Read it.

California Democrats should listen to The Rolling Stones.

Or the Beatles—The Taxman lays it out directly.

The band famously fled England in the 1970s, heading into tax exile in the south of France.

Mick Jagger and his mates weren’t alone—a generation of rock royalty abandoned the U.K. because of its steep taxes: David Bowie opted for Switzerland; Rod Stewart went to California.

“We left England because we’d be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all,” Stones guitarist Keith Richards recalled to Fortune.

Progressives are now transforming California into what Britain was before Margaret Thatcher—and it’s not celebrities who are leaving, but the billionaires who drive Silicon Valley’s economy, and therefore the state’s.

The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act ballot measure is a recipe for reverse alchemy, turning the Golden State into lead.

Read it.

Import Turd World people, get Turd World problems.

Read it.

Last year in Ireland, a ten-year-old girl in state care was raped by a man the government had already ordered to deport. The government brushed it off as a “regrettable oversight.” The apology was so rehearsed it could have been written weeks before the crime.

There was no national outrage. No emergency debate. No resignations.

The public was told to stay calm. The reaction was labelled “far-right hysteria.” The government called it “misinformation.” This came as a surprise to no one, because in Ireland, the apology always arrives quicker than the accountability.

But that case did something the political class didn’t expect. It cracked the surface. It made people ask what else is being buried under government PR, staged compassion and fear of saying the obvious.

The truth is, this wasn’t an isolated failure; it was the latest entry in a pattern Ireland has perfected.

We apologise to children after the damage is done.

Read it.

According to plans from the Federal Chancellery, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is set to significantly expand its surveillance capabilities. The focus is particularly on internet communication transmitted from within Germany abroad, which is to be included in the agency’s monitoring catalog going forward.

After months of heated debate over the expansion of the Brussels censorship apparatus under the Digital Services Act and ‘Chat Control,’ attention to the EU Commission’s surveillance ambitions has temporarily faded in Germany. Now, however, a draft bill from the Federal Chancellery, obtained by WDR, NDR, and Süddeutsche Zeitung, is triggering renewed alarm.

The proposed expansion of BND powers makes one thing unmistakably clear: German policy is moving in lockstep with the EU Commission, with full force directed against the privacy and communication of citizens, journalists, and government-critical organizations.

Read it.

NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte and EU leaders from the Arctic bordering states hold a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As NATO General Secretary Rutte outlines the reality of the situation with a full defense of President Trump’s position, he remarks to the audience, “I’m not popular with you right now because I defend Donald Trump, but I really believe we can be happy that he’s here”.

Read it.

I posted last summer about the death of a 16-year-old Ukrainian girl named Liana K. in the German city of Göttingen. The unfortunate young lady was murdered when she was pushed in front of a speeding train by an Iraqi named Muhammad A. (like most accused offenders in Europe, young Muhammad’s surname is only one letter long).

It’s yet another case that has a Mohammed Coefficient of 100%.

At the time he committed the crime, Mr. A’s mental condition was considered questionable, and whether he could be tried for the murder was up in the air. Now it’s official: the young migrant is a loony, and cannot be held criminally responsible.

Quillette.

Over the long arc of modern history, technology has been one of the most effective engines of women’s liberation—independently of the attitudes or intentions of the mostly male people who built it. From washing machines and telephones to reproductive technologies such as IVF, technological changes have expanded women’s autonomy by enabling their education, paid work, entrepreneurship, and personal freedoms. By reducing the burden of physical labour needed to enable a household to survive and function, these advances have loosened the link between sex and economic dependence. In emerging economies grappling with energy poverty, the pattern is even starker: electrification has proven to be among the few reliable forces capable of freeing women from gruelling labour, while sharply reducing the risks of childbirth, early childhood mortality, and maternal death.

The scale of this transformation is difficult to overstate. For most of human history, 1–2 percent of women died as a result of pregnancy or childbirth, making reproduction one of the leading causes of female death. Today, in many high-income countries, maternal mortality has fallen to under one death per 10,000 births. Child mortality shows a similar pattern. Globally, the share of children who die before the age of five has fallen by more than half over the past few decades alone, largely due to advances in sanitation, vaccination, antibiotics, and neonatal care. These declines were not driven by shifts in attitude or ideology, but by technological interventions that made survival routine rather than exceptional.

