Read it.

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts have announced charges in a major welfare fraud case tied to a local restaurant, alleging more than $1 million in stolen government benefits were funneled through a multi-state scheme involving stolen identities and SNAP fraud.

Authorities say the lead defendant, Raul Fernandez Vicioso, operated El Primo Restaurant and worked with three co-defendants to obtain SNAP benefits using the identities of more than 100 victims, according to Newsmax crime correspondent Jason Mattera on Monday’s “Wake Up America.”

Investigators allege the group collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in EBT funds between 2023 and 2025, using the cards to purchase bulk food from wholesalers and stock the restaurant at taxpayer expense.

Prosecutors say the fraud extended beyond SNAP, with the same group accused of filing bogus COVID-era unemployment claims in multiple states, netting more than $700,000 in additional funds. Federal officials say the case highlights ongoing vulnerabilities in benefit programs and the need for tougher enforcement when state officials fail to act.

The defendants now face multiple federal charges, including fraud and conspiracy.

Ponder why you never see these massive fraud cases in Red states. The nature of the Democrat party as a criminal enterprise is becoming painfully clear.

Read it.

HAVING JUST SUFFERED another 300 newsroom layoffs, the closure of sections and bureaus, the exodus of many of its most venerable journalists, and the “moral infirmity” — in the words of a former editor — of transforming its editorial page into a Trumpist mouthpiece, The Washington Post is a dead newspaper walking.

It is far from alone in the graveyard.

In the US, most newspaper chains are controlled by hedge funds milking them dry, or by billionaires — The Post’s Jeff Bezos or the Los Angeles Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong — harpooning their souls.

Tyler Cowen.

To be clear, I am not blaming Singapore on this one. But it is striking to me how much Americans do not talk about Singapore any more. They are much, much more likely to talk about Europe or England, for instance. I see several reasons for this.

I would point out that Singapore is a small place with a homogeneous culture, something that can rarely be said about most major countries, in the West and the East. Switzerland used to be the poster child for this sort of thing, but, well, Europe….

Read it.

Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is openly pushing training sessions to arm agitators with tactics to obstruct ICE operations and dox agents, escalating the left’s war on border security.

For which she ought to be arrested and prosecuted.

Read it.

The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has appeared at a summit along with autocratic and undemocratic leaders from Georgia and Burundi to talk about protecting citizens and democracy. Fascinating. It is very revealing.

tirades against alleged techno-oligarchs. However, the evidence shows that beneath the supposedly “noble” goal of protecting minors, there is an agenda that includes the introduction of digital identities, biometric control for all, and prior censorship accompanied by state surveillance.

It is obvious to everyone that the objective is to silence independent media.

If the digital control law had been implemented in 2018, the corruption scandals surrounding the Socialist government would never have come to light. Koldo García, accused of embezzlement, would still be a member of the board of public train company Renfe today; Jose Luis Ábalos, under investigation for various corruption scandals, would still be minister; Salazar, investigated for sexual assault, would be an exemplary socialist; Venezuela’s dictatorship’s Delcy Rodriguez would be a VIP nighttime visitor; and the Socialist party’s number two, Santos Cerdán, would still be “Super Santos.” For Sánchez, all those cases were “disinformation” and “fake news” from the “far right”; do not forget it.

Seems to be a trend among socialists these days.

Read it.

After having lived in California the past four years, I can attest to the near-insanity of progressive politics in this state, yet California’s very progressive governor, Gavin Newsom, is considered a front-runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2028.

Given how the Trump administration has helped to tank the economy through its tariffs, inflation, and outright regime uncertainty, there is a real possibility that Newsom can make California governance a reality for the entire country.

Read it.

Australia’s right-wing One Nation party (ONP) is experiencing one of its most dramatic surges in decades, as it reaches an unprecedented 27% in the latest Newspoll.

The Australian reports that the Coalition has fallen to just 18%, split between 15% for the Liberals and 3% for the Nationals, marking its worst result to date. Labor edges higher to 33%, while the Greens remain steady at 12%.

The collapse in Liberal support has triggered a wave of internal panic. Party leader Sussan Ley has recorded just 23% approval—the lowest for any major party leader in 23 years. Senior figures warn that the Coalition is on the brink of “electoral annihilation” unless it changes course.

The Antiplanner.

California’s high-speed rail project has become increasingly embarrassing for the state. Originally, a 494-mile line connecting the state’s two most populated urban areas, LA and San Francisco, was supposed to cost $40 billion. Now the state is spending $40 billion on a 171-mile line from Bakersfield to Merced, the state’s ninth and 82nd largest urban areas, while the full Anaheim-to-San Francisco project is expected to cost as much as $135 billion and to open at least 20 years late.

Now, the state has come up with a way to minimize this embarrassment: censorship. Under a proposed new law, the state inspector general could withhold from the public any high-speed rail records that would “reveal weaknesses” in its program. Although similar language was part of the state’s proposed budget submitted to the legislature by the governor’s office, Governor Gavin Newsom denied knowing anything about it a a press conference last week.

