Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

November 30, 2025

THANK FRAUD ALMIGHTY: Liftoff achieved!

I would like to say “we have achieved liftoff” in drawing national attention to the massive public-program frauds committed by a large cast of Minnesota Somalis. But “we” would be misleading. Attention has been drawn by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo in their City Journal column “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer” (the headline is a quotation).

They first drew President Trump’s attention in a big way. Now comes the New York Times in Ernest Londoño’s long story “How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch” (“Prosecutors say members of the Somali diaspora, a group with growing political power, were largely responsible. President Trump has drawn national attention to the scandal amid his crackdown on immigration”). The story has clearly been in the works for a while, but Trump’s attention has intensified its newsworthiness.

As Steve Guest, the former political communications adviser for Ted Cruz, tweets:

Evergreen:

Related: Great moments in vetting:

UPDATE: This is CNN.

Unexpectedly!


Posted at 12:40 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2025

JOHN PODHORETZ: Tom Stoppard, 1937-2025.

[A]ccording to his official biographer Hermione Lee, he read a novel by a Croatian writer named Dasa Drndic called Trieste. A character in the novel, writes Lee, “lacerates real historical figures whom she describes as ‘bystanders’ or ‘blind observers.’ They include Herbert von Karajan, Madeleine Albright, and Tom Stoppard: people who discover their family history, but turn a blind eye to it. Her ‘blind observers’ are ‘ordinary people’ who “play it safe. They live their lives unimpeded.’”

This hit Stoppard hard. Writes Lee: “He thought: yes, actually, she’s right. He felt that Drndic was justifiably blaming him for excluding from this ‘charmed life’ all those others who had ‘disappeared.’ He took it as an intelligible rebuke. He felt regret and guilt….He went back over his family history, and his Jewishness. It began to seem to him that he had been in denial about his own past. He increasingly felt that he should have been rueing his good fortune in escaping from those events, rather than congratulating himself. As a playwright, he needed to inhabit those lives he never lived, in his imagination. He started to think about a play which would answer the rebuke.”

That play is Leopoldstadt, and in every way, it is a miracle. It is the greatest play of our time, and the greatest play Stoppard ever wrote, and perhaps the greatest literary work written by an octogenarian. It is set not in Czechoslovakia but in an apartment in Vienna we see at four moments in time—1899, 1924, 1938, and 1955. Over the course of the first three scenes we meet 20 members of the extended Marz-Jacobowicz family. In the final scene, only three remain; all the others are dead, either directly or indirectly, due to the Holocaust. One of them is Stoppard’s stand-in, a young British writer who has no memory of his youth in Vienna from which he was removed by his widowed mother’s fiancee until he is reminded of a scar on his hand. He cut it as a little boy and had it stitched up by a now-dead uncle in that very apartment. He dissolves into tears. His cousin, a survivor of the camps, says to him, “You live as if without history, as if you throw no shadow behind you.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2025

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Your New ‘Red-Green’ City.

You’re no idiot, of course. You know how to navigate the subway (mostly), find the best dollar slice, and avoid eye contact on the L train. But when it comes to the “seismic shift” in your city’s government, you might feel a little out of your depth. Who are these new people? Why does the Mayor want to “decolonize” your landlord? And what exactly is a “Red-Green” alliance?

Don’t panic! The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Your New ‘Red-Green’ City is here to help you understand how your vote for cheaper rent accidentally bought you a ticket to a “civilizational jihad.”

Part 1: The “Trojan Horse” (It’s Not Just a Gift!)

You thought you were voting for “bread and butter” issues like affordable housing. But surprise! You actually voted for a “Trojan Horse” filled with revolutionaries.

Chapter 1: Meet Your New Mayor (He’s Cool, He’s Hip, He’s … a Tribalist?)

Zohran Mamdani might look like your average progressive who enjoys a good cold brew, but experts say he’s actually a “Muslim Tribalist.” While he certainly doesn’t act like a hardline cleric from Tehran—he is way too cool for that—his goals are far more specific. He views New York City not as a bustling metropolis, but as a “colonial outpost” that needs to be “decolonized.” Consequently, his strategy involves using the Mayor’s office as a “forward operating base” for a global war.

