Read it.

It’s not how much you make, it’s now much the government lets you keep.

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

The Supreme Court blocked a state judge from redrawing Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ (R-N.Y.) congressional district, agreeing to her emergency request Monday to restore the lines that connect Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

The high court’s intervention marks a new twist in the legal battle that has rippled through New York’s state judiciary and thrown the future of New York’s 11th Congressional District into question. It marks a victory for Republicans, who had been bracing for the possibility that the district would swing to Democrats if it was redesigned ahead of the midterm elections.

A state judge had ordered the boundaries be redrawn after ruling the district dilutes Black and Latino voting strength in violation of the state constitution.

White people, of course, get their voting strength diluted all the time and nobody gives a shit—certainly no Democrat.

TechDirt.

You might recall that when political news website Semafor entered the media industry on the back of $25 million in private money, they made all kinds of promises about how they were somehow going to revolutionize U.S. media. In reality most of their promises were relatively inane, and it didn’t take long before the outlet demonstrated it was primarily interested in propping up the status quo.

Case in point: one of the very first things the outlet did is start hosting “Restoring Trust In Media” annual conferences. Except each year they make it a priority to unironically validate, normalize and platform a lot of the people actively working to undermine trust in news. Like former Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson the first year, and overt bigot Megyn Kelly last year.

Semafor keeps being criticized for not only not helping to “restore trust in media,” but for actively making the problem worse. But they keep doubling down. This year’s event, for example, is a who’s who of people that have made U.S. media immeasurably less trustworthy over the last year

Gothamist.

When Ian Davey of Davenport, Florida, filed an insurance claim for a 2023 car crash with a day care bus in Queens, he filled in a section asking whether the incident was staged with a definitive answer: “Hells F–ing NO.”

But there were some red flags.

The doctor who declared Davey “totally disabled” by his injuries was a urologist practicing at a hospital in Bangladesh, according to court documents. Records show the only witness to the collision owned a personal injury consulting firm and later retracted his statement to investigators. And the surgeon who operated on Davey was named in a civil racketeering case as part of an alleged criminal network that staged crashes and exaggerated injuries to inflate insurance claims.

“This case is a fraud from top to bottom, an entirely manufactured claim,” said attorney Dan Johnston, who’s representing the bus driver. “The most horrifying part is that this is a set of circumstances that repeat over and over again every single day in the courts of New York.”

Newsbusters.

Did you know that a historic and symbolic landmark of the nation’s capital was recently vandalized by an individual currently sought after by the FBI? If the story escaped your attention, thank the Big Four News Apps — Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News — which largely ignored the attack, only featuring one article on the story over four days.

On Feb. 20, Fox News exclusively reported that the Trump-Kennedy Center had been subjected to an alleged act of vandalism after a suspect poured a “toxic,” dark substance onto an outdoor ice rink earlier that morning. The attack marked a major escalation of violence on a federal property, particularly one that holds national significance.

The Media Research Center examined the Big Four News Apps to determine whether they featured the vandalism story among their top 20 headlines during the mornings of Feb. 21 through Feb. 24. The results were telling.

Read it.

A fight over Virginia’s congressional maps is heating up, with Republicans and Democrats locked in a legal battle that could reshape the state’s representation in Washington.

Virginia voters were originally scheduled to head to the polls on April 21 to decide on a referendum on new congressional maps as the state’s Supreme Court reviewed a legal challenge. The proposed constitutional amendment would allow the General Assembly to redraw districts before the 2026 midterm elections.

Republicans, including House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, sued to block the vote, arguing Democrats did not follow proper procedures. A lower court initially sided with Republicans, but the state’s high court ruled the referendum could proceed while legal arguments continued.

A Tazewell County judge has since issued a temporary restraining order blocking the April 21 referendum, pausing the vote as litigation continues.

Read it.

During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Trump’s simple offer to them, and their Republican counterparts, was like a college professor telling his students: “Anyone who wants 10 points of extra credit, please stand up if you believe the Earth is round.”

Trump’s challenge to senators and House members was equally simple. As he put it:

“I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

At once, Republicans bolted upright and heartily applauded an anodyne declaration with which at least 90% of Americans surely concur. Some, perhaps most, illegal aliens grudgingly would approve.