They just have to hide it long enough for Newsom to get the Democrat Presidential nomination.

Gates of Vienna.

This post started out as an examination of a phenomenon that is not at all controversial in the little niche of cyberspace that I inhabit: the essentially religious nature of the extremely violent rhetoric that currently dominates our political culture. The frothing homicidal madness is more prominent on the Left than on the Right, but both sides of the political spectrum are prone to it. It’s all but impossible to read about political issues without encountering at every step the fervent wish that one’s opponents should die for their opinions, preferably painfully.

I say “read”, but I assume the same is true of videos. I tend to avoid them if I can, partially due to my hearing difficulties, but it seems unlikely that video discussions are any less likely to descend into frothing madness.

Quillette.

The Trump administration’s US$700 million Regenerative Pilot Program, announced in late 2025, is one of the most significant federal investments in sustainable farming practices in recent history. It was greeted with widespread, almost reflexive approval by everyone from environmental groups and farm organisations to public-health advocates. But few people paused to ask what exactly “regenerative” and “sustainability” mean.

Beneath the agreeable language of soil restoration and ecological harmony lies a modern “sustainable agriculture” movement that rejects some of the technologies responsible for the greatest environmental and humanitarian advances in the history of food production. What began as a legitimate critique of soil erosion, chemical misuse, and monoculture farming has hardened into something closer to ideology, often characterised by suspicion of modern science and hostility to innovation.

Read it.

New York City would smell worse than it does if it weren’t so cold. And if it weren’t so cold.

After urging New Yorkers to abandon their individualism for his “warmth of collectivism”, 16 homeless people are dead because of Mamdani’s progressive policy of letting them stay out in the cold, instead of escorting them to homeless shelters, but the survivors of his Gulag Games did get a consolation prize in the form of red capes with ‘Mayor Mamdani’ emblazoned on them that are thinner than his resume. But the same cold killing the homeless is also keeping the trash that has been piling up since Jan 24 from rotting so it doesn’t smell as bad as his policies.

The city hasn’t had trash pickup for a third of Mamdani’s term. It’s also had a homeless death against every other day he’s been in office. Zohran Mamdani did promise to transform New York City, but few expected him to make it a frozen wasteland full of corpses and trash in one month.

Daily Record (UK).

No one should ever be faced with such a decision, but for the rescuers trying to save a cave explorer, it was a matter of life and death.

John Jones suffered what has been described as the most horrific death imaginable when he became trapped upside down in a tiny, confined cave for over 24 hours.

The rescue team was confronted with a difficult decision: attempt to save his life, knowing it would cause him immense pain.

Brandon Kowallis was the last person to see the young man before his tragic end after becoming stuck upside down inside a cave. The details of that night continue to haunt him.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Dealing with terminally stupid people is often occasion for people to demonstrate laudable heroism, but you really have to wonder about some of them.

Read it.

There was outrage in Westminster, when a leading politician admitted he was “shocked” that he had been lied to by another, but less leading, politician who had once been a quite leading politician before having been forced to quit over questions of honesty a few times.

That politicians lie is a well-known constant, treated almost like a law of physics—comparable to the fixed speed of light in a vacuum.

“My father was a toolmaker”, said the leading politician (the one who had not been forced to quit over questions of honesty a couple of times). “And he told me of the satisfaction he enjoyed when working with a set of tools he worked hard to complete, and in his memory, I like to believe that I also work with complete tools who give me satisfaction.”

“Having a good tool in your hands can be a satisfying experience, and I like handling well-made tools as a pastime. But enough about me. I am shocked, shocked to my core that I was lied to by a man who had been previously a leading politician, and to whom I called on to be so again but in a specific capacity, rather like a well-turned tool. But he turned out to be a bad tool, a very bad tool indeed.”

Apparently British politicians aren’t the tools they’re made out to be. I must confess I didn’t know that.

Judge tells ICE to free man arrested in Chinatown sweep, warns of unconstitutional arrests (Gothamist)

Impressed By Their Setting Up Checkpoints To Demand Papers, Trump Hires Protesters To Join Border Patrol (Babylon Bee)

Virginia Democrat gives profanity-laced response to Cruz’s criticism of the state’s redistricting push (Rachel Wolf/Fox News)

Green Day Frontman Calls on ICE Agents to Quit Their Jobs  You can’t make this shit up.

Green Day frontman calls out ICE ahead of Super Bowl: ‘Quit that s-tty job you have’ (Ryan Mancini/The Hill)

Reaction to Trump’s Racist Post Shows He Is Not Always Immune to Politics (Erica L. Green/New York Times)

Trump Rages at Bad Bunny–and Accidentally Exposes a Big MAGA Weakness (Greg Sargent/New Republic)  Greg Sargent loses his shit.

