ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: The Leftwing Propaganda Media Vows, “We Will Never Know the Trans Shooter’s Motive.”
Related: Minneapolis school shooter Robin Westman’s mother Mary Grace not cooperating with cops.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
August 28, 2025
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:
Black parents in an upscale suburb asked a black academic to investigate why their kids were averaging a GPA of 1.9 while white students averaged a 3.45.
His conclusion: Culture.
They didn't like this, and called him “an academic Clarence Thomas.”https://t.co/iF2hJXWxnV
— i/o (@avidseries) August 28, 2025
DISPATCHES FROM SOVIET SCOTLAND: In Case You Missed It.
How many of you realized that the video of Mayah Sommers brandishing weapons to keep her sister safe was made and posted by the would-be assaulter? That he, speaking clear English, goaded her to show the weapons so he could film her and have her arrested?
He knew that law enforcement would back him, and that she would get in trouble, probably arrested. It was deliberate on his part to to harm her because she kept him from doing whatever it was he wanted to do to her younger sister. She resisted, and resistance must be crushed, not to mention that she was a female who defied him and as such must be punished. That is the Islamist way.
The British caste system is already jumping in on his side, with people referring to her as ‘from a rough family,’ trash, scum, and worse*. She is not just lower caste, but what many consider the lowest caste of native Brit (Scot actually).
Solzhenitsyn didn’t write the Gulag Archipelago as a how-to guide:
* This is the sort of language that was used to ignore the grooming gang scandals in England: “The victims, according to one witness in Rotherham, were seen as ‘undesirables’—teens from care homes or otherwise troubled backgrounds. ‘Police weren’t arsed with us, really,’ said one victim from Rochdale, ‘They don’t give a f**k when you’re not from a wealthy [home].’”
Westman, 23, later wrote that he regretted being trans and just wished he were a girl.
“I regret being trans.. I wish I was a girl I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have today. I also can’t afford that,” he said.
Westman opened fire on the Annunciation Catholic Church and School Wednesday morning while students were praying at Mass, killing two kids and wounding 17 others before taking his own life.
Westman applied to change his birth name from Robert to Robin in Dakota County, Minn., when he was 17 years old, according to court documents. That name change was granted in January 2020.
The petition noted that Westman “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”
But, five years later, he seemed to have shrunk away from his new identity, scribbling on another page of the notebook “I don’t want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman but I definitely don’t feel like a man.”
Westman’s chilling writings revealed his violent fantasies about killing children, including wanting to be the “scary horrible monster standing over those powerless kids.” He also glorifies the Sandy Hook massacre, in which 20 schoolchildren were killed.
Westman’s videos, posted hours before the shootings, also show the phrases “kill Donald Trump” and “for the children” scrawled on gun magazines.
His notebook also showed how he had specifically targeted Annunciation Catholic Church and School, where he graduated from grade school in 2017.
Meanwhile, much of the DNC-MSM is churning out anti-journalism to keep Westman’s motives hidden from the public: Compare the New York Post’s Front Page to Other Media Semi-Coverage of the Minneapolis Shooter.
JAMES LILEKS: “Absolute evil. I got a text from sister-in-law: ‘Mass shooting at Annunciation.’ It’s the church and school on 54th, across the creek from our place, a mere block away from her house. I went outside and heard every siren in the world converging on our neighborhood:”
At 11 I took Birch for a walk. We crossed the creek and headed up to the area. Everyone walking along has headphones on and everyone is looking down. Get to Nicollet; pass the fire station. Doors open, trucks back in. Nod to the fireman. He nods back. Unspoken communal acknowledgement. Turn on 54th, heading towards the church, run into a neighbor on this bike. Nothing to say but we say it all anyway. I turn to head back, and meet another neighbor, and we go through the same ritual. How’d you hear? He’d heard the shots, then went to Nextdoor, where there was a report on the gunshots a literal minute after he’d heard it. We nod and go our different ways. I turn south to see if I can get to sister-in-law’s house, but halfway up the block, half a block from the scene, Birch stops. Digs in. Tenses. Won’t advance. Will not go another inch.
Agreed, Birch. Back we go.
Read the whole thing.
NORM MACDONALD COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Stop villainizing trans people, Democrat mayor says after school shooting.
The Mayor of Minneapolis told people to stop “villainising our trans community” after gunman Robin Westman sprayed bullets at primary school children.
Two children, aged eight and 10, were killed after the gunman, who is trans, stormed Annunciation Catholic School in Minnesota on Wednesday.
Armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol, Westman “sprayed” dozens of rounds of bullets through the stained glass windows of the school’s adjacent church.
The 23-year-old changed his name by deed poll in 2019 from Robert to Robin in documents seen by The Telegraph.
Speaking at a press conference following the attack, Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, said those attacking transgender people had “lost their sense of common humanity”.
“I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community,” Mr Frey told reporters.
“Anybody who is using this … as an opportunity to villainise our trans community, or any other community out there, has lost their sense of common humanity.”
Classical allusion in headline:
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend texts: “Weird how they flip from one incident to another from blaming the gun, to blaming Trump, to concern for trans. The only consistency or logic in the narrative is, it has to serve the narrative.”
The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution.
WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF MINNESOTA UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE:
It was always a threat. https://t.co/7TfAlT77c3
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) August 27, 2025
you will never get me to drink the tap water in Minnesota pic.twitter.com/INGIZziFsu
— Robert Sterling (@RobertMSterling) August 27, 2025
August 27, 2025
CIVICS REVOLUTION: Conservatives Are Reviving Traditional Education With a Modern Twist.
The Philadelphia-based Jack Miller Center and other civics advocates have settled on a synthesis of both perspectives, avoiding the extremes of cynicism and nostalgia that reduce the nation’s history to tropes and caricatures. The center’s eponymous founder committed his fortune from the office supply business to “solving the national crisis of uninformed citizenship by teaching America’s founding principles and history.” The center aims to de-escalate the subject by bypassing interpretive textbooks and online learning aids and going directly to the original documents – the Federalist Papers, presidential speeches and letters, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and much more.
Its K-12 teacher workshops include the types of readings and writers that were largely ignored in the stodgy civics instruction a generation ago: first lady Abigail Adams, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, the Slavery Provisions of the U.S. Constitution, pro-slavery advocate John Calhoun, poets Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, Nikole Hannah-Jones (the architect of the NYT’s 1619 Project), and Amanda Gorman, the African American poet who recited her verse, “This Hill We Climb,” at President Biden’s 2021 inauguration.
This viewpoint diversity reflects the Jack Miller Center’s philosophy that American identity is forged out of disagreement, and that understanding the nation’s history and development requires familiarity with the historical and literary documents written by the leading voices in those controversies, said Lucas Morel, professor of politics at Washington & Lee College in Virginia. He leads Jack Miller Center teacher seminars and serves on the organization’s board of directors.
“The founding in itself and the early American period – these were products of debate and discussion,” Morel said. “And we have found over time that the teachers find these programs so engaging precisely because the Jack Miller Center does not say, ‘These are the eight things you have to believe about the Declaration of Independence, and you have to write lesson plans that have these answers.’”
Read the whole thing.
CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL: Land’s End.
Whomever Britain chooses to lead it away from its era of multiculturalism, something big is going to change. In the United States, most deep reforms must travel a narrow road of constitutionality and survive the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. Britain has a different constitution. The democratic prerogatives of the British Parliament are almost absolute. It is true that, at the turn of the century, Blair enshrined the European Convention of Human Rights in British law and empowered a Supreme Court to vet parliamentary decisions. For now, such institutions and treaties impede any program of large-scale deportation. On the other hand, Britain’s proudly (or notoriously) sovereign parliament could abolish these Blairite guardrails in an afternoon. All three conservative leaders—Farage, Badenoch, and Jenrick—have, in one way or another, declared themselves open to the idea. Even relative to Brexit, or to what Donald Trump has done thus far in the United States, this would be an earthquake. It would take at least until the next election, but on present trends it cannot be ruled out. Maybe that will turn out to be what Brexit was for.
Read the whole thing.
QUESTION ASKED: Is This the Identity of the Minneapolis Church Shooter?
GREAT MOMENTS IN GASLIGHTING:
A very incomplete list of prominent Republicans prosecuted during the Biden Admin:
Donald Trump (4 separate jurisdictions)
Rudy Giuliani
Mark Meadows
John Eastman
Sidney Powell
George Santos
Jeff Fortenberry
Steve Bannon
Peter Navarro
Kenneth Chesebro
Jenna Ellis
Jeffrey Clark… https://t.co/IJxbu985AO— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 26, 2025
TRAVIS KELCE LAUNCHES AMERICAN EAGLE COLLECTION AFTER TAYLOR SWIFT ENGAGEMENT:
Kelce said he kept the collection a secret “for nearly a year. It was an awesome opportunity to team up with an established brand where both sides were excited to truly collaborate on every decision in the design and creative process.”
