Republican News

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Remember this story from 2018? An armed man shot up the lobby of the Trump National Doral Hotel in Miami (see update), forcing a temporary evacuation while the perp dragged around an American flag. One police subdued him, Jonathan Oddi went off on weird rants during his police interrogation, claiming to have been part of a sex-trafficking ring run by Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and other rappers, while also spewing some nonsensical claims about Barack Obama and Donald Trump as well. Police at the time figured Oddi was in a manic-psychotic state after having stopped taking meds.

Well, back that train up the track a bit. Testimony yesterday in Combs’ sex-trafficking trial confirmed Oddi’s claims in that 2018 police interrogation, at least according to the prosecution’s star witness, Cassie Ventura. Oddi did take part in the “freak-offs” run by Combs, according to Ventura, and had been close to the inner circle around Diddy until his arrest:

Jonathan Oddi was busted in 2018 after he was caught on camera carrying an American flag and raving about President Trump as he barged into the lobby of his golf resort.

After his arrest, he claimed he had been kept as a “sex slave” by Combs, video from his interview with police showed.

Oddi was one of 13 male escorts Combs’ ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, identified in Manhattan federal court Wednesday as sex workers hired for “freak-offs” — bringing the total for the trial to 16.

This began coming out last week as the prosecution’s case unfolded. Four years before the shooting, Oddi signed a non-disclosure agreement with Combs that reportedly paid him $5 million to keep his mouth shut. The Daily Mail exposed the NDA last week, and Oddi claimed that he desperately needed the cash at the time. Hmmmm:

Oddi claimed he was making just $2,000 a month as a fitness trainer and had a net worth of negative $1,800 in the divorce documents.

Despite that, he went on a spending spree less than a month after the divorce was finalized, buying five distressed properties for $765,000 in the space of two months, NBC Miami reported, citing Miami-Dade County property records.

All of the properties were purchased mortgage-free, suggesting they were bought with cash.

This would have been around the same time he allegedly received his $5 million windfall from Diddy.

However, that’s not the oddest part of this story. Recall that the shooting took place in May 2018 — seven years ago, almost to the day. And for some reason, Oddi still hasn’t come to trial yet:

Oddi is currently in jail in Miami-Dade County, awaiting trial on charges of attempted felony murder of law enforcement officers, armed burglary, and armed grand theft.

YouTube analyst Nate the Lawyer notes this too with a tone of disbelief, in a video he released this morning that has part of Oddi’s police interrogation from 2018. It’s worth watching in full:

How could it possibly take seven years to try someone for crimes he committed on camera, and for which he was arrested on the scene? It’s not as if police had to spend five years determining his identity and tracking him overseas as a fugitive. There’s no doubt about the identity of the suspect, and it doesn’t even appear from this video that Oddi denied it, although he may have done so in other questioning. Even if Oddi’s mental state might have delayed his trial, that would be part of the public record — and even competency determination shouldn’t take this long. 

Did Oddi’s inside info kick off the feds’ probe into Diddy? Double hmmmm. At the very least, these circumstances seem almost like a Matrix glitch. 

Addendum: Nate the Lawyer has some very good content on his YouTube channel. He has a very common-sense approach that readers may well appreciate. 

Update: This may have happened at Trump’s West Palm resort rather than Doral. 

FWIW, that incident happened at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm. Trump National Doral is just outside Miami. They’re easy to confuse.

— WSG (@WScottGordon) May 15, 2025

The Miami Herald and other media identified it as Doral at the time, but they may have gotten it wrong. Just in case, I took Doral out of the headline. 

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In a startling coincidence, murder rates have plummeted in Denver and Aurora, Colorado, in the first quarter of 2025. 

I’m sure that correlation doesn’t equal causation here, but some bigots who clearly hate brown people have made the insane suggestion that deporting gang members who terrorized residents in these cities might have had something to do with it. 

Homicides Drop Sharply in Colorado Cities Following ICE Deportations of Tren de Aragua Gang Members https://t.co/8AouPWDQQQ

— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) May 15, 2025

Surely deporting these future doctors, lawyers, and people destined to cure cancer must have nothing to do with this. Right?

📉 Crime is down in Aurora – and the numbers show it.

Last week, the @MjrCitiesChiefs released its first-quarter report showing declining crime trends across the U.S. and Canada. Aurora is proud to be among the cities leading that progress.

As of May 4, 2025, Aurora has seen:… pic.twitter.com/kORTcXK87i

— Aurora Police Dept (@AuroraPD) May 13, 2025

Critics of Trump’s deportation policies insist that this is the result of superb community relations and police work, and part of a longstanding trend. 

Except…murders are down by almost two-thirds compared to the same period last year. In the first quarter of 2024, 28 people were murdered in Denver. This year, 10. 

Car theft?

A REMARKABLE decline

Colorado was the worst state in the country a few years ago. Lots of reasons for this, I suspect, but impossible to ignore.