As goes the Washington Post: US democracy takes another hit under Trump (The Guardian)

Massie on Trump’s rhetoric: ‘He’s gone too far’ (David Cohen/Politico)

The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US (Bryan Armen Graham/The Guardian)  And Voices of the Crust are SO UPSET….

Why Trump’s Attack on Refugees Could Hurt Grandma (Jonathan Cohn/The Bulwark)  If grandma is illegal, although that’s the quiet part they don’t say out loud.

Trump Using A ‘Softer Touch’ With ICE In Minnesota? Residents Say Don’t Be Fooled. (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)  Although they have a long history of being fools.

Wes Moore suggests race may be why he was not invited to gov dinner with Trump (Cheyanne M. Daniels/Politico)  Only if Democrat is a ‘race’.

Trump rips Olympic skier over remarks about representing US (Sophia Vento/The Hill)

Raskin: Voter ID Law Violates The 19th Amendment In Denying The Vote To Women  Clutching at straws or another Democrat Big Lie? We report, you decide.

Democrats sound alarm about possible voter intimidation in midterms (Jacob Wendler/Politico) “Cheese it, the cope!”

Election officials are “very concerned” about Trump voting push, says David Becker (CBS News)  I’ll bet they are.

Trump lashes out at American Olympian who expressed negative view of US politics (Cheyanne M. Daniels/Politico) And rightly so. If you don’t like it, move somewhere else. I’ve heard that Ukraine needs more people.

Trump says it’s ‘terrible’ Bill Belichick wasn’t elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot (Allan Smith/NBC News)  This belongs in a newcast?

U.S. Olympic athletes in Italy are speaking out about the political situation at home (Kevin Baxter/Los Angeles Times)  And so ought to be barred from any future Olympic representation of the U.S. Only fools pick ‘representatives’ who are going to trash-talk them.

SAVE America Act becomes catch-all for Trump’s election demands: Here’s what’s actually in it (Avery Lotz/Axios)  According to the Narrative, that is.

Trump plans to keep Democratic governors out of traditionally bipartisan meeting (Mariana Alfaro/Washington Post)  Because Democrats are not and never have been ‘bipartisan’—they define ‘bipartisan as ‘Republicans roll over’.

Trump Shreds Olympic Skier Hess Over Comments About Repping the US  And rightly so.

Read it.

Hey, that’s what Democrats are all about.

No wonder California is a Turd World shithole.

Watch it.

Steven Crowder covers a topic that the Narrative Media don’t want you to know anything about.

Read it.

The unrest in Minneapolis has died down, and the Trump administration is pulling 700 immigration enforcement officers out of the area. But all of the national media scrutiny has obsessed over Team Trump. It has rarely acted to “hold government accountable” when the governing comes from Democrats, like Gov. Tim Walz or Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

NPR was eagerly touting its new NPR/PBS Marist Poll to underline the effectiveness of their advocacy: 65% of Americans, up from 54% in June of 2025, think the actions of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] have “gone too far” in enforcing immigration laws, and 62% say the actions of ICE are making Americans “somewhat less safe, or much less safe.”

The New Republic underlined what NPR and PBS were cooking: “Brutal New Poll Wrecks Trump’s Main Claim on ICE.”

Now ask yourself this question: Did PBS and NPR ever ask the public for their evaluation of ICE under President Joe Biden, when there was a mass importation of illegal aliens? Pollsters may have asked about their approval of Biden on the immigration issue. But this polling is specific and suggestive, intended to punish ICE deportation efforts.

Read it.

White House officials have used “terrorist-grade sanctions” to target officials from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, freezing assets and disrupting war crimes investigations,Reuters reported on 6 February.

According to interviews the news agency conducted with U.S. and UN officials and sanctioned individuals, Washington is seeking to penalize the ICC over investigations into US and Israeli war crimes.

The effort to target the UN and ICC came in response to requests from at least two US tech companies involved in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

As you can tell by the writing, this article is by a Voice of the Crust. There is and was no ‘genocide’ in Gaza, because Muslims are not a ‘genos’. There were no ‘U.S. and Israeli war crimes’ (a) because Hamas is not a ‘lawful combatant’ under the Geneva Accords, but rather a terrorist group, (b) Hamas started the game with their targeted attacks against Jews (an actual ‘genos’) on October 7th, and (c) the use by Hamas of the population of Gaza as hostages and ‘human shields’ makes Hamas, not the U.S. or Israel, the actual malefactors. That’s not the Narrative, of course, in which the U.N. is deeply invested: Every terrorist act by Muslims is justified and legimate, every attempt to suppress terrorism is a ‘war crime’ or a ‘crime against humanity’.

New York magazine, a Voice of the Crust.

Since the mid-20th century, each generation has had their own version of what is now known as an e-girl. Think back to the British punks, in tartan and T-shirts destroyed by safety pins. In the ’80s, they were called goths, loved the Cure, and dressed in all black, with black hair, and intentionally pale skin. In the 2000s, it was the angsty, pop-punk emo girls who listened to My Chemical Romance and took Facebook photos like this. And now, it’s the age of the e-girl, who stamps  black hearts on her cheekbones, listens to K-pop, and dresses like she’s auditioning for a reboot of The Craft.

