Alma Boykin, whose books I highly recommend.

Could part of what we see be the collapse of a millennial movement, one that has lasted 47 years? I hadn’t thought about it until I watched a video clip yesterday, and pieces fell into place.

Revolutionary Shia Islam of the kind preached by the various ayatollahs since 1979 has a strong eschatological bent. Shia Islam, like Christianity, has an end time with a last battle and the return of a prophet, in this case first the Hidden Twelfth Imam, then Issa bin Maryam. The pair will be at the Last Battle and the coming of the End Times, followed by paradise. One of the big differences, as best I can tell, between the older versions of Shiism and Khomeini and Khamenei version is that the older belief does not include pushing G-d into ending the world (for lack of a more graceful term). Like Christianity and Judaism, the majority of Shiites believed that the end time would come, or a Messiah-like figure would return, when the Most High willed. Not when people wanted it. And no one could or should push G-d into acting*.

I recall getting rather concerned in 2009-2011 when the then-president of Iran, Mahmud Ahmedinegad, claimed that he had spoken to the Twelfth Imam, and that the US was preventing the end of the Occultation of the Imam and the beginning of the End Times. The US State Department shrugged such words off, because they didn’t take religion seriously. The Iranian government does – it is a theocracy. If the president of Iran said he was talking to a major figure of the Second Coming and End Times, that was not good. Especially later, when whispers got around that the ayatollahs might be discussing starting the global conflict that would herald the coming of the Last Judgment, because it had not happened yet.

The process is called ‘immanentizing the eschaton’.

Read it.

A culture-enricher in the Dutch city of Nijmegen went on a rampage with an axe in a shopping center last Thursday, doing damage to a another man who may or may not have been a fellow culture-enricher.

Generally speaking, the preferred bladed weapon for sub-Saharan Africans is the machete. For North Africans, Middle Easterners, and South Asians it’s the kebab knife. But all of them will gladly use an axe when necessary, so the ethnicity of this particular perpetrator can’t be determined from the available information.

Read it.

ive culture-enriching “Austrian” teenagers went on trial in Vienna for their high-spirited shenanigans in the Viennese district of Donaustadt, which, as you might guess, is on the Danube. Their actions were just the usual antics of young Austrians — beating, kicking, robbery, breaking bones, knocking out teeth, forced kissing, that sort of thing — but the judge threw the book at them, handing down custodial sentences of up to three months. That’ll teach ’em!

Read it.

At Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon, tens of thousands of people crowded around a massive Douglas fir tree decked with lights. Waiting for the carnage to begin was Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali ‘child’ refugee, who was dreaming of killing them all.

In 2010, Mohamud had urged a friend of his traveling to Mecca to pray “that I will be a martyr in the highest chambers of paradise.” He planned to attack Americans “in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays.” And Christmas was the perfect time of the year to do it.

While fathers lifted up their children on their shoulders and music filled the air, Mohamud was smiling for a different reason.“You know what I like, what makes me happy?” he had told undercover agents. As American families were enjoying the moment, the Somali Muslim was picturing their bodies ripped to shreds by his bomb.“You know, what I like to see? Is when I see the enemy of Allah, then you know their bodies are torn everywhere.”

Choosing a spot next to a light rail terminal, Mohamud waited for a train to arrive in order to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the families arriving at the ceremony. But instead of murdering thousands of people at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, he was arrested and dragged away while screaming, “Allahu Akbar.”

I’m sure that the resemblance to Hakim Jeffries was entirely coincidental.

Watch it.

Chris Williamson of the Modern Wisdom podcast interviews Nick Shirley, the ‘citizen journalist’ who broke the Somali fraud scheme in Minnesota.

Democratic Leaders Hesitant to Wage Shutdown Over Disagreements With Trump Administration (NOTUS)

“You Don’t Want This Smoke”: Philly Sheriff, DA Threaten To Arrest ‘Fake Law Enforcement’ ICE Officers

White House shares video of Minneapolis shooting from ICE officer’s perspective (Rebecca Beitsch/The Hill)

Minnesota officials open their own probe of ICE shooting as protests spread (Reuters)

Five States Sue Trump Admin Over $10 Billion Freeze In Child-Care, Family-Assistance Funds

ICE Is Only Getting Started, the Worst Is Yet to Come: A Conversation with David J. Bier (Shikha Dalmia/The UnPopulist)

Maduro in Minneapolis — The shadow of Maduro hangs over Minneapolis. (Timothy Snyder/Thinking about)

‘I don’t need international law’: Trump’s Wild West doctrine freezes European brains (Tim Ross/Politico)  Ah, ah, ah, ah, yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

Newsom calls for Noem’s resignation (Sophie Brams/The Hill)  And Noem ought to call for Newsom’s resignation. Sauce for the goose ….

How Trump’s plan to charge foreigners more is causing chaos at national parks (Jake Spring/Washington Post)

After pressure from Trump, Colorado gov. signals possible clemency for election denier Tina Peters (Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket)

220,000 Fewer Workers: How Trump’s Cuts Affected Every Federal Agency (New York Times)  A good start.