Idiot’s Definition: “Affordability Agenda” This is a clever disguise used to hide a network of Islamists and socialists who want to dismantle Western civilization while you’re distracted by the promise of lower rent.

Part 2: Going Green (And We Don’t Mean Recycling)

In this administration, “Green” stands for the Global Islamist Movement. Meet the new folks in charge of your community organizing!

It’s satire — but it really isn’t.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2025

SCOTT JENNINGS TRIES TO GET MORE INFO ON LIB PUNDITS’ TRUMP-SUPPORTING FRIENDS WHO REGRET THEIR VOTES:

Gosh, who over the last decade knew that Trump was such a hardliner on immigration laws? (And by hardliner, I mean someone who has a mid-1990s to early 2010s-era Democrat’s view on illegal immigration.)

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2025

QUESTION ASKED AND (POSSIBLY) ANSWERED: Hey, Why Was the DC National Guard Shooter Naked Except for a Pair of Socks?

Why had he taken off his clothes after shooting people? The simplest and most obvious answer is the same reason for why Mohamed Atta intended to change into a fancy suit: to meet the virgins. Atta wanted to look sharp; Al Issa wanted to get right down to business.

So also, apparently, did Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Yet neither the establishment media nor law enforcement authorities have made any mention of this. After all, it would only highlight Lakanwal’s identity as an Islamic jihadi, when every public official and mainstream journalist knows that the Islamic character of jihad violence must be denied or obscured at all costs. And so we have the curious phenomenon of the media reporting that this murderer was naked, yet never even attempting to explain why. All in a day’s work for today’s media propagandists.

Related:

 

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2025

RICH LOWRY: Europe Has Made Itself an Afterthought.

The late conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer maintained of the U.S., “Decline is a choice.”

This isn’t quite right with regard to Europe, whose great powers were kneecapped by the cataclysms of the early 20th century. France bore the brunt of World War I, suffering 1.4 million dead and 4.3 million wounded and a ruinous economic cost.

As for Britain, stretched to the max, it got steadily eclipsed in power and influence by the United States as World War II progressed.

The less said about Germany’s role in all this, of course, the better.

And then the European colonial empires inevitably dissolved.

So, Europe was going to be diminished compared to its glory days. Its current fecklessness, though, has indeed been a choice, born of strategic fantasy and economic incompetence.

Strong militaries were deemed a thing of the past, or something unnecessary as long as Uncle Sam was around. The Brits, for instance, are hard-pressed to maintain a 73,000-strong military, and the size of their once-storied surface fleet is at a historic low.

Europe imagined itself “a diplomatic superpower” but has learned to its regret that “soft power” not backed up by hard power is of limited utility. Both the Nobel Committee and Amnesty International have considerable soft power, too, but no one pays attention to them regarding high-level geopolitical questions.

Economically, the EU “regulatory superpower” has hobbled growth — over the last 30 years Western European labor productivity declined from 95 percent of the U.S. level to 80 percent — while Europe’s commitment to “net zero” greenhouse emissions has driven insane energy priorities.

With painful consequences, back in the real world:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 30th, 2025

November 29, 2025

RIP: Sir Tom Stoppard dead at 88: Legendary playwright won 5 Tony Awards and an Oscar. “The five-time Tony winner, most famous for his groundbreaking 1966 play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,’ died ‘peacefully’ at his home in Dorset, England, United Agents said in a statement…He additionally won an Academy Award for co-writing Gwyneth Paltrow’s 1999 hit film ‘Shakespeare In Love.’ Other screenwriting credits include ‘Empire of the Sun’ (1987) and ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ (1989).”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

CHANGE:

UPDATE: America Is The World’s Hottest Economy.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Anecdotally, I drove by West Towne Mall yesterday and the parking lot was full, for the first time on Black Friday since pre-Covid. Lots of traffic in the shopping areas, too, more than in recent years.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

BREAKING: ANOTHER Afghan ‘Refugee’ Goes Jihad on Us.