2/ pic.twitter.com/I5ISmpNqJ2

— Chris Vanderveen (yep…me) (@chrisvanderveen) May 13, 2025

So, no. This is not a longstanding trend. It is a sudden drop in most crimes, all coinciding with the Trump administration sweeping up members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and sending them off to El Salvador. 

New data reveals a dramatic drop in homicides across Denver and Aurora, Colorado, following Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) efforts to dismantle the Tren de Aragua gang. The terror group, a violent Venezuelan criminal organization, consists of illegal immigrants blamed for escalating chaos in the region.

According to data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, reported by KUSA-TV Denver, homicides in Denver declined 58 percent in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year. Aurora saw a 36 percent decline in homicides during the same timeframe.

Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlin noted an even broader reduction in crime across the board. “The City of Aurora and Aurora PD are actually in a really good spot right now. Our crime numbers are down 22.8% overall,” Chamberlin said.

This marked decrease in violence comes after intensified immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, which had made the Denver metropolitan area a key focus for removals of criminal migrants. ICE has acted swiftly, arresting 538 illegal aliens across multiple cities, including Denver. Shortly thereafter, the agency expanded its efforts in Colorado, zeroing in on members of Tren de Aragua.

Breitbart News reports that despite these federal initiatives, local Democratic leaders resisted cooperation with ICE. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and Colorado Governor Jared Polis were among those who worked to oppose the administration’s actions, which prompted the Trump administration to initiate legal action against Denver and state officials for obstructing federal immigration enforcement.

This drop in homicides and other crimes comes no thanks to local politicians, who fought tooth and nail to ensure that the worst people in the world could remain in their communities. The Pravda Media went insane over Trump’s policies, arguing that “only a handful” of apartment complexes were taken over by armed thugs who beat people up and murdered those who wouldn’t cooperate with their extortionate tactics. 

NEW: JD Vance torches ABC’s Martha Raddatz after she minimized the illegal immigrant gang takeovers because “only a handful” of apartments complexes have been seized.

Raddatz: “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes…”

Vance: “Do you hear yourself? Only… pic.twitter.com/TPXdNTD5UH

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 13, 2024

Time and again, we see liberal elites care more about virtue signaling than the lives of ordinary people. The classic example is the skyrocketing murder rate of blacks after the “racial reckoning” in 2020. The Black Lives Matter movement led directly to a massive increase in black men getting murdered, and yet nobody on the left seems to care that the result of “social justice” and “criminal justice reform” is more murdered black men. 

According to the CDC, a black person’s risk of dying by homicide was 7x or 8x times the white rate of 2010-14 in 2014 before BLM’s rise after Ferguson. But after George Floyd’s death in 2020, blacks died by homicide as much as 15x more.

Heckuva job, BLM!https://t.co/rRbwimQQ7R pic.twitter.com/jHLGtv2rNR

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) May 29, 2022

It’s the same phenomenon. Actual dead bodies caused by liberal policies don’t matter a whit. What matters is that leftists can shout about “justice” and blame Americans for oppression. 

“BLM de-policing policies seem to have taken thousands of (mainly Black) lives. During the BLM era, the age-adjusted Black homicide rate has almost doubled, rising from 18.6 murders per 100K African-Americans in 2011 to 32 murders per 100K in 2021. Murders of Black males rose to… pic.twitter.com/5kwkFHm0zB

— Free Black Thought (@FreeBlckThought) January 16, 2025

It’s a pattern. We must have censorship to preserve freedom, insecure ballots to promote democracy, “sanctuary” policies for violent felons to preserve the peace, and “criminal justice reform” to ensure that black people get justice. 

All these policies lead to the opposite of the claimed goal, and predictably so. It’s almost as if exacerbating the problem is the point, and in many cases, it is. If you want to burn the system down, make it worse, and use the failures as an excuse to destroy it. That’s why Marxists opposed the labor movement in the United States in the 1920s and 30s. They feared that better pay and working conditions would destroy the revolutionary spirit. 

If you want to know what the point of some policy is, ignore what its advocates SAY. Watch what the policy DOES. If a policy to eradicate homelessness leads to more homelessness, then eliminating homelessness was never the point. 

Deporting violent gang members obviously leads to fewer crimes; hence, sanctuary policies that claim to lead to more community safety clearly are not designed to do that. 

However “compassionate” these radical migration activists claim to be, the results are clear: more crime, including murder. So if they are fighting to keep Tren de Aragua and MS 13 members here, that’s what they want. 

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Good enough? Not for me, and likely not for Benjamin Netanyahu. But neither of our votes count much these days, it seems.

The same day that Donald Trump declared the “Neocon era” was over, the Iranians decided to make him an offer that Trump might not refuse. The mullahs’ representatives presented Steven Witkoff with a proposal that would surrender its uranium enriched to weapons-precursor levels and agree to limit enrichment in the future to only low levels for civilian use. They would open all of their nuclear facilities to IAEA inspectors and close down any efforts to make military use of nuclear technology. In return, the US would have to lift all sanctions immediately:

Iran is ready to sign a nuclear deal with certain conditions with President Donald Trump in exchange for lifting economic sanctions, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader told NBC News on Wednesday. 

