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J.D. Vance didn’t need to cast the tie-breaking vote — but it came close. Both Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted against confirming Kash Patel as the new director of the FBI, but Mitch McConnell voted in favor, allowing Patel to take office by the narrowest Senate vote thus far for a Donald Trump nominee:

Every Senate Democrat voted against Patel. They were joined by two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who said they believed Patel was too overtly political to lead the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

“Mr. Patel’s recent political profile undermines his ability to serve in the apolitical role of Director of the FBI,” Collins said ahead of the 51-49 vote.

Patel’s confirmation marks a tectonic shift at the bureau, as he plans to adjust its focus from terrorism and counterintelligence work back toward its historical mission of fighting violent crime. His priorities, partisan approach and open criticism of the agency he will lead set him apart from most every other director in the bureau’s history.

Given the political nature of the FBI over the past decade — and much of its first 50 years or so — one might think Patel to be a natural fit for the position. It certainly does send a signal that business as usual is over at the FBI, although what form that will take remains to be seen. Adam Schiff, who kept insisting that he’d personally seen evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia and leaked false information while serving on the House Intelligence Committee, now fulminates in the Senate over [ahem] “trust”:

About a half-dozen Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee gathered outside FBI headquarters earlier Thursday in a last-ditch plea to derail his confirmation.

“This is someone we cannot trust,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “This is someone who lacks the character to do this job, someone who lacks the integrity to do this job. We know that, our Republican colleagues know that.”

This is a clear case of projection. Schiff spent two terms in the House channeling Sen. Joe McCarthy and promising to prove that Trump was a Russian asset, while Devin Nunes and Patel exposed his lies and prevarications. For Schiff, this is all about revenge, not public trust.

Nonetheless, Patel does need to demonstrate that he can rise to the occasion and truly take the FBI in a non-partisan direction. He tried to back away from heated partisan rhetoric in the past, but firmly stuck to his plans to reform the bureau and bring it back to a strictly law-enforcement approach:

“I’ve overwhelmingly said multiple times that 98% of the FBI is courageous, apolitical warriors of justice. They just need better leadership,” Patel told senators during the hearing.

He touched only briefly on his desire to protect the country from national security threats, namely Chinese espionage, terrorism and Iranian aggression. But he repeatedly said his goal was to “let good cops be cops,” and spoke of sending more agents from Washington into the field to fight crime.

That partly depends on Congress, however. The FBI as a law-enforcement agency makes sense. Having the FBI do counterintelligence at the same time sounds good in theory, but in practice has been a disaster. The best approach would be to divorce those responsibilities from the FBI and to hand them off to another agency that’s less tempted to use the combination of both powers for political purposes. Unless and until Congress acts to do so, however, Patel is stuck with both missions and needs to demonstrate real integrity in keeping a nonpartisan balance. 

Perhaps Patel can start working on a proposal for Congress to address this. That would be a very good step toward real reform and would help build confidence in his leadership. It’s his show now; let’s keep a close eye on how Patel performs. 

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[Beege adds: I know, I KNOW – that’s BMW’s tagline. I was traumatized at the dentist’s first thing this morning. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.]

It’s been hard times for the auto industry, what with interest rates going up and consumer interest in the once Golden Calf-like electric vehicle sure thing going down.

It’s been especially tough to be a carmaker in Europe, where those EV sales numbers are mandates that come with healthy fines if they aren’t met. And all the while, you can’t sell what you need to sell because no one wants to buy them. To make matters worse, the European Union is about to hammer you financially as the Chinese eat your lunch and steal your cupcake.

If you’re a car company in Germany, you’ve got another set of homegrown problems on top of all that.

And now there’s Trump with a “T,” which is also the first letter in ‘T’ariffs. 

The very thought has set auto manufacturers’ teeth on edge.

Volkswagen, the country’s synonymous vehicle manufacturer, is curling into a fetal ball, trying to avoid any more bad news or body blows. You can probably hear them squeaking, ‘Please don’t hurt me anymore‘ from here if you listen real close.

The entire European auto sector was pronounced to be in an ‘existential crisis’ just last month.

…Mandates and Green dreams still can’t change what people want and are willing to pay for, it seems.

European automotive suppliers are experiencing unprecedented turbulence as electric vehicle market uncertainties trigger a wave of dramatic workforce reductions. Major manufacturers are confronting a perfect storm of economic challenges that threaten the industry’s traditional foundations.

In a stark illustration of the sector’s volatility Robert Bosch, ZF Friedrichshafen, Continental and Schaeffler have collectively announced 54,000 job cuts in 2024. This figure represents a record number of redundancies surpassing those announced during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 combined according to the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA).

The Grande Dame of German auto engineering, Mercedes Benz, has also had a rough go of it this past year and EVs were a good part of it. The company is warning that 2025 is going to be disappointing.

“Profits at the company’s car division dropped 41 per cent, while net profits fell 28 per cent to €10.4bn last year. Revenues dropped 5 per cent to €146bn.”

Mercedes-Benz warns 2025 profits will be ‘significantly’ lower – https://t.co/wgZXZnep3f

— WP 🇩🇪🇺🇸🇬🇷🇧🇪🇫🇷🇦🇹🇨🇿🇵🇱🇬🇧 (@WPipperger) February 20, 2025

And they are going to cut auto production in Germany. How’s that for an announcement three days before national elections?

Mercedes-Benz Group is cutting production capacity in Germany and moving some output to low-cost countries as it grapples with fierce competition and uneven demand in the global auto market.

The automaker said it plans to cut production costs by 10 percent through 2027 and will also work with suppliers to reduce material costs. Global prices for everything from chemical coatings to metals have risen in recent years.

Mercedes’ operating earnings slumped 30 percent last year, the automaker said on Feb. 20. Its automotive margin dropped to 8.1 percent, below the previous year’s 12.6 percent. The car division had a 40 percent slump in 2024 earnings as sales in the key Chinese and German markets took a battering.

Mercedes expects its automotive margin to drop to as low as 6 percent this year. After pledging to boost margins to a minimum of 8 percent less than three years ago, the new guidance marks a blow to Mercedes’ strategy of shifting upmarket to secure higher returns.

The production cuts are interesting, as they won’t be closing any factories in Germany, which has to come as a relief to the mainstream candidates running. But they will be moving production out of Germany to take advantage of cheaper labor costs and protect themselves from those Trump tariffs if they come to pass. So Hungary will score for their affordable wage structure – the company will save up to 70% in labor costs over the German unions – and another vehicle line will get shifted to the plant in Alabama, US of A. Tariff-proof, although the company denies the potential tariffs played any part in the decision.