The line represents more than 90 pieces priced between $14.95 and $179.95, and were made to “evoke Travis’ unique style, delivering an elevated take on everyday essentials and transforming classic silhouettes into bold statements of confidence and individuality.” Cricket sweaters, rugby polos and utility cargo pants are on the menu.
The campaign is the first new American Eagle spot to run after this summer’s brouhaha over “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” Launched a month ago with the star of “Euphoria” and “Anyone But You,” the ad touted Sweeney’s genetic blessings. Some took the message as the company praising Sweeney’s specific looks as desirable over others. KQ
American Eagle defended their vision, saying the ad “is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story. We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
A decade ago, the DNC-MSM gave Kelce’s fiancée the same Bletchley Park-level decoding effort that Sweeney received at the beginning of this month:
● Can’t Shake It Off: How Taylor Swift Became a Nazi Idol.
—Vice.com, May 23rd, 2016.
● White Supremacists Call Taylor Swift An Aryan Goddess.
—NPR, May 27, 2016.
● Neo-Nazis Are Really Into Taylor Swift.
—KQED, May 25th, 2016.
Dominic Green had fun deflating that weird obsession of the legacy media in 2018: Taylor Swift, Nazi Barbie? “Really, the only Nazi Barbie was Klaus Barbie, a model long out of production. Pop’s echoes of fascist propaganda testify not to pop’s pretend radicalism, but to its merciless commercialism.”
I’m so old, I can remember when Freddie Mercury received the same treatment in the 1970s from Rolling Stone:
Whatever its claims, Queen isn’t here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, “We Will Rock You,” is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band.
Well yeah, that’s how it works; I kind of assumed that when I paid my money to see Queen at the Philadelphia Spectrum a few years later, they would indeed be rocking me, along with the 17,000 other people in the stands.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO RETAKE CONTROL OF D.C.’S UNION STATION AMID CRIME CRACKDOWN:
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced plans to retake control of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station — its latest measure geared at combating crime in the district.
“Instead of being a point of pride, Washington’s Union Station has fallen into disrepair,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. “By reclaiming station management, we will help make this city safe and beautiful.”
While the Department of Transportation has owned the historic station since the 1980s, it has allowed a nonprofit, the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, more control over the station year after year.
Now, the Department of Transportation says it plans to use a new deal with Amtrak and USRC to fund improvements to elevators, lighting, security and other repairs to the roof and several major systems.
Perhaps you could say he’s pounced on the station, or even seized it: AP Reports Trump Has Seized Upon Americans’ High Level of Concern About Big City Crime.
Evergreen:
August 26, 2025
SLUAGH-GHAIRM! ‘Young Queen of Scots’ Trends As 14-Year-Old Lass Bravely Defies a Would-Be Predator.
The word ‘slogan’ has an interesting etymology. It comes directly from the Scottish Gaelic term ‘Sluagh-Ghairm,’ or battle cry. Highlanders in the Middle Ages would shout their sluagh-ghairms to rally their troops into war. In the movie Braveheart, William Wallace’s sluagh-ghairm was ‘Alba gu bràth,’ or ‘Scotland Forever.’
We note this obscure bit of history because it appears that young lasses in Scotland have had just about enough of their government covering up for immigrant groomer gangs. They are shouting their sluagh-ghairms and channeling their inner William Wallace to show everyone, including would-be sexual assailants, that they’re not going to take it anymore.
A video clip of a brave — and quite well-armed — 14-year-old girl has been trending on X because of the courage she showed in the face of a creeper. And, of course, her cowardly government arrested her, not him, for her trouble.
[Warning for some broguish NSFW language in the clip below.]
* * * * * * * * *
You can hear the migrant say "show the knife, show the knife" in this video
This is the behavior of someone confident the system will protect his own predation https://t.co/ICF3bpv58C
— Jeremy Kauffman 🦔🌲🌕 (@jeremykauffman) August 26, 2025
The smugness in his voice reveals that he has probably been protected before.
Related: Farage has thrown down the gauntlet on illegal migration. “Whose side are our rulers on? Certainly not the side of the public, whose reasonable demands for a secure, controlled border have gone totally ignored for far too long. The elites can scream at Nigel Farage all they like, but they only have themselves to blame for leaving him a wide open goal.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Morning Joe left shocked as Chicago’s woke mayor refuses to answer simple policing question five times.