The prototypical e-girl is really more of an idea — an aesthetic rather than a person. As the antecedent “e” would imply, the e-girl is also “very online” — maybe she’s a gamer, a cosplayer, or spends a lot of time on TikTok. Tumblr, the dinosaur medium used by emo-girls of yore (2010s), also makes up a big part of the e-girl online diet. The style is heavily influenced by Asian culture, specifically anime and K-pop. YouTuber Jenna Marbles called it a mix between “Harajuku, emo, and Igari makeup, the hangover makeup in Japan.” Think Harley Quinn with rudimentary film-editing skills.

Being mocked by New York magazine is like being called ugly by a frog.

Not mentioned, perhaps because it is obvious, is that these chicks are the very model of a stylish A.W.F.U.L. Democrat.

Read it.

The Natural Selection Sorting Hat works every time.

Read it.

Climate alarmism has lost at the ballot box time and time again, and last year, even Bill Gates significantly dialed down his support for it. However, enterprising lawyers on the Left are still trying to smuggle in an effective carbon tax through the courts—and the Supreme Court should put an end to it.

It works like this: local governments or activist groups file a lawsuit against oil and gas companies, claiming that the burning of fossil fuels impacts the climate, and these impacts negatively harmed people. Activist lawyers bring cases in state courts that are more likely to rule in their favor, and—presto!—you’ve got a “carbon tax” imposed on oil and gas companies without needing a vote in Congress.

Don’t take my word for it. David Bookbinder, who served as part of the legal team representing the left-leaning city and county of Boulder in suing oil companies, described the climate lawfare as “an indirect carbon tax.”

“Tort liability is an indirect carbon tax,” Bookbinder said on a Federalist Society panel in October. “You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable. The oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products.”

Tellingly, he added, “I’d prefer an actual carbon tax, but if we can’t get one of those… this is a rather, somewhat convoluted way, to achieve the goals of a carbon tax.”

The thing is, the law isn’t supposed to work that way.

Read it.

Two journalists have just embarked on the exercise of writing a ‘biography,’ or rather a damning pamphlet, against the writer Renaud Camus, on whom they intend to heap all the ignominy of having invented and popularised the phrase ‘the great replacement.’”

But what crime is this when the expression is now swallowed and spat out by everyone, including and especially on the Left, by certain MPs and politicians who today make it a point of pride and a programme?

To feed its fundamental need to feel useful, the Left needs scapegoats. As Le Figaro editorialist Eugénie Bastié points out, Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead, so a ‘replacement’ must be found. Renaud Camus is the ideal candidate for the role.

Read it.

“These scientists say the world is closer than ever to ‘doomsday,’” blared the Washington Post. “Atomic scientists set ‘Doomsday Clock’ closer to midnight than ever,” fussed Reuters. “Doomsday Clock hits record, nears midnight. What it means for Alabama,” the Montgomery Advertiser advertised.

Every year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (who are not atomic scientists and don’t have a bulletin) announce that the world is closer to destruction than ever as long as Trump is here.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bulletin (which back then at least had both a ‘bulletin’ and ‘atomic scientists’) set the ‘Doomsday Clock’ at 12 minutes to midnight. By 2020, the clock of doom had run out of minutes and was down to seconds. Last year the fake clock ticked down to 89 seconds, and now it’s down to 85. When it finally hits zero, Ed McMahon will return from the dead to tell us we’ve all won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes award.

Read it.

As a reader of science fiction, I’ve noticed that the sci-fi aisles in bookstores are getting smaller and smaller. So small, in fact, that I now regularly have to make the trip to a shop here in Berlin that still sells the “good stuff.” Fantasy seems to be taking over, at least commercially. And while this trend is no secret, I thought it would be interesting to visualize it.

On the search for a suitable dataset, I came across the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), a volunteer effort to maintain an up-to-date source of bibliographical information on works of fiction that fall into the genres of science fiction, fantasy, or horror.

Let’s see how often typical sci-fi words have been mentioned in the ~210,000 titles in that database over the decades:

Trump Posts Obamas As Apes Driving Democrats Insane (Tim Pool) Tim actually shows what the video is all about: Trump is king of the jungle, and the others are all funny animals. I especially love Hillary as a warthog and Pritzger at an elephant and AOC as a donkey..

Ben Shapiro Is Waging Battle Inside the MAGA Movement (David Remnick/New Yorker)  I’ll bet you didn’t know that there even were an “MAGA media”. I suspect that “MAGA Medis” are any that don’t support the Narrative.

Senate Democrat knocks TrumpRx: ‘Glorified coupon book’ (Joseph Choi/The Hill)  It will help more people than Obamacare.