OKAY

…Mercedes will reduce the capacity of its German plants to about 900,000 cars from around one million. There are no plans to close plants in Germany but jobs will be cut through natural attrition.

Kallenius would not say how many jobs could be affected in Germany.

Mercedes plans to shift production of one of its compact cars from Germany to its plant in Hungary, where costs are 70 percent lower, CFO Harald Wilhelm said.

It will also outsource areas from finance and human resources to procurement, he said.

To shield itself from tariffs and trade tensions, the carmaker will increase the number of cars produced within the market in which they will be sold from 60 percent to 70 percent globally, with a particular focus on China and the U.S.

The U.S. factory, in Vance, Alabama, is likely to get another “core” model, meaning a C- or E-Class vehicle, Kallenius said. The light truck factory builds the GLE, GLE Coupe and GLS, including EV variants.

According to a supply chain source, Mercedes could begin building GLC crossovers in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2027. The source told Automotive News GLC volumes could hit 50,000 vehicles in the first full manufacturing year.

Tariffs are a serious threat to a shaky European bottom line. At Mercedes, the CEO is saying the Trump tariffs would cost them a billion a year.

🇩🇪 German automakers are about to get hit with the next round of Trump tariffs. Biggest impact is expected on Volkswagen (80% of US sales are imported), Mercedes Benz (63%), BMW (52%). Scope, rates and impact on cars produced under the free trade agreement are unclear pic.twitter.com/kFvkgON2zL

— Nikolay Kolarov, CFA (@libertniko) February 15, 2025

Interestingly enough, that same Vance, AL plant was the scene last year of a fiercely contested labor fight over unionizing the plant, with all sorts of ugly accusations of skullduggery and malfeasance flying back and forth between Shawn Fain’s United Autoworkers (UAW) and Mercedes management.

It was nip and tuck and anyone’s guess, but in the end, plant workers voted to sent the UAW packing.

Most grievously affected, @BernieSanders .

— MarkWhittington (@MarkWhittington) May 17, 2024

As far as specific vehicle production plans go, Mercedes is going back to their roots – focusing on internal combustion engines (ICE) and elegant, expensive cars.

…Mercedes also said it will launch more gasoline and diesel cars than battery-electric cars in its new product range in a bid to revive margins.

The company will release 19 new combustion engine models and 17 battery-electric cars by the end of 2027, in a sign of a renewed focus on its combustion engine offering after its BEV sales collapsed by a quarter last year.

Most of the new models will be in its top-end price tier, showing that the carmaker is still committed to its strategy of selling a lower volume of higher-margin vehicles, despite some investors and labor representatives expressing concern in recent months that the strategy had failed.

If I might be so bold, another thing Mercedes could consider is to stop making such ugly, junky-ass cars. Hubs has a 2002 E430 we bought used (that we also desperately need to get back on the road), and he just can’t turn loose of it. 

Why?

It’s a beautiful car. It’s everything the Mercedes you might have dreamt about one day buying and we lucked into it.

Every Mercedes we’ve looked at since has looked more unattractive and cheaper (!) with each new model year, and there are endless complaints about the quality issues. Our experience exactly mirrors what a fellow wrote in a letter about the company’s fall from customer grace in the hands of Swedish-German Mercedes CEO Sten Ola Källenius. He berates them for chasing ‘ostentation’ over the company’s heritage of quality and design.

I just read it, and I’ll bet it’s a good bit of their sales slump.

this letter to the editor summarizes Mercedes’s misery under Källenius:

The letter criticizes the current direction of Mercedes-Benz under Ola Källenius, arguing that it strays from the traditional “Swabian” values of modesty and quality. The author laments the shift toward… pic.twitter.com/PukWuyRfoj

— stekkerauto 🚗⚡️ (@stekkerauto) February 20, 2025

…The letter criticizes the current direction of Mercedes-Benz under Ola Källenius, arguing that it strays from the traditional “Swabian” values of modesty and quality. The author laments the shift toward excessive luxury and ostentation, such as oversized SUVs and overly elaborate designs, which he sees as incompatible with the company’s heritage. He praises the simpler, more functional designs of past eras, like those under designer Bruno Sacco, and calls for a return to a more balanced model lineup focused on quality rather than extravagance. 

Full text: Swabian Gene 

Regarding “Luxury Reloaded” (F.A.Z. from February 15): There is a Swabian gene. If one were to define it, “the Daimler,” as people in Stuttgart call Mercedes-Benz, is part of this gene. It’s a significant part that has ensured prosperity in the region for over a century. The current CEO Ola Källenius is not part of this genetic makeup. He has not understood that hubris is not a Swabian trait. In Sindelfingen, we have always built wonderful and even expensive cars and have impressed and inspired the world with our achievements in Swabian modesty. Then came the boasting with “the best or nothing.” With Källenius came the ostentation. 

Now we get the bill: E-SUVs that look like small trucks, AMG versions with Rambo grilles, an oversized luxury sedan with a weird name, and an S-Class with side windows so slanted and an A-pillar so steeply inclined that only a hunched posture allows entry. Is this luxury? Just now, the highly talented designer Bruno Sacco passed away. If only there were such talents again at Daimler. And a model range that is clear and focuses on the economically significant mid-size segment. That was always Sindelfingen’s hallmark. Luxury could then be afforded when one was asked for it—and it was requested. Delivery times were the secret

Herr Bonz from Böblingen nails what ails them.

The EV situation is an easy excuse, but it’s not the whole shebang. Mercedes has an image problem which is a real problem for a company whose reputation is built on their image. Once upon a time, you saw that symbol, and your brain said ‘German engineering’ or, more hilariously, like the old commercial, ‘qvick and qviet.’

Now, it does look as if they have a good start on the road back to classic. Mercedes designers have already ‘refreshed’ the ‘S’ class, and I have to say, it looks schweet, weird, fuzzy headrest notwithstanding.

More than spectacular: the #SClass.

📷 sebastiankubatz (IG) for #MBcreator#MercedesBenz #MANUFAKTUR pic.twitter.com/TFnGilrSLw

— Mercedes-Benz (@MercedesBenz) February 20, 2025

If they capture more of that timeless quality, get their engineering ducks back in a row, and navigate the EU-mandated EV hump, maybe there will be brighter driving days ahead.

If their impish sense of humor is restored…

…we’ll know things are going well and the confidence level is high.

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The BBC produced and aired a documentary purporting to feature a young child struggling to survive in the Gaza war zone. 