Feminism is a political movement, while technology is a set of tools. Yet, over the past two centuries, the most reliable driver of women’s autonomy has not been ideological persuasion or legal decree. Technology has accomplished what moral exhortation rarely can: it has changed the incentives. Modern technologies—particularly those that reduce physical strength requirements, expand access to information, and automate domestic labour—have done more to advance women’s bargaining power than most explicitly feminist political movements, precisely because they alter the underlying constraints of human life rather than attempting to moralise them away. Moral attitudes fluctuate, laws can be ignored, and cultural norms can resist change. Constraints, once relaxed, can rarely be tightened again. Feminist outcomes are best measured, then, by the extent to which women gain real autonomy, safety, and choice in their daily lives.

Read it.

Social media is agog with posts about the usual flurry of bill introductions that accompany a new legislative session, in this case, the Commonwealth of Virginia. A new legislative session began this week following November’s odd-year elections.

The home state of Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and four of our nation’s first five US presidents opened it’s new Democratic trifecta – nearly a 2:1 majority in the House of Delegates, with Democrats flipping 14 previous GOP seats – and it’s more tenuous 21-19 Senate majority last week, following the inauguration of our former CIA case officer Governor; our first-ever Muslim Lt. Governor; and our reckless driving Attorney General who muses about killing his GOP opponents.

We’re off to a great start.

The influx of Deep State apparatchiks (and their families and hangers-on) to northeast Virginia, and it’s consequent conversion of an Other Left Coast hell-hole, is one of the ongoing tragedies of this century.

Time to leave.

Read it.

When the history of the great Net Zero climate hoax comes to be written, pride of place will be given to the terrifying sixth mass extinction scare. Mainstream media barely question the idea that human-controlled climate is wreaking havoc with the life chances of millions of animal and plant species around the world. In November 2024, the Guardian reported that “as the planet warms up, scientists predict a series of ‘extinction cliffs’”. We are in danger of forgetting what the climate crisis means: extinction, was the cheerful article headline. But a recent bombshell report from the UK Royal Society has knocked seven bells out of all this nonsense by showing that species-level extinctions related to climate change “have not significantly increased over the last approximately 200 years”.

Daily Record (UK).

We’ve all experienced being greeted by our loud alarm clock what feels like 20 minutes after we’ve shut our eyes. But whilst it’s normal for us to wake up every now and again during the night, many of us do not know what’s normal and what’s not.

Research published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research discovered that we’re more nocturnal than we might imagine, with a third of people fully waking during the night at least three times weekly. Meanwhile, separate research indicated that nearly a quarter of people wake at least once nightly.

However, our internal body clock naturally shifts as we age – resulting in more frequent night-time awakenings. Typically, we experience brief micro-awakenings approximately 20 times each night, though these are usually so fleeting that we don’t recall them.

Country Squire Magazine (UK).

Look around you. Cast your eye across the sclerotic state of our nation – the rudderless ship of government, the suffocating blanket of nanny-state regulation, the timid hand-wringing in the face of genuine threats, and the sheer, unadulterated dullness of it all. We are governed by managerial technocrats, men and women whose greatest ambition is to navigate a focus group, whose boldest vision extends to a new cycle lane or a tax on meat. They speak in sanitised platitudes, their spines seemingly replaced by polling data. In this landscape of the mediocre, one’s soul aches for a figure of verve, of audacity, of sheer chutzpah. We need, in short, a Sir Francis Drake.

We in the U.S. suffer from the same mealy-minded ruling class, but we actually have Trump, who is as close to a Sir Francis Drake as the modern world is capable of producing.

Read it.

1. People communicate most honestly through jokes. Pay attention to them.
2. If you can’t refuse something, it owns you.
3. Fear of being cringe will stop you living fully. Get over it.
4. Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.
5. Expect no applause for telling the truth. Sometimes doing the right thing costs you – friendships, comfort, peace. But always pay the price without question.
6. Whatever scenario you’re in, just act like you belong.
7. The lazy person works twice as hard.
8. Curiosity is a superpower.
9. Honesty without kindness is brutality. Default to kindness. Though know when to be firm.
10. Life never meets your youthful expectations. As an adult, you need to learn to find joy nonetheless.

….

Read it.

The modern gynocentric social order makes it impossible for most men to find and pair with women, and most women to find and pair with men that they find acceptable. Feminism has substantially succeeded in turning girls into virtual men, boys into virtual women, and our culture into compost.