Trump Shares Video Portraying the Obamas as Apes (New York Times)  The more they complain, the more people watch the video. Streisand Effect, here we come.

Trump revives racist imagery once seen as disqualifying (Russell Contreras/Axios)  That was then, this is now, and we don’t give a shit any nmore about your “disqualifying”.

Donald Trump is trying to crush a religious uprising against him (John Stoehr/Editorial Board)  The religion is Wokeism, and that’s what he was elected to do.

Trump has never accepted election results and he is only getting worse (Marc Elias/Democracy Docket)

Trump wants Penn Station, Dulles Airport named after him in funding deal with Schumer, sources say (Jonathan Karl/Associated Press)  Nobody on the Left understands sarcasm.

White House excluding Dems from its annual governors meeting (Daniel Lippman/Politico)  Why invite the Wreckers?

House Dem Leader Jeffries: “F*** Donald Trump” (Andrew Solender/Axios)  That’s what passes for news these days.

Don Lemon Brands JD Vance “Vile Human Being” And Fake Christian  Like being called ugly by a frog.

Ohio Man Charged With Threatening to Kill VP Vance

Trump refuses to apologize over video showing the Obamas as apes (Natalie Allison/Washington Post)  That’s because he has nothing to apoloize for. The video completely passes over the head of all of the race-mongers with their tunnel vision.

NY Times Columnist on Bluesky: J.D. Vance’s Addict Mom Should Have Sold Him for Drugs

The Real Threat Isn’t Trump. It’s the MAGA Apparatus. (New York Times)  Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

Congressional Black Caucus chair says Trump’s post on the Obamas shows a ‘bigoted and racist regime’ (Associated Press)  Of course she does.

Marco Rubio Will Let 2.5 Million Children Die so Sarah Rogers Can Fund Far Right Extremists in Europe (emptywheel)

Anne Applebaum on Trump’s betrayal of Europe (Aaron Rupar/Public Notice)

Democrats fear body cameras could be ICE’s new mass surveillance tool (Politico)  Be careful what you wish for….

Read it.

In December, bestselling author and humorist David Sedaris wrote a New Yorker magazine essay about a recent trip to Portland, Oregon.

While on a walk to a donut shop, he “lost count of the strung-out addicts I passed on my way” before eventually encountering four homeless people huddled around an empty baby carriage and smoking drugs right on the sidewalk. Moments later, a dog belonging to one of the addicts rushed out and bit him.

Following the incident, Sedaris, a former methamphetamine addict himself, was struck by the fact that most people in Portland didn’t seem concerned about the state of the city—even the medical worker who treated him appeared more concerned with the dog’s well-being than what had happened to him:

Read it.

English singer-songwriter Louise Distras, who was previously banned from music streaming service Ampwall for her allegedly ‘transphobic’ views, has submitted a formal complaint to the West Yorkshire Police Professional Standards after the police “repeatedly downplayed or ignored” three years of reports of “serious, sustained stalking, harassment, threats and intimidation from a trans rights activist” and instead treated her as the offender, she said on Substack.

In 2023, police arrested Distras in her home as she emerged from the shower and forced her to get dressed in front of a police officer with a body cam recording. She was interviewed under caution regarding alleged ‘transphobic’ comments she made about ‘trans-right extremists’ on GB News and released without charges.

“The humiliation continued with invasive searches, mugshots, fingerprints, DNA, 7 hours in custody, a further ‘voluntary’ interview under threat of rearrest in February 2024, and charges I discovered not from the police but from vicious, targeted social media posts by journalists and trans activists,” Distras wrote, adding that this has resulted in destroying her music career and causing her complex PTSD.

The Leeds Crown Court in December 2025 found Distras not guilty of the charges brought against her.

The singer has demanded an independent investigation, a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, disclosure of all relevant records and body cam video, disciplinary action against the officers involved, and an apology.

Read it.

In the dystopian novel 1984,  George Orwell wrote, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

The true meaning of that line was never more clear than watching the truly bizarre photo op of California governor Gavin Newsom heralding the success of the greatest boondoggle in history: his high-speed train to nowhere.

Without laying a single yard of track after burning $12 billion, Newsom showed a diesel freight train on a conventional track to create the appearance of a working railroad.

Read it.

And about time, too.

A damning new report from ISGAP Action has thrust Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) back into the spotlight, this time with allegations that extend beyond rhetoric and directly involve national security.

The nonpartisan group released findings that detail what it describes as a disturbing and recurring pattern of connections between the “Squad” member and individuals and organizations tied to designated terrorist groups, including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

“As a sitting member of the United States Congress, Tlaib’s repeated engagement with figures who promote or excuse terrorism and antisemitic ideology presents a challenge to the integrity of democratic institutions, congressional ethics, and national security,” the report’s executive summary states.

The report raises serious questions about whether her presence in Congress poses a risk to national security and whether she has crossed a line that should trigger expulsion.

Read it.

As pointed out by my friend Gene Meyer, “fascist” these days merely means “something the Left doesn’t like”.