ICE and Border Patrol shootings spark hundreds of weekend vigils and protests (April Rubin/Axios)  All in Blue-pustule urban areas, all managed by the protest-industrial complex.

Right-wing media villainize and blame Renee Good for her own death in Minneapolis ICE shooting (Gideon Taaffe/Media Matters for America)  She fucked around and found out.

Stephen Miller Is Taking His Fascist Horrorshow International (Tim Dickinson/The Contrarian)  I guess Miller is the New Nazi.

Threat Made Against WH Press Secretary Leavitt on X  That’s what proglodytes do.

The Hole in Trump’s Rationale for Acquiring Greenland (The Atlantic)

Trump Goon Delivers Bonkers Excuse for Grim Jobs Report (Vic Verbalaitis/The Daily Beast)

Trump dials Collins with ‘profanity-laced rant’ over Venezuela war powers vote (Al Weaver/The Hill)  And apparently The Hill was listening in.

The Poison Always Drips Through (Ned Resnikoff/Public Comment)  Mostly on a Narrative Media page.

Renee Nicole Good is ALL OF US (The Contrarian)  “Us” meaning proglodytes like The Contrarian, that is.

Kristi Noem and DHS do not deserve the benefit of the doubt (Philip Bump/MS NOW)  Philip Bump loses his shit.

Judge Blocks Trump Order Impacting Vote-By-Mail States

Trump’s plan to strong-arm insurers into lower prices is met with skepticism (Cheyenne Haslett/Politico)  Of course, if a Democrat President did it, they’d be kissing his ass.

Trump, Venezuela and the doctrine that wouldn’t die (Greg Grandin/Financial Times)

Brooks: Won’t Judge Minneapolis, But ICE Has Acted ‘Like Thugs’

Federal Agents Are Violating the Rights of Americans (Anne Applebaum/The Atlantic)

Anti-ICE Mob Takes Protest Inside Minneapolis Hotels  Good way to get more people shot—which is what they want.

Democrats Say Things Would Be Much Safer If Law Enforcement Would Just Stop Trying To Enforce The Law (Babylon Bee)

Is It Good Politics to Defend a Harmless Woman Getting Shot in the Face? (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)  Not when she hit an ICE officer with her car—except on Planet Proglodyte.

From “America First” to “Manifest Destiny”: MAGA eyes foreign expansion (Tal Axelrod/Axios)  And the mind-readers from Axios are on top of it.

Trump’s Married Labor Boss Accused of Booze-Filled Fling With Staffer (Catherine Bouris/The Daily Beast)  The best of American high-school journalism.

Widow Who Urged Wife To ‘Drive’ In Deadly ICE Incident Rakes In $1.5M In Donations

Minneapolis City Officials Dismantle ‘No-Go Zone’ Set Up By Anti-ICE Agitators

Tim O’Brien on the decline of The Donald (Public Notice)

Read it.

If you find yourself squinting while driving at night, you’re not alone. The IIHS reports that average headlight brightness has roughly doubled in the last decade. The NHTSA receives growing consumer complaints regarding headlight brightness. There’s a real, widespread anger out there; there’s even a subreddit with over 44,000 members complaining about this growing and very real crisis.

The numbers support the public’s frustration. Older halogen bulbs produced approximately 1,000 lumens. Newer factory-fitted LEDs produce up to 4,000 lumens or more. Some aftermarket LEDs have been found to produce 10,000 lumens or more. But the problem is that the federal brightness standards for automotive headlights have not changed for decades.

The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 hasn’t had significant updates since 1986, with an addition allowing Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) headlights coming only in 2022. The NHTSA last investigated the issue of headlamp glare in 2003. The current standards include huge loopholes for auto manufacturers to emit as much light as desired, as long as the manufacturer meets the requirements of the other parts of the regulation.

Read it.

A federal judge dismissed a conservative nonprofit’s defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center Wednesday, reversing a previous judge’s theory of the case.

Critics say the SPLC routinely smears mainstream conservative and Christian groups by placing them on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. D.A. King, founder of the Dustin Inman Society, sued the center for defamation after it branded his Georgia-based organization—which opposes illegal immigration—an “anti-immigrant hate group.”

Judge W. Keith Watkins of the Middle District of Alabama allowed the defamation case to move forward in 2023, but Judge Corey L. Maze of the Northern District of Alabama later took the case.

After discovery—the legal process of acquiring documents to prove a case—Maze ruled Wednesday that most of King’s claims fell outside the statute of limitations, and that King further failed to prove the center acted with “actual malice” in re-publishing the “hate group” accusation. King died last year, but his estate is a plaintiff in the case.

Harry Mihet, chief litigation counsel for Liberty Counsel and one of King’s attorneys, told The Daily Signal that Judge Maze took the wrong approach to the case.

“I think the first judge who looked at this issue got it exactly right and the court currently got it exactly wrong,” Mihet told The Daily Signal in a phone call Thursday.

“The first judge looked at this in careful detail and nothing’s changed since. Whether something is time barred is a matter of law, so that should not have been affected by the facts in discovery.”