The Register.

The UK government is investing in a defense-focused degree course to train both civilian students and soldiers to become drone technology specialists. However, it’s only targeting a small number of people.

According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Department for Education (DfE), this new course will open for enrolment at the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) in Hereford in the west of England from September this year.

The degree course forms part of a broader effort to deliver on the aspirations outlined in the Strategic Defence Review, published in mid-2025, to enhance the capabilities of the British Army through AI, drones, and autonomous systems.

By building a pipeline of homegrown talent with specialized science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills, the MoD hopes to address critical workforce gaps while aiming to push the UK’s expertise in next-generation military capabilities.

As is often the case with much-trumpeted initiatives, the actual amount of funding made available – a £240,000 (about $322,000) investment from the British Army – hardly seems commensurate with the government’s ambitions for it.

The three-year course aims to train 15 civilian students and up to five soldiers each year to become drone technology specialists.

British degree programs, unlike those in the U.S., ordinarily take three years.

Hereford is where the headquarters of the Special Air Service is located.

PBS, a Voice of the Crust.

The gauze-and-cream dressing must be changed every day, a painful process. In the burn unit at Fortaleza’s José Frota Institute, patients contort as their wounds are unwrapped and washed.

Enter the humble tilapia, a fish that’s widely farmed in Brazil and whose skin, until now, was considered trash. Unlike the gauze bandages, the sterilized tilapia skin goes on and stays on.

Read it.

A new study published in Nature provides the earliest evidence that our human ancestors lived in the tropical rainforests of Africa

The study involving University of Sheffield researchers dates humans living in rainforests back to 150,000 years ago, 80,000 years earlier than found in other rainforests sites around the world

Luminescence and Electron Spin Resonance dating techniques were used to date sediments containing Middle Stone Age tools found at an archeological site in Côte d’Ivoire, Africa, to a time when tropical rainforests existed across the region

The study argues that tropical rainforests were not a barrier to the spread of modern humans and supports the theory that human evolution happened across a variety of regions and habitats.

Read it.

In what could have been the starting gun of Trump’s de-escalation, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the US President was right about security in the Arctic.

“When it comes to the Arctic, I think President Trump is right. Other leaders in NATO are right. We need to defend the Arctic,” the former Dutch prime minister said. “We know that the sea lanes are opening up.”

Rutte said that China and Russia were becoming increasingly active in the Arctic Circle, and acknowledged that this posed a problem for the alliance.

Read it.

A federal law enforcement officer was injured in Southern California on Wednesday after an illegal alien allegedly tried to evade arrest by ramming officers with his vehicle, prompting agents to fire defensive shots, according to the Trump administration.

The incident occurred in Compton, near Los Angeles, as Department of Homeland Security agents moved to arrest what the agency described as “a violent criminal illegal alien” from El Salvador.

DHS said the suspect “weaponized his vehicle and rammed law enforcement” during the attempted arrest, according to a statement posted on X.

“Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired defensive shots,” the statement said.

Read it.

Somali fraud in Minneapolis began long before the cases that have been making nationwide headlines. And one of the first cases involved the abuse of Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) by day cares with fraud amounting to an estimated $100 million in 2015.

Minnesota Child Care Services which got its license in 2012 and a year later was already the single largest recipient of (CCAP) funds for the next two years during which time it also accumulated ‘corrections’ for not keeping proper staff records, staff qualifications, cleanliness and crib violations, was one of a number of organizations targeted in the fraud investigations.

Investigators also discovered that during just one two week period the Somali day care center billed “for 950 children who did not actually attend the center”, that it billed for children on days when no children attended, and the center was also accused of providing kickbacks to parents.

As part of an agreement, the day care center pled guilty to one charge of theft by swindle and

Abdirizak Ahmed Gayre, its director, and Ibrahim Awgab Osman, its assistant director, were barred from “working or having an ownership interest in any licensed child care provider in Minnesota” for only two years.

But the story was just beginning.

The Foundry.

Remember when Democrats spent an entire election cycle talking about “affordability” as if that’s all they care about now? Well, if you bought that, then there’s a socialist mayor in New York who’s got a bridge to sell you.

But New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t actually the one completely blowing up the affordability farce, it’s assumedly “moderate” Virginia Democrats.