Ali Shamkhani, a top political, military and nuclear adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is one of the most senior Iranian officials to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions. 

He said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons, getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium which can be weaponized, agree to enrich uranium only to the lower levels needed for civilian use, and allow international inspectors to supervise the process, in exchange for the immediate lifting of all economic sanctions on Iran.

Asked if Iran would agree to sign an agreement today if those conditions were met, Shamkhani said, “Yes.” 

Hmmmm. This certainly sounds good, but we have heard similar claims from Iran in the past too. In fact, it sounds nearly identical to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Barack Obama signed in 2015. In that “Iran deal,” as it became known in the US, Iran also agreed to surrender its low- and medium-enrichment uranium and to limit future enrichment to 3.67% for the next 15 years. They also promised to dismantle two-thirds of their centrifuge capacity. It turned out that Iran complied at the facilities that had already been identified, but had still hidden a covert nuclear weapons program from the IAEA, and had not dismantled its centrifuges as required. Over the years, it also became clear that Iran had not revealed all of its nuclear-development facilities as required, one of which came to light this month.

The Iranians never did take those promises seriously. The JCPOA front-loaded all of the economic benefits to Iran in return for — at best — a delay in the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Tehran took the money and did little more than pay lip service to the JCPOA while continuing to develop nuclear weapons. And perhaps more importantly, Tehran used the massive economic benefit from the JCPOA not to make peace with the West but to fuel its proxy wars in the region, including and especially the Houthis, which are now firing missiles at Israel on a regular basis and nearly stopped global shipping in the Red Sea for the past nineteen months. 

So why should we expect it to be any different now? Some of us clearly don’t, but the situation has changed from 2015 in significant ways. Iran has lost most of its forward strategy in the region now; Bashar al-Assad is living a decadent exile in Moscow, and Syria is in the hands of a hostile force that appears ready to align with the US and Israel. Hezbollah is a shell of its former self, its lines of communication to Iran all but gone; it may not survive in Lebanon much longer, let alone present any kind of formidable front-line defense for Iran. Hamas is dying, and the Houthis are at best an annoyance to the West in the long run. Trump’s decision to park a squadron of B-2 Stealth bombers in Diego Garcia made the mullahs wake up and smell the coffee, so to speak, about their precarious position. Without better economic progress, the mullahs may find that the B-2 squadron was the lesser of the threats facing the regime, as their populace is sick and tired of 46 years of pariah status and the privations it creates.

Maybe that makes the Iranians more willing to cut a real deal this time. However, one can argue that the same set of circumstances could make the mullahs even more desperate to get their hands on a nuclear weapon as a means to ensure their survival and to negate at least the external threats that could bring them down. Plus, lifting all of the sanctions up front puts us in the same position as the JCPOA did — allowing the mullahs fresh revenue streams to conduct their proxy wars and internal repression in exchange for vague promises to behave in the future, likely with no reliable verification possible.

It’s literally a Wimpy offer: I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. 

A deal with the mullahs may still be possible, but this one’s not worth the effort. Any deal should impose actual verification, and require Iran to renounce its terrorism and proxies entirely and immediately. Otherwise, we’ll be right back at Square One again … and Israel would likely be right back to another October 7.

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Arlington County, VA, has been a “sanctuary” county for illegal immigrants for a long time, but until yesterday, they made a few exceptions to their strict “no contact” with ICE policy. 

Terrorists, human traffickers, pedophiles–you know, the kind of people who no sane person wants anywhere near their community under any circumstances–did not receive the same “courtesy” as garden-variety illegal aliens who have brushes with the law. Even the bleeding hearts in the D.C. metro, who, after all, had front-row seats to a jet crashing into the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001, conceded that terrorists should be deported. 

No longer, now that Trump is in office. The principle is that only foreigners will do the terrorism that Americans will not, so we must keep the borders open to them. Same with cartel and gang members, of whom America apparently does not have enough. 

🚨New: The Arlington County Board voted to ban local police from turning in illegal immigrant terrorists, gang members, and human traffickers to ICE and federal immigration officials. https://t.co/kAVhegoUhz

— Nick Minock (@NickMinock) May 14, 2025

ARLINGTON, Va. (7News) — On Tuesday, the Arlington County Board voted to further restrict the Arlington Police Department’s (APD) cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and federal immigration officials.

