I’M TIRED OF THE WORD “BOMBSHELL,” BUT… JustTheNews breaking an outstanding story evolving from info gleaned from IRS Whistleblower suits.

“Years after the FBI was forced to shut down multiple corruption probes of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charity, the IRS under President Donald Trump began a criminal tax investigation into the Clinton Foundation and its dealings with other players on the global charity stage, but then abruptly stopped working with whistleblowers in spring 2019, according to IRS memos and internal emails reviewed by Just the News.”

The net-net is that for years, IRS agents all over the country seriously considered and looked into allegations of monkey business at the Clinton Foundation. At one point an IRS agent reportedly described the Clinton Foundadtion as a “fraudulent enterprise.”

Then suddenly, the entire investigation was roadblocked from somewhere at the top.

Most notably, after participating with whistleblowers for quite some time, the medium to top level dogs at the IRS suddenly said “We cannot talk about the CF” referring to the Clinton Foundation.

We can guess at who ordered what, but guessing ain’t reporting.  The whistleblowers’ case is a bit complicated, and the Trump admin is moving to dismiss on procedural and administrative grounds — not the merits — but the insiders say the Tax Court judge is inclined to let the case continue as the feds were not forthcoming on discovery.

We shall see what we shall see. 

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I Would Love to Believe That the Dems Are in a Doom Spiral… “As we have discussed here many times this year, the Democrats aren’t making much of an effort to win back any of those voters they’ve lost. They’ve mostly been putting on a show for the dwindling base. Rather than face reality and try to broaden the party’s appeal, they’re high-fiving each other over South Park episodes about President Trump.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Federal District Court Rules NY’s Non-Resident Carry Ban Violates the Second Amendment. “This ruling will, of course, be appealed. The game, after all, is to delay, delay, delay. Still, this is a very positive ruling and another brick knocked out of the gun control wall.”

I choose to think of it as one small step on the way to nationwide constitutional carry.

GOVERNMENT PATRONAGE DONE RIGHT? Roger Kimball: On promising developments at the National Endowment for the Humanities. “Pursuing the first, and in consultation with doge, McDonald has reviewed a host of neh grants dating back to 2021. So far, he has terminated 1,477 awards, totaling $431,580,341. He has also canceled all Biden-era woke programs and special initiatives and ended or suspended nineteen “agenda-driven” programs. He has reduced his staff from 183 to fifty-nine full-time employees, a reduction of about 70 percent. He also eliminated remote-work options, requiring all staff to come to the office five days a week. On the second front, McDonald has striven to return the endowment to its original purpose: bringing the riches of the Western humanistic tradition to Americans across the country.”

Plus: “The larger issue concerns the persistence of the progressive, anti-American feeling that has defined elite opinion since the 1960s. To the extent that there is in American society a recoiling from what Elon Musk described as the “mind virus” of woke ideology, many of the pro-American reforms that McDonald has instituted have a good chance of outliving the moment. Only time will tell whether optimism about that apparent shift in the national consciousness is justified. Looking around, we conclude that the reorientation is real, deep-seated, and probably long-lasting. Donald Trump deserves a lot of the credit for this change. Brisk, competent lieutenants like Michael McDonald are playing a major role as well. Bully for them.”

CHANGE: DHS Corrects Newspapers Using ‘Undocumented Immigrants’ in Headlines.

MATT TAIBBI: Mean Mr. Mustache: Even the “suck on this” version of Thomas Friedman was nicer than this one.

Buried lede: Tom Friedman is still alive?

GETS? Don Surber: Newsom gets weird.

IT’S COME TO THIS: A stranger told me I was sending my kids to ‘Nazi camp’ — this shows how mainstream anti-Jew hate has become.

ICYMI: Tulsi Stares Down UK, Scoring Another Big Win for American Consumers.

CLEARLY THIS IS BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATS HAVEN’T BEEN LEFTIST ENOUGH: NYT and NPR: “There Is a Stampede of Voters Away from the Democratic Party.”

OBAMA IN A NUTSHELL: Built up as big, but in substance very small.

Fun fact: the Obama Library will hold no books, papers, or presidential documents of any kind. All of it has been digitized and will only be accessible on some computer.