And yet Democrats sat there, flat in their chairs, neither standing nor cheering a tenet as basic as asserting that parents’ primary responsibility is to feed their children rather than nourish people who break into their homes.

Democrats silently scowled as Americans watched in astonishment.

Read it.

A gay rights/LGBT parade was abruptly cancelled based on the credible risk of an extremist attack, it has been revealed. Security authorities identified a “concrete threat” just one hour before the Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade in Gelsenkirchen, scheduled for May 17th last year, was set to begin—forcing approximately 600 registered participants to abandon the march.

The alarm was raised after the North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Police discovered a TikTok video in which a male user announced an impending assault. Investigators linked the threat to Islamist extremism, noting that the suspect’s profile featured a black flag and the “Tawhid finger”—symbols frequently associated with radical groups. The investigation has since shifted to Switzerland, where the Lucerne juvenile prosecutor’s office is conducting proceedings against a young male suspect believed to be the author of the video.

The organizing association, “Together,” made the difficult decision to call off the festivities to protect attendees.

Be careful what you wish for.

Read it.

Fairfax County Public Schools is no longer a district in quiet decline—it is a system in visible retreat.

Fairfax Schools experienced the largest decline in student enrollment of any district in the state from 2015 to 2025, according to University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Policy. While neighboring districts such as Loudoun County Public Schools and Arlington Public Schools grew by 8,315 students and 3,429 students, respectively, Fairfax Schools saw a decrease of 6,894 students during the same period.

Declining enrollment in Virginia’s largest public school district doesn’t show signs of slowing. From 2025 to 2030, Weldon Cooper further estimates that the district’s student enrollment will decline an additional 6.6%.

While district leaders, especially the superintendent, Michelle Reid, continue to invoke Fairfax Schools’ past reputation as a beacon of public education and academic excellence, current priorities and indicators tell a different story. In 2025, Virginia Department of Education’s data show that roughly a quarter of students in Fairfax Schools failed their reading, math, and science Standards of Learning exams, compared with about 20% of students in the neighboring district of Loudoun.

Additionally, in December 2025, the state’s department of education reported that 40 federally identified public schools in Fairfax County need support—meaning that 20% of the district’s 199 public schools are underperforming.

You can’t depend on Democrats for much, but you can depend on them to destroy the public schools.

Time to leave.

Read it.

The European Commission presented its new strategy, “ProtectEU: Agenda to prevent and counter terrorism,” an ambitious document that seeks to update the Union’s response to an evolving threat environment.

On paper, the initiative aims to anticipate risks, prevent radicalisation, and strengthen police and judicial cooperation. In practice, however, it seeks to broaden the concept of “terrorism” and “violent extremism” to such an extent that it ultimately encompasses increasingly diffuse political and cultural categories (and is convenient for those in power).

The result is a framework in which the boundary between criminal violence and ideological dissent becomes dangerously blurred.

The document itself acknowledges that, although jihadist terrorism remains “the most prominent and lethal threat,” terrorist actors are driven by a “growing range of motivations,” including the “rejection of European democratic values,” antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and, among others, “anti-LGBTQ+ hatred,” misogyny, racism, “anti-system ideologies,” or even “nihilism.”

What the E. U. really needs is a First Amendment. No chance of that, though.

Read it.

Hundreds of Iranian nationals gathered in the centre of The Hague and on the Dam in Amsterdam over the weekend to celebrate the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in attacks carried out by U.S. and Israeli forces. In Amsterdam, bottles of champagne were opened and sweets were distributed among the crowd.

Many participants carried the Persian flag bearing the ancient Lion and Sun symbol, removed by the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution.

“We’re not happy about war, of course, but this is the only option,” activist Nastaran Beik Pourian said, adding “We need other countries.”

Read it.

The Golden Dome for America (GDA) initiative has drawn criticism for not publicly releasing a detailed architecture, cost breakdown, or long-range budget projections. Think tanks, major media outlets, and some lawmakers argue that without public transparency the program risks becoming an expensive, open-ended undertaking.

Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But they often treat public disclosure as an unquestioned virtue. Revealing how the system works would give our adversaries the information they need to blunt it.

We don’t disclose budget information or performance characteristics for nuclear submarines, the F-35 and other sensitive air vehicles, or spy satellites developed by [the National Reconnaissance Office]. Demanding public disclosure of GDA is akin to asking the United States to publish a playbook for defeating it.

This reality is not theoretical. China and Russia have already criticized Golden Dome as destabilizing and driving an arms race. In this environment, withholding key details is not only prudent—it is imperative.

Read it.

Fairfax County police have charged a Sierra Leonean man, who authorities say illegally entered the U.S. in 2012, with second-degree murder after the fatal stabbing of 41-year-old Stephanie Minter at a bus stop shelter in Virginia’s Hybla Valley area last month.

Police responded at 7:16 p.m. Feb. 23 to reports of an injured woman at the bus stop near Richmond Highway and Arlington Drive, where they found Minter of Fredericksburg suffering from stab wounds to her upper body.

Officers and emergency personnel attempted lifesaving measures, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

The case has drawn public attention and sharpened debates over criminal justice practices and cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Investigators identified Abdul Jalloh, 32, through surveillance footage and interviews, noting he was seen with Minter exiting a bus near the attack site shortly before the killing, police said.

On Tuesday, officers located Jalloh after an employee at a local business recognized him and contacted police.

UPDATE: Media Ignore Arrest of 14-Year Illegal Alien with 30 Arrests in Case of Va. Bus Stop Stabbing Murder

The Antiplanner.

BART is proposing to close 15 stations if voters don’t agree in November to a tax increase to support the bloated agency. BART’s 2025 ridership was only 49 percent of 2019, yet its operating costs were at least a third greater and “general administration” (bureaucratic overhead) was more than two-thirds greater.

Read it.

Import Turd World people, wind up with Turd World problems.

Read it.

Import Turd World people, wind up with Turd World practices.

ODF.

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

Barely a year ago, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) came close to becoming the Senate’s most powerful Republican. A former top lieutenant to Sen. Mitch McConnell while the Kentuckian was majority leader, Cornyn has built a reputation over more than two decades in the Senate as a staunch conservative who could still compromise with Democrats, an enormously prolific fundraiser and an architect of the Republican takeover of what is now the country’s biggest red state. He demolished every primary challenger he faced in three reelection races.

On Tuesday, he could lose it all.

Cornyn, 74, is facing formidable Republican primary challenges from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt despite Cornyn’s enormous spending advantage. Cornyn and his allies in Washington have poured $69 million into ads in his defense, helping to make the primary one of the most expensive on record, according to AdImpact.

Still, polling shows Cornyn lagging behind or running even with Paxton, despite the attorney general’s numerous legal and personal controversies, such as his 2023 impeachment by the state House of Representatives on charges including bribery and abusing his office to cover up an affair.

The question that never gets asked, by Cornyn or anyone in the political establishment, is why? Why does a senior Republican in a presumably safe seat come to be in trouble? Why is he coming so close to losing to a rival who would seem to have several strikes against him?

But the one endorsement that could save Cornyn — President Donald Trump’s — has eluded him.

And there’s a reason for that. But nobody is asking what it might be.

Gregg Keller, who runs a super PAC backing Paxton, said much of the Republican base in Texas detests Cornyn and could stay home in November if Cornyn ekes out a primary victory.

“These Texas MAGA voters — they will not turn out in the general election for John Cornyn,” Keller said.

And there we have it. Cornyn isn’t an outright RINO like Murkowski or Romney or McCain, but he’s been coasting for far too long. He’s become the anchor on the ass of the Republican party in Texas, at a time when we need wind in our sails.

Many of Cornyn’s vulnerabilities in a Republican primary stem from what made him a formidable character in the Senate. His work on a bipartisan gun safety bill has been panned by the right in a state where the Second Amendment is politically sacrosanct. Paxton also blasted Cornyn’s work helping refugees settle in the United States and for calling Trump’s border wall “naive” in 2016.