‘That’s not the question I asked!’ an exasperated Scarborough responded, before asking again whether ‘5,000 more cops’ would make Chicago safer.
Johnson replied: ‘I don’t believe that we should narrow it down to just police officers… What I’m saying, that is an antiquated approach.’
Scarborough then told the mayor he agreed that social programs were also important in combatting crime, but continued to press him.
‘Are you hearing what I’m saying?’ Scarborough asked, before repeating the question.
But Johnson went back to his default response, telling Scarborough: ‘I don’t believe that just simply putting out an arbitrary number around police officers is the answer.
‘What I’m saying is policing and affordable housing. It’s policing and mental and behavioral health care services. It’s policing and youth employment. It’s a full package.’
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson: Putting people in prison is racist, unholy and doesn’t lower violent crime rates.
Please stick with this message, Democrats. pic.twitter.com/1cNsImGxJS
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 25, 2025
Johnson is making ‘90s-era Fox Butterfield sound like an expert in penology: “‘The Butterfield Effect’ is named in honor of ace New York Times crime reporter Fox Butterfield, the intrepid analyst responsible for such brilliantly headlined stories as ‘More Inmates, Despite Drop In Crime,’ and ‘Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction,’ not to mention the poetic 1997 header, ‘Crime Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.’”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Genius Trump Enacts Plan To Dumb Down Chinese Population By Inviting Them To Attend American Universities.
FARAGE SETS OUT HIS MASS DEPORTATION PLAN:
In an Oxfordshire aircraft hanger this morning, Nigel Farage finally unveiled his party’s long-awaited deportations strategy. For six weeks, asylum and small boats has dominated the airwaves. Now, after a successful summer offensive, Farage laid out his plan to deal with the problems he has exploited so successfully. To stop the small boats, he is launching ‘Operation Restoring Justice’ – an initiative to enact mass deportations if Reform wins power.
A five-page document was handed out to 200 attendees. It explains how Reform will leave the ECHR and disapply the Refugee Convention for five-years if elected in 2029. A new British Bill of Rights will be introduced, with all government departments required to make the migration crisis their number one ministerial priority. Some £2 billion will be put aside to achieve this goal. Aid and sanctions will be used as ‘carrot and stick’ to ensure cooperation from other countries.
Farage’s ambition is grand and so was his setting. He stood beneath a giant Union Jack, in front of a No. 10 style lectern, to give him his status as Prime Minister in waiting. Around him were departure gate boards, all listing flights to various foreign countries. The razzmatazz and spectacle was a marked contrast with recent Tory press conferences, held in various cramped rooms across Westminster and Whitehall. Farage was joined by Zia Yusuf, the former chairman who has spent six months labouring over this document. Both men gave 15-minute speeches, followed by an extensive round of questioning from the press.
Unsurprisingly, many dwelt on the issue of illegal migrants returned to hostile regimes. Farage, echoing the line he articulated in the Times on Saturday was regretful but unapologetic about the need to deport those who come here illegally. Yusuf says that the ambition is for 600,000 people to be deported by the end of Reform’s first parliament.
Naturally, the British press don’t seem very sympathetic to the British people:
UPDATE:
I would like to help fund legal actions against corrupt officials who aided and abetted the rape of Britain, per the official government inquiry.
Please reply below for consideration. https://t.co/20tp9VFFAv
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 26, 2025
NFL SEASON KICKS OFF EARLY THIS YEAR: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged as she shows off HUGE ring and romantic details of private proposal surrounded by flowers.
My only fear is that a Hawaiian judge will overturn the engagement:
WHEN FA MEETS FO:
The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 36, Part 2.13 ("Fires") bans burning ANYTHING on National Park land except in designated areas.
Lafayette Park is under National Park Service control.
This idiot did not need to burn a US flag in that place to get arrested. He could… https://t.co/AZIqqTeeih
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) August 26, 2025
Related:
First they were waving Mexican flags. They realized how bad the optics were, and started passing out American flags.
Then Trump trolls them into burning American flags. Incredible. https://t.co/lqYdJIKHyr
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) August 26, 2025
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): What did I tell you?
WATCH: Cameraman Wins the Day During Live Shot of JB Pritzker’s Anti-Trump Presser.