Arlington County Board Members Takis Karantonis, Matt de Ferranti, Maureen Coffey, Susan Cunningham, and JD Spain voted to prohibit APD from initiating contact with federal immigration authorities when:

• An immigrant in the U.S. illegally has been identified as a gang member and is wanted or arrested for a violent felony or a criminal street gang offense
• An immigrant in the U.S. illegally is arrested for a felony offense or is a confirmed gang member
• An immigrant in the U.S. illegally is arrested for a terrorism or human trafficking offense

The Arlington County Board unanimously voted in favor of the changes Tuesday night, claiming without providing data, that immigrant communities are reporting fewer crimes to APD.

Model citizens. Or should I say, model non-citizens? 

There is a rationale for extending the sanctuary policies, making them a blanket immunity from reporting to ICE: the claim is that illegal aliens will feel unsafe reporting crimes unless they are assured that the fuzz won’t report them to ICE. 

“We have seen a significant decrease of trust of our especially of our immigrant community to contact local law enforcement when it was really necessary,” said Karantonis. “That means we have seen a decrease in safety in our own community.”

Before the policy change, Arlington police officers already had strict restrictions when working with ICE.

The county’s Trust Policy had already banned local police from requesting immigration status from people who reported crimes and sharing that type of information with federal immigration officials.

It’s a stupid rationale, since this policy has nothing to do with that outcome. You can easily have a policy that distinguishes between REPORTING a crime and COMMITTING a crime and getting arrested. In fact, you would think that your community would be SAFER if illegal aliens feared committing crimes but not reporting them, right? 

Stay under the radar and the po-po won’t bother you; commit a crime and goodbye Abdul or José. A simple way to separate the wheat from the chaff, right? 

Not in the eyes of Arlington County, apparently, who believe that terrorists and human traffickers should feel comfortable in their community too. 

Next, we will get explanations like, “Did you know that many terrorists are doctors and engineers?” Osama bin Laden was an engineer, you know, and any country can use a good engineer, right? Toss in Mohammed Atta, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and Ramzi Yousef, who were engineers too. And doctors are disproportionately likely to lead terrorist organizations, so do you really want to deport these highly educated men just because they like to blow people up?

For God’s sake, man, is this not the definition of deranged? Liberals hate Donald Trump so much that they would prefer to have violent felons and terrorists living next to them than allow ICE to deport them. 

We live in insane times. 

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Mike Mike Mike Mike Mike … what time is it? Closing tab time …

“We seek the end of tyranny in our world. Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it.” That was George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union.

Here was Donald Trump yesterday in Riyadh: “The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation-builders,’ ‘neocons,’ or ‘liberal nonprofits.’ Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought about by the people of the region themselves.”

It’s astonishing what a difference 20 years has made.

Ed: Indeed, as I observed in my VIP analysis earlier today. As is its custom, the Free Press story links to two somewhat opposing views that it hosts on the topic. I see wisdom in both takes, but neither is conclusive … nor could they be. 

===

I will say this:

For all my criticisms of Trump this week, if there is ONE man who can somehow make Syria change from a pariah regime to a functioning country, it’s him.

I really want to be hopeful this is the start of something new. Not holding my breath, but still. pic.twitter.com/CntE37uDIj

— 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) May 14, 2025

Ed: Hope is a powerful force. We shall see, but perhaps we need to bear the difficulty that this enterprise faces before we get hopes up too high. It’s an approach worth trying — as long as we keep our eyes open and our power ready to defend ourselves and our allies. 

===

As this report also observed, the “religious zealots” and “hardliners” in HTS are complicating matters for Syria’s interim president. When he called himself al-Jolani, he shared HTS’s official support for replacing the Assad regime’s Ba’athist ideology with a form of Sharia law — a goal Sharaa’s deputies haven’t abandoned. The harassment of Christians and Druze continues, and there have been reports of atrocities against women alleged to have violated Islamic modesty codes. This sort of thing has reportedly led skeptics of the new regime in Trump’s orbit — figures like National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and Counterterrorism Director Sebastian Gorka — to recommend that the U.S. keep up the pressure on Damascus.

Their concerns are not unfounded. And yet, the president’s decision to side with those in his administration who counsel tentative engagement with the Syrian regime is a praiseworthy enterprise. If it succeeds, the benefits to the United States and the West would be immense.

Ed: A surprising concurrence from my friend and former Hot Air colleague Noah Rothman. I’m a little surprised to see Gabbard and Gorka among the skeptics, though perhaps I shouldn’t be. 

===

Deals, not war. In one day, Trump showed he’s the dealmaker, peacemaker, realist, and optimist. $283B in deals, pressure on Iran, outreach to Syria—and always America First. This is what leadership looks like. pic.twitter.com/uV0c9oUkzR

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) May 14, 2025

===

‘War is never inevitable. Weapons can and must fall silent, for they never solve problems but only intensify them,’ Pope Leo XIV wrote on the official ‘Pontifex’ X account. 

‘Those who sow peace will endure throughout history, not those who reap victims,’ he added. ‘Others are not enemies to hate but human beings with whom to speak.’

The pope did not refer to President Trump by name, but his post emphasized a universal truth about the teachings of Christ at a time of war and chaos around the world.