Much of the media touted Abigail Spanberger as the moderate Democrat gubernatorial candidate who could lead the party back to power. The Wall Street Journal even called her the “anti-Mamdani.”

“Abigail Spanberger is seen as a potential moderate face for her struggling party,” read The Wall Street Journal’s subheadline.

Moderate face, Maoist heart, I guess.

UPDATE: ‘Life Just Got Harder and More Expensive’ in Virginia Less Than 1 Week Into Spanberger’s Term

Read it.

Lock ‘er up

UPDATE: These Democrats Voted to Hold Clintons in Contempt for Obstructing Epstein Probe

Trump Disguises Himself As Muslim Migrant So Europe Will Let Him Invade Greenland (Babylon Bee)

Trump To Convert Entire City Of Minneapolis Into Insane Asylum (Babylon Bee).

Minnesota Arrests Churchgoers For Interrupting Protest (Babylon Bee)

We Want an Independent Fed, Not One With Trump Derangement Syndrome or Foreign Influence

Anti-ICE Activist Groups Silent on Church Invasion

New protest art on National Mall takes aim at Trump and Epstein files (Joe Heim/Washington Post)

“ICE 101” — How Trump changed ICE and CBP into a fascist secret police (Garrett M. Graff/Doomsday Scenario)

Trump Needs a Shrink and a Baby-Sitter, Not a National Security Adviser (emptywheel)

Trump’s Attack on Democracy Is Faltering (Quinta Jurecic/The Atlantic)

Atlantic Mag Attempts to Link Fringe Weirdo ‘Looksmaxxing’ to Trump Supporters

Judge posts job opening for top prosecutor spot that DOJ claims Lindsey Halligan occupies (NBC News)

This Is the End — One year ago today Donald Trump was sworn in as president … (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)

Trump’s “roving patrols” are closing in on Americans (Brittany Gibson/Axios)

‘We Don’t Want to Be Like Minneapolis,’ Other Minnesota Cities Say, Supporting ICE

Trump Exhaustion Syndrome (Ashley Parker/The Atlantic)

Yo, Dems: You can’t ‘reform’ fascism (Will Bunch/The Philadelphia Inquirer)  Will Bunch loses his shit.

Trump’s deeply unpopular presidency so far (Amber Phillips/Washington Post)  Deeply unpopular with the Left, that is.

House Democrats’ support for impeaching Kristi Noem is exploding (Andrew Solender/Axios)

Maine Secretary of State Bellows: No Undercover ICE Plates

Thousands of ICE, Border Patrol Employees Doxed in Data Leak

Gretchen Whitmer says it’s not ‘paranoia’ to fear Trump disrupting elections (Steve Inskeep/NPR)

Leftists Call For Political Purge Of MAGA If They Return To Power  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Trump’s weird text to Norway’s prime minister renews 25th Amendment talk (Steve Benen/MS NOW) They hope.

Trump, 79, Kicks Off Press Conference by Reading Aloud to Himself (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)

Democrats Are Trying To Weaponize The 25th Amendment Again, And It Won’t Work

US science after a year of Trump (Nature)

Conservative Military Archbishop Says Catholic Troops Can Defy Trump Orders on Greenland (Christopher Hale/Letters from Leo)  First of all, he’s not ‘conservative’, and secondly, that’s not what he said.

Read it.

A long-standing Los Angeles school policy created decades ago under court-ordered desegregation is now under fire in federal court, with a conservative group alleging it discriminates against white students.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the 1776 Project Foundation, challenges a Los Angeles Unified School District policy dating to the 1970s that provides smaller classes and other advantages to schools deemed “racially isolated minority” campuses.

Those schools are defined as having student populations that are more than 70% nonwhite.

 

Read it.

Newly released emails reveal that senior Biden administration health officials privately grappling with research suggesting recovery from Covid-19 infection provided stronger protection than vaccination alone – at the very moment the federal government was preparing sweeping vaccine mandates in 2021.

The correspondence, released under the Freedom of Information Act to the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, offers the clearest documentary evidence to date that top officials recognized scientific uncertainties around one-size-fits-all vaccination policies, even as they publicly dismissed the value of natural immunity.

At the center of the internal debate was a massive Israeli study of nearly 800,000 people that found prior infection conferred substantially stronger protection against reinfection than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In private emails, Dr. Anthony Fauci described the findings as “rather impressive,” acknowledging both the scale and rigor of the research, which had received prominent coverage in Science.