The Robb Report.

Wouldn’t mind having one of these.

The Robb Report.

Billionaires are fleeing California ahead of a proposed 5 percent wealth tax, with at least six members of the ten-digit club moving their business to other states before the bill’s January 1 deadline to be considered for the levy. And more may be on the move still, if the tax actually comes to pass, Bloomberg reported.

Well, that will free up a lot of high-end housing. (Won’t help the homeless much, but proglodyte celebrities ought to benefit.)

And though the proposal hasn’t been signed into law, the idea alone was strong enough to send some UHNW individuals out of the state. Both Peter Thiel and David Sacks packed their bags right at the end of 2025, with the PayPal cofounder heading to Florida and the venture capitalist going off to Texas. Global investment firm Iconiq Capital’s founder Divesh Makan says he’s aware of four or five families that left California, explaining that the floodgates would open even further if the bill was passed, according to Bloomberg. David Lesperance, whose company helps affluent families with immigration and taxes, has helped move four billionaires out of the state, he told the publication.

The bill itself calls for a one-time tax on California residents who have over $1 billion to their name. Though it’s not a sure thing by any means, with the move still needing enough signatures to even appear on the state’s November ballot; then, of course, it would need to be voted into law. Governor Gavin Newsom is strongly opposed to the measure; other detractors say it would harm the California’s tech economy, as many start-ups may not have the funds to cover the levy. And, since the state’s economy overall relies heavily on existing taxes on the uber-rich, the bill may actually end up costing California money in the long term if these UHNW individuals happen to exit. The union that introduced the proposal aimed to generate $100 billion to fund gaps in health care, food benefits, and education statewide.

Read it.

Dick Smothers: “Take it, Tommy!”

Tom Smothers: “Take it where?”

Read it.

Persuading idiots to perform criminal acts (e.g., assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers, as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 111) is a crime. The fact that the one being urged to commit the crime is a drug-addled, mental defective or emotional basket case is not an excuse or defense.

…

The woman shot in Minnesota was allegedly “trained” to interfere with ICE. Are her trainers guilty of criminal solicitation or even felony murder? And the likelihood that she was not a person of consistently sound judgment would not be a defense in accordance with section (c) and possibly an aggravating factor.

Quillette.

In the last days of 2025, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stoked controversy by welcoming activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to the UK after his release from prison in Egypt. Fattah has expressed extreme views, including hatred of white people and support for the killing of police and “Zionists,” including civilians. He became a UK citizen in 2021, while he was still in prison, on the basis of his mother’s UK citizenship. The right to citizenship by descent on the mother’s side for those born prior to 1983 used to be dependent on passing a “good character” test (rather than granted automatically), but this requirement was removed by the British Nationality Act 1981 (Remedial) Order 2019, due to judicial decisions made under the auspices of the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998. How, then, did human rights law come to facilitate the move to the UK of an activist whose own respect for human rights seems tenuous? To understand this, we need to look at the origins of human rights law.

Read it.

Few cases encapsulate the rot at the heart of Britain quite like that of Shamima Begum. On the surface, she should have been a textbook illustration of the virtues of multiculturalism: a second-generation Bangladeshi, raised in the Muslim enclave of Tower Hamlets in East London. In reality, she embodies everything Britain has gotten wrong since Tony Blair: a thriving fifth column, greedily suckling at the ever-accommodating teat of the progressive state, nursing hatred in lieu of patriotism.

Begum is the well-documented ‘ISIS bride’ who left Britain at 15 a decade ago to join the Islamic State, married a Dutch jihadist, and—according to credible reports—was an armed enforcer for ISIS’ dreaded ‘hisba’ morality police. Sources claim that, far from a wide-eyed bystander, Begum attempted to recruit other young women to the cause, strutted around with a Kalashnikov, berated women who were improperly dressed, and allegedly sewed bombers into their suicide vests. Despite witnessing beheadings, rapes, and enslavement, Begum showed no remorse in initial interviews—describing life under ISIS as “normal” and claiming the sight of severed heads “didn’t faze me at all.” She even dismissed the Manchester Arena bombing as justifiable “retaliation”.

Read it.

The latest iteration of the Democratic Party’s color-revolution-style operation was on full display in recent days as tensions erupted following the fatal shooting of a left-wing activist by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a federal enforcement sweep in Minnesota. This incident demonstrates that the protest industrial complex, funded by left-wing billionaires, has been on standby, waiting for a catalyzing event to ignite mass mobilization.

MSM, the Democratic Party, and left-wing nonprofits are working hard to manufacture another ‘George Floyd’-type protest or riot by omitting key context about the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent. They conveniently left out her social justice “warrior” role in Minneapolis, including her reported involvement with “ICE Watch” and other operations to disrupt ICE raids in the sanctuary city. These details matter because MSM attempted to manufacture an outrage news cycle, while nonprofits create artificial multi-city protests aimed at shifting public opinion on ICE operations nationwide.

But Alpha News published cellphone camera footage from one of the ICE agents that confirmed the activist was indeed involved in a confrontation leading up to the deadly shooting.