Unlike Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who shot two National Guard members in Washington on Wednesday, killing one of them, Mohammad Dawood Alokozay was caught in time, before he could carry out the jihad massacre he was planning in Fort Worth, Texas. Like Lakanwal, however, Alokozay came to the United States from Afghanistan in 2021, as the Biden regime was executing its catastrophically botched withdrawal from that country. And also like Lakanwal, Alokozay is proof that, contrary to assurances at the time, these Afghan “refugees” were not properly vetted, and pose a clear and present danger to Americans.

Fox News reported Saturday that Mohammad Dawood Alokozay “was arrested this week after posting a video of himself on TikTok indicating he was building a bomb with an intended target of the Fort Worth area in Texas.” Alokozay was “charged at the state level with making a terroristic threat.”

Just as it welcomed Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the Biden regime welcomed this latest would-be jihad mass murderer into the country in the summer of 2021 as part Operation Allies Welcome, which brought large numbers of Afghans here without making any serious effort to determine if they actually were Islamic jihadis, or were likely to become Islamic jihadis. Then on Sept. 7, 2022, Alokozay was granted the status of a lawful permanent resident of the United States.

Related: Over 5K Afghan migrants flagged on ‘national security’ grounds since 2021, document reveals.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

FACT CHECKING THE “FACT CHECKERS:” WaPo Worried the WH’s Media Bias Hall of Shame Site Ramps Up Attacks on Outlets and Reporters.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS:

UPDATE:

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

QUESTION ASKED:

As Mark Steyn wrote 20 years ago, “our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you’re nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists.”

Related:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY: The flammed together ‘new episode’ feels totally pointless.

The problem is, the new episode isn’t all-new at all. It’s essentially the bonus material from the 2003 DVD edition of Anthology padded out to 50 minutes: the three surviving Beatles being interviewed together at George Harrison’s home and at Abbey Road, loosely jamming old rock’n’roll songs – and an early McCartney effort, Thinking of Linking – on acoustic guitars and ukuleles; working on the new tracks at Paul McCartney’s home studio with producer Jeff Lynne; and sitting at a mixing desk while George Martin plays them multitrack recordings from the 60s.

Some of the footage is sweet – there’s a lovely moment where Ringo addresses his bandmates with a plaintive “I like hanging out with you guys” – and some of it is oddly telling: you could divine a lot from George Harrison’s visible exasperation as the sessions for Free as a Bird and Real Love drag on. (Off camera, he famously refused to work on a third Lennon demo, Now and Then, deeming it “fucking rubbish”. McCartney and Starr eventually finished the track in 2023, 22 years after Harrison’s death.)

To be fair, in the 1990s, the technology just wasn’t there to separate Lennon’s voice from his piano, and reduce the noise from recording demos on a pair of cassette recorders in the Dakota Building. Lennon’s “Now and Then” is a wisp of a song, but today’s track separation and audio restoration technology at least allowed McCartney, Starr and Giles Martin to mount a killer arrangement and production on top of Lennon’s demo.

But as Alexander Larman asks, regarding the new Anthology album at the Spectator: When will the Beatles bandwagon end? “I can’t help thinking – allied to the underwhelm of ‘Now and Then’ – that, for the first time, the sheer accumulation of detail and trivia runs the risk of letting daylight in upon magic, and making the Beatles seem, well, ordinary – which is something that they never were, or never could be. Perhaps McCartney and Ringo, who are both awaiting the Sam Mendes-directed films about each member of the band – expected in 2028 – might be advised to step in and say, ‘Right lads, enough is enough’, and to let the whole, magnificent enterprise rest in dignity. You might even say that it was time to let it be.”

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

GAMBLING GOING ON IN RICK’S CAFE: Top Zelenskiy Aide Quits Amid Ukraine Corruption Allegations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s powerful chief of staff resigned after becoming ensnared in a corruption investigation.

