PROPOSAL TO PUT CONGRESS ON A DAVE RAMSEY BUDGET PLAN: And if either Congress or the President screw it up, it’s no more tax-paid junkets for you! It’s my latest for The Washington Stand.

EXPERTS WARN OF POTENTIAL DANGER OF BETTING FIRM WITH TRUMP TIES: If you’ve never heard of Kalshi, Inc., you likely will be soon because it’s unlike any other betting enterprise ever. Kalshi makes it possible to bet on any “event” that happens or may happen. In other words, it makes it possible to bet on everything.

But here’s what really makes Kalshi interesting: One of its board members, Brian Quintenz, was nominated by President Donald Trump to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in February, a month after Donald Trump Jr. was signed on as a consultant.

In an exclusive report today, The Washington Stand’s S.A. McCarthy lays out the details of what could easily become a major scandal in Trump’s second term, including the fact that “economists, attorneys, and both advocates and opponents of predatory gambling are sounding the alarm over Kalshi’s potential to radically destabilize the U.S. economy if one of its board members is placed on the commission that’s supposed to regulate the betting company.”

BIDEN TELEWORK ABUSES CONFIRMED: A new analysis by the Inspector-General (IG) at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) confirms serious teleworking abuses by more than half of the employees at the federal government’s central human resource agency.

NOW WE MAY KNOW HOW MANY SLEEPER CELLS BIDEN ENABLED: Now that President Donald Trump has obliterated Iran’s nuclear bomb-making facilities, we may well find out in coming days just how many terrorist sleeper cells were able to enter this country during the Biden era. It’s my hurriedly posted PJMedia column.

EIGHT VIP CHARACTERISTICS: J. Warner Wallace is one of the most successful cold-case homicide detectives ever. For years, he was featured on NBC’s “Dateline” explaining how he solved a particular old and challenging case. He knows good and bad evidence when he sees it.

Thanks to that ability to assess the value of evidence, Wallace has also become one of the best-known Christian apologists in the world. On HillFaith today, Wallace discusses eight characteristics of evidence he has found that indicate purposefulness rather than random chance.

Fortunately, Instapundit has a wonderfully intelligent readership that can offer reasonable arguments for and against a multitude of thoughtful views, including Wallace’s eight characteristics. That, rather than ad hominem for or against, is what I seek in posting this link.

SHOW YOUR WORK, CHILDREN: Apparently, somebody at the Washington Post thinks their readers don’t need to know the demographic details of respondents to a survey that purports to show 2-1 public opposition to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

The Washington Stand talks to an international pollster who says showing your work in the details of your sample is essential to being credible. And no surprise, a spokesman for the Post could not be reached.

IF CBO KEEPS GETTING IT WRONG: Then, doesn’t it make sense to change how CBO does its work? That’s what a bunch of folks on Capitol Hill are saying, including especially House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

NO, SLAVES DID NOT BUILD AMERICA’S WEALTH: Today is Juneteenth, the day that commemorates the moment slaves in Texas first got word of Lincoln’s signing the Emancipation Proclamation. But the Left has taken what was before a celebration of freedom and corrupted it into a key part of the Great Lie about America.

That would be the lie that America is irretrievably evil because the Founders accepted slavery and in the decades thereafter it was slaves in the American South who built what has become the richest, most prosperous nation in human history.

Much has been written over the years about this lie, but nothing that this writer has ever read even begins to match the razor’s edge of fact and truth displayed in Rod Martin’s Substack column today, entitled “Juneteenth: No, America’s Wealth Was Not Built by Slaves – Slavery Held Us Back.” 

THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF MOSSAD IN IRAN: The most unappreciated aspect of Israel’s remarkable success against Iran is the reality that for months before the current hostilities began, Mossad agents were roaming inside the former Persian empire.

Richard Pollock talked to somebody who knows a great deal of how this happened and continues happening today. Here’s a small sample:

“One who is talking about this omission and is dialed into this extraordinary military campaign is John Spencer. He currently serves as the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and is Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project,

“Spencer told me that, indeed, Mossad is continuing to aggressively and freely operate throughout Iran. ‘Most mainstream media treat Mossad’s presence in Iran as something that happened in the past. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the current reality,’ he said.

