KRUISER: The Kamala Harris-ing of Gavin Newsom Is Underway. “The playbook is the same, however: pimp every interaction that Newsom has with Trump or other Republicans as being a Mortal Kombat ‘FINISH HIM!’ moment.”
Archive for 2025
July 16, 2025
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TYLER O’NEIL: 3 Perverse Ways Your Tax Dollars Fund the Left’s Dark Money Network.
The Justice Department funded at least one major Soros-backed NGO. One of Soros’ most notorious projects involves his support for “rogue prosecutors” who lower the penalties for crime. Not surprisingly, many of the cities with the highest murder rates have prosecutors backed by Soros.
The Vera Institute of Justice, which claims that the American criminal justice system is “rooted in a history of white supremacy,” has received more than $11 million from the Foundation to Promote Open Society since 2016.
Under Biden, the Justice Department paid Vera at least $73.6 million in contracts, mostly for providing legal services to immigrant children. In just over one year, the Department of Health and Human Services paid Vera nearly $200 million for “refugee and entrant assistance.”
Vera aims to “establish a right to representation for all immigrants facing deportation,” a rather curious stance to take under the Biden administration, when at least nine million illegal aliens entered the country.
Meanwhile, other NGOs also received hefty government funding to house and transport immigrants across the country, including illegal aliens. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, one of many such groups, received 98% of its revenue—a whopping $284 million—from government grants in the 2023 fiscal year. The Foundation to Promote Open Society also contributed to the committee, sending $75,000 between 2017 and 2021.
Is there anything more fall-of-Rome decadent than a government paying for a billionaire’s pet projects to undo that government?
TRUST CAN BE LOST MUCH MORE QUICKLY THAN REGAINED: Americans’ trust in Ivy Leagues is tanking: poll. Voters polled say they want universities to get rid of DEI, ‘advance truth over ideology.’
ROBERT SPENCER: Either These Guys Were Very, Very Lost, Or They Were Up to No Good. “After the U.S. strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, there was considerable concern about sleeper cells within the U.S. being activated; now it is clear that they’re not the only threat from Iran that American officials have to be worried about. Are agents of the Islamic Republic also taking advantage of the still-vulnerable northern border? A news item on Tuesday certainly suggested as much.”
2028 CAN WAIT: An Exceptionally Good Liar: Newsom Reimagines His Record on Gun Rights in the Run-Up to 2028.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing all he can to obfuscate his abysmal record to prepare for a White House bid in 2028. His latest stunt – he received a SIG Sauer P365 XMACRO from Shawn Ryan while he was sitting for a podcast interview.
It gets better. Gov. Newsom actually said, “I’m not anti-gun at all. I’m just for some gun safe common-sense. I’m challenged by large capacity clips in urban centers, weapons of war sometimes outgunning the police. But otherwise, man, people have the right to bear arms. I got no ideological opposition to that at all.”
If you believe that, I’ve got a Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.
Here’s Gov. Newsom’s problem. We have the receipts. Heck, everyone has the receipts. The firearm industry hasn’t forgotten the time California Attorney General Rob Bonta – working for Gov. Newsom -“leaked” the personal information of every California concealed carry permit holder. Gov. Newsom’s self-professed affinity for the Second Amendment is about as hollow as former Vice President Kamala Harris’ attempt to side with gun owners by saying she owns a GLOCK handgun.
Damning details at the link.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Great Trump Tariff Tizzy of 2025 Has Gotten Quiet. “Again, I was out of my depth about the whole tariff thing, but 14 weeks seems like a pretty quick turnaround time for the pain to start going away. The people who were the loudest about doubting Trump back in April are probably even more surprised than I am. I can’t be sure, because they’re not talking much about tariffs anymore.”
DEI BAKED INTO LLM:
By golly, I tried it too. When it didn't work, I specifically asked Grok for a photo with current US racial breakdown and it simply cannot do it.
When I asked why, Grok explained it was likely trained to underrepresent whites to make up for past misrepresentations. https://t.co/fd18XOx2Xg pic.twitter.com/t0GR4kxMN1— Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️♂️💼🥋 (@SharylAttkisson) July 16, 2025
As Trump turns toward Ukraine, Russians wonder if an opportunity was missed.
But Trump’s new weapons deal and his increasing criticism of Putin’s grinding military campaign have sparked an uneasiness among some factions of the Russian elite over the deepening conflict and fears that Putin could overplay his hand.
“The number of those who are upset with Putin for the fact that he could have stopped the war but didn’t do it is growing,” Stanovaya said. “It is not a question of whether such a deal was ever genuinely possible, but rather a matter of prevailing sentiment — a belief that there was a moment of opportunity, unilaterally squandered due to Putin’s obstinacy and irrationality.”
A deal was not possible because, “as [Vice President] JD Vance said, Putin wants too much,” Stanovaya said.
In the spring, there had been hope that Trump and Putin would reach an agreement and ease sanctions, especially after envoy Steve Witkoff talked about a deal for lifting sanctions and recognizing Russia’s territorial conquests in return for freezing the front line.