Read it.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin quietly began unwinding portions of their financial empires in California in the days leading up to Christmas, according to corporate filings reviewed by The New York Times, as progressive lawmakers consider a proposed billionaire wealth tax. This development confirms our earlier note that California is on an accelerated path toward self-destruction.

ATQUE: Google Founders Quit California Over Billionaires Tax Proposal

Read it.

It is generally acknowledged that the Baby Boom generation (of which I am a member) has been the most successful, socioeconomically speaking, in the history of this planet, and the prospects for the generations following to match or surpass us are not looking good. As a confirmation of the disparity, I recently read that while Baby Boomers make up approximately 20% of the current US population, they possess more than 50% of the wealth.

In speaking with others of my generation, I have come to realize that very few Baby Boomers have even a modicum of insight as to how that success happened. The typical pabulum that I get from my peers is that they got their education and worked hard, implying that it should be no different for the younger generations.

Read it.

A shocking scene played out in a Latin American country Thursday, but this time it’s not Venezuela, but nearby Honduras.

A Honduran legislator from the country’s conservative National Party of president-elect Nasry Asfura was speaking to the press within the halls of the Honduran national congress, or just outside, when suddenly an explosive device was thrown, detonating just behind her head. The disturbing incident, which she survived, was filmed given the many cameras around at the time of the attack.

Deputies had been summoned to meet, and the attack victim – Gladis Aurora López – collapsed to the floor during the explosion, her jacket left torn apart.

Witnesses immediately rushed her to begin giving her medical attention, and authorities in a later update announced that her injuries were thankfully not life-threatening.

Violence is a primary political tool for those on the Left. Their calls for ‘revolution’ leave no doubt of that.

Read it.

During the 1992 Presidential Debate, independent candidate Ross Perot famously warned that “there will be a giant sucking sound going south” due to the cheaper Mexican labor and lower regulatory demands on businesses. That sound is being heard again, but this time it is coming from California, which is virtually chasing taxpayers and companies out of the state with a massive state deficit, rising taxes, crippling regulations, and wasteful programs.

Recently, Gavin Newsom boasted, “California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace.”

Recent data shows he is right.

There is a record number of U-Hauls fleeing the state — more than any other state. Indeed, the only thing harder to find than a wealthy taxpayer in California appears to be a U-Haul.

According to U-Haul’s data, the state is again leading blue states in the exodus. The Washington Post noted this week that “California came in last. Massachusetts, New York, Illinois and New Jersey rounded out the bottom five. Of the bottom 10, seven voted blue in the last election.” Conversely, “nine of the top 10 growth states voted red in the last presidential election,” with Texas again leading the growth states.

The Post wrote that the conclusions are inescapable: “People want to live in pro-growth, low-tax states, while the biggest losers tend to be places with big governments and high taxes.”

Read it.

John Solomon’s Just the News reports that a dark-money NGO network tied to CCP-linked communist billionaire Neville Roy Singham was allgedly activated as a command-and-control support node to organize nationwide anti-ICE protests just hours after the deadly shooting in Minneapolis.

“China may be helping astroturf far-left protests against ICE via a financial network in league with radical-left financier and multi-millionaire Neville Roy Singham. Singham funds a network of groups expressing anti-American sentiment,” Solomon’s team wrote in a note.

On Wednesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote on X, “I have formally made a motion to subpoena Neville Singham, an American billionaire with ties to the CCP.”

During a House Oversight Committee meeting earlier that day, Luna said the China-based Singham “has been funding extremist organizations that fuel division and civil unrest in this country, especially regarding the anti-ICE riots last summer.”

ZMan:

That is the nature of long relationships between people. Integral to Irish identity will be their relationship with the British. The same is true for Scots, Welsh and Cornish to one degree or another. You see it with blacks in America. Who they are depends on their relationship with Whites. We freed them from the perpetual squalor of Africa, and they will never forgive us for it.

Chris Zeeman is dead, but his spirit lives on.

Read it.

“. . .the Minnesota protests look less like a local eruption and more like the latest deployment of an international revolutionary machine.”

– Insurrection Barbie on “X”

Chrump, Chrump Chrump… He’s come to occupy the Left’s minds like an infestation of weevils chawing away the ligaments of civilized society.

But, of course, the whole wicked, Cluster-B, anomie-driven, insurrectionist extravaganza is a made-for-video production bought and paid for by a tiny coterie of super-wealthy megalomaniacs untouched by consequence — George and Alex Soros (The Open Society Foundations), Shanghai-based American Neville Roy Singham (Codepink and more), Reid Hoffman (funder of Trump prosecutions and more), Lauren Powell Jobs (The Atlantic and the Emerson Collective), Hansjorg Wyss (Berger Action Fund), Bill Gates (of course). . . .

Their main client in all this mischief is the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party’s chief motivation, its raison d’être going on at least ten years now, has been to hide its multifarious crimes, its vast racketeering operations now garishly on display in the state of Minnesota, where the grift just went too far and was done right in America’s face.

The Telegraph (UK).

The Open University has been forced to back down on claims the Virgin Mary was born in “ancient Palestine” following a legal complaint.