In other words, the entire thing could have been replaced with a USB drive. https://t.co/9pfixB3eE8

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) August 20, 2025

AMAZON’S A.G.I. PRIME:

Dr. Danielle Perszyk, a cognitive scientist at Amazon’s AGI Labs, can’t help but feel anxious every time she opens her computer, where she is greeted by all the usual pop-up distractions: email alerts, Slack messages, social media updates, “productivity” app notifications. Of course, her frustration—which has to do with these obstructive detours between thinking and interfacing—was hardly evident in the 45 minutes we spent chatting about her research. But it’s certainly one of the factors driving her interest in A.I. “I think that part of the solution is making the tech go more in the background,” she told me, noting the irony of developing new technologies designed to make older technologies less obtrusive.

Amazon’s AGI Labs hasn’t been around for long: It was launched at the end of 2024, after the tech behemoth hired away the top executives at A.I. startup Adept. The team is largely focused on long-term research bets centered around the creation of so-called agentic (action-taking) systems that can help mitigate the negative cognitive impacts of all the bullshit clicking and scrolling that suppress higher-level thinking and creativity. “The technology that we’re building allows all of this existing structure to be masked, essentially, by creating what will ultimately be a meta interface,” she explained, describing a generative user interface “where you’re starting from the goal that the human has, and the model understands what that goal is, and it will put everything else on silent and only give you the button that you need to click in this moment.” In other words: an interactive focusing tool that would just work.

Read the whole thing.

FRANK TIPLER: Plato Solved the Problem of Evil 2,300 Years Ago. With application to the Trump assassination attempt.

SHOT: D.C.’s Murder Rate Is More Than 500% Higher Than The Average State. “D.C.’s murder rate ran 169 percent higher than Louisiana’s, the deadliest state, and an astonishing 523 percent higher than that of the average state.”

Chaser: DC just had a murder-free week, and yes, Dems, Trump did that.

As the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Trump administration’s takeover of the Washington DC police force begins to fade, the results are coming in, and they are nothing short of extraordinary.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the nation’s capital has had no murders for seven days, something that had not been achieved since March and something I can find no recent record of in summer months when the murder rate is typically at its highest.

Last Monday, when a man was tragically gunned down in Logan Circle just hours after the Trump takeover, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., took to social media to say that “Trump owns this. No word if the congressman agrees Trump also owns the lives saved this past week.

And it’s not just murder, according to the local police union. Robbery dropped 46% in the week after the takeover, carjackings were down a whopping 83%, and violent crime down 22%. Who could possibly argue against that?

Democrats “committed to leg-humping criminals,” as Kruiser put it yesterday — that’s who.

But it’s the kind of change DC’s majority-minority residents might appreciate.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Westinghouse 12500 Watt Dual Fuel Home Backup Portable Generator. #CommissionEarned

DUKE WAS ONCE A DECENT SCHOOL: Duke Is Abandoning American History.

TEXAS HOUSE VOTES ON REDISTRICTING MAPS, WITH FINAL MOMENTS OF DRAMA: “The bill now goes to the Texas Senate. The vote is expected to be on Thursday. It is expected to pass. Then, it would likely be signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by the end of the week. The plans are believed to provide Republicans with potentially five new U.S. House seats. That’s what’s driving Democrats crazy. That’s why California Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to respond with redistricting action to help the Democrats.”

IT REALLY IS: Stephen Miller’s Rant on ‘White, Crazy Communist Hippie’ Rent-a-Mobs in D.C. Is Standing-O Worthy.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE:

🚨 BREAKING: A student in Florida was nominated by his own teacher as "Most Likely to Become a Dictator" because he was a conservative, a parent just revealed.

The teacher allowed students to label him a "N@ziphile" because he was interested in WW2 history and ROTC.

They… pic.twitter.com/giiXqW4iIl

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 20, 2025

Sending your kids to public school is looking like parental malpractice.

REPORT FROM BEHIND ENEMY LINES:  How Trump’s tariffs bamboozled the EU.

THE BATTLE BEGINS FOR CONTROL OF HISTORY:  Film that gives a voice to the censored, vilified vaccine victims.

WHAT? MORTGAGE FRAUD ISN’T A CRIME ONLY WHEN REPUBLICANS DO IT?  Trump Calls on Fed Governor to Resign Over Mortgage Fraud Allegations.

THEY NUKED BRUSSELS??? GREAT IDEA!  AND HERE WE THOUGHT THEY WERE TIMID:  Trump Administration Just Went Nuclear on International Criminal Court Officials for Targeting Americans.

EVEN THE ONES WHICH WEREN’T CORRUPT WERE WASTING $$$:  This Is How Much Money the EPA Was Spending on Corrupt Scams.

ABOUT TIME:  Marine Insurers Urged to Address Modern Slavery Risks in Global Maritime Supply Chains.