Read it.

It’s what they do best.

Newsbusters.

On Tuesday’s Inside Politics, CNN attempt to give credence to a story that an unfortunate “disabled” woman was accosted and arrested by ICE for supposedly no reason while trying get to a doctor’s appointment. But a simple search of the woman’s name, Aliya Rahman, turns up a treasure trove proving that she had a long history as a professional liberal activist working with far-left organizations that promote “racial,” “criminal,” and “social justice.” With part of her focus being against law enforcement.

“We’re hearing for the first time from Aliya Rahman, the woman ICE officers dragged from her vehicle while she shouted that she was disabled and trying to get to her doctor’s office,” announced host Dana Bash.

What followed up was a soundbite of Rahman claiming that even someone without her cognitive processing problems would have an issue understanding the ICE agent’s order to move her car out of their way.

Read it.

Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger has accused the radical left of getting people killed through ongoing delusions and interference with federal immigration enforcement, pointing to the fatal shooting of Renee Good as a prime example.

Appearing on FOX News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Shellenberger highlighted how leftist rhetoric and actions are radicalizing individuals like Good, leading them into perilous situations while obstructing lawful operations.

“I think left is getting people killed at this point. There’s no other way to say it,” Shellenberger stated. “These are not difficult issues, legally, morally. The public voted for a president who is implementing his policies, it’s undemocratic to halt the implementation of those policies, which is what is happening.”

On the other hand, every Leftist cosplayer that gets shot means one less to bother the rest of us. Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

Tuesday’s CBS Mornings served as further proof of what we found earlier this month about their evening counterpart (the CBS Evening News), which is they’ve been the strongest in covering the widespread Somali fraud scandal in Minneapolis. This time, CBS News Minnesota’s Jonah Kaplan interviewed Aimee Bock, the leader of the infamous group Feeding Our Future, as she awaits possibly decades behind bars for her role in a quarter-billion dollar scheme.

“Now to a CBS News exclusive interview with the woman who prosecutors say it was the mastermind of the biggest Covid-era fraud scheme. 44-year-old Aimee Bock is her name. She’s not part of the Somali community. Last year, she was convicted of orchestrating a $250 million plot to defraud government program to feed hungry kids,” declared co-host Gayle King in cuing Kaplan.

Kaplan began by pointing out “there’s been so much focus on the Somali community here in Minnesota because of the widespread fraud and most of the suspects charged and convicted in the schemes, they are from the Somali community, but…the mastermind, according to prosecutors, federal prosecutors, she is not Somali.”

Read it.

Leaders of a Black Lives Matter-aligned coalition claimed responsibility for organizing the mob disruption that shut down a Christian worship service in Minnesota on Sunday, defending their actions even as the Department of Justice launched a federal investigation.

Dozens of anti-ICE activists stormed Cities Church in St. Paul, chanting slogans, confronting congregants, and forcing worship to a halt.

Video posted to social media shows protesters yelling “ICE out” inside the sanctuary in what President Donald Trump on Tuesday called a “church raid.”

The protest was organized by a coalition that includes Racial Justice Network, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and Black Lives Matter Twin Cities. BLM Minnesota livestreamed the takeover.

If you’re wondering why an organization named “Black Lives Matter” is involved with the death of an AWFUL protester, join the club.

Read it.

Newsbusters.

On Monday’s edition of The View, to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, actress Pam Grier was teed up by co-host Sunny Hostin to recall the racism she experienced while growing up in Columbus, Ohio in the 1950s. According to her, her mom would often have to get her and her siblings to avert their eyes lest they see a body hanging from a tree. But according to the Ohio Lynching Victims Memorial, the last lynching was in 1911. Other details about the story were questionable as well.

There are lies, damned lies, and Democrats.

Read it.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is investigating the city of Minneapolis’s “comprehensive racialized housing plans,” the department said in a statement on Jan. 16.

Read it.

Apparently there is a furor over something Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said regarding inflation. It seems she recommended that Americans eat a “three dollar meal” and gave an example consisting of chicken, broccoli, a corn tortilla and one other item. The internet went crazy – when doesn’t it – suggesting this was impossible. Even the harpies on The View said so. ( I guess they asked their personal chefs) I know that Bidenflation pushed prices up 21%, but $3 seemed very doable. I popped open the app from my local grocery store here in NJ – Shop Rite. Let’s see.