Academics had been accused of using material which risked “erasing Jewish history” by adopting the contested term “ancient Palestine” to describe her native province.

The row broke out over the university’s use of the description in its entry-level humanities module, Discovering the Arts and Humanities, which explores the role of myths and legends in shaping religious beliefs and practices.

The course material refers to Mary as having been born in “ancient Palestine”, describes Aramaic as “a language widely spoken in ancient Palestine” and includes a map labelled “Map of ancient Palestine”.

“Palestine”, of course, didn’t exist until the Romans created it after the destruction of the Jewish state after the rebellions of the first century A.D.

I find it entertaining that the illustrations accompanying the article are all of Orthodox icons of the Theotokos rather than Latin representations of the Virgin Mary.

The Telegraph (UK).

First came Russia’s “turtle tank”, a metal shed rumbling across the battlefield. Then Ukraine laughed at the so-called “hairy tank”, coated in long, wavy metal wires.

Now the “dandelion tank” has arrived.

Moscow’s latest crude design, which features flexible metal rods arranged in branched layers, attempts to shield the body of the tank from the ever-present threat of small kamikaze drones.

The Telegraph (UK).

Cash-strapped councils spent more than £100,000 paying contractors to take down Union flags and St George’s crosses, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

No taking down of Pride flags, of course.

The Telegraph (UK).

A Labour council has been accused of building “socialist speed bumps” that scrape high-performance and luxury family cars.

Residents on an affluent street in Lewisham, south-east London, say the local authority has installed sleeping policemen that are prone to damaging the undercarriages of expensive private vehicles.

Motorists in Blackheath have even produced their own engineering report, which claims that 12 out of a sample of 15 new speed bumps breach Lewisham council’s recommended height limit. The council, however, insists they all meet national guidelines.

An excellent metaphor for how socialism deals with life generally. Socialism clings to ‘equality’, and since it is impossible to make low-quality people high-quality, the only method available is to make high-quality people in effect low-quality.

Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” is even more apropos to modern life than Orwell’s “1984”.

Trump Targets 5 Defecting Republicans After War Powers Rebuke

Inside Democrats’ new push to handcuff ICE (Stephen Neukam/Axios)

Man accused of killing parents to fund Trump assassination plot pleads guilty (Ryan Mancini/The Hill)

Trump, Congress Target Biden-Era Minnesota Mining Ban

CNN Accuses ICE Agent Of ‘Murder,’ ICE Recruitment Ads Evoke Nazi Germany

The Trump Administration Says It’s Illegal To Record Videos of ICE. Here’s What the Law Says. (C.J. Ciaramella/Reason)

That’s the Whole Ballgame, Folks (David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo)

Senate unanimously approves installing Jan. 6, 2021 plaque (Hailey Fuchs/Politico)

Protesters Track, Harass Feds in Minneapolis

Walz Orders Minnesota National Guard on Standby  Hope Tim likes the weather in Guantanamo.

Democrats demand hearing with Noem after deadly ICE shooting (Rebecca Beitsch/The Hill)  A lot of demands for people with no power.

NBC News Analysis Of ICE Shooting Video Opens Door To Self-Defense

Renee Nicole Good was Minneapolis ‘ICE Watch’ ‘warrior’ who trained to resist feds before shooting (New York Post)

Vance Says Woman’s Fatal Shooting by an ICE Agent Was a ‘Tragedy of Her Own Making’ (NOTUS)

I’m the Mayor of Minneapolis. Trump Is Lying to You. (Jacob Frey/New York Times)

Top Democrats decline to say if they would push to rein in ICE funding after Minnesota shooting (Eric Garcia/The Independent)  They’re crazy, but they aren’t stupid.

Report: Slain Minneapolis Woman Active With Anti-ICE Group

Why Donald Trump Wants Greenland (and Everything Else) (Susan B. Glasser/New Yorker)  The mind-readers of the Narrative Media are out in force today.

Exclusive: Trump supporter and oil magnate Harry Sargeant advising US on Venezuela, sources say (Reuters)  So what?

Kimmel Claims Trump Wants To ‘Kill Americans’

Kimmel Slams ICE, Displaying T-Shirt Urging Agency Out of Minneapolis

Lawmakers request court-appointed official to oversee the Epstein files release (Hailey Fuchs/Politico) EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN! EPSTEIN!

On Night Before ICE Shooting, CNN’s Burnett Let Minneapolis Mayor Claim Trump & ICE Are Racist

Watch: NYC Protesters Chant “Kristi Noem will Hang!” and “Save a Life, Kill an ICE”

PBS Invites Paranoid Professor to Mark January 6 As ‘Phase of Fascism’ Under Trump

Ukraine Awards Major Lithium Project to Investors With Links to Trump (Constant Méheut/New York Times)  “Links” means they can’t prove any connection but they’re going to insinuate one anyway.