“He’s been doing this for 24 years. People are just ready for a change, ready for someone that has more energy and that has the ability to go fight for them in Washington,” Paxton said shortly after a Saturday rally in Fort Worth. “John Cornyn doesn’t do that.”

Exactly.

As they do….

Read it.

In borderless Britain, it seems as if barely a day goes by without some monstrosity being committed by a migrant who should never have been in the country in the first place. The world is now familiar with the ongoing scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani rape gangs. Yet what is also unfolding right now is a wave of brutal sexual violence committed by illegal arrivals, often asylum seekers from Afghanistan.

Read it.

It took some time for the supposed difference between Annalena Baerbock’s feminist foreign policy and the approach that the diplomatic corps under Chancellor Friedrich Merz would take to become clear. What has changed is less the substance than the performative act. Under the Sauerland-born Merz, tone and gestures shifted—the staging is meant to appear more masculine, sober in style, perhaps more professional, less embarrassingly activist—but the content remains largely unchanged.

Jonathan Turley.

“Respectfully, f–k off.” Those words by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, summed up the current race to the bottom of American politics.

And that race has been spearheded, at least during my lifetime, by Left wing degenerates—in addition to everything else they’ve done to corrupt our public social space.

Democrats appear in a competition of the profane where voters are now subject to a virtual carpet-bombing of f-bombs and other indecent language.

Gardon’s response was to a standard media inquiry after Newsom’s controversial statement to a black interviewer.

And there it is.

There was a time when political leaders maintained basic standards of civility and avoided profanity in public.

That ship has sailed.

Read it.

Iran is most often discussed as a nonproliferation problem, a sponsor of terrorism, a regional spoiler. Each of these framings captures a real problem, but none captures what matters most. The nuclear file, the militia archipelago stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, the question of Gulf security architecture: these only acquire their full meaning when read against the backdrop of Chinese grand strategy.

Beijing has spent years and billions of dollars building Iran into a structural asset. Everything that follows in the Middle East flows from this fact. Which is why Operation Epic Fury is the first American military campaign that threatens to sever that asset. By striking Iran directly, the Trump administration is dismantling, whether by design or by consequence, a pillar of China’s regional architecture.

The urgency of saying so plainly has never been greater. In June 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a 12-day campaign of precision strikes that destroyed Iranian enrichment facilities, killed over 30 senior commanders and a dozen nuclear scientists, and drew the United States into direct strikes on 3 nuclear sites. The Islamic Republic’s deterrent mythology, cultivated over four decades, collapsed within a fortnight. In late December, the largest protests since 1979 erupted across all 31 provinces, fueled by economic freefall and a population that no longer believed in the regime’s strength. The government responded in January 2026 with massacres that killed thousands, prompting the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization and further increasing the isolation of the regime.

By any conventional measure, the Islamic Republic is weaker than at any point in its history. Yet China was moving to put it back together. This week, it was reported that Tehran was close to finalizing a deal for Chinese-made supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, weapons capable of threatening American carriers now massing in the Persian Gulf. Earlier, Chinese suppliers shipped over 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a key missile propellant ingredient, to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, enough to rebuild a substantial portion of the ballistic missile stockpile that Israel had just spent 12 days destroying.

Understanding why Beijing would do this and what it means for the United States requires looking beyond Iran and toward the broader contest in which Iran plays a role.

Dean  Ball.

Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology under Trump

At some point during my lifetime—I am not sure when—the American republic as we know it began to die. Like most natural deaths, the causes are numerous and interwoven. No one incident, emergency, attack, president, political party, law, idea, person, corporation, technology, mistake, betrayal, failure, misconception, or foreign adversary “caused” death to begin, though all those things and more contributed. I don’t know where we are in the death process, but I know we are in the hospice room. I’ve known it for a while, though I have sometimes been in denial, as all mourners are wont to do. I don’t like to talk about it; I am at the stage where talking about it usually only inflicts pain.