It was, as all such documentaries are, stunning and brave. It tugged your heartstrings. You connected with the vital true story of an innocent child being chased down by genocidal maniac Israeli tyrants. 

The film Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone hit all the high notes, except one: telling the truth. The intrepid narrator of the “independent” film (was it partially funded by USAID?) is the son of the Hamas Minister of Agriculture. 

They happened to leave that detail out. 

Oh dear, this is a major blunder. The BBC admits it did not know that the child protagonist in documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was the son of Hamas royalty. It blames the independent producer for not sharing this info during editorial checks. https://t.co/0Ypw5yXvCG

— Jake Kanter (@Jake_Kanter) February 19, 2025

Oops. That puts a bit of a different spin on things, doesn’t it?

The BBC has apologized and added a clarification to its Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone documentary that featured the son of a Hamas minister, after nearly 50 entertainment figures sent a letter to the corporation to urge an investigation.

The BBC “had not been informed of this information” by the independent producers behind the doc, the corporation added, following backlash from dozens of senior entertainment figures including former BBC controller Danny Cohen, J.K. Rowling’s agent Neil Blair, agent Anita Land and ex-Got Talent commissioner Claudia Rosencrantz.

The letter was sent to Director General Tim Davie, content chief Charlotte Moore and BBC News boss Deborah Turness earlier today, urging an investigation after the documentary about children in Gaza that failed to declare that the lead contributor was the son of Hamas royalty.

Before the airing, lots of critics were raising the alarm that the “documentary” would be pure propaganda, but the BBC assured everyone that all the appropriate editorial standards were met. It was “independent,” but used BBC standards. I suppose that is true in the sense that the BBC is itself a propaganda outlet. 

Now the BBC is going the other direction. “It’s not our fault. They never told us this minor fact.”

Here’s a statement from Danny Cohen, the former BBC television chief turned BBC interrogator-in-chief, who has been consistently raising concerns about anti-Israeli bias in Gaza crisis coverage. pic.twitter.com/rHqpH0KrIC

— Jake Kanter (@Jake_Kanter) February 19, 2025

Not that they care. They will continue to air the documentary, simply appending a note that the child is related to a Hamas minister. 

In a statement in the past few minutes, the BBC said that since the transmission of the doc three days ago it had “become aware of the family connections of the film’s narrator, a child called Abdullah.” “We’ve promised our audiences the highest standards of transparency, so it is only right that as a result of this new information, we add some more detail to the film before its retransmission,” the statement added. “We apologise for the omission of that detail from the original film.”

For future repeats and on iPlayer, the film will now clarify: “The narrator of this film is 13 year old Abdullah. His father has worked as a deputy agriculture minister for the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The production team had full editorial control of filming with Abdullah.” The statement has been added to the BBC’s Corrections and Clarifications page and the BBC said it will also respond to the letter directly.

The BBC went on to say that it followed the usual compliance procedures in making the film and “had not been informed of this information by the independent producers when we complied and then broadcast the finished film.” Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone was produced by Hoyo Films, the independent producer run by the doc’s director Jamie Roberts, and it was commissioned through the BBC’s current affairs team, which sits under Turness.

The BBC commissioned the film. They had editorial control over it, by their own admission. They aired it without informing people about the most basic fact in the world: the narrator was a Hamas member. And now they will continue to air it as a documentary, not as an example of a modern-day Triumph of the Will. 

British taxpayers paid for this. It is likely that USAID contributed to it through our funding of BBC’s “charity” funding of “independent” journalists. 

The BBC’s initial statement issued yesterday about the narrator’s links to Hamas appears to try and put distance between Abdullah Al-Yazouri and his father, stating: “The film told the children’s own stories, showing viewers their direct experiences of living through a war, and the children’s parents did not have any editorial input.” But the letter flags the BBC’s international safeguarding policy rules and regulator Ofcom’s broadcasting rules, asking questions including: “What role did Abdullah Al-Yazouri’s parents play in the supervision of the filming of the child and the BBC’s duty of care obligations in filming with under-18s?”

“Given that the terrorist group Hamas remain in de facto control of Gaza, it is reasonable to presume that the documentary could only be made with their permission or authorisation,” it adds. “Was this the case? If so, why was this not disclosed to audiences?”

The BBC expects us to buy the argument that a documentary featuring a Hamas minister’s child, in Hamas-held and ruled Gaza, in the midst of a Hamas-Israeli war, was not influenced by Hamas?

Yes, yes they do. Because if you can’t trust the BBC, who can you trust?

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Last month, Bryan Kohberger’s attorneys attempted to have all of the evidence against him in his murder trial thrown out on the grounds that he was identified thanks to genetic genealogy techniques which were used without proper warrants.

DNA was found at the scene on the sheath of a knife which was discovered under one of the victim’s bodies. The FBI took that DNA and compared it to DNA on some publicly available database and found a familial match which directed them to Kohberger. Subsequently, they tracked his movements as he drove to his families home in Pennsylvania where they took trash from outside the family home and ran the trace DNA to find a match for the father of the suspect. Kohberger’s attorneys argue both searches required a warrant and because authorities never had one all of the evidence that resulted from the identification of Kohberger should be tossed out. Today the judge in the case rejected this fairly bizarre view of privacy.

A DNA technique that prosecutors said first identified Bryan Kohberger as the suspect in the University of Idaho student homicides did not jeopardize the investigation, and its use by the FBI does not justify suppressing any evidence collected after that, the judge in the high-profile murder case ruled Wednesday…

“In sum, defendant’s argument finds no support under the law,” Hippler wrote. “Any privacy interest he can claim in this DNA was abandoned along with the sheath, to which he claims no ownership or knowledge. Even if no such abandonment occurred, defendant has not demonstrated it is reasonable to recognize a privacy interest in DNA left at a crime scene.”…

“The court concludes that the search warrants are not invalid based on the omission of defendant’s identification through IGG because that information would have only bolstered probable cause for the searches,” Hippler wrote. “As to the remaining challenges, the court finds defendant has failed to carry his preliminary burden under Franks and, therefore, denies his motion.”

Kohberger’s attorneys were arguing that he maintained a privacy interest in DNA left at a crime scene and that therefore a search warrant was needed. Judge Hippler, in his decision, pointed out that a search warrant is not needed at a crime scene and that Kohberger had denied any ownership or connection to the knife sheath where his DNA was found. His attorneys could only point to one concurring decision in a single case to support their claim about the DNA. The details of that claim seem equally fantastic. It involved DNA left on the body of a woman who had been raped and murdered.