5 blue states sue Trump admin over $10 billion child care funding freeze (Axios)

Protesters, officers clash in Minneapolis after ICE shooting (Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill)

OMISSION: Nets Suppress Reports of Renee Nicole Good’s Anti-ICE Activism

German Prez Gets Schnitzel In A Twist, Says Trump Destroying World Order

The Cruelty of Trump’s Crackdown on Afghan Refugees (Lydia Polgreen/New York Times)

‘I don’t need international law’: Trump says power constrained only by ‘my own morality’ (Maya Yang/The Guardian)

Support for abolishing ICE hits a a new high (G. Elliott Morris/Strength In Numbers)  On his planet.

The right-wing dehumanization machine is speeding up (Justin Glawe/Public Notice)

By Killing Renee Good, ICE Sent a Message to Us All (Michelle Goldberg/New York Times)  Yeah—Don’t try to run over ICE agents.

Trump Shooting Fiasco Worsens as Dems Find Fresh Line of Attack on ICE (New Republic)

The Mad King’s Madness Deepens (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks.

ICE is not the victim — MAGA lies can’t hide the real damage done to people like Renee Nicole Good (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Amanda Marcotte loses her shit.

How right-wing creators bend reality to their will (Caitlin Dewey/Vox)  Vox attempts to bend reality leftward.

US Authoritarian Regime Executes Unarmed Civilian as Ruler Grows More Erratic, Isolated (Prem Thakker/Zeteo)

What lies behind Trump’s retro oil plundering? (Gillian Tett/Financial Times)

Transcript: Can Trump’s Thugs Be Reined In? These Dems Have an Idea. (New Republic)

Revealed: ICE shooter has an IMMIGRANT Filipina wife and is an Iraq veteran as father comes to his defense (Ben Ashford/Daily Mail)

China’s fentanyl crackdown led to a stunning drop in U.S. overdoses, research says (April Rubin/Axios)

Renee Macklin Good’s wife releases statement about ICE shooting (Cari Spencer/MPR News)

Radical Rhetoric by Sanctuary Politicians Leads to an Unprecedented 1,300% Increase in Assaults Against ICE Officers and a 3,200% Increase in Vehicular Attacks (Department of Homeland Security)

A cold-blooded murder — In Minneapolis on Wednesday, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three. (Robert Reich)  Robert Reich loses his shit.

Murder in Cold Blood (Dan Rather/Steady)  Being run down by a proglodyte in a car is not ‘cold blood’, Dan. Get back on your meds.

Trump administration unleashes torrent of untruths after woman shot dead by ICE (Richard Luscombe/The Guardian)

Our Mad King’s Vainglorious Venezuelan Victory Lap Was Rudely Interrupted By A Newly Assertive Congress Yesterday (Simon Rosenberg/Hopium Chronicles)

A Turning Point for Trump’s Marauding Secret Police (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)

Federal officers blocked medics from scene of ICE shooting, witnesses say (George Chidi/The Guardian)

Seattle Judge Blocks Health Department From Rejecting Head Start Grants With DEI Terms

Watch it.

Tim Pool has the video.

Newsbusters.

Apple News failed to link to a single right-leaning media outlet among its top 20 daily articles during the month of December. Out of the 620 opportunities analyzed at approximately 10:00 a.m. each day by the Media Research Center, Apple News whiffed every single time.

Instead, dozens of times Apple News published articles from leftist outlets like The Washington Post, NBC News and NPR and center outlets like Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

You have to go all the way back to Nov. 5 of last year to find the last time Apple News deigned to link to a single right-leaning site. That story was from British outlet The Telegraph covering the atrocities taking place in Sudan: “In Sudan’s genocide, Only Those Who Pay Survive.” Ironically, Apple hid the article behind the Apple News+ paywall and only paid subscribers could read the full article.

Read it.

There are competing narratives about Wednesday’s ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis. Some left-leaning corporate outlets focused on the fact that a woman was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a federal enforcement deportation operation, while other media, like the New York Post, highlighted that the woman, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was part of a left-wing group “Ice Watch” that mounted pressure campaigns on ICE agents on the ground.

Put aside all those viral videos on X; now Alpha News has obtained cellphone footage from what appears to be one of the ICE agents, and it provides a completely new perspective on what happened and why the ICE agent felt threatened enough to fire several shots at Good, killing the activist.

Read it.

An estimated 453,230 accounts were shut down in the United Kingdom in the last year, a stunning figure that has drawn outrage from the country’s leading conservative lawmaker.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called the shocking figure “appalling” and slammed European rules that he believes “makes it cheaper for banks to close accounts over unusual transactions.” Farage, who was elected to the British Parliament in 2024 and leads the conservative populist Reform Party, is no stranger to debanking, having had his accounts closed by Coutts in 2023.

So what’s the banks’ excuse? “Financial crime reasons,” they said, according to documents obtained by The Telegraph under Freedom of Information rules.

Read it.

Supermarket shelves have never been fuller, yet diets have become poorer. Across the world, food systems praised for their productivity now deliver an abundance of calories alongside widespread micronutrient deficiency, ecological collapse and rural precarity.

This is the outcome of an agricultural model that equates food security with yield and mass production with nourishment. Sustained by billions in subsidies, industrial agriculture increasingly resembles a welfare state for agribusiness and retail giants whose profits depend on public money.

