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed his presence would have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States.

In a statement, Khalil’s legal team disputed whether he could be legally detained or deported while the appeals process has not concluded. In the statement, they said the government’s actions “reinforce its disdain for the First Amendment rights of people engaged in peaceful protest.”

The 30-year-old former student, who is a lawful permanent U.S. resident, was the first of several immigrant university students at Columbia and across the country to be targeted for deportation over their pro-Palestinian activism.

The Register.

Gee, I wonder why.

But, the researchers found, there are roughly 6.1 million workers who “face both high exposure to LLMs and low adaptive capacity to manage a job transition.”

Paper-pushers who don’t actually make things that people need, and who can’t do that kind of work (“administrators”).

“Many of these workers occupy administrative and clerical jobs where savings are modest, workers’ skill transferability is limited, and reemployment prospects are narrower.”

This, in turn, means that they are more likely to face longer job searches, less chance of actually finding new employment, and “more significant relative earnings losses compared to other workers.”

And, if you haven’t guessed it, “Of these workers, 86 percent are women.”

Called it.

Read it.

While many Denver office tenants went remote or fled to Cherry Creek or the ’burbs in recent years, law firm Ballard Spahr did the opposite.

It stayed downtown, though it swapped out its old headquarters for a newer spot a block away at 1800 Larimer in August.
“It was more about the amenities,” said Damon O. Barry, office manager partner, as he listed features like a full gym with towel service, a green space on the second floor, proximity to Union Station and lobby security. “My goal was to have a space that folks want to come into.”

But a sign of the times was that the company opted for leasing less space. Its new 19,000-square-foot office is one-third smaller than its prior home at 17th Street Plaza. No, the 60-person company isn’t shrinking, Barry said. It’s growing. There’s hybrid options and “hoteling” desks, available to whomever is in the office that day. This is about efficiency.

Yeah. Efficiency. No mention of how many may be relocating to less Woke Red states.

Read it.

This is actually true: a Utah senator is sponsoring a bill that would see Android adopted as an official state mobile operating system for absolutely no reason at all. In the history of dumb ideas, this is pretty high on the list.

I don’t know where they find these people, much less vote for them.

Roughly half of the US likes Android, half like the iPhone, and from time to time people try out each. You do you. And if Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore (R-Sandy) is an Android fan, that’s a fact of totally no interest to anyone whatsoever.

But it apparently matters a lot to Cullimore, so given his position, he is taking time in the Utah 2026 legislative session to try to get it done. According to KSL local news, Cullimore said it was also about the green and blue bubbles complaint.

Democracy at work resembles nothing so much as a human colon.

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On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to end federal spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Yet the government has continued to award contracts based on race and sex. Despite rampant fraud and multiple court rulings against the practice, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has used “disadvantage” essays from business owners to skirt the rules and continue discriminatory programs that dole out billions in government contracts.

For decades, the federal government has awarded certain special contracts exclusively to so-called disadvantaged businesses and women-owned small businesses. Until 2023, SBA presumed that racial minorities were “disadvantaged.” The resulting discrimination was absolute: according to an analysis conducted between 2020 and 2023, these programs made not a single award to white men.

Though the second Trump administration has taken steps to limit these contracts, the largest disadvantaged-business initiative—the SBA’s 8(a) program—is thriving. The program “is still one of the most lucrative and sought after” SBA certificates, one contracting lawyer said in November. In fact, fiscal year 2025 saw the largest 8(a) spending on record, totaling $26 billion.

President Trump signed an executive order forbidding federal DEI discrimination, and a federal district court struck down the SBA’s presumption that minorities are disadvantaged. How, then, has 8(a) survived?

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Crowds of Canadian citizens stood in long lines across Alberta for hours this week to sign a petition for a referendum on leaving Canada – officially titled “A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence.” The petition requires at least 177,000 signatures in order to trigger the referendum, which would ultimately decide if the province will separate.

Petitions have 120 days to collect the signatures needed. Pro-separation groups say they could get as many as 1 million signatures, which would be a clear indication that Alberta will leave Canada. Alberta’s population is currently 5 million people.

Some petition locations reported as many as 10,000 signatures in a day and the public response is described as “concerning” by critics who want to remain part of Canada’s “constitutional monarchy.” Alberta is widely considered the most conservative province in the country and has been at odds with the far-left Canadian government (ruled by Ontario progressives).

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ttorney General Pam Bondi announced Thursday that law enforcement had arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, a leader of the agitators who invaded a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday.

“Minutes ago at my direction [Homeland Security Investigations] and [FBI] agents executed an arrest in Minnesota,” Bondi posted on X Thursday morning.

“So far, we have arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota,” she added. “We will share more updates as they become available.”

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During oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that the post-Civil War “Black Codes” – a set of openly racist laws enacted in the Democrat-controlled South to strip newly freed Black Americans of basic rights, including the right to possess firearms – could serve as legitimate historical precedent under the Supreme Court’s Bruen test. That test evaluates modern gun laws by asking whether similar restrictions were accepted in the nation’s historical tradition. The case concerns a Hawaii law that bars licensed gun owners from carrying firearms onto privately owned property open to the public. Jackson relying on the Black Codes for constitutional guidance is hilarious, as those laws were explicitly designed to deny civil rights to Black Americans in defiance of emancipation.

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Now, Democrats appear to have settled on a new cause: illegal immigration.

In this framing, enforcing immigration law is portrayed not merely as a policy disagreement but as an expression of white supremacy itself. Illegal immigrants, the argument goes, must be allowed to remain in the country, and any attempt at enforcement is morally suspect.

This is a stretch — one that suggests demand for examples of systemic American racism has outpaced the available supply.

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Seventeen House Republicans gave California Democrats a late Christmas present this month when they crossed the aisle to vote for extending enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies for another three years.

Not only did they move these massive handouts one step closer to permanent entitlement status, but they failed to advance reforms that would actually lower health care costs, like closing the Intergovernmental Transfer loophole that has cost taxpayers tens of billions over time.

The Senate should stop this bill in its tracks and—in anticipation of pushback from those who have never seen a government expansion they didn’t like—prepare to argue to the public why propping up a broken system won’t reduce health insurance premiums. As I argued in The Hill, these subsidies just mask the true cost of government distortion.

Since the Affordable Care Act passed, average family premiums have exploded to more than $25,000 per year. Government subsidies haven’t stopped that rise. They’ve enabled it—by insulating insurers from competitive pricing and reducing any pressure for meaningful reform.

And while Washington debates whether to extend temporary tax credits, states like California are quietly siphoning off billions in federal Medicaid dollars through legalized budget fraud tied to the Intergovernmental Transfer loophole.