In support of his argument, Defendant relies exclusively on concurring opinion in State v. Carbo, which is factually similar to this case. In Carbo, the evidence at issue was semen deposited inside the deceased crime victim and skin scrapings from underneath her fingernails. In an attempt to identify suspect, law enforcement contracted with lab to conduct genetic analysis of the DNA extracted from this evidence. Like here, the lab created SNP profile from the DNA and utilized commercial genealogical databases to determine potential source. It also generated report that provided information about the suspect’s physical traits and ancestral origin. /d. This information ultimately led law enforcement to the defendant. Law enforcement then created DNA profile from trash discarded by the defendant, which matched the DNA profile from the crime scene. Subsequently, the defendant provided voluntary DNA sample, which matched the profile from the crime scene and the garbage.

The defendant moved to suppress evidence of his genetic information left behind at the crime scene. He argued, as Defendant does here, that although he may have abandoned his privacy interests in his semen and skin cells, it did not equate to an abandonment of the “vast troves” of genetic information that biological material contained. Making short work of this argument, the Minnesota Supreme Court found that by voluntarily leaving his semen and skin at the crime scene, he abandoned any subjective privacy interest in his genetic information contained therein.

In the concurring opinion relied upon by Defendant, one justice disagreed with the majority on this issue because, given the sensitive genetic information revealed by SNP testing, he would have required warrant before allowing such testing. He further opined that the concept of abandonment which requires voluntariness is an “ill fit” for genetic information because it is virtually impossible for humans to prevent leaving personal genetic information everywhere they go.

In the case the defense lawyers cited, the majority of judges disagreed and said there was no right to privacy on DNA left at a crime scene, just as there would be no right to privacy for fingerprints left at a crime scene. 

It’s a fairly surreal argument. The suspect in each case is claiming that they have a right to something like a HIPAA privacy claim to their DNA left behind at a murder scene. This argument might even carry some weight if the FBI were using the DNA to create a complete medical profile of the suspect. But Judge Hippler pointed out that the DNA gathered in this case was not searched for medical information but only for identity information.

This was probably Kohberger’s last hope to avoid a conviction in this case. With all of the evidence now allowed in to the case by this decision, he will somehow have to come up with an alternate explanation to create reasonable doubt about his guilt. As I pointed out before, the amount of evidence against Kohberger is simply overwhelming and he has never provide an alibi except to claim he was out driving alone in the middle of the night when the crime happened.

The trial is set to begin in August. If convicted he is facing the possibility of the death penalty. Given the number of victims and the premeditated, cold-blooded nature of the crime that seems to be a likely outcome in this case.

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I don’t share the antipathy that many people feel for President Zelenskyy, but he sure isn’t doing himself any favors by continuing to pick fights with Donald Trump. 

Trump and Zelenskyy are in the midst of a war of words over Ukraine policy, and as an outside observer, I have to say I don’t like what either of them has been saying. I support Trump’s policy choice to wrap up the Ukraine war and think that a lot of the rhetoric used to justify continuing the fighting is complete BS. I don’t think Trump is right to say that Zelenskyy is a tyrant who started the war. 

Zelenskyy, on the other hand, seems determined to act as if he has a right to an unlimited war budget from the American people and has seems to be deluded into believing that he and Europe have a prayer of defeating Russia without help from the United States. He doesn’t even have a prayer of winning the war WITH the help of Europe and the United States. 

How do I know that? In 3 years and after hundreds of billions of dollars of aid, the war is in a stalemate. The body bags keep piling up, but the front lines move only meters one way or another, and nobody has a plan to change that, and certainly no plan to return to the status quo ante 2014, which is Zelenskyy’s war aim. 

In that light, we are 10 years into a forever war, with something over a million people killed or wounded so far. The war started under Obama, who allowed Putin to take Crimea and occupy other parts of Ukraine. It was a stalemate under Trump. Restarted under Biden, during whose term about a million people died or were severely wounded, and now Trump wants to stop the killing. 

BREAKING — Zelensky govt reportedly blocks Trump’s Truth Social network across Ukraine pic.twitter.com/QVbGSqe9fk

— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) February 20, 2025

Trump is right that this phase of the war wouldn’t have started except for his defeat in 2020. And he is right that Biden and Zelenskyy should have negotiated a cease-fire when Russia was willing in 2022-23. But that doesn’t make Zelenskyy the aggressor, and Trump shouldn’t have said otherwise. 

But this is Trump, and Zelenskyy is wrong to antagonize him. Zelenskyy is hardly in a position of strength, either morally or practically speaking. He was antagonistic to Trump and did what little he could to defeat him during the campaign, and he certainly has been part of the great money laundering scheme that the war has become. 

On Trump’s claim about money disappearing in Ukraine: We wrote last year about how corruption is still a big issue in Ukraine, and how the Pentagon at the time had only TWO inspector general staffers physically in Ukraine to oversee billions of $$.https://t.co/Vx83PAU8fs pic.twitter.com/k6ATBt8tvR

— Sarah Bedford (@sarahcbedford) February 20, 2025

Zelenskyy is playing a losing hand and should fold. Instead he is upping the ante both rhetorically and by shutting down Truth Social in Ukraine. 

Trump’s rhetorical excesses–“mean tweets,” as it were–shock the sensibilities of many who are used to the diplomat-speak and quiet backstabbing that are the normal way of doing political business. But Trump can do that because he is Donald Trump, and holds almost all the cards. 

Trump isn’t interested in being fair; he wants to win, and because winning for him is almost always the same thing as winning for the American people, that works out well most of the time. 

If people are analyzing the Ukraine war as a great struggle between good and evil, then Trump’s moves look like a great betrayal. But the fact is that the Ukraine war is a conflict between a corrupt transnational elite skimming off the top and an oligarchical mafia state run by an ex-KGB thug. Nobody has clean hands. 

USAID funded the vast majority of ‘independent’ media in Ukraine. What American taxpayers don’t realize is that their money went to suppressing the truth.

Wild reporting here by @TanyaLukyanova_ in @thefp:https://t.co/7zp7WQguWE

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 19, 2025

We see this war through Cold War lenses because USAID-funded “independent media” has been paid to portray it that way. If you see it as what it is–an excuse to pillage European and American pocketbooks for the benefit of the transnational elite–you come to very different conclusions. 

One very good thing is coming out of all of this: European countries are concluding that they can’t keep grifting off of the US taxpayer forever. For all the talk about the US being an “unreliable ally,” the Europeans complaint may lead to something useful–them picking up the bill for their own defense. 

European countries have been able to subsidize their welfare states by having the US pick up the tab for their collective defense. If they are determined to go to war with Russia, the least they can do is pay for it. 