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The Swedish Migration Board, the authority charged with deciding who may live in Sweden and under what conditions, has been described by internal sources as an organization largely staffed by personnel with a migration background who often speak their own languages and seek to prioritize those from their own country of origin to establish a greater cultural foothold in Sweden.

Swedish news outlet Samnytt spoke to long-serving employees of the organization who blew the whistle on its structural weaknesses and its inability to adhere to the agency’s requirement for neutrality on migration policy.

“Currently, the majority of the staff have a background other than Swedish. Many do not even have Swedish citizenship. And they speak their own language with their own group,” said one source who has worked within the authority for several decades and is still employed there.

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The Trump administration is considering sending lump-sum payments of up to $100,000 to each of Greenland’s roughly 57,000 residents as part of an effort to buy the Arctic island, media outlets reported Thursday.

The reports followed comments Wednesday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said he told lawmakers earlier this week that the goal is to buy the semiautonomous territory from Denmark, The Wall Street Journal reported.

U.S. officials, including White House aides, have discussed figures ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per person, according to Reuters, which cited two sources who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“We can make you rich or we can make you dead. Which do you choose? — The Mafia

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The U.K. home secretary has barred a New Jersey–based Islamic scholar from entering Britain after determining that his past statements appeared to support Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, the Daily Telegraph reported this week.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood banned Dr. Shadee Elmasry, an Islamic cleric from New Jersey, prompting the cancellation of several scheduled speaking engagements in Birmingham, Bolton, and Ilford.

The U.K. home secretary serves a role similar to that of the U.S. secretary of homeland security, overseeing border control and national security matters.

British authorities cited social media posts made by Elmasry after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which more than 1,200 people were killed in Israel.

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Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent reportedly involved in the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday was dragged more than 100 yards by a fleeing suspect’s vehicle during a June arrest attempt involving a foreign national and convicted sex offender.

That happened in Bloomington, Minnesota, where Ross suffered injuries that required 20 stitches to his right arm and 13 stitches to his left hand, according to court records.

Ross on Wednesday shot and killed Good, 37, in her vehicle in Minneapolis, sparking large protests in the streets.

The Department of Homeland Security says the officer shot her in self-defense after she tried to run him over.

Once burned, twice shy.

Watch it.

I am as skeptical as Ryan Inis is. But if it works out (and the company involved has a history of innovation) it could be a real breakthrough. At any rate, it will tell you more about batteries than you probably want to know.

Robert A. Heinlein, in his 1982 novel Friday, mentions a similar product called ‘shipstone’. (If you haven’t read Friday, do so. You’ll enjoy it.)

Mackey Chandler’s April series (which I also heartily recommend) use a similar energy storage device, invented by Jeff Singh, one of the protagonists, as a major plot device.

Trump-Defying Conservatives Shower Massie With Cash After President’s Latest Rant

Musician Béla Fleck is the latest to cancel Kennedy Center performances after Trump’s renaming (Dareh Gregorian/NBC News)

Trump hammers NATO allies while Greenland crisis deepens (Elena Giordano/Politico)  There is no ‘Greenland crisis’ except in the fevered brains of the Narrative Media. (Cold War Treaty Already Gives US Broad Access to Greenland)

Big 4 News Apps Conceal Trump’s Venezuela Victory, Spout Dem Narrative

How Trump’s Attack On Venezuela May Have Boosted His Net Worth (Kyle Khan-Mullins/Forbes)

‘GET HIM OUT!’ Whoopi Wants to Know Why NATO Not Saving Us from Trump

Minn. Gov. Walz Slams Trump After Fatal ICE Shooting  Anything to distract from his own incompetence.

Defiant Protester Renames Tehran Street for Trump

ICE Agent Kills Woman, DHS Tells Obvious, Insane Lies About It (Albert Burneko/Defector)

MN Gov. Walz Threatens to Use National Guard Against Federal Government

Deadly Minneapolis Encounter Is the 9th ICE Shooting Since September (New York Times)

ICE Agents Can Be Charged With Murder (David Dayen/American Prospect)

Deadly Minneapolis ICE shooting echoes Franklin Park, Marimar Martinez shootings during Operation Midway Blitz (Sara Tenenbaum/CBS News)

ABC Analyst Smears ICE Agent in Minneapolis, Suggests He Didn’t Know What He Was Doing

Trump Seeks $6.2M in Legal Fees From DA Willis’ Office

Trump seeks $6.2 million in legal fees from Fani Willis’ office over election interference case (Kate Brumback/Associated Press)

Trump quits pivotal 1992 climate treaty, in massive blow to global warming effort (Sara Schonhardt/Politico)  Trump for the win.

Furious Democrats threaten government shutdown after Minneapolis shooting (Axios)  Bring it own. You are the guys who want more government.

‘Jackassery’: Former Senior National Security Officials Rip Trump’s Attack On Venezuela (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)

Rep. Kelly announces plans to impeach Secretary Kristi Noem (Congresswoman Robin Kelly)

Trump defends ICE, seeks to define shooting before facts are established (Emily Davies/Washington Post)  Just like a Democrat!