Read it.

The recent release of a tranche of files by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) under the “Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R.4405)” has once again prompted many people to closely examine redacted and sanitized PDF documents. Our previous articles on the Manafort papersand the Mueller report, as well as a study by Adhatarao, S. and Lauradoux, C. (2021) “Exploitation and Sanitization of Hidden Data in PDF Files: Do Security Agencies Sanitize Their PDF files?,” in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security, illustrate the importance of robust sanitization and redaction workflows when handling sensitive documents prior to release.

This article examines a small random selection of the Epstein PDF files from a purely digital forensic perspective, focusing on the PDF syntax and idioms they contain, any malformations or unusual constructs, and other technical aspects.

PDFs are more challenging to analyze than many other formats because they are binary files that require specialized knowledge, expertise, and software. Please note that we did not analyze the contents of the PDF documents. Not every PDF was examined. Any mention of products (or appearance in screen-shots) does not imply any endorsement or support of any information, products, or providers whatsoever. We are not lawyers; this article does not constitute legal advice

We offer this information, in part, as some of the Epstein PDFs released by DoJ are beginning to appear on malware analysis sites (such as Hybrid-Analysis) with various kinds of incorrect analysis and misinformation.

The Times (UK).

Once only seen in the wealthier parts of London, civilian patrols are moving into the home counties in a trend driven by fears of a slow police response to crime.

The War Zone.

The U.S. government has accused China of secretly conducting at least one “yield-producing nuclear test” in recent years despite the country having a stated moratorium on such activities. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to engage in new nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with China and Russia, but it remains unclear what that might mean and what action has been taken. The new test allegation also comes as American officials continue to call for a new nuclear arms control treaty that includes China to succeed the New START agreement with Russia, which sunset yesterday.

“Today, I can reveal that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” Thomas DiNanno, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said during a speech at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland this morning. “The PLA [China’s People’s Liberation Army] sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognized these tests violate test ban commitments.”

Trump deploys a top White House attack dog in push to kill NYC’s congestion pricing

New Study Reveals Videos Of Police Arresting Protesters Are Very, Very Funny (Babylon Bee)

That Political ‘Call to Action’ Might Actually Be a Scam

Trump Opinion Polls: ‘Voters Have Had Enough Of The Cronyism’ | Fraser Nelson

Trump Deletes Video Depicting Obamas As Monkeys After ‘Racism’ Row

Democrats Push For Death Certificates To Be Accepted As Voter ID (Babylon Bee)

Say Hello to Another Squad Member

DON’T PANIC! Under No Circumstances Should You Panic

Nominating Minneapolis [Rioters] for Nobel Peace Prize

A letter to the world: You brought Trump on yourselves

Homeland Security: ACLU ‘Demonizing’ ICE Agents With Demand for UN Probe

Trump Admin Responds to Claims of ICE Targeting Polling Stations   That’s where the illegal immigrant votes happen.

Judge’s Ruling Brings More to Springfield Story on TPS for Haitians

Immigrant, civil rights groups issue Florida travel alert for FIFA World Cup (Kimberly Leonard/Politico)

Trump’s FBI Raid Could Lead to a Takeover of Elections in Georgia’s Largest County (Mother Jones)

Local officials push back on Trump’s threats to ‘nationalize’ elections in targeted cities (Alexandra Marquez/NBC News)

Feds arrest Trumbull County man accused of threatening Trump, ICE (Mike Gauntner/WFMJ-TV)

New emergency fund supports US journalists at risk (Committee to Protect Journalists)  Yet another thinly-disguised proglodyte NGO.

Senate Dems: Trump D.C. Guard Mission Costly With No Safety Gains

Trump wants Dulles and Penn Station renamed for him (Punchbowl News)  Ah,  ah, ah, ah, yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

Revealed: Private jet owned by Trump friend used by ICE to deport Palestinians to West Bank (The Guardian)

Dunh dunh DUNHHHHHHH….

150 days of Kavanaugh stops, and it just keeps getting worse (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

Trump’s Plan to Nationalize Elections Using Fabricated Claims of Foreign Interference (Allison Gill/The Breakdown)

DHS watchdog details extensive probes into Trump’s immigration crackdown (Jacob Wendler/Politico)

US government to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities in Europe (Financial Times)

Trump officials propose testing a citizenship question amid a push to alter the census (Hansi Lo Wang/NPR)

Lawmakers Say They Will Not Cooperate With Inquiry Into Illegal Orders Video (Megan Mineiro/New York Times)

Trump Posts Vile Video of Obamas in Manic Late-Night Rampage (Cameron Adams/The Daily Beast)  I guess the Daily Beast is afraid of competition.

Trump’s Immigration Policy Is 100 Years Old (Jia Lynn Yang/New York Times)  I like it already.

JD Vance should have been sold by his mother for drugs, NYT columnist says (Lindsay Kornick/Fox News)

Why Delia Ramirez thinks DHS needs to be dismantled (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

Trump America: Everything the president has tried to name for himself (Julianna Bragg/Axios)  Living rent-free in Democrat heads.