Andriy Yermak has been lead negotiator in peace talks and his decision comes ahead of an expected visit by the US delegation in Kyiv in the coming days.

“There will be a reboot of the Office of the President of Ukraine*,” Zelenskiy said in a video posted on Telegram. “I am grateful to Andriy for always representing Ukraine’s position in the negotiation track exactly as it should be. It was always a patriotic position. But I want there to be no rumors or speculation.”

The move followed a search of Yermak’s apartment by anti-graft investigators early Friday. While the authorities didn’t explain the raid, it followed news of a widening probe involving several ministers and one of Zelenskiy’s former business partners. Yermak said he was cooperating fully with the investigation.

Will Yermak’s next stop be Disney World? Not exactly: Former top Zelensky aide sends The [New York] Post ominous message hours after resignation: ‘I’m going to the front.’

* No word yet when Zelensky will perform the ultimate reboot of the office of the president of Ukraine: Why hasn’t Ukraine held elections since the war began?

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

WELL, THEY’RE NOT WRONG ABOUT THE “INVADING ARMIES” PART: German Christmas market installs ‘anti-tank’ barriers meant to stop invading armies, public media cheers ‘creative’ solution.

The German town of Külsheim is dealing with the soaring costs of terror-proofing German Christmas markets with a very festive solution: anti-tank barriers.

The German public media reporting this news does not even blink about how absurd the situation has become, but instead actually praises the “creative solution” of the anti-tank barriers. For skeptics, the anti-tank barriers may serve as a comical or tragic illustration of German Christmas markets moving beyond a mere police state and right into something resembling a militarized zone.

The Christmas market in Külsheim, which has a population of approximately 5,000 and is located in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, has announced it is saving money by recycling anti-tank barriers for its Christmas market.

Located in the Main-Tauber district, Tageschau notes that “four disused concrete anti-tank barriers with a diameter of 1.4 meters were converted for the Christmas market.”

The barriers were painted with white and red paint, and were produced at the cost of €1,000 per anti-tank barrier when paint and working time are considered.

Flashback: Protesters call for Islamic state in Germany.

UPDATE:

MORE:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 29th, 2025

VDH: Can the ‘Lost Generation’ be found?

All through K-12, young men, particularly white males, have been demonized for their “toxic masculinity” that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia.

In college, the majority of students are female. In contrast, white males — 9-10 percent of admittees in recent years at elite schools like Stanford and the Ivy League — are of no interest to college admission officers.

So they are tagged not as unique individuals but as superfluous losers of the “wrong” race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Gen Z men saw themselves scapegoated by professors and society for the sins of past generations — and on the wrong side of the preposterous reductionist binary of oppressors and the oppressed.

Traditional pathways to adulthood — affordable homes, upwardly mobile and secure jobs, and safe and secure city and suburban living — had mostly vanished amid overregulation, overtaxation, and underpolicing.

Orthodox and loud student advocates on campus — climate change, DEI, the Palestinians — had little to do with getting a job, raising a family, or buying a house.

During the Biden years, white males mostly stopped enlisting in the military in their accustomed overrepresented numbers.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, they had died in frontline combat units at twice their percentages for the demographic. No matter — prior Pentagon DEI commissars still slandered them as suspects likely to form racist cabals.

Gen Z males seemed bewildered by women and sex — and often withdrew from dating.

Never has popular culture so promoted sexually provocative fashions, semi-nudity, and freewheeling lifestyles, and careers of supposedly empowered single women.

And never had the rules of dating and sexuality become more retrograde Victorian.

Casual consensual sex was flashed as cool everywhere on social media. And when it naturally proved in the real world to be selfish, callous, and empty, males were almost always exclusively blamed as if they were not proper Edwardian gentlemen.

Soon, young men feared sexual hookups and promiscuity as avenues to post facto and one-sided charges of harassment — or worse.

Happily for confused young men looking for a little sexytime, based on the ad that ran before the Thanksgiving Chiefs-Cowboys game, it’s ChatGPT to the rescue!

Posted at 8:14