Unfortunately, however, I cannot carry out my job as a writer today with the level of analytic rigor you expect from me without acknowledging that we are sitting in hospice. It is increasingly difficult to honestly discuss the developments of frontier AI, and what kind of futures we should aim to build, without acknowledging our place at the deathbed of the republic as we know it. Except there is no convenient machine to decide for us that the patient has died. We just have to sit and watch.

Our republic has died and been reborn again more than once in America’s history. America has had multiple “foundings.” Perhaps we are on the verge of another rebirth of the American republic, another chapter in America’s continual reinvention of itself. I hope so. But it may be that we have no more virtue or wisdom to fuel such a founding, and that it is better to think of ourselves as transitioning gradually into an era of post-republic American statecraft and policymaking. I do not pretend to know.

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

Potential Democratic presidential candidates are blasting Donald Trump’s war against Iran, but their criticisms differ — and a few even echo some Trump talking points.

The problem for Democrats is that Americans have been waiting for decades for some President to do what Trump has been doing, from getting stuck into the immigration problem to robust action against state sponsors of Islamic terrorism like Iran, and everything the Democrats have to say against Trump’s actions merely pulls them deeper and deeper into the tarpit of obvious anti-Americanism.

Favoring every other nation except your own may work in Britain and Canada and Australia, and certainly works in Europe, but with Americans … not so much.

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

Left-wing Democrats are quietly escalating efforts to persuade New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president. One big reason: They see no clear alternative. Bernie Sanders (84) is too old — and no other Sanders-like pol with national punch is emerging.

I guess Gavin Newsom counts as “moderate” in the present Democrat party. Telling.

But I can understand their problem. All of the Democrats with what might be called “national name recognition” are either obvious incompetents (like Kamala Harris) or obvious psychopaths (like every Democrat in Congress). The party is basically stuck between a rock and California.

Read it.

In a rare moment, Israel is confirming at least nine people killed and over 40 injured after an Iranian ballistic missile slammed into a residential area west of Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon.

The missile impact was in Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, and according to Israeli media destroyed a synagogue and even caused damage to a bomb shelter beneath surrounding homes. There’s a likelihood that the death toll throughout the country will climb given Tehran’s ongoing massive retaliation.

“The Magen David Adom ambulance service said it declared the deaths of eight victims at the scene and took 28 others to hospitals, two in serious condition,” Times of Israel reports. “The death of the ninth victim was declared a short time later.”

“Significant”? By what standard?

More people died in the mob that attempted to storm the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan. Almost as many died in the Islam-inspired mass shooting in Austin, Texas. Eight times as many casualties occurred in the famous Oct. 7 Hanas terror raid that the Narrative Media are so studiously ignoring, while trumpeting the perfectly understandable Israeli retaliation in Gaza as a “genocide”.

I guess “significant” is in the eye of the propagandist….

Read it.

For the past half century, successive Presidential administrations and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have thwarted the development of advanced reactor designs that might fulfill President Eisenhower’s vision for the “peaceful uses of atomic energy.”

That all changed last May, when President Trump issued four executive orders aimed at reinvigorating the U.S. nuclear energy industry. The Trump orders addressed advance reactor technologies – from microreactors to small modular reactors all the way up to advanced tech versions of the water-cooled reactors that power every active U.S. nuclear power plant.

Trump also pledged to revamp the NRC to cut costs and timeframes for bringing new nuclear energy facilities – of all sizes – into production. This revolutionary move ended decades of bureaucratic overkill that choked off what could have long been a preeminent energy driver.

They just ought to buy the reactors that power U.S. nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Proven technology, compact, never had any problems, ever.

Read it.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges Friday against 30 more people who are accused of civil rights violations in a January protest inside a Minnesota church where a pastor works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The new indictment comes a month after independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong were charged for their alleged roles in the protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

Perhaps because ‘incels’ now include the majority of young men? (Thank you, progressive feminism….)

A recent tweet from the US Department of Defense boasts about the killing capabilities of the US military as follows: “Low cortisol. Locked in. Lethalitymaxxing”. To many, that will sound as indecipherable as the teenagers that discuss “high-tier Beckys” or the New York Times warning of “Tate-pilled” boys.

Well, to a writer for The Guardian, at least.

I understood it, and I’m 76.