Inside Trump’s Takeover of D.C.’s Golf Courses (Reese Gorman/NOTUS)

How Worried Should Democrats Be About Trump Stealing the Next Election? (Bill Scher/Washington Monthly)

Stephen Miller’s Wife Makes Truly Deranged 2028 Plea (Will Neal/The Daily Beast)

Trump Posts Video Portraying the Obamas as Apes (Isabella Kwai/New York Times)  Apes are nicer.

How the Black Panthers’ Playbook Helped Minneapolis Activists Fight Trump (Charles Homans/New York Times)  Terrorists of a feather flock together.

ICE and Minnesota Have Pushed the U.S. Closer to Autocracy (New York Times)

Democrats erupt over Trump push to rename Dulles, Penn Station (Andrew Solender/Axios)  Ah, ah, ah, ah, yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

Kimmel Likens ICE To Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy

NBC’s Softball Trump Interview Normalized an Abnormal President (Mehdi Hasan/Zeteo)

Trump shares a racist video that depicts the Obamas as primates (Associated Press)  The Obamas are primates, not that the Associated Press knows what that means.

‘A stain on our history’: outrage after Trump shares racist video about Obamas as White House attempts to brush off the post – live (Shrai Popat/The Guardian)  And while they’re screaming about this, they aren’t paying attention to what else he is doing.

Trump Posts Wildly Racist Video of the Obamas (Ryan Bort/Rolling Stone)

Why Is The Deep State Targeting DNI Tulsi Gabbard With Such Ferocity?  When you start getting flak you know you’re over the target.

Trump shares racist video depicting the Obamas as monkeys (Rebecca Shabad/NBC News)  Monkeys are nicer.

GOP fast tracks monster voter suppression bill that could disenfranchise millions by requiring proof of citizenship at polls (Jim Saksa/Democracy Docket)  Well, that’s the whole point—you’ve got to be a citizen to vote, and Democrats hate that.

BREAKING: Madman President Promotes Racist Video of the Obamas as Apes (Asawin Suebsaeng/Zeteo)  Apes are nicer.

How Autocrats Meddle With Elections (Anne Applebaum/The Atlantic)  Just check out what Democrats have done since JFK stole the Presidency.

U.S. cuts ties with Polish speaker of parliament over ‘insults’ against Trump (Associated Press)

Trump Posts Video Online Depicting Obamas as Apes (Natalie Andrews/Wall Street Journal)  Apes are nicer.

The Empty Propaganda of ‘Melania’ (New York Times)  If it had been “Michelle”, they’d have loved it.

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The bill President Donald Trump signed in order to end the government shutdown also included mandatory spending that will contradict his policy goals.

The $1.2 trillion package included funding for specific entities—some of which the Trump administration is currently threatening to defund. Other funded entities provide legal defenses for illegal aliens facing deportation, while some hospitals receiving money practice late-term abortions.

“Avoiding a protracted government shutdown of some of the largest agencies like HHS and the Department of War is a laudable goal, but passing bills that undermine the president’s agenda to cut woke and weaponized spending is not the way to do it,” Connor Semelsberger, government relations director at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in a statement Thursday.

Read it.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is demanding documents from the husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., after new financial disclosures showed his business holdings skyrocketed in value — a surge Republicans say raises red flags about transparency, investor influence, and potential misconduct.

In a release Friday, Comer said financial disclosure forms filed by Omar indicate that her husband, Tim Mynett, holds ownership stakes in two companies — eStCru LLC and Rose Lake Capital LLC — whose reported value surged from a combined total of as much as $51,000 in 2023 to as much as $30 million in 2024.

Comer said the lack of publicly available investor information for the firms makes the dramatic increase particularly concerning.

Newsbusters.

The debate over immigration rages on in this country, with a disproportionate media focus on the enforcement side. But there continue to be horrific crimes committed by illegal aliens that garner no coverage from the network evening news.

The networks routinely report on lethal traffic accidents. In fact, all three today reported on the woman that plowed into a Los Angeles supermarket. Three people died as a result of that accident. But this one’s different. Or, perhaps- (D)ifferent. In any case, not a peep on the network nightly news.

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A damning on-site investigation has revealed that the winery co-owned by Ilhan Omar’s husband is nothing more than a phantom operation, fueling suspicions of fraud amid scrutiny of her skyrocketing wealth.

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is seeking a court order for investigating systemic race discrimination allegations against white workers by footwear and apparel corporation Nike Inc., according to a Feb. 4 statement from the agency.

The EEOC filed an action in federal court to compel Nike, headquartered in Oregon, to produce information related to allegations that the company discriminated against white workers as part of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

According to the filing made by EEOC in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, the agency is looking to enforce an administrative subpoena against Nike for failing to submit the required information, which was initially requested in 2024 by then-commissioner, and now chair, Andrea Lucas.