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See how much of this you can stomach. I managed to get through a full minute before shutting in down in disgust, but this Hamas rally using hostages and hostage bodies must be seen to be believed:

Here’s a briefer look at the coffins:

Even I, who said Hamas was evil, never imagined it would parade the body of the Bibas children out in a public spectacle, in mislabeled coffins with locks that don’t open. pic.twitter.com/8ZBe1SW9qR

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) February 20, 2025

Trump may have seen enough, too. Reportedly, he told his advisors that the US and Israel need to take off the gloves:

BREAKING: Israel’s Channel 14 has reported that after seeing the dead baby parade from Gaza, President Trump said to his advisors:

“I want to see Gaza wiped out; I don’t want to see even one building standing.”

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) February 20, 2025

So far, there hasn’t been any confirmation of those remarks, so take this report with a grain of salt for now. It’s not too difficult to believe, though, that Trump said that in response to this flagrant defiance from Hamas and the humiliation of the hostages and their remains. Israel has warned Hamas before about the consequences of forcing hostages to participate in grotesque ceremonies. They still haven’t stopped doing it, since the previous warning came with no consequences:

Hamas has been condemned for parading the coffins of hostages in Gaza, with the United Nations rights chief saying the ‘abhorrent’ treatment of the October 7 attack victims ‘flies in the face of international law.’

Israelis are mourning the youngest hostages – baby Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel – as well as their mother Shiri and elderly captive Oded Lifshitz, whose bodies are believed to have been inside the caskets.

The four coffins were displayed to crowds in front of disturbing propaganda posters before being handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by armed Hamas fighters. …

Alongside the coffins, Hamas displayed mock munitions labelled ‘They were killed by USA bombs’ and a poster depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire – all part of Hamas’ message that Israel was to blame for the hostages’ deaths. 

The UN, which spent the last 20 years supporting Hamas and even helping them hide weapons in UNRWA facilities, wagged its finger today about “international law”:

Condemning the horrific scenes, UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement that ‘under international law, any handover of the remains of deceased must comply with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, ensuring respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families.’

Turk’s a decade late and $50 billion or so short. The UN knew what Hamas was and is when it decided to partner with them in Gaza. They provided the funding and the cover for Hamas to turn Gaza into a human-shield militarized zone and allowed Hamas endless violations of “international law” without uttering a peep. Had the UN taken international law seriously, Gaza wouldn’t be in ruins, and the lives of these hostages would have been uninterrupted.

And yet the same people wagging their fingers at Hamas today insist that the only solution to the conflict is to create a state in which Hamas will inevitably seize power if left to rebuild. In fact, the same voices at the United Nations insist that UNRWA return as the international body to direct that effort, despite its complete corruption by Hamas. They want a return to the status quo ante that produced the October 7 massacres and the mass rape and kidnapping that resulted in this ghastly, despicable show today in Gaza. 

Israel is again making it clear that they will not allow Hamas to control Gaza under any circumstances, and this grotesquerie shows why:

Israel’s main priority remains preventing the reemergence of an armed Palestinian force in Gaza, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar emphasized in an interview with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov. Addressing former US President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Gaza’s Palestinian population, Sa’ar did not explicitly endorse the plan but acknowledged its potential feasibility.

“If someone wants to emigrate and another country is willing to accept them, that is a legitimate, moral solution,” he said. However, he stressed that Israel’s main priority remains preventing the reemergence of an armed Palestinian force in Gaza.

He added that Israel will not accept a ceasefire deal that allows Hamas to maintain control of Gaza or dictates the country’s security terms. …

“The fundamental issue is Gaza’s future—who will control it and how it will be disarmed,” he said. “Hamas is trying to replicate Hezbollah’s model in Lebanon, maintaining military dominance while outsourcing governance. That is unacceptable to us.”

It should be unacceptable to everyone. As long as Hamas remains in Gaza, a state of war will exist, no matter what Hamas promises in the short term. Hamas has broken ten cease-fire agreements with Israel and publicly proclaims its intention to annihilate it and the Jews entirely. Granting Gaza sovereignty while leaving Hamas in place is setting a fire underneath a pile of TNT.

Sa’ar went on to prescribe a “root canal” for both Gaza and the West Bank after this display:

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar says that the “horrific and repulsive spectacle of twisted and monstrous minds” that Hamas put on during the transfer of slain hostages in Gaza this morning is evidence that all of Palestinian society must be deradicalized from “a deep sickness.”

“It is clear that the systematic poisoning of the younger generation in Palestinian society (in Gaza just as in Judea and Samaria) is eliminating any chance for peace,” he writes on X, using the West Bank’s biblical name. “A root canal treatment is required. The Palestinian terrorist armies must be eradicated and defeated. Gaza must be completely demilitarized.”

And just in case anyone doubts this wisdom and/or the nature of Hamas, look who came to the parade:

A Palestinian terrorist responsible for killing dozens of Israelis who was released from prison just days ago was seen in media footage at the Hamas handover of bodies of four slain hostages Thursday.

Mohammed Abu Warda, a former commander in Hamas’s armed wing, was serving 48 life sentences in Israel for masterminding multiple terror attacks that killed 45 people, including a 1996 bombing on a Jerusalem bus that left 24 dead.

He was released by Israel on February 8 along with other terror convicts as part of the ongoing hostage-ceasefire deal with the Hamas terror group.

This calls the entire strategy into question — as should have happened after October 7. The Israelis set a high store on getting hostages back, and they pay a high price to do so. All that does is incentivize hostage-taking, and now the Israelis are paying for it with these spectacles intended to humiliate them. At some point, the Israelis have to make the price for hostaging the permanent and total defeat of Gaza and the destruction of its infrastructure until capitulation. That is the only way to end wars when one side insists on fighting for annihilation. 

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That’s billions with a “B” designated for an organization ‘linked to’ the election-denying real Georgia governor and former President of Earth, Stacey Abrams.

Not that I don’t have anything against the woman’s perpetual hustles – girls gotta make a living, I guess. But why does it always seem to be taxpayers getting fleeced whenever that name comes up?

Now, she hasn’t kept a low profile since the Trump takeover. She’s been busy doing her duty as a loyal drone to insinuate dark deeds afoot and sinister motives to every move that the president and his housecleaning sidekick make, even when she has to lie to do it.