Sounds like somebody needs to get out more.

Many will have now seen the 6 February tweet that went globally viral, viewed more than 24m times and since discussed in endless analyses and explainers:
Clavicular was mid jestergooning when a group of Foids came and spiked his Cortisol levels. Is Ignoring the Foids while munting and mogging Moids more useful then SMV chadfishing in the club?

I understood that, too. Somebody REALLY needs to get out more.

In 2026, this kind of language is appearing more frequently, from America’s most prominent newspaper to the highest tiers of the US government. Why has this disfigured way of speaking become so normalized?

Because a corresponding disfigured way of thinking has also become normalized. Watch any ‘progressive’ protest march or demonstration. These Are Not Normal People, no matter how much Narrative Media organs (like The Guardian) depend on such for their daily bread.

It starts with the rise of “incels”, a growing cohort of men who are “involuntarily celibate” and think women are to blame.

Women are to blame, by definition. Think about it. “I’m looking for a guy in finance—6’5″, trust fund, blue eyes…”

The remainder of the article gives a good overview of the rot that has settled into our culture because of the Leftist March Through the Institutions.

The Times (UK).

Reports of crimes against MPs have hit record-breaking levels, with cases doubling in two years to nearly 1,000 annually, driven by a surge in abuse and threats to kill.

Harassment cases have increased almost fivefold and reports of threats to kill have tripled since 2019, according to data obtained via a freedom of information (FOI) request to the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Female MPs told The Times that threats to life had become “standard” and that the surge in cases was “sadly not surprising”.

The War Zone.

Details remain very limited at this time, but an F-15 went down in the Middle East. Accounts online claim it occurred over Kuwait. Videos show the aircraft in a flat spin while ablaze, with its vertical tails missing and fire coming from its empennage, before crashing into the ground. At least one crewman safely ejected.

…

U.S. Central Command has confirmed that, on March 1, three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles flying in support of Operation Epic Fury went down over Kuwait due to an apparent friendly fire incident. The CENTCOM statement continued:

“During active combat — that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones — the U.S. Air Force fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses.”

CENTCOM said that all six aircrew ejected safely, have been safely recovered, and are in a stable condition.

“Kuwait has acknowledged this incident, and we are grateful for the efforts of the Kuwaiti defense forces and their support in this ongoing operation,” the statement added. The cause of the incident is under investigation.

ScienceDaily.

I wonder whether it works on progressives….

Read it.

The California Franchise Tax Board announced that it will refuse to treat newly created Trump Accounts as tax-deferred accounts for state tax purposes.

In doing so, California is purposefully making it difficult for families to fully utilize Trump Accounts.

Read it.

Bill O’Reilly has called for the Secret Service to haul in Robert De Niro for an “intensive interrogation” following the actor’s repeated threats against President Trump, warning that De Niro could face up to five years behind bars if convicted under federal law.

The demand comes amid growing scrutiny of De Niro’s unhinged anti-Trump rants, which have exposed the depths of Trump Derangement Syndrome among leftists desperate to undermine America First leadership.

O’Reilly zeroed in on De Niro’s recent MSNBC interview where the actor repeatedly declared “we got to get rid of him” in reference to Trump.

Read it.

Fresh analysis lays bare the Democrats’ crumbling position on immigration, with voters trusting Republicans more than ever to handle border security—even as radicals ramp up their attacks on ICE and deportations.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten highlighted the stark shift during a recent segment, noting that despite the barrage of anti-ICE rhetoric, Democrats are faring worse now than during Trump’s first term.

“Despite EVERYTHING that’s been going on, Democrats in a WORSE position than Trump’s 1st term!” Enten said.

Read it.

You can already hear some liberals and left-leaning libertarians now: “He paid for his crime, right? So what’s the problem? What about the politicians mentioned in the Epstein files…?”

But “whataboutism” is not a valid argument for rationalizing societal decay. And if America isn’t capable of applying the most basic standards at the lowest levels of government, then America is lost.

Rene Campos, a registered sex offender, is seeking elected office in California – launching a campaign for Fresno City Council amid fierce backlash and renewed questions about whether someone with his record should hold public office.