Though he used the event to give a warm-up speech well ahead of a prospective run for president in 2028, the unintended consequences of Pritzker holding the news conference in close proximity to Trump International Hotel and Tower – Chicago even as he claimed he was “living rent-free” in Trump’s head was something that perhaps could not be overlooked by a cameraman who was filming the goings on.
“I know that I live rent-free in the president’s head. I wish he would spend some time in Chicago so that he can see what a lovely city we have,” Pritzker proclaimed. But watch what the cameraman did next:
PRITZKER: "I live rent free in the President's head."
Wait 'til the end. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/wPiB3xSi0b
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 25, 2025
“Might have been intentional. Might not have been. But still funny.”
A CENTURY AGO, THE ‘SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL’ SHOOK THE NATION. THE STAKES ARE JUST AS HIGH TODAY:
What many Americans know about the Scopes trial is actually based on a popular play and film inspired by the trial. “Inherit The Wind” tells the story of a teacher prosecuted by a small religious town for teaching human evolution. The play, which is often taught in schools, portrays critics of evolution as backwards fanatics denying scientific evidence.
Critics say “Inherit the Wind” misleads the public about key facts about the case, whitewashes inconvenient facts about the biology textbook in question, and has perpetuated stereotypes about opponents of evolution as backward rubes.
Dr. John West, the vice president of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, told The Daily Wire that there are many facts of the case that don’t come across in its telling. For example, the 1925 textbook at the center of the Scopes trial — Civic Biology, by George Hunter — was deeply racist and promoted eugenics.
“The dirty little secret that very few people actually talk about … is that Hunter’s civic biology was a ravingly racist and pro-eugenics book,” West told The Daily Wire. “It’s kind of a riot today because if you actually tried to teach out of that textbook today, teachers would probably be fired.”
For example, the textbook said that the Caucasian race was the “highest type of all” humans, and said some people were “parasites” unfit to reproduce.
“If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading,” the textbook said. “Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.”
West also said that Bryan, the progressive Democrat politician who helped prosecute Scopes, saw the trial as a battle for parental rights. Bryan believed that parents should not be forced to send their kids to government schools that would undermine their Christian faith. Instead, he believed the teachers should avoid the issue of human origins altogether, according to West.
Related: A Forgotten Lesson of the Scopes ‘Monkey Trial.’
We already have seen what happens when this suffocating ideology is given a free hand. When the United States indoctrinated its citizens in the dogma of eugenics, the results were catastrophic: a widening and deepening of institutional racism, xenophobic anti-immigration policies, and the coercive sterilization of “the unfit.” And it was all justified in the name of “progress,” supported by the scientific and academic establishments.
“Could any doctrine be more destructive of civilization?” Bryan asked. The answer arrived soon enough: The event that brought all of it to a screeching halt was the Holocaust. It is well known that the Nazis based their 1933 sterilization laws on the work of American eugenicists such as Harry Laughlin, who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg for his efforts to promote “race hygiene.”
Exit quote: “Hitler’s death camps were the horrific yet logical result of the militant rejection of the God of the Bible.”
ROGER SIMON: Tired of Selfish Weed Smokers?
Some would call Norwegian tennis star Casper Ruud—currently competing at the US Open— rude with an e for bringing up something many of us have been thinking for years.
The NY Post reports under the headline: “Casper Ruud hates the weed smell at US Open: ‘Worst part about New York’”
I don’t know about “worst,” but it’s certainly up there. Every time I go to New York I feel as if I’m getting a contact high just walking around midtown Manhattan, a contact high, to be clear, I don’t want.
(This goes for many other cities, notably Seattle, Denver, Portland and everywhere in CA. In the case of Seattle, you trip over smokers getting off the ferry. It’s like an opium den in 19th Century China.)
I have no right to be a prude about marijuana. I smoked it regularly in my thirties. As I detailed in “Turning Right at Hollywood & Vine,” I did a fair number of other drugs popular at the time as well (psychedelics, etc.). Most of them I only tried once (okay, twice) because I am fortunate not to have an addictive personality—except for the ribeye steaks my doctor tells me are lethal for my kidneys and I am currently trying to shake.
As is well known, marijuana has changed over the years, becoming many times more potent. Curious about that, roughly ten years ago when I was still living in Los Angeles, I picked up the new vintage (there were as many choices as at a luxury wine shop) at a couple of the upscale marijuana emporiums then blossoming along Ventura Blvd. One of them had valet parking yet.
Earlier: How Weed Became The New Oxycontin.
August 25, 2025
OPEN THREAD: All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no threading there.