The Kremlin, however, indicated that such an approach was only “okay as a starting point,” Stanovaya said. Momentum for the deal died, especially in the face of Ukrainian and European opposition to an agreement that could give Moscow the opportunity to later take additional territory, and Russia stuck to its hard-line, maximalist goals.
With no deal now in sight, concern has been growing among members of Russia’s financial elite about the deterioration of a Russian economy racked by inflation due to the existing sanctions regime and Putin’s wartime spending spree. Central Bank efforts to rein in price growth by imposing sky-high interest rates at over 20 percent have pitched the country toward a credit crisis and recession.
Absent a ceasefire in 50 days, could Trump’s 100% secondary tariffs on nations trading with Russia tip their economy into recession — or worse? Nobody really knows.
Related: The Kremlin Sure Woke Up Cranky After Trump’s Ultimatum.
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE: Rep. Hank Johnson Drops a New Epstein Protest Song, and I’m Murdered.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: A Response to Jack Rakove. “These claims are not correct, and Rakove puts not a shred of evidence forward supporting his positions. . . . Professor Rakove’s blaming on the Supreme Court today’s lack of controlling and persuasive precedent regarding the meaning of the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments and Domestic Emoluments Clauses is, at best, mistaken, and at worst, Orwellian.”
MICHAEL BAHARAEEN: A Final, Comprehensive Look at How Trump Won in 2024.
The rightward shift nationally was propelled almost entirely by non-white voters.
Though racial minorities overall supported Kamala Harris, there was a clear move to the right among three populations: blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Black Americans were still one of the most pro-Democratic groups, backing Harris by 68 points (83 percent to 15 percent), but this represented a 14-point rightward swing from just four years earlier, with Trump nearly doubling his vote share from eight percent to 15. The movement was especially pronounced among black men, who shifted toward Trump by more than any other demographic cohort—22 points. And even black women moved right by nine points.
The group that swung by the most along racial or ethnic lines, though, was Hispanics. Longtime TLP readers will know that Democrats have been losing support from Hispanic Americans for some time now, so this development in last year’s election wasn’t exactly surprising. What was more remarkable is that Trump won a greater share of the Hispanic vote than any Republican presidential nominee on record: 45 percent.2 The result—a mere seven-point advantage for Harris—made Hispanics a true swing group in this last election.
Asian Americans can be a little harder to capture than blacks and Hispanics, as they are the smallest share of the electorate among the non-white groups these studies typically analyze. But from what we can tell, they shifted right by nearly as much as Hispanics. After backing Joe Biden by more than a two-to-one margin in 2020 (67 to 32 percent), they still supported Harris, but by a much smaller 19-point margin. The swings appeared to be greater among non-college Asian women, specifically.
For their part, white voters pretty much stood pat relative to 2020, backing Trump by 14 points, a small two-point rightward shift.
Four years of Joe Biden — and 107 days of Kamala Harris — was all it took to shift pretty much the entire country to the right. The most notable exception being neurotic, woke women.
BARBARA JORDAN (D-TX) IN 1995:
Civil Rights Icon Barbara Jordan in 1995:
"Immigration is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution to everyone anywhere in the world who thinks they want to come… Immigration is a privilege… granted by the people… to those WE choose to admit"pic.twitter.com/xa7qKVZJfi
— NumbersUSA (@NumbersUSA) February 23, 2025
Additional flashbacks to Democrats who once made sensible statements on immigration:
—Twitchy, December 28, 2018.
● “Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to remind Democrats that even former President Barack Obama spoke out against illegal immigration. Trump dug up a 2011 tweet from former President Obama which said: ‘I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration.’ ‘I totally agree!’ Trump wrote, retweeting the former president.”
—The Daily Caller, December 27, 2018.
—Hot Air, October 30, 2018.
—Instapundit, January 31, 2017.
To expand on Glenn’s comments at the time, clips from all of these Democratic Party stalwarts should have been rounded up into a campaign ad ending with “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message.”
STOPPING ISN’T ENOUGH; WE NEED TO TURN BACK THOSE CLOCKS: Can we stop the clock in the countdown to calamity?
ROGER KIMBALL: The mullahs mean their threats: By and large, the West has grudgingly accommodated Iran’s petulant malevolence.
In the words of Curtis LeMay, if you kill enough of them, the rest stop fighting.
THEY’VE BEEN LOSING ‘IT’ A LOT OF LATE: America’s Largest Teachers Union Lost It Over SCOTUS Ruling to Dismantle the Department of Education.
THAT’S A PROBLEM WITH MODIFIED, LIMITED HANGOUTS: Ex-MSNBC Analyst Highlights What’s Missing From the NYT Piece on the Biden Autopen Scandal.
JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER ONES: Another Anti-Trump Narrative Just Imploded.
HE’S A MAN WHOSE MOMENT IS PASSED: Shut Up, Mike Pence.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN IDENTIFYING PERSYNS: EXCLUSIVE: Congressional Republicans To Unveil Bill Stripping National Education Association’s Federal Charter.
WEAK MINDS CREATE HARD TIMES: Decadence and Wealth.
NATURE IS HEALING: Another win for a blacklisted professor.