My, what a surprise.

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

Three people died, and at least 14 others were injured in a shooting on West Sixth Street overnight Saturday into Sunday, according to Austin-Travis County EMS.

Austin Police officers responded to the popular street to calls about a man shooting at Buford’s Bar. Austin Police Department Chief Lisa Davis said three officers shot back toward the suspect, who died.

While the suspect has not yet been identified publicly, KXAN confirmed with multiple sources that the suspect was 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne.

Austin is in Travis County, and both are deep Blue pustules on otherwise Red Texas.

ATQUE: Austin mass killer captured on video wearing ‘Property of Allah’ hoodie during rampage (New York Post)

ATQUE: Who Was Ndiaga Diagne? What to Know About Suspect in Austin Mass Shooting (Newsweek)

ATQUE: Texas mass shooting suspect has ties to Bronx, sources say; possible terror link investigated (AMNY)

Austin is in Travis County, and both are deep Blue pustules on otherwise Red Texas.

ATQUE: Lone-Wolf Terror? Senegal-Born Shooter Wearing “Property Of Allah” Shirt Kills 3, Wounds 14 At Austin Bar

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.

Alma Boykin.

Chicago style – the filling is under the cheese (foot notes)

APA style – stuffed crust (parenthetical citations)

Read it.

As part of its wave of airstrikes against Iran this weekend, U.S. Central Command confirmed that it had launched its new low-cost kamikaze drones, the first time the weapons have been used in combat.

On Saturday afternoon, CENTCOM announced that it had fired its Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drones as part of the widespread salvo of weapons used against Iran. Details in the ongoing strikes remain limited, with the White House and military offering only a few statements, but CENTCOM did say that it had successfully launched the LUCAS drones as part of Operation Epic Fury.

“The first hours of the operation included precision munitions launched from air, land, and sea. Additionally, CENTCOM’s Task Force Scorpion Strike employed low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat,” CENTCOM said in statement.

UPDATE: US Deploys LUCAS Shahed Clones Operationally Against Iran

The Foundry.

The woman who helped organize the invasion of a St. Paul, Minnesota, church in the middle of service last month now faces an ethics complaint that may cost her the ability to practice law in the state.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, a former president of the Minneapolis NAACP, has admitted to leading the agitators who invaded Cities Church on Sunday, Jan. 18. Agitators said they targeted the church because one of its pastors also works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Armstrong faces federal charges for interfering with the First Amendment rights of Christians, and she has pleaded not guilty.

In order to practice law in Minnesota, attorneys must maintain an active license with the Minnesota Lawyer Registration Office and abide by professional standards.

The Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility in Minnesota investigates and prosecutes complaints of unethical conduct by lawyers, and the Center to Advance Security in America filed a complaint against Armstrong last month.

“Nekima Levy Armstrong’s outrageous behavior in leading aggressive activists into a church during worship and potentially committing a federal crime is unacceptable conduct for an attorney,” James Fitzpatrick, the center’s director, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “We are hopeful the Minnesota Bar will initiate an investigation based on our complaint and are encouraged to see the Department of Justice investigating the matter.”

Read it.

Old friends may remember the farce we experienced last May, when outgoing Marshmallow Interior Minister Nancy Faeser pushed her gaggle of goons in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to upgrade their political classification of Alternative für Deutschland.

No longer did the BfV consider the national political party to lurk under mere “suspicion of right-wing extremism,” oh no. They announced suddenly and with much establishment fanfare that they had determined the AfD to be “confirmed right-wing extremists.”

Faeser and her goons hoped this new designation would edge the AfD more firmly into Evil Nazi Fascist Hitler territory in the popular mind, thereby preparing the way for banning the party. According to the dumb Gender Studies-tier retards unassailable and unbiased experts of the BfV, the AfD were more definitely Evil, more definitely Nazi, more definitely Fascist and more definitely Hitler than ever before. They had such clear proofs of all the Evil Nazi Fascist Hitlerism lurking within the AfD that they could not even reveal them. Doing so, Faeser said, would compromise the mysterious sources and methods of her highly sophisticated political spy agency. Instead, the Interior Ministry leaked a classified dossier supporting the upgrade to sympathetic media like Der Spiegel, and these media promptly published earnest articles telling us all how absolutely Fascist and Evil and Nazi and Hitler all the secret evidence showed the AfD to be, because trust us bro.