Trump and Musk are defying court orders, undermining our democracy. DOGE operatives are wreaking havoc in federal agencies, ignoring legal checks and balances. On last week’s Assembly Required, we dissected Musk’s infiltration of the Treasury and the perilous path ahead if the… pic.twitter.com/6lWbSFQajE

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) February 18, 2025

For instance – I’d be happy if they could cite a single court order that’s been ‘defied’ as they claim. Every TRO attempt has been answered by a Trump legal response or challenge and settled accordingly.

It’s simply easier for the progressive foot soldiers to spew than attempt a reasoned argument with a fact or two thrown in for legitimacy.

So, only a week ago, brand new EPA head Lee Zeldin and his team had their own ‘Look what we found!‘ moment.

BREAKING: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin just announced that his team has discovered a staggering $20 BILLION that the Biden regime laundered to corrupt NGOs.

Zeldin has referred the matter to the Inspector General & Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“Shockingly, roughly 20 billion of… pic.twitter.com/ngpouVQqnQ

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 13, 2025

…Zeldin has referred the matter to the Inspector General & Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“Shockingly, roughly 20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA. This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rushed job with reduced oversight. Even further. This pot of $20 billion was awarded to just eight entities that were then responsible for doling out your money to NGOs and others at their discretion, with far less transparency. Just under $7 billion was sent to one entity called the Climate United Fund.”

So what more about these entities has Zeldin and the DOGE team discovered once they started digging into the $20B slush fund?

One of them is tied to something called Power Forward Communities – sounds snazzy, huh? The questions start when one realizes this nonprofit, which was awarded two BILLION dollars of taxpayer money, was basically a start-up and only had a hundred bucks in the bank.

‘SCUSE ME?

DOGE discovered $2 billion in taxpayer funds set aside for a fledgling nonprofit linked to perennial Georgia Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

The Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration awarded Power Forward Communities the grant in April 2024 as part of the agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program. Power Forward Communities received the green energy grant despite the fact that it was founded months earlier in late 2023 and never managed anywhere near the grant’s dollar figure—it reported just $100 in total revenue during its first three months in operation, according to its latest tax filings.

Power Forward Communities’ grant was one of just eight Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants that the EPA doled out in April 2024 and that, altogether, totaled $20 billion. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced on Feb. 13 that his staff and Department of Government Efficiency officials discovered that the Biden administration parked that same $20 billion at an outside financial institution before leaving office, limiting the federal government’s oversight of the program.

The revelation that Power Forward Communities is among the beneficiaries of the funds Zeldin’s team located raises ethics questions about how the Biden administration selected recipients of such massive grants and whether it played favorites when doling those grants out. Abrams was a vocal proponent of the Biden administration’s green energy agenda and campaigned for former vice president Kamala Harris.

How did Biden’s EPA even know who they were, less mind that they were worthy of a couple of billion of federal largesse aka Green grift?

One can only assume it was because the President of Earth was connected to the enterprise.

…Power Forward Communities was established in October 2023 as a coalition of groups led by Rewiring America, a left-wing group that advocates for electrification policies and a transition away from fossil fuel dependence. Abrams, who serves as Rewiring America’s senior counsel, said at the time that she was “thrilled” to be part of the Power Forward Communities coalition. “This is how we expand access to clean energy—by prioritizing housing, equity and resilience,” she wrote in an X post.

…In its only press release to date, Power Forward Communities said that, in addition to induction stoves, it would use the $2 billion received from the EPA to help install heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, solar panels, home battery systems, EV chargers, and weatherization upgrades.

“For an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant—it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud,” Daniel Turner, the executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, alleged in an interview with the Free Beacon.

Power Forward Communities lists a large number of partners on its website that it works with to implement its mission. Among its partners are the Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count, two left-wing nonprofits founded by Abrams in the wake of her 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election defeat.

(Abrams was never defeated – the election was stolen. Brian Kemp is a pretender.)

Stacey Abrams is also connected to a couple of the now multi-billion-dollar fledgling enterprise’s partners because Stacey Abrams *checks notes* founded two of those non-profit organizations.

WELL…HUH

BREAKING: In February 2025, allegations surfaced that Stacey Abrams, a prominent Georgia Democrat, was linked to a potential scam involving $2 billion in taxpayer funds. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly uncovered that the funds were allocated to “Power… pic.twitter.com/aORinfo4ZQ

— Live From America TV (@LFATVUS) February 20, 2025

I’m sure it’s all above board. And right now, anyone questioning it on X or throwing shade at the rather obvious hinkiness of the entire pyramid scheme runs a good chance of being accused of both being a ‘stupid sheep’ and shamefully ‘dragging a black woman.’

Reading through all this, I have to admit I thought the Abrams angle sounded vaguely familiar and, by George, I had done something on her Rewiring America green grift two years ago that gives you some great background for this current situation. Old girl’s been working the climate cult government money for years now under the motto:

STACEY ABRAMS REWIRES AND INSPIRES

Well, Stacey Abrams *is* coming after your gas stove… https://t.co/px0cogjKVR

— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 14, 2023

…Abrams is thrilled – thrilled, I tell you – to be a part of such important work. Bringing the message of climate change, renewables, and electrification to ignorant sods in communities all over the country, who didn’t know how unhappy they were with the appliances they own.

…“Rewiring America anchors our work in how the decisions we make around the kitchen table about the machines we use can save us money, make our homes and communities healthier, and reduce climate-harming emissions,” Rewiring America co-founder and CEO Ari Matusiak said in the release. “Stacey Abrams’ career of public service has hit all these themes and more. She’s a brilliant and visionary organizer who will accelerate our work and expand the audience for the benefits of electrification — the most equity-centered climate strategy we have.”

Abrams will work to assist the organization in connecting Americans and communities to “machines, installers, Inflation Reduction Act incentives, and jobs in the clean energy transition,” according to the release.

“I’m excited to join Rewiring America to share the benefits of electrification and ensure families get their fair share. I look forward to working together as we build the tools that will transform everyday Americans from energy consumers to energy moguls in their own communities,” Abrams said in the release.

You’ll notice the mention of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives there. She’s pushing spending our money to make us miserable, cold, and unhappy. Not to mention she’s “connecting” you to the people who’ll do the installing, etc., so she’s basically the annoying solar salesman who bangs every third day on your door already, only she’s salaried. What a peach.

And I’m not kidding about soaking the taxpayer – it’s what this whole Ponzi scheme is feeding off of.

…Co-founder and CEO Ari Matusiak attributed Abrams’ hire to her dedication to public service and said she is a “visionary organizer who will accelerate our work and expand the audience for the benefits of electrification — the most equity-centered climate strategy we have.”

Matusiak founded Rewiring America with Alex Laskey and Saul Griffith, who have all netted millions in buyouts or received significant federal funding for their environmental ventures, while they also simultaneously advocated for policies that would benefit those ventures through the nonprofit, according to Fox News….