Ed: The Daily Mail headlines this as a “possible olive branch to Trump,” which is a bit puzzling, since there hasn’t been any discord between Pope Leo XIV and Trump. Trump offered him his best wishes on Thursday after being elected pontiff, and the new Pope hasn’t commented on American policy at all yet. With that said, popes rarely comment on matters out of coincidence, and Pope Leo XIV seems like a pontiff not given to glib commentary. 

===

Reuters is reporting that Vladimir Putin will not be going to Turkey for talks with President Zelenskyy.

Unsurprising.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 14, 2025

Ed: I wonder if Pope Leo XIV meant that message for Moscow. 

===

A significant overhaul of the National Security Council at the White House is expected in the coming days, including a staff reduction and a reinforced top-down approach with decision-making concentrated at the highest levels, three senior Trump administration officials told CNN. …

“NSC as we know it is done,” an administration official said.

Ed: This is absolutely related to the new “neocon era is over” direction by Trump. Whether or not one agrees with that direction, the nat-sec ‘establishment’ is oriented almost entirely in that direction. This kind of major shift would require a complete overhaul.

===

🚨WATCH: Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen is removed by law enforcement for interrupting RFK Jr. hearing pic.twitter.com/OU7Pc5GHrP

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 14, 2025

Ed: I guess Ben’s hoping to embarrass Unilever enough to dump the B&J brand to his equity partners on the cheap. 

===

My style can be described as modern minimalist meets classic. I own several sheath dresses that fit and flatter, but when I put them on now, they echo what I see as MAGA style. How can I restyle them without sacrificing my aesthetic? — Miriam, Whidbey Island, Wash.

There is a very specific look associated with women who subscribe to the Trump worldview, one that is sort of a cross between a Fox newscaster and Miss Universe. It generally involves flowing tresses that are at least shoulder length, false eyelashes, plumped-up cheeks and lips, high heels and, as you say, a sheath dress. The effect underscores an almost cartoonish femininity that speaks to a relatively old-fashioned gender stereotype; the counterpart to this woman is the square-jawed, besuited guy with a side part.

Ed: You really have to read the whole thing to appreciate how deeply sprained some people are in Trump’s second term. Without hovering over the link, try to guess which newspaper printed this in a fashion-advice column. I bet you’ll get it in three guesses. 

===

😳 https://t.co/ahExwZ19e3

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@HarmeetKDhillon) May 14, 2025

Ed: If I were Dr. Alan Garber, I’d be worried. Speaking of which …

===

A Harvard spokesperson confirmed that President Alan Garber is taking a voluntary 25% pay cut between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026.  The Harvard Crimson, which was the first to report the news, said Harvard presidents typically earn over $1 million annually.

Earlier this month, dozens of tenured Harvard professors said they would donate 10% of their salaries “as our contribution to the university’s financial resources while it legally contests these attacks.”

Ed: (1) Still overpaid. (2) They’ll need the money for legal fees for the fight to continue their discrimination and violations of Title VI. (3) Imagine what discovery will produce in Harvard’s lawsuit if Chris Rufo already has the above!

===

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It was just over a week ago that a group of pro-Hamas extremists at the University of Washington occupied the brand new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in order to protest the school’s connection to Boeing. I wrote about it when it happened and there was lots of video of what was happening outside the building including vandalism and fires.

BREAKING NOW @UW: Black-clad, masked activists have TAKEN OVER the brand new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (IEB) and are piling furniture outside to blockade it. 👇 1/4 pic.twitter.com/UwQGJoniKw

— UW_JewishAlumni (@UW_JewishAlumni) May 6, 2025

The bigger story was what happened inside. The vandals did an estimated $1 million in damage to the brand new equipment.

The University of Washington’s Board of Regents is set to meet Thursday morning as the school estimates pro-Palestinian protesters caused $1 million in damage during a building takeover earlier this week…

According to UW, protesters not only damaged a campus building on Monday night but also ruined equipment inside — in addition to setting fire to dumpsters outside.

Some images of the damage.

The militants destroyed expensive machinery and trashed offices. pic.twitter.com/OS7rnYStu4

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) May 6, 2025

A total of 32 people were arrested for that vandalism and the school then announced 21 students had been suspended. The rest of the activists were not students.

The University of Washington has suspended 21 students who were involved in a pro-Palestinian protest and occupation of the campus’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building earlier this week.

Of course the organizers of the vandalism demanded the suspensions be dropped. This is standard operating procedures for these groups.

Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return (SUPER UW) held a rally on campus Thursday, the day after UW announced it was suspending 21 students for the destructive protest.

We think it is shameful that they would be punished in an emergency suspension without due process,” said James Lopez, who identified himself as an organizer of the rally. “I think it is sad that we are focusing on millions of dollars in damage to one building here and not the billions of dollars of damage and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in Gaza.

In any case, the activists decided $1 million in damage wasn’t enough. Over the weekend they targeted the same building again.