Read it.

Shortly after meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping in late October, President Donald Trump said China would never attack Taiwan while he is president because Chinese officials “know the consequences.” While support from the United States is welcome news for Taiwan, Trump’s words raise a real question: Does Xi actually know the cost of invading Taiwan?

Much of the analysis of a potential Beijing attempt to seize Taiwan by force has centered on the Chinese military’s capabilities and Taiwan’s defenses, especially if supported by the United States. Many assessments conclude that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is not currently capable of defeating the U.S. military in a direct conflict.

However, analysts still warn of a worst-case scenario in which Xi, seeking to cement his legacy, launches a premature strike. Xi has tied his legitimacy to the “China Dream” of national rejuvenation by 2049 and has framed unifying Taiwan with the mainland as essential to achieving that goal.

Fox News.

In the dark of the night, 10 minutes before President Donald Trump even announced that the U.S. and Israel had attacked Iran, a network of U.S. nonprofits aligned with China, Russia and Tehran activated foot soldiers to hit America’s streets.

Groups funded by Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based, American-born tech tycoon, which regularly parrot messaging from America’s adversaries, swung into action even as the initial bombs were dropping. The nearly instantaneous response was the latest salvo in an information war on the U.S., with foot soldiers called upon to converge in protests and echo anti-U.S. talking points.

At 2:34 a.m. ET, the ANSWER Coalition, a nonprofit project whose leaders self-describe as Marxist and communist, announced: “EMERGENCY NATIONWIDE DAY OF ACTION TODAY, SAT. FEB 28 — STOP THE WAR WITH IRAN!”

If someone tried that in Communist China, of course, they’d be ‘disappeared’ and probably used for spare parts.

Read it.

At least eight people were killed during pro-Iran protests at the United States consulate in the Pakistan megacity of Karachi on Sunday, a rescue service spokesman told news agency AFP.

“We have moved at least eight bodies to Karachi’s civil hospitals, while 20 others were injured in the consulate incident,” said Muhammad Amin, a spokesman for the Edhi Foundation rescue service, adding most had bullet wounds.

Hundreds of pro-Iranian protesters had tried to storm the consulate following the US-Israel strikes on Iran.

A crowd of young people climbed over the main gate and gained access to the driveway of the consular building, smashing some windows.

Police fired tear gas at the protesters who dispersed.

UPDATE: ‘Six dead’ as ‘vengeful’ mob storm Pakistan US Consulate after Khamenei killing (Daily Record UK)

The Telegraph (UK).

A 38-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage after graffiti was sprayed on the statue of Winston Churchill in Westminster, police said.

The Metropolitan Police said Caspar San Giorgio, of no fixed address, was arrested shortly after 4am on Friday.

He was taken into custody and charged with criminal damage just before 4am on Saturday.

Graffiti was daubed on the statue of the former prime minister in Parliament Square in the early hours of Friday morning, branding him a “Zionist war criminal”.

Other phrases including “Stop the Genocide” and “Free Palestine” were sprayed in red paint on the bronze sculpture.

The Telegraph (UK).

Iran fired ballistic missiles towards Cyprus where Britain has a military base, the Defence Secretary said.

Two ballistic missiles were “fired in the direction of Cyprus” on Saturday, but John Healey cautioned that Iran was not targeting the island.

He also said British forces were involved in shooting down Iranian drones elsewhere in the Middle East.

However, he refused six times to say whether the UK believed the strikes were legal.

The War Zone.

The joint U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran has entered its second day. The Iranians, as well as their regional proxies, continue to retaliate in kind against multiple countries in the region.

Readers can catch up first on the events of the first day of the war with our initial rolling coverage here.

The death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now confirmed by Iranian authorities, has created a new dimension to the conflict. The regime in Tehran has pledged to avenge Khamenei, and has also announced 40 days of public mourning.