“’Mossad has a long track record of building deep operational infrastructure inside enemy territory. There is every indication that those networks are still in place and active. They are likely supporting real-time targeting of regime leadership, missile systems, and mobile launchers, while also disrupting Iranian internal security from within,’ he told me.”

There is more, much more. Joshua and Caleb, veterans of a previous notable Israeli spy operation, are grinning ear to ear.

AND SPEAKING OF THE WASHINGTON STAND: California officials have shoveled tens of millions of tax dollars to five key Far Left non-profit activist groups that are supporting the violent and continuing anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere across the nation.

KERSHAW REMINDS MLB WHO CREATED THE RAINBOW: You may have seen one of the several Major League Baseball team “celebrations” of Pride Month. Los Angeles Dodgers’ star pitcher Clayton Kershaw’s response to the LGBQTetc.etc.etc. tyrants reintroduced them to a hugely significant fact, as The Washington Stand’s Suzanne Bowdey explains.

WANT TO MAKE BEAUCOUP BUCKS? Set up shop with a moving company to help the millions of Americans who are waving bye-bye to the 10 states, plus the District of Columbia, that top the list of Sanctuary jurisdictions. That is, those jurisdictions that refuse to allow local and state law enforcement work with federal immigration authorities against illegal immigrant criminals.

Data featured by Issues & Insights pegs the number of movers from those areas since 2020 at 3.1 million. Here’s a partial breakdown:

“New York alone saw 966,209 leave. Illinois lost 418,056, and Minnesota lost 47,930. California is the all-time leader – it suffered a net loss of more than 1.2 million over those years. In fact, the top five population losers are all sanctuary states.

“Just two sanctuary states – Vermont and Colorado – eked out population gains … a mere 37,000 in total. In contrast, of the 12 states ranked by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center as having the least friendly to illegal immigrants, 10 had huge net gains in population from 2020 to 2024 – totaling 2.9 million.”

CBO REFORM PUSH GATHERS STEAM: Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) and a bipartisan coalition of House colleagues are sponsoring the “Stop the Baseline Bloat Act of 2025.” The measure focuses on an admittedly obscure problem — the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) considering emergency spending as permanent — about which most people couldn’t care less.

But that obscurity doesn’t negate the importance of what the Grothman proposal does – banning CBO from including temporary spending in long-term projections. The reason its important is fatter baselines help the legions of congressional sufferers from Federal Spending Addiction (FSA) keep increasing their fixes.

The fact there are co-sponsors from both parties on this one is an encouraging sign that perhaps sanity is mounting a comeback on the House floor.

MAGA-TIME IN VACCINE LAND: Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. just demonstrated that the familiar complaint that nobody in Washington ever gets fired is not always accurate.

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Moffit makes the casein The Daily Signal that RFK’s firing all 17 Biden-appointed members of the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices is illustrative of exactly what is needed and what the public health lobby most fears

THE LEFT’S RIOTS ARE JUST GETTING STARTED: Richard Pollock knows a thing or three about how and why the Left so often seeks to spark riots such as have been going on for a week now in Los Angeles. Richard once was one of those on Left who sparked riots.

In his latest Substack column, he looks at the LA violence and observes how familiar the present riots appear in the context of Saul Alinsky’s handbook for political violence, “Rules for Radicals:”

Alinsky explained how radical activists can and must create political chaos in modern Western societies. His first main observation is that truth really doesn’t matter. Alinsky openly counseled his minions, ‘To begin with, he (the revolutionary) does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.’ (italics is in original)

“Just as distressing, Alinsky’s revolutionary radicals have a particularly nasty point of view about ethics. ‘The rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war, the end justifies almost any means,’ Alinsky wrote in his book. ‘Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.’

“’Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics,’ Alinsky counseled. He told activists, ‘you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.’