The climate scam and Green Grift were and still is ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.

Period.

That two billion bucks of ours that POTATUS toadies just handed to Stacey Abrams had to be the biggest score ever.

It’s beyond blatant and utterly disgusting.

Now, our cynical side would say this was surely a payout to a progressive buddy vice legitimate advocate group, and Zeldin is going to have his hands full trying to claw any of those funds back. Even though the bulk of the money is still unspent and lying there at Citibank, the way the Biden administration tied up the transfer is, apparently, going to make squashing the deals extremely difficult.

…Shortly before leaving office, Biden’s EPA parked the $20 billion located by Zeldin’s team and DOGE officials in an account at Citibank. While the eight recipients of the funding—which, in addition to Power Forward Communities, includes groups like Climate United Fund, the Coalition for Green Capital, Inclusiv, and Justice Climate Fund—have only tapped into a small slice of the funding so far, the arrangement restricts the Trump administration’s ability to claw the funds back, though Zeldin has made retrieving the funds a priority.

The Biden EPA is turning out to have been one big slush fund. Billions upon billions were handed out willy-nilly not to save the planet but to fund and reward Democratic and progressive functionaries under the guise of a climate change EMERGENCY.

It’s so funny how the only organizations that were equipped to handle climate change were ones that met certain Democratic and progressive parameters.

The senior Biden administration official tasked with directing former President Joe Biden’s $27 billion climate grant program oversaw a $5 billion grant from the program to his former employer, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Jahi Wise joined the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2022 as the founding director of the newly created Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF, according to his LinkedIn profile. In April 2024, while Wise served in that role, the EPA announced that it would award GGRF grants totaling $20 billion to just eight nonprofits, including the Coalition for Green Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based group that received $5 billion as part of the announcement and where Wise previously worked as the director of policy. There is no indication that Wise recused himself from that process.

…The revelation that Wise was involved in doling out a massive grant benefiting both his former employer and former White House colleague raises serious ethics and conflict-of-interest questions, experts told the Washington Free Beacon. Federal ethics laws place strict limits on officials’ involvement in matters involving past employers.

It also provides fresh fodder for Trump administration officials who have set the GGRF program and its massive grants in their sights. On Tuesday, Denise Cheung, the top criminal prosecutor in the Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney’s Office, was forced to resign after she declined to open a grand jury investigation into the EPA’s GGRF program funding, CNN first reported.

“The story of the Biden EPA’s gold bars never stops,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin told the Free Beacon. “The waste and abuse was so deeply interwoven in the last administration that not only did the leaders who oversaw this not bat an eye at billions of your taxpayer dollars going towards partisan pet projects, but serious conflicts of interest were ignored. That should have raised red flags.”

It’s the old Mafia saying in action – one hand washes the other. 

Only the Biden admin has been washing Green money with dirty, dirty hands.

This post was originally published on this site

But it’s taaaaaaaaaax season, laments CNN. Indeed it is, and it’s time that the government stops being so taxing to its citizenry. 

Thanks to civil service rules, Donald Trump can’t summarily lay off the entire federal bureaucracy. He can, however, direct agencies to cut loose any bureaucrats still in their probationary periods, and that especially includes the IRS, where Joe Biden attempted to add 87,000 new employees to wring more cash out of taxpayers. Six thousand probies will hit the bricks today, according to CNN:

The Internal Revenue Service is expected to fire about 6,000 workers Thursday, according to a source familiar with the agency’s plans.

The government workers who will lose their jobs were more recently hired and therefore have probationary status, making them easier to cut loose, the source said.

The IRS workers who will be fired are described as largely auditors and support workers involved in compliance work, many of whom were hired during the last months of the Biden administration.

Emphasis mine. If they are probationary, then they all would have been hired in the past year of the Biden administration. And for a specific purpose, too. 

As one will recall, Biden got the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents as part of his falsely named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was in actuality a watered-down Green New Deal. How would adding 87,000 new IRS agents to drill down into taxpayer returns help fight inflation, after all? The purpose of those agents was to bully taxpayers into conceding disputed claims and rake in more money for Biden’s pet Green New Deal projects that the IRA funded, making the bill as close to revenue-neutral as then-Senator Joe Manchin required for his vote. 

In other words, this won’t do anything to the IRS except return it to the status quo ante 2023 — if that. It’s not clear how many of those 87,000 positions got filled early enough to lock in civil-service protections for Biden’s horde of auditors. And since we can expect Biden’s pet projects to get shut down soon through the DOGE-enabled spending cut-offs, we won’t need that extra revenue after all, either. 

It’s worth pointing out too that the Protection Racket Media and Democrats (pardon the redundancy) have been shrieking over a few hundred DOGE workers gaining access to taxpayer records at the IRS, as well as at Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Those workers have to follow the same privacy-protection rules that apply throughout the federal government, of course. However, none of these same voices bothered to even question Biden’s plan to grant the same access to 87,000 people off the street in order to gin up funding for Biden’s pet Green New Deal projects. 

Now the most recent six thousand of that horde will get their walking papers today. That’s a good start at reversing the weaponization of government against the electorate, but it’s only a start.

Can this go too far, too fast? Sure, and we should be watchful for that, especially in the medical-assistance fields. At least at the moment, the layoffs have been confined to the probies, which means the impacts should be minimal in general, but could have deleterious effects in specific cases. Hopefully, Cabinet officials will remain vigilant to ensure that legitimate services remain unaffected while the swamp gets drained of the deadwood and worse. But it’s also worth remembering that Trump tried doing this through normal channels in his first term, and was rewarded with obstruction, insubordination, and the bureaucracy’s version of La Résistance. This time, Trump won’t wait around for that reaction to accomplish what he set out to do. 

This post was originally published on this site

We have entered the “if Trump says it, it must be false” stage of discourse yet again. 

(Anti-)Scientific American has done the “Science™ says that sex is a spectrum” pieces, and now The Washington Post has thrown out its version of gender spectrum nonsense. 

Mark Johnson, the Post’s “Pulitzer Prizewinning Science Journalist™,” proudly drops his anti-Trump screed in which he explains that Trump’s executive order that defines sex as binary is anti-scientific nonsense. 

“Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post science reporter” claims there are not two sexes. https://t.co/BnCLGZZU7b pic.twitter.com/w0ouiac2Lr

— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) February 20, 2025

He trots out the same tired arguments that we have been subjected to for years, none of which bear repeating because they all come down to handwaving in the service of alphabet ideology. There is nothing “scientific” about the arguments. 