CNN Contributor—Trump Foreign Policy Shows He’s Not Planning To Leave White House!

NBC Only Newscast to Report Vehicular Obstruction in Minneapolis ICE Shooting

Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” sets U.S. on great-power collision course (Zachary Basu/Axios)

Trump’s team races to come up with a Greenland takeover plan — here’s what’s at stake (Sam Meredith/CNBC)  Hysteria.

Renee Good’s killer can and must be prosecuted (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)

Trump Is Ensuring That His Venezuela Attack Has No Upside for Anyone (Nicholas Grossman/The UnPopulist)

Trump’s most defiant second-term moves were some of his most mocked first-term proposals (Washington Post)

An ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good. Judge Sara Ellis all but told us today would happen. (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

Minneapolis schools cancel classes after Border Patrol clash disrupts dismissal at Roosevelt (Elizabeth Shockman/MPR News)

Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods (Joseph Cox/404 Media)

Defining Donald Trump (Simon Kuper/Financial Times)  In service of the Narrative.

Anger erupts in Congress over Minneapolis ICE shooting (Andrew Solender/Axios)

ICE Killed Another Person (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.

Trump relaxes Venezuelan oil embargo, benefiting MAGA billionaire (Judd Legum/Popular Information)

Protesters Clash With Federal Agents In Minneapolis After Fatal Shooting

Read it.

The Other McCain.

There are about a million things I could say about what happened Wednesday morning in Minneapolis, and the subsequent reaction, but before we get to the commentary, first let’s grab the news:

The woman gunned down by an ICE agent in Minneapolis has been identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, who described herself as a mother, a wife and a poet.
Good was identified by her mom hours after she was shot and killed when she clipped an ICE agent with her car during a protest against the federal agents, the Star Tribune reported.
“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” her mother, Donna Ganger, told the newspaper. . . .
Video appeared to show her Honda Pilot making contact with an ICE agent as he opened fire. President Trump and other officials have said Good’s killing was justified as the officer was acting in self-defense.
Good was the mom of a 6-year-old boy and had recently moved to the neighborhood with her wife and son, according to her distraught spouse and a neighbor who spoke to the Tribune. She was killed just blocks away from her home, the outlet reported.
Her young son was left an orphan by the shooting, according to his shaken grandfather.
The child’s father, a comedian Good was previously married to, died in 2023, also at age 37. . . .

Gonna pause there a minute, because in none of the news accounts I’ve read is this explained: She was from Colorado Springs. The father of her child, Timmy Ray Macklin Jr., spent 14 years in the Air Force then tried to become a comedian before his death at age 36 (not 37). Less than three years later, the widow is living in Minneapolis with a lesbian “wife” and participating in radical protests? How does this happen? It’s hardly your typical Hallmark Channel movie plot.

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Two dozen noncitizens cast illegal votes in Alabama, while almost 200 were registered to vote, the state found with the assistance of a federal database.

The Trump administration has made the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services SAVE program–short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements–available to state and local governments for citizenship verification.

“Our elections must be decided by American citizens and only American citizens,” Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said in a public statement. “While liberal organizations and media outlets claim noncitizen voting is not a problem, my office has proven otherwise.”

Using the SAVE data, the state found 186 noncitizens in the state were registered to vote, while 25 actually cast illegal ballots.

They’ve never been happy since Republicans freed their slaves.

ATQUE: Democrats Once Again Threaten Civil War To Stop Republicans From Taking Away Their Slave Laborers (Babylon Bee)

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New York City parents may soon have access to free child care for their 2-year-olds, under a plan set to be unveiled Thursday by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The two Democrats are expected to detail the program at a news conference Thursday morning, along with a pledge from Hochul to pursue a wider, statewide free child care initiative.

“There’s one thing that every family in New York can agree on, the cost of childcare is simply too high,” Hochul said in a statement. “As New York’s first mom Governor, fighting for New York’s families has always been at the core of my agenda.”

Until they run out of other people’s money—as happened with the ‘Affordable Care Act’.

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It didn’t take long. Within hours of an ICE-involved shooting in the Minneapolis area, the Democratic Party’s protest industrial complex moved into action, quickly creating conditions for coordinated demonstrations across multiple cities. The rapid response suggested these nonprofit activist networks were on standby, waiting for a catalytic event, as an army of radicals intensified pressure campaigns against federal agents, blocking streets, harassing officers, and openly doxxing them.

Shortly after the ICE-involved shooting that left one woman dead, multiple videos of the incident went viral on X. In at least one video, she appears to be blocking the street with her vehicle in an attempt to impede ICE agents and is later shot and killed after advancing toward one of the agents. Numerous angles of the incident are circulating on X, offering competing narratives.

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Spanish police have arrested 15 international bus drivers in Barcelona, accused of transporting illegal migrants between France and Spain in exchange for cash, exploiting their access to regular cross-border routes, according to reports by El País.

France appears to be immigrant-export-central for the E.U., sending them by the boatload to Britain and now by the bus-load to Spain.