Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

January 26, 2026

January 25, 2026

BARACK OBAMA FORGETS HIMSELF, PONTIFICATES ON WHAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SHOULD DO ABOUT ICE:

Obama begins:

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.
Which “core” values are under assault? The values of safety, security, and not being afraid a criminal illegal is going to rape, murder, or ram you with a car or commercial truck? Or is it the core value of not having your First Amendment and other civil liberties violated? As I recall, Obama was not big on civil liberties, since he used his presidential powers to not just spy on journalists (Hello, James Rosen and Sharyl Attkisson), but to weaponize the IRS to block Tea Party and pro-liberty groups who opposed him from acquiring 501(c)(4) status so they could fundraise against his 2012 re-election.

Of course, Obama just leaves that one hanging, because his “core values” are flexible.

He blathers on.

Federal law enforcement and immigration agents have a tough job. But Americans expect them to carry out their duties in a lawful, accountable way, and to work with, rather than against, state and local officials to ensure public safety.

That’s not what we’re seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite.

Jan Brewer smiles: Byron York on immigration law: Federal government has enforcement authority.

Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York said that, despite what Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass think, state and local governments do not have the authority to enforce immigration laws — only the federal government does.

Bass defended her resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement on CNN’s The Situation Room, where she responded to the network’s new poll finding that 54% of people approve of the administration’s program to deport illegal immigrants. However, Bass said she does not believe this poll is accurate and that federal agents were “overstepping,” taking away power from the state.

In response, York clarified that the federal government has the sole authority to enforce immigration law.

York recalled the Obama administration, when Arizona officials told former President Barack Obama, “You are not enforcing immigration laws, so we’ll do it.” Obama said no, the issue went to court, and the president won.

“The ruling is the federal government has the sole authority to do this,” York said Tuesday on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. “So when Karen Bass says, ‘It is like the federal government is coming in and taking our state and local authority,’ no, they don’t have any state and local authority.”

Bill Clinton has weighed in as well, despite having his own unique record of smashmouth immigration enforcement:

Posted at 8:52 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

THE LEFT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS ABOUT ALEX PRETTI, THE MAN THE BORDER PATROL SHOT: “We already knew that Pretti was carrying a loaded handgun and two extra loaded magazines when he showed up at an active ICE operation targeting a violent criminal illegal immigrant. And like Good before him, Pretti wasn’t some random citizen. He was part of an organized network dedicated to interfering with immigration enforcement. And he brought a loaded gun. Cam Higby from Newsmax spent days undercover inside the Signal messaging groups these activists use to coordinate their efforts. What he found was stunning in its sophistication. These aren’t just angry citizens showing up to protest. This is a well-oiled machine running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Related:

UPDATE:

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

IRONY: ICE Incident At One Epicenter of Welfare Fraud.

Including an old friend:

“Before all this chaos erupted, the entire country had its eyes on the fraud; now everybody is angry about ICE.  That’s how Frey and Walz want it.”

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

NATIONWIDE ANTI-ICE PROTESTS REVEAL HOW UNIONS AND ORGANIZED LEFTIST GROUPS AIM TO REKINDLE THE ANGER AND DISORDER OF BLACK LIVES MATTER:

The organized nature of the demonstrations has not been lost on President Donald Trump.

“These people are professionals,” he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner.” Speaking to reporters that same day about the scene at the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis, he described a protester who was “so loud, like a professional opera singer … These are professional agitators that want to see our country do badly.”

This month, assuming a role similar to that which it played in fomenting BLM chaos, unions, including United Auto Workers, have taken leading roles in coordinating the nationwide march.

“No work, no school, no shopping — only community, conscience, and collective action,” the ICE Out For Good website reads. Those outside of Minnesota are encouraged to “take action on January 23 in solidarity by organizing or attending a non-violent solidarity event, demanding corporations stand up to ICE, and calling on Congress to act now to rein in ICE.”

An “ICE Out for Good” rally—organized by a conglomerate of large and small unions as well as left-wing political groups such as Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America—is being held in Manhattan’s Union Square late Friday afternoon.

The unions, which once championed the BLM cause, have since rechanneled their energies toward resisting ICE and Border Patrol officers, perhaps seeing an opportunity to rebuild solidarity and passion on the left in the face of the MAGA movement. Friday’s strikes and protests, for example, resemble the nationwide “Strike for Black Lives” that took place in July 2020 at the behest of 60 unions and social justice groups, the San Diego-based outlet KPBS reported. Essential workers from Boston to San Francisco ditched their jobs to “rewrite the rules so that Black people can thrive, that corporations dismantle racism, [and] white supremacy.” In June of that year, researchers around the world promised a strike to #ShutDownSTEM and #ShutDownAcademia in support of BLM.