The caption reads in part:

ANONYMOUS SUBMISSION from today 5/10/25:

“Open war on war profiteers! Boeing Kills, Boeing Pays!

Inspired by the May 5 student occupation of the “Interdisciplinary Engineering Building” at the University of Washington (see @super_uw ), community members in so-called Seattle attacked and destroyed several windows of the building. Following the destruction of these windows, comrades escaped without incident. This building, meant to design AI-engineering programs for Boeing, was funded in part by a $10 million Boeing grant to the University of Washington, whose century-long partnership has enabled countless war crimes. Boeing is the world’s third largest war profiteer, and they have no business being integrated into an educational institution.

Maybe it was a “anonymous submission” but there’s a good chance it’s some of the same dopes who damaged the building on May 5. The University of Washington should expel all of the students involved and ban from campus anyone else arrested last week . That would be a good start on making sure there’s not another repeat of this behavior.

Here’s a local news report on the damage from the first building occupation.

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Mean old Marines. At least that’s the impression you get from the headline the communists at Military.com put on their story.

A Woman Drove into a San Diego Military Facility by Mistake. She Now Faces Deportation.

Aw, jeez. Well, sometimes life just comes at you the wrong way.

The ‘military installation’ in question just happens to be the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego, or MCRD as it’s fondly (once you’re a graduate) known.

It’s a dang shame the military is picky about who wanders up to or onto their installations, but that’s how base security rolls.

So what exactly happened, and who is this poor victim?

An undocumented immigrant whose family claims she drove into the entrance of a San Diego military base by mistake could now face deportation.

Last month, Ana Camero, 64, took a different route home from her job in La Jolla as a restaurant dishwasher. After stopping at a gas station on Washington Street, she mistakenly drove into the Marine Corps Recruit Depot near the San Diego airport.

Following routine procedure, military personnel at the entrance asked for identification so she could turn around. But Camero did not have proper documentation. This prompted a call to the U.S. Border Patrol, and Camero was detained, her family said.

“Anyone can make a mistake,” said her daughter, Melissa Hernández. “She wasn’t a threat, it was just a wrong turn.”

So she didn’t have the proper documentation, and the gate guards did what they were required to do.

But this is where they should have left the story if they wanted one iota of sympathy out of anyone for this apparently hard-working illegal alien’s plight.

Because a couple of paragraphs later, her daughter continues the tale of woe. So, she realizes her mom is late and then gets a call from base to come pick up her mother’s car. What’s next just frosts my shorts.

…She first thought the authorities had taken the vehicle because her mother did not have a driver’s license, but she said she never expected her mother to be detained. “It never even crossed my mind,” she said.

Excuse me, whut?

Mamacita has been driving without a license? The daughter doesn’t say Mamacita left it at home or forgot it at her job. She says she doesn’t have one.

As her illegal immigrant mother is driving herself all over San Diego without a driver’s license, which no doubt means that she doesn’t have a lick of insurance either, right?

How long has Señora Camero been in the States again?

…Camero, originally from Mexico, has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, and her family says she has no criminal record. She is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody pending removal proceedings.

Oh, yay again. Twenty frickin’ years and her family pinkie swears she’s not a criminal. She’s only here illegally to begin with and has been driving without a license and insurance in a populated urban environment for God knows how long.

California is a state, mind you, where every illegal can get a driver’s license.

…AB 60, passed in 2013, allows all Californians to apply for a driver’s license, even without proof of their immigration status, if they can establish their identity and California residency, pass a driving test, a vision test, show proof of insurance, and any other driver’s license requirements. However, AB 60 did not expand access to CA ID cards. Residents who cannot obtain a driver’s license (which can serve as a form of ID) – perhaps because they do not drive or do not have access to a car – and who cannot provide proof of lawful presence in the United States have been unable to obtain a CA ID card (a non-driving alternative form of ID available to other California 

And she couldn’t even be bothered to do that?

But she hasn’t done anything, like, bad, you know. And this was just a ‘mistake.’

Her pastor says it’s even worse than that.

…“It’s an injustice,” he later said. “Because it wasn’t something she planned, she just drove in and didn’t know what to do.”

Well, oops.

That was my sympathy meter pegging. 

This post was originally published on this site

After the wildfires that swept through LA neighborhoods of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, State Farm (California’s top home insurer) requested an emergency rate hike of 22%. They didn’t get that but yesterday a judge did approve a 17% hike.

Administrative Law Judge Karl Frederic Seligman, who oversaw an unusual three-day hearing on the matter last month, said that California’s largest insurer was already in a weakened financial state at the time of the fires and that the emergency rate hike would carry it over as the state considers other rate hikes requested last year.

“The proposed interim rate stipulation serves the best interests of California consumers and the public. Taken as a whole, it represents a fundamentally fair, adequate and necessary measure — effectively functioning as a rescue mission to stabilize State Farm’s financial condition while safeguarding policyholders,” he wrote in a decision released Tuesday.