“Alinsky further argues that morality of using certain tactics shouldn’t be a primary factor. ‘The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or victory,’ he wrote. ‘In short, ethics are determined by whether one is losing or winning.'”

Just keep scrolling, as Glenn would say, because Richard sees a long, hot, destructive summer ahead.

AMERICANS FED UP WITH PRIDE LIES: Major corporations like IBM and Coke are abandoning their support for Pride Month activities. A recent poll finds a 14 point decline in support for such activities among Republican voters. So little public support appeared that a Boise Pride Festival was cancelled.

Is something significant happening? Looks like it, according to Family Research Council (FRC) Senior Fellow Joseph Backholm, who writing in World Magazine further suggests the reason why:

“We were told redefining marriage was a matter of fairness and decency, and a lot of people fell for it. People with moral objections to same-sex marriage supported it because they thought it was the kind and fair thing to do.

“But the sexual revolutionaries did not offer the tolerance they demanded. The moment they felt a sense of cultural dominance, they responded with speech codes, lawsuits against churches, and attempts to ruin the lives and businesses of anyone who expressed a contrary view.”

THE WAY WE STILL ARE: Remember that 1973 classic flick starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand? They were total opposites, but somehow managed to find love, get married, ignore their irreconcilable differences for a stretch of years, but it all ended when her Marxist “principles” were more important than love, companionship, loyalty, etc.

There is a vitally important lesson in that movie, one that the conventional wisdom of the Left will never acknowledge, as I explain in my latest Substack column.

ABOUT THE AURORAS: Regardless your view of their origin, the Northern and Southern lights are amazing, and awesomely beautiful, as this short Illustra Media video on HillFaith this morning masterfully illustrates.  You know where I am on the God question, but don’t let that prevent from you enjoying a calmly elegant pause for your Sunday.

STOP BRO-FEUDING, TELL US HOW BAD SOCIAL SECURITY REALLY IS: Remember all those headlines earlier this year about millions of Social Security recipients on the rolls despite being 120, 130, even 150 years old? President Donald Trump and former DOGE driver Elon Musk appeared to be pushing differing data.

But a new analysis by OpenTheBooks points to an obvious reconciliation — of the conflicting data, not the conflicting super egos. Even so, as I explain in my latest PJMedia column, the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) laughable response to OpenTheBooks’ FOIA request suggests things are far more seriously wrong in America’s oldest entitlement benefits program than even the most extreme DOGE deductions.

WHAT PORN TOOK FROM US: For Gen Z and, especially, Gen Alpha, the harm inflicted by the porn explosion in American society is so much worse than is commonly assumed. Freya India of the Free Press has the stark facts.

MEET THE COMPANIES HELPING TRANS YOUR KIDS AND HIDE IT FROM YOU: The Washington Stand’s Suzanne Bowdey digs into the Trevor Group and its corporate backers and finds a sink pit of ugly:

“And while The Trevor Project claims to be harmlessly dedicated to ‘advocacy, education, and crisis support for LGBTQ+ young people,’ it’s the nature of that advocacy and education that should disturb Americans.

“For starters, this is a group that, just three years ago, was exposed for stealthily grooming children online. A suspicious mom, whose daughter struggled with gender dysphoria, logged onto the organization’s TrevorSpace chat room to see what kind of advice she was getting — and was horrified at the graphic and disturbing nature of the site.”

FORGET 3D CHESS: What if Trump and Musk are playing 5D chess? Has your head exploded yet?

MRNA AND LEUKEMIA: More evidence of COVID’s man-made lethalities.

DO WE HAVE THIS KIND OF COURAGE TODAY?  This passage written by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson in the “Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms” was published a year before Declaration of Independence.

THE LEFT’S WORST NIGHTMARE: America is on the mend, economy is growing, business investment is headed upward, things are getting better — unless you are an illegal immigrant with a criminal record, an illegal immigrant intent on murdering Jews, a player in the biggest coverup in American history, etc. etc. That’s the worst possible result of Americans sending Donald Trump back