Flashback: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same. “One year, statues are toppled and the next, Jews are bullied, but it’s amazing how the far-left treats such wildly diverse issues with the same small toolbox. It has ever been thus. As one radical wrote for a Students for a Democratic Society publication in the 1960s, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’”

Incidentally, Worst Hitler, Ever: Church-Invader Nekima Levy Armstrong Rushes to Democrat-Friendly CNN After Release by Activist Judge.

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

QUESTION ASKED: Who Built the USSR?

One of the epic stories of World War II is how Russian troops held the Stalingrad tractor factory against repeated assaults by German units from August to October 1942. That factory, the historians tell us, had produced more than half of the Soviet Union’s tractors before the war, and had begun manu­facturing T-34 tanks in 1941. The factory finally fell in battle, but it was rebuilt after the war as a symbol of Soviet resistance to fascism—and an enduring icon of the economic miracle of Soviet socialism.

The truth was, the Stalin­grad factory had been designed and built by American engineers and American workers living on-site in the early 1930s, and then outfitted by a dozen or so American companies, including International Harvester. The McClintic-Marshall Company made the plant’s steel structures, which then shipped to Stalingrad for assembly. The first tractors to roll off the assembly line in June 1930 were designed by the McCormick Deering company.

In other words, this supposed icon of Soviet industrial prowess was one of many examples where American companies, engineers, and workers helped transform the USSR into a major ­economic power.

Oh sure. Next you’re going to tell me that the Americans designed the Soviets’ postwar Tupolev Tu-4 bomber:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

BUNKERTIME: Iran’s supreme leader retreats underground, warned of likelihood of US airstrikes: report.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has gone underground, reportedly hiding out in a bunker out of fear of being wiped out by US airstrikes — as the USS Abraham Lincoln steams toward the Persian Gulf.

The 86-year-old supreme leader has moved to a fortified shelter in Tehran connected to a series of elaborate underground tunnels after senior military officials warned of the increasing likelihood of an imminent US attack, Iran International reported, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Faster, please.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

MINNESOTA’S AMY KLOBUCHAR IN 2006: Build That Wall!

Indeed. Here’s Klobuchar in 2026: Dems “are focused on getting ICE out of our state.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

THE FINAL DAYS:

●  Washington Post Cancels On-Site Winter Olympics Coverage Ahead of Expected Layoffs.

—The Wrap, Friday.

● Washington Post sports desk reportedly could be shuttered entirely.

—Awful Announcing, today.

● Washington Post Reporters Have Sent ‘Plea’ To Jeff Bezos:

—The Spun, today, which contains this classic malapropism: “Bezos, who could probably fund the Washington Post with his couch cushion money, has been pleaded with by reporters.”

Who does he think is paying to keep the lights on there? At least for now (hence the headline, a classical reference to what the Post views as its glory days). As Ira Stoll wrote in 2024: Who Will Be the Washington Post’s Next Owner?

Now the Post staff is worked up into a panic over a British former Wall Street Journal executive’s plan to bring in editors from the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph to run the place. The supposed trigger is the British press’s use of “stolen” documents, but that seems like a pretext coming from the staff of a newspaper that published the Pentagon Papers. The real issue isn’t stolen documents (the Post staff didn’t mind when the New York Times published President Trump’s stolen tax return) but fear that the new Post management might curb the left-wing tilt. Whatever the motive, Bezos is under fire from his own staff, which is questioning his loyalty to the institution. One Post veteran editor and reporter, the biographer David Maraniss, posted on Facebook, “Jeff Bezos owns the Post but he is not of and for the Post.”

As I wrote back then, Bezos must be thinking, “I’m not? If I’m signing your paycheck, I’m ‘of and for the f***ing Post.’”

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

WHO’S TO BLAME?

In contrast:

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: 2020’s Summer of Love.

The New Coldness? 2025’s Winter of Love!

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

ROGER SIMON: Ice Storm! The End Is Nigh!

In 2021, something like that happened in Texas when 246 people died, not to mention a passel of chickens, because the storm engendered a national shortage.

We’ve been listening to numerous television reminders of that episode, plus advice on what to do—roll up towels and put them at the bottom of doors to conserve heat, open cupboards, turn on all faucets to a trickle to prevent pipes from freezing, and so on. (Had I had the brains to purchase a generator, most of this wouldn’t be necessary.)

And of course, we are supposed to charge all our electronic devices to the top and whatever battery backups we have. Luckily, I was smart enough to pick up some of those, and they are dutifully plugged into myriad outlets around the house. But who knows how long they will last?

All day we have had snow, harmless enough, but the serious ice action is slated to begin in the small hours of the morning. We may wake up to find ourselves without heat in single-digit weather.

If all else fails, we could go into the garage and sit in the Tesla.