Don’t trust me on this; here is the most celebrated biologist in the world to tell you so:

Sex is clearly binary, declaring oneself to be otherwise is a distortion of reality. #Gender #Science #PoetryOfReality pic.twitter.com/PHap1TQlaA

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 31, 2023

Johnson’s piece is just one in a long line of postmodernist-inspired redefinitions of reality to make it accord with the ideological desires of the cultural and political elites. These efforts have been going on for nearly a century in one form or another as an outgrowth of “critical theory,” and until recently, the efforts have been extraordinarily successful. 

DEI is the apotheosis of this movement–the direct effort to reorder society along leftist-preferred lines, transferring wealth and power from one group to another, and alphabet ideology is the apotheosis of DEI. 

The problem, though, is that the closer “critical theorists” get to easily discerned reality–there are boys and girls, not a spectrum–the less persuasive it is. The ideas get so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them. 

Johnson rests his argument–backed up by all the usual suspects–on the uncontroversial fact that there are genetic defects that occur leading to what is loosely referred to as “intersex” characteristics. 

Well, duh. Some people are born with only one arm or leg, or one kidney, or malformed body parts. That doesn’t change the fact that human beings have two arms, two legs, or one head. That there are exceptions to the rule doesn’t mean the rule doesn’t exist. 

And, of course, all of this is beside the actual point: Johnson and his ilk are arguing that literal boys with testicles, penises, and all the biological benefits of being born male should compete in women’s sports. 

All the rest is handwaving. The “well actually…” is a total distraction from a very basic issue: should be force women to get beaten up by men and be ogled by them in locker rooms?

All these people remind me of the sociologist I was talking to in graduate school who seriously explained to me that gravity was a “Western” scientific concept and didn’t really exist. 

I asked her: “If you walked out that window over there, would you fall to the ground?”

Her response: “Yes, but only because I was raised in Western culture and can’t shake the belief in science.”

Reality either exists or doesn’t. You can’t change it by changing the definition of words. 

Americans are waking up to the fact that the people making these arguments are doing so in bad faith–that this is about power, not science or fairness. A smaller and smaller fraction of Americans is willing to listen to this nonsense. 

But the left can’t let it go, at least not yet. Using critical theory, they have taken the commanding heights of cultural and economic power. DEI grants fund them. DEI policies help them put their acolytes in positions of wealth and power. DEI helps them control the schools, academia, and corporations. 

DEI, NetZero, alphabet ideology, USAID, $2 billion grants to Stacey Abrams, the Clinton Foundation grift, the World Economic Forum, ESG–they are all of a part. 

So “Pulitizer-prizewinning Science Journalists™” have to pretend that sex is not binary. If they don’t the whole structure might come tumbling down. 

This post was originally published on this site

Rule 1 in both cross-examination and in news interviews: Never ask a question for which you don’t know the answer. In fact, after watching Gayle King crash and burn in this attempt to blame Donald Trump for a Delta crash-landing in Toronto (!), perhaps the first rule should be: Don’t ask the questions at all if you don’t understand Rule 1.

The CBS news anchor apparently hoped that Ed Bastian would be motivated to shift the blame for the accident, which miraculously resulted in no deaths. Instead, Bastian refuted the entire idea that the new Trump administration was cutting safety corners at the FAA — let alone the fact that the FAA has nothing to do with landing decisions in Canada:

Gayle King tried to bait the Delta Air Lines CEO into blaming Trump for the recent crashes.

It did not go as she planned. pic.twitter.com/3wTcXPgNpM

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) February 20, 2025

The Delta flight involved a landing in another country under adverse wind and ground conditions, in which landing gear collapsed on impact with the runway. That has very little to do with the relatively small number of FAA personnel who have left their jobs in the US, none of which worked in air traffic control. In fact, Delta has been rather remarkable in taking responsibility thus far; they offered each of the Toronto passengers $30,000 to compensate for the experience with no strings attached. They can still accept the money and sue Delta, although they’re clearly hoping that the generous gesture will convince them otherwise.

As a number of people have pointed out on Twttter/X, the entire premise of the question is based on a lie. The number of air accidents has not risen over the historic norm since Trump’s inauguration. In fact, thus far they are somewhat lower than the past few years, as the NTSB data show, although the number of fatalities is up after the mid-air collision outside of Reagan International (via Twitchy):

The difference between the numbers is likely statistically insignificant. Still, the last two months have seen a lower accident rate than the same months in the past several years, contradicting King’s suggestion that air safety is being put at risk. 

So why would King suggest the opposite of what the actual data shows on a news program? Perhaps CBS News doesn’t know how to access the NTSB data, although it’s certainly public and (fairly) easy to find. It took me all of five minutes this morning to navigate their website and find the Monthly Aviation Dashboard, where this official data set gets published and updated daily. I wouldn’t call it the most intuitive portal in the world, but it’s hardly the worst. 

If I can do that research on my own, why can’t the vaunted news division at CBS? 

The reason is that they don’t want to find the actual data, nor report the truth. They want to air propaganda that might damage L’Homme Orange Mal and don’t much care who else it might damage — like Bastian’s airline and all the other airlines that provide an extraordinarily safe method of mass transportation to Americans. CBS News was so anxious to push that narrative that they didn’t even bother to check with Bastian first before putting him on the air to advance it, which demonstrates that King and her team are as incompetent as they are biased.

Newsweek actually did a better job of putting the data in context, although it took them a while. They also did a decent job of getting to the source of the hysteria, but didn’t connect the final dots:

Throughout the year [2024 — Ed], 1,415 aviation accidents were reported, including 257 fatal incidents. Of the 179 fatal incidents that Newsweek obtained records of, there were 306 reported deaths. The deadliest incident was a Pilatus aircraft crash in Recluse, Wyoming, which killed six of the seven people on board, including the pilot.

The increased number of reported crashes involving larger aircraft likely contributes to the perception that there are more accidents this year.

Additionally, videos and photos of crashes and collisions circulating on social media might be amplifying these concerns.

That’s part of it, and the DC crash was the first in a decade to involve as many deaths. However, the real driver of the “perception” that there are more accidents is the mainstream media attempting to push that narrative to punish Trump. Democrats in Congress are part of that hysteria as well, hoping to leverage that hysteria to cover the fact that they are intellectually bankrupt and rudderless. L’Homme Orange Mal was their only message in 2023 and 2024, and so far it’s their only message in 2025.

They have no shame, and they have no credibility. And they wonder why the American public trusts used-car salesmen more than they trust the Protection Racket Media.