The hike was approved by Judge Seligman yesterday and today the state insurance commissioner also approved it.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara approved an emergency rate hike request by State Farm that will allow the company to increase premiums on homeowners, renters and landlords…

“Let me be clear: We are in a statewide insurance crisis affecting millions of Californians,” Lara said. “Taking this on requires tough decisions. This is not a game. This is not a media-driven moment for some to exploit — this impacts people I am committed to protecting.”

The new rate hike follows a 20% rate hike for State Farm that went into effect in March 2024. These rate increases have been approved because insurers have a trump card to play: They can simply pack up and leave the state. Several insurers have done that over the past couple years. State Farm never went that far but it did stop taking new insurance customers for a time back in 2023.

State Farm had initially requested a 22% increase but homeowners fought that, led by people who had lost their homes in the wildfires but were struggling to get insurance payouts from State Farm.

During the recent hearing in California and in the process that ensued, State Farm was forced to make some concessions — lowering the rate hike to 17 percent, from nearly 22 percent, as well as requiring State Farm’s parent company to provide an infusion of $400 million in cash to its California affiliate…

The higher rate comes after survivors of the Eaton fire in the working-class community of Altadena organized, first on a WhatsApp group dedicated to pickleball and later on Discord, a platform better known for gaming.

There they found each other and collected hundreds of firsthand accounts of homeowners insured with State Farm in California, who were struggling to get paid  even when their homes had been leveled, said Joy Chen, a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles and the leader of the group, now known as the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

In theory, this rate hike could still be revised after the fact. If a later hearing decides State Farm charged too much, customers could receive rebates.

The Department of Insurance will continue to study the necessity of the rate increase. A full hearing is expected no earlier than October 2025.

“State Farm must now justify its financial condition and detail its recovery plan in a full rate hearing before a neutral judge and my Department’s experts,” Lara said in a statement.

For now, this hike only impacts State Farm customers in California. The rate hikes should take effect next month. But once other insurers see this they are likely to seek their own rate hikes. So the cost of insurance will continue to climb rapidly in California.

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Better late than never, I guess. The New York Times has finally acknowledged that American boys aren’t doing so well. 

It’s Not Just a Feeling: Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind. Boys’ educational achievement, mental health and transitions to adulthood indicate that many are not thriving. https://t.co/QLdBA3ht41 via @NYTimes

— Carl Hindy (@DrCarlHindy) May 13, 2025

A single story does not a trend make, but it is still good to see a straightforward story that acknowledges what lots of people on the right have been pointing out for more than a decade: our society has become anti-male, and the consequences for young men have been dire. 

For decades, there has been an obsession with giving girls a hand up, and by traditional measures, the results have been that girls have leapt ahead of boys in many measures of achievement. 

Unfortunately, a lot of that improvement has been at the expense of boys doing well, and what began as a mostly good-hearted attempt to ensure that women and girls had the same opportunities as boys has been warped into a full-scale war on masculinity. 

Boys and young men are struggling. Across their lives — in their educational achievement, mental health and transitions to adulthood — there are warning signs that they are falling behind, even as their female peers surge ahead.

In the United States, researchers say several economic and social changes have combined to change boys’ and men’s trajectories. School has changed in ways that favor girls, and work has changed in ways that favor women. Boys are often seen as troublemakers, and men have heard that masculinity is “toxic.”

Young people themselves tend to agree that girls are now at least equal to — and often doing better than — boys. Many young men say they feel unmoored and undervalued, and parents and adults who work with children are worried about boys. It’s not just a feeling: There’s a wealth of data that shows that boys and young men are stagnating. Below, I’ll explain what some of that data is.

I’m pretty sure you won’t find lectures about “toxic femininity” in America’s schools, and that any educator or media figure who ventured into that territory would garner a lot of hate for saying so. But you can build a lucrative career promoting the idea of “toxic masculinity” and giving DEI lectures about how to crush it. 

By most measures, the well-being of boys has been declining for quite a while. Educational achievement has been going down, suicide is on the rise, and men are less likely to enter the workforce and rise up the ladder than in the past. 

It’s not that men’s relative achievements have declined due to an increase in women’s achievements–objectively speaking, men are doing worse than they have in the past. And that, I would argue, is because men are being beaten down by a dominant culture that keeps punishing them for being male. 

Is it any wonder that so many boys are “discovering” that they are girls? By making that simple change, a toxic male can vault above a natal female in prestige. So much so that any girl who objects to a boy strolling into their locker room and using their male strength to outcompete them is attacked as a transphobic bigot. 

The war on boys is good for nobody, not even girls, who, on first blush, appear to benefit. And in this, I am not just referring to the transgender insanity. 

Girls and boys, women and men are complementary. Members of each sex bring things to the table that, on average, members of the other sex don’t excel in. Men tend to be stronger, more aggressive, analytical/systematic, and ambitious. Men build and defend things. 