Which makes much more sense than sliding across the slick southern roads this weekend in a $243,000 Maserati MC20:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

ROGER KIMBALL: The Countdown to Iran’s Liberation Has Begun.

At the moment, the regime seems firmly in control. The populace is behind bars. The Ayatollahs and their minions command all the firepower.  But that situation is inherently unstable. The people cannot be held at knife or rifle point forever.  Moreover, Donald Trump will not countenance the world-historical enormity perpetrated by the Iranian mullahs and their death squads. Today, tomorrow, or possibly early next week, Khamenei and his coterie of murderous weirdos will go to meet their fate. Will they be surprised to find not 72 virgins but squadrons of B2s, F35s, and Tomahawk missiles?

Faster, please.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 25th, 2026

January 24, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Chicago’s Ruling Class Meet Up With Minnesota’s Ruling Class: Chicago Teachers Union Go To Minnesota to Show Support.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 24th, 2026

HOW THE LAWYERS KILLED PRACTICAL ADULT EDUCATION:

If you want to learn how machines actually work, go watch a mid-century industrial film. The ones shot in black and white, with the clipped narration and the cutaway diagrams. The ones that assume you can pay attention for twenty minutes, remember a sequence, and behave like an adult around rotating mass and stored energy.

Then compare that to most “training” made today. It is either infantilized entertainment, compliance theater, or vendor marketing in a lab coat. It tells you what to click, not what to understand. It teaches substitution, not diagnosis. It gives you a vibe, not a skill. It is worse than useless because it produces the confident incompetent.

This is not because people got dumber or because cameras got better. It is not because “the culture changed.” It is not because we forgot how to teach.

It is because the legal system made truthful instruction radioactive.

The moment you treat instruction as a liability surface, you stop teaching and start lawyering. That is the whole story. Everything else is downstream.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 24th, 2026

IT’S COME TO THIS: Don Lemon Claims Illegal Aliens Don’t Commit Crime.

“So credit where it’s due. I don’t know this woman’s name, but she did a great job. She didn’t yell. She didn’t posture. She just followed the logic to its conclusion and Don Lemon couldn’t survive his own talking points.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 24th, 2026

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The infantile Israelophobia of Ms. Rachel.

Don’t you just hate it when you accidentally like a social-media post calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews? Poor Ms Rachel, the gurning kids’ entertainer, committed just such a digital gaffe this week. She liked a post by one of her followers on Instagram that said ‘Free America from the Jews’. She later put out a tearful vid saying it was all an innocent mistake. She’d meant to delete the neo-medieval cry for a new Jew expulsion, not ‘heart’ it. Her thumbs let her down.

Most celebs would be given the benefit of the doubt in a situation like this. And we should give it to Ms Rachel, too. But her faux pas has caused a stink because Ms Rachel is a proper Gazaholic. Alongside entertaining toddlers on YouTube in her stupid dungarees, she has a side hustle in going absolutely mental about Israel. One minute she’s singing ‘Wheels on the Bus’, the next she’s holding forth on ‘genocide’ like some UN dignitary. And some people are wondering if it might actually make sense that a woman so feverishly obsessed with the Jewish State might also like the idea of Jews getting the fuck out of America.

It started when Ms Rachel posted a note on Instagram that said: ‘Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Free Iran.’ For me, that’s the most shocking part of the story. A preening, virtue-hoarding celeb mentioning countries that are not Palestine or Israel? Blow me down. Then someone replied with the following: ‘Free America from the Jews.’ And Ms Rachel gave it the thumbs up. After spotting her error she sobbed on camera, because of course she’s the real victim here. ‘Horrible!’, she said. I’ll say.

But with a bit of nudge-nudge, wink-wink to say, sorry, not sorry:

And as America’s Newspaper of Record reports:

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 24th, 2026

REPORT: Steelers Hiring Mike McCarthy as Head Coach.

The Pittsburgh Steelers have found their next head coach. The team is bringing in former Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers leader Mike McCarthy as their fourth head coach in nearly 60 years, working on deal with the 62-year-old, according to Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.

McCarthy was one of the biggest names in their head coaching search, sitting at the top of the list with Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores and Los Angeles Rams DC Chris Shula. The team brought McCarthy, Flores and Miami Dolphins DC Anthony Weaver in for in-person interviews but have made their decision and are going with McCarthy.

Exit quote: “The Steelers will need to bring in a quarterback over the next few years and likely look at McCarthy as their best option to help develop him. For now, however, the former Packers head coach could be an easy bridge to get Aaron Rodgers back in the building as well.”

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 24th, 2026

WHY IS THE ESTABLISHMENT LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF HOMOPHOBIA? Hypocrisy Alert: Gavin Newsom’s Team Drops Homophobic AI Memes on Gay Treasury Sec. Bessent.

 

Posted at 12:19 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 24th, 2026
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