Read it.

A Stockholm court on Wednesday sentenced a 19-year-old Syrian-Swedish man to seven years and ten months in prison for plotting a terrorist attack on the Stockholm Culture Festival on behalf of the Islamic State. The district court found him guilty of planning the bombing as well as “aggravated participation in a terrorist organisation.”

According to the court, the planned attack could have seriously harmed Sweden, aiming “to instill grave fear in a segment of the population in Sweden that does not share IS’s ideology.” The man had pleaded guilty to the charges.

Evidence presented showed that he had secured financing, conducted reconnaissance at Kungstradgarden park in central Stockholm, and recorded a “martyr video” intended for publication after the attack. He also possessed instructions and components for making explosives, and had purchased clothing and a body camera to record the assault.

Read it.

If there’s anything Republicans and Democrats can agree on, it’s how to spend money. Both parties created the federal budget deficit and contributed to the looming $38 trillion national debt, but President Donald Trump’s administration is actively working to close it.

Since the budget is essentially financed by taxpayers, closing the gap means reduced borrowing and interest payments, lower national debt, and boosted long-term economic growth all Americans can feel.

The Monthly Treasury Statement highlights fiscal year 2025, in which the federal government spent over $7 trillion in outlays and generated $5.2 trillion in receipts. Despite including President Joe Biden’s last four months in office, the budget deficit of approximately $1.8 trillion was still down 2% from fiscal year 2024.

Early data for fiscal year 2026 (October to December 2025) shows further fiscal responsibility. The cumulative deficit of $602 billion is approximately 15% lower than the same period in fiscal year 2025.

The deficit’s closure—or at least slowed rate of growth—under the Trump administration, can be attributed to a combination of receipt (revenue) increases and targeted outlay (spending) reductions.

Read it.

report published by the Institute of Women, an agency under the Ministry of Equality, openly defends the wearing of the Islamic hijab in classrooms and goes a step further by publicly naming schools that have limited or banned it.

The document, “‘Hands Off That!’: Discrimination Against Young Muslim Women Wearing the Hijab in the Education System,” presents these restrictions not as neutral disciplinary decisions, but as cases of institutional discrimination. According to the report, opposition to the hijab is rooted in “Islamophobia,” described as a form of cultural racism that targets Muslims—or those perceived to be Muslim—within Spain’s education system.

The report directly challenges long-standing justifications used by schools, including uniform policies, common dress codes, and the preservation of a neutral learning environment. These arguments, it claims, are selectively applied and disproportionately affect Muslim girls.

The Foundry.

Affordability has become the latest mantra for Democrats as they gear up for midterm elections. Yet, blue states lead the nation in driving up the cost of basic essentials like electricity and water, new studies say.

A recent report by the Institute for Energy Research, titled “Blue States, High Rates,” found that while average electricity prices across America increased by nearly 40% since 2021, Americans in left-leaning states paid significantly more than their conservative compatriots.

The report states that the vast majority of states with electricity prices above the national average are Democrat-led states. By contrast, red states comprised eight of the 10 states with the lowest electricity prices.

“Because of the Federal Power Act, the states have most of the discretion in terms of how they want to structure their electricity markets,” Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research and one of the study’s authors, told The Daily Signal. “We have seen over the past 10-15 years that typically blue states have high rates and red states, especially in the south and southeast, have much more reliable and affordable electricity for their ratepayers.”

Read it.

A dormitory in Amsterdam intended to promote “coexistence” between asylum seekers and local students has faced repeated incidents of violence, sexual assault, and drug-related offenses, yet the municipality has ruled out an early closure. The “Stek Oost” integration project, launched in 2018, now looks set to continue until April 2028.

The 250-resident dormitory house is half allocated to Dutch students and half to asylum seekers. A buddy system was introduced to foster cohesion between the groups. However, reports indicate that violent incidents, including sexual assaults and knife threats, have occurred in shared spaces. In one case, a Syrian resident involved in a sexual offense in 2019 was only removed in 2022 after committing a second sexual offence. He was later imprisoned.

Housing association Stadgenoot, responsible for the facility, requested an action plan from the municipality and police as early as 2019. Despite these warnings and staff threats, the municipality maintained that it could not abruptly displace 250 people.