Women provide the glue of civilization and direct male aggression and ambition toward productive things. Left to their own devices, men are generally a mess. Put them in a family and a social structure that directs their masculine impulses, and you get a civilization. 

Men manipulate things, women deal with people. I suspect that is why most surgeons tend to be men and, in my experience, the best patient-facing doctors are women. 

Masculine or feminine characteristics are not “better” one way or another. They complement each other, at least when both are encouraged to flourish. That’s why the primary social unit is or should be the family, not the individual. 

Modern Western values have come to denigrate the masculine traits, and when masculine traits are devalued, they don’t go away–they become destructive. Hence, the increase in suicide rates. 

During the 2024 election season, I argued that we were witnessing the testosterone vs. estrogen election, and we were not better off for it. Trump is an alpha male, and if you believe, as I do, that America is in crisis, then it is an alpha male we need, just as we needed Patton in World War II. 

But I can’t deny that in less fraught times, a more balanced administration–one that combines strength, ambition, and a desire to build, matched with a higher emotional quotient and less aggression would be less exhausting. 

We need to nurture the masculine virtues once again and tame the toxic femininity that has come to dominate our culture, but not at the expense of the feminine virtues that sustain our civilization and, indeed, make America great. 

We should all reject the war between the sexes. It diminishes us all. 

This post was originally published on this site

Yesterday, Judge Hannah Dugan was indicted by a federal grand jury. She is set to enter a plea in response to that indictment tomorrow. But before that happens, her attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming that she has complete immunity from prosecution for any “official acts.” If that sounds familiar it’s probably because her attorneys are citing Trump’s case for immunity in the motion to dismiss.

This is no ordinary criminal case, and Dugan is no ordinary criminal defendant…

The problems with this prosecution are legion, but most immediately, the government cannot prosecute Judge Dugan because she is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts. Immunity is not a defense to the prosecution to be determined later by a jury or court; it is an absolute bar to the prosecution at the outset. See Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 630 (2024)…

Judge Dugan’s subjective motivations are irrelevant to immunity. “Judges are entitled to absolute immunity for their judicial acts, without regard to the motive with which those acts are allegedly performed.” Id.; accord Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. at 618 (“In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives”). 

How many progressives have been outraged by the outcome of that decision? How many will still be outraged now that Judge Dugan is attempting to use it to dismiss her case? I think we all know the answer is a number approaching zero.

After making the immunity argument, the motion moves on to make a 10th Amendment argument before returning again to immunity.

As a practical matter, counsel for Judge Dugan stand ready to file briefs and to participate in an evidentiary hearing if either or both will aid the Court, but they stand on the observation that any further proceedings in this case, other than immediate dismissal, are barred by official acts immunity and judicial immunity.

Dugan is demanding the court deal with this issue before moving forward with the prosecution so this may delay things a bit.

The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman. The next step will be for the government to respond to the defense motion. Depending on the ruling, the issue could end up being appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Two reactions to this, first from Jonathan Turley who predicts the motion to dismiss will be denied.

Disgraced Judge Hannah Dugan filed a motion to dismiss today, on grounds of Judicial immunity

Jonathan Turley~
I can’t see any basis to do that, which means her motion to dismiss will be denied

Judge Dugan faces (6) years in prison, who else besides me hopes she gets the max pic.twitter.com/uBxyfrjYLx

— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) May 14, 2025

But contradicting that is this thread from a law professor named Dan Lennington who says Dugan has a “good shot” at a dismissal.

Second, I want to know whether judicial immunity extends to criminal acts. In Ex Parte Virginia, SCOTUS allowed a federal indictment against a state judge for discriminating. In Mireles v. Waco, SCOTUS said judicial immunity doesn’t apply to crimes. This should be briefed/6

— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) May 14, 2025

These are all just preliminary thoughts, but strategically this is a good development for Dugan. She has a good shot at dismissal and then an appeal to the Seventh Circuit, which could take months. This case will probably be around for quite some time. /8

— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) May 14, 2025

Former Gov. Scott Walker agrees, adding some political commentary about Judge Adelman, the judge who was assigned this case. Walker also predicts a dismissal.

Federal Judge Lynn Adelman is a long-time liberal activist. I expect him to dismiss the case. If he does not, suspended Judge Hannah Dugan is in trouble. No one is above the law. https://t.co/Sgea2vbqOS

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) May 14, 2025

Apparently this judge is very far left.

Talk about luck of the draw! Following indictment, the Dugan prosecution was randomly assigned to Judge Lynn Adelman. Judge Adelman, age 85, is the most liberal judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and maybe one of the more liberal judges in the US. https://t.co/LmMHqN9Amn

— Jeff Wagner (@jeffwagnerradio) May 13, 2025

We’ll see who is right but there doesn’t seem to be much disagreement that Judge Dugan scored when her case wound up in front of this judge.