Lucas alleged that Nike, since at least 2020, engaged in “a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white employees, applicants and training program participants in hiring, promotion, demotion, or separation decisions, including selection for layoffs; internship programs; and mentoring, leadership development and other career development programs.”

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Top leaders of the nation’s two largest teachers unions spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on luxury resorts, golf getaways, and casino hotels in 2025, even as they publicly warned that Trump administration policies were putting teachers under financial strain.

Newly disclosed union financial records show executives at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) traveled to high-end destinations including Las Vegas, Miami, Palm Springs, California, Honolulu, and golf resorts across the country, the Washington Examiner reported.

Many of the expenses were categorized under vague labels such as “professional development” or “staff education,” while some were not itemized at all.

What’s the use of having power if you can’t abuse it?

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Nick Shirley, the YouTuber who went viral for exposing alleged Somali-run daycare fraud in Minnesota, has revealed that leftists have put out hits on his life.

In a shocking update, Shirley’s security team informed him he was the “number one man” targeted, forcing him to switch hotels amid fears for his and his family’s safety. This comes after his investigative video highlighted millions in taxpayer funds vanishing into ghost daycares with no children in sight.

Shirley detailed the terrifying backlash in a recent appearance, saying people have sent him photos of bodies in ditches with captions like “that’s going to be you” and openly telling him to “k**l yourself.”

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Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler announced Friday her agency has suspended 111,620 borrowers in California over alleged fraud related to pandemic-era loan programs.

These borrowers had secured a total of 118,489 Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans loans which amounted to more than $8.6 billion, according to an SBA news release. Loeffler said in a statement that the SBA is “taking decisive action” in an effort to “deliver accountability in a state whose unaccountable welfare policies have created a culture of fraud and abuse.”

“Once again, the Trump SBA is taking decisive action to deliver accountability in a state whose unaccountable welfare policies have created a culture of fraud and abuse at the expense of law-abiding taxpayers and small business owners,” Loeffler said. “Today, we announced we have suspended nearly 112,000 borrowers tied to at least $9 billion in suspected fraud.”

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It may seem that it’s impossible to get anything done in Washington these days.

Nevertheless, the free spirit of Americans cannot be suppressed.

Americans are voting with their feet.

Per the Census Bureau’s just released annual report on population growth and migration in the U.S., Americans are packing up and moving from anti-growth blue states to pro-growth red states.

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Spotify announced today a beta feature called About the Song, which adds swappable cards to the Now Playing View containing information about the track you’re currently listening to.

The future is available in English to Premium subscribers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. It summarizes information from third-party sources, including publications such as Variety and TIME.

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It’s no lightweight matter. DARPA is putting about $35 million in total funding on the table in the hope that it will spur researchers to work around fundamental physical constraints and build much larger-scale photonic circuits that do more of the computing with light, not electronics.

A recent solicitation from the Department of Defense’s research arm – the Photonic Integrated Circuit Architectures for Scalable System Objectives (PICASSO) – aims to scale photonics beyond today’s narrow demonstrations. Citing the need for more capable photonic systems, including those relevant to artificial intelligence workloads, DARPA is calling on researchers to submit proposals showing how circuit-level design can overcome the fundamental limitations that constrain current photonic computing approaches, using today’s photonic components rather than waiting for new ones to be invented.

For those unfamiliar with photonic computing, it’s the use of light instead of electrons to process and transmit data. If that sounds far-fetched, it’s not, as DARPA points out – there are already photonic circuits around today, albeit in limited form.

Using light to process data signals has advantages that are ideal for heavy workloads like AI due to greater bandwidth, less latency, and improved energy efficiency. Unfortunately, as DARPA points out, “systems incorporating photonic circuits struggle to show significant system-level performance advantages over electronic systems.”

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There was recently an attempt by an independent journalist to expose fraud in a Minnesota social program. It was deeply frustrating; the journalist had notably poor epistemic standards, which secondary media seized upon to dismiss their result.

The class-based sniffing almost invariably noted that prestige media had already reported stories which rhymed with the core allegation, while sometimes implying that makes the allegations less likely to be true, through a logical pathway which is mysterious to me.

The journalism went quite viral anyway, in part because of sensationalized framing, in part because of signal boosting by an aligned media ecosystem and aligned politicians, and in part because the journalism develops one bit of evidence that has a viscerality that paperwork dives often lack: these purported childcare operations routinely have no children in them.

Fraud has become quite politicized in the United States the last few years. We had a poorly-calibrated federal initiative led by a charismatic tech entrepreneur which believed it would unearth trillions of dollars of fraud that focused substantial effort on large programs which are comparatively fraud-resistant. Across the aisle, we have reflexive dismissal that fraud happens in social programs, which functions as air cover for scaled criminal operations which loot many varied social programs [0] and are sometimes run out of geopolitical adversaries of the U.S. including by ambiguously-retired members of their clandestine services.