Quillette.

Hitler left blood. Richard III left bones. Lenin left an entire body, preserved like a specimen.

For centuries, historians and biographers have understood the powerful by scrutinising their words and letters, dissecting their decisions, and weighing the testimony of those they governed. But the recent rise of ancient DNA research has opened unsettling possibilities for analysing the actions of our rulers both past and present on the basis of their biology. This new perspective complicates but does not replace traditional interpretation; it could challenge old assumptions or further reinforce them. More significantly, however, genetics offers a tantalising—and possibly distorting—shortcut to understanding the minds that have shaped, or are now shaping, our world.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis has moved far beyond tracing human ancestry and patterns of migration. Over the last decade, it has become a tool for detailed personal reconstruction, revealing previously impossible information about past individuals, including their health, diet, relationships, and physical appearance. And aDNA can now increasingly provide clues—sometimes surprising ones—not just about the bodies of the long-dead, but also about traits linked to neurological or behavioural tendencies.

The Foundry.

On Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, and former Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield shed light on how health officials and President Joe Biden’s administration sought to suppress the COVID-19 lab leak theory.

Miller-Meeks told the audience that the Biden administration worked backward from its preferred conclusion rather than grapple with the “spillover” outbreak theory.

“Either I was stupid, and everybody else was vastly more intelligent than I was, or people don’t want people to know, because science isn’t consensus, and I think that’s the biggest thing,” Miller-Meeks said in her opening remarks, noting that dissenting opinions on the origins of the virus should have been welcomed rather than suppressed.

“Science is a hypothesis. It’s an idea. You do a study, you get a conclusion, you repeat the study to show validity, but it’s not a consensus,” Miller-Meeks added.

Redfield told the audience that “almost every public health decision we made in the first six months of the pandemic was mainly wrong.”

The New Neo.

Ohio immigration courts may be subject to bribery:

At the center of the operation is Patricia Golder, who, according to the footage, has turned the alleged manipulation of the asylum process into her business. Golder says she takes a portion of the pay given to the Mauritanian migrants in exchange for helping them navigate the system, and she claims she can bribe judges to rule in the migrants’ favor. The footage also suggests that many of the migrants involved neither embrace nor intend to adopt core American values, even as they access public resources designed to protect legitimate asylum seekers. …

“You get the lawyer and you say, ‘Okay, we have this sheet of paper. I need you to ask the judge how much to carry these people two more year in this country? Probably until we get this project done.’ He say, ‘Okay, give me $50,000.’”

That $50,000 will get split up between everybody, Golder says.

I have long assumed this sort of thing goes on, plus lesser forms of deception and gaming the system. I really don’t see how it could be otherwise, and not just in Ohio by any means.

A great many articles discussing this mention that bribery is standard operating procedure in many parts of the world. So of course immigrants from such countries will consider it both necessary and noncontroversial. And that’s where we are.

Read it.

The controversial French euthanasia bill was passed by the National Assembly in May 2025 and is currently being reviewed by the Senate. Despite being considered more conservative, the Senate has unexpectedly decided to dramatically speed up the debate. Two bills are currently on the table: one on euthanasia and active assistance in dying, and the other on the development of palliative care. In a shake-up of the schedule, the Senate has chosen to examine the first bill first for reasons of ‘priority,’ counting on the mobilisation of senators, while the second bill is unlikely to interest parliamentarians who will be eager to return to their constituencies in the run-up to the next municipal elections.

Anxiety is mounting among pro-life advocates at the prospect of the bill being definitively adopted. Its content would make France one of the most permissive countries in the world.

The March for Life demonstration, organised in Paris on Sunday, January 18th, highlighted the semantic fraud behind the bill: the text describes euthanasia and assisted suicide as “care,” creating an obligation for doctors, with terms deliberately chosen to mask the purpose of the act, which is to deliberately cause death.

Doctors used to take the Hippocratic Oath, the first provision was “Primum non nocere” (First, to do no harm.) Apparently that’s no longer the case.

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Scientists at Stanford Medicine have discovered a treatment that can reverse cartilage loss in aging joints and even prevent arthritis after knee injuries. By blocking a protein linked to aging, the therapy restored healthy, shock-absorbing cartilage in old mice and injured joints, dramatically improving movement and joint function. Human cartilage samples from knee replacement surgeries also began regenerating when exposed to the treatment.

BBC, a Voice of the Crust.

Some 100,000 of these small dives are hidden in plain sight across Japan. Now, travellers are finally discovering these locals-only hangouts – and the beloved “mamas” who run them.

I didn’t plan on having my fortune read by a matchmaking “mama” on my most recent visit to Tokyo. But after climbing to the second floor of a cozy sunakku (snack bar) called Aeru in the Shinbashi neighbourhood, the proprietress and owner, Urara, smiled coyly as she pulled a Knight of Wands from her tarot deck.

“You’re craving passion and protection… in a man,” Urara told me, as I nibbled chilli-flavoured rice crackers and deep-fried dough sticks slathered in brown sugar.

“I’ll be sure to let my husband know that,” I replied with a wry smile.

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Around 2,000 strange tunnels have been found around central Europe. These aren’t like the well-known catacombs of Paris or Rome. Known as the erdstall, these passages are extremely narrow, never more than two feet (60 centimetres) wide nor high enough for an adult to walk in, and sometimes the passages become seemingly impossibly narrow, as small as 16 inches (40 centimetres) in diameter. Determining their age and purpose is made difficult by the fact that almost no archaeological evidence has been found inside any of them. A ploughshare was found in one, millstones in a couple others, but apart from that the erdstall are eerily empty. Carbon analyses of coal and pottery fragments found within point to construction dates of around 900 to 1200 AD, but no written records from the Middle Ages mention the erdstall’s existence.

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On the western flank of the Hoover Dam stands a little-understood monument, commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation when construction of the dam began in 01931. The most noticeable parts of this corner of the dam, now known as Monument Plaza, are the massive winged bronze sculptures and central flagpole which are often photographed by visitors. The most amazing feature of this plaza, however, is under their feet as they take those pictures.

The plaza’s terrazzo floor is actually a celestial map that marks the time of the dam’s creation based on the 25,772-year axial precession of the earth.

Now Is the Time to Admit It, America: Trump Is a Dangerous, Lunatic Moron (David Rothkopf/The Daily Beast)

Judge refuses to block new DHS policy limiting Congress members’ access to ICE facilities (Michael Kunzelman/Associated Press)

Falsehoods Fueled Trump’s First Year Back in Office (New York Times)

Trump’s talk of canceling elections is a sign of desperation (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

It’s Sundowning in America (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks.

President Trump Will Get a Third Term Even Without Defying the Constitution (John F. Harris/Politico)

A very simple explanation for why politics is broken (Eric Levitz/Vox)  It’s all the fault of those stupid white people.

With Threats to Greenland, Trump Sets America on the Road to Conquest (Peter Baker/New York Times)

Lemon Defends Joining Anti-ICE Mob to Storm Church of ‘White Supremacy’

One Year of All This — On the corrosive private ambition of Donald Trump. — One year in. (Jonathan Bernstein/Good Politics/Bad …)

How Trump Doomed the American Auto Industry (Ryan Cooper/American Prospect)

Trump’s a T-Rex and ‘pathetic’ leaders need to confront him, rages California’s Newsom (Politico)

How Donald Trump broke Congress and rendered ‘separation of powers’ meaningless in just a year (Eric Garcia/The Independent)

How Trump Has Used the Presidency to Make at Least $1.4 Billion (New York Times)  All this and he didn’t even get “10% for the Big Guy”.

Ray Dalio warns that ‘capital wars’ could follow Trump’s actions, with countries dumping U.S. assets (Yun Li/CNBC)

Trump’s Year of Anarchy (Foreign Affairs)

Bull Connor’s Ghost (Joyce Vance/Civil Discourse …)  Remembering always that Bull Connor was a Democrat.

26 Villains For ’26 — To honor the nation’s looming Semiquincentennial, here are some of … (Greg Olear/PREVAIL)

MS NOW Fails At Fact-Checking Trump On St. Paul Church Storming

The Register.

Perhaps not helping is that datacenter firms consistently expect power to be available up to two years earlier than the utilities and power generating companies say it can be delivered, according to the report.

This is forcing operators to go where the power is, and Texas is expected to be a big winner here, thanks to its ample energy resources. Bloom Energy forecasts that, by 2028, the state could exceed 40 GW of IT capacity, nearly 30 percent of the anticipated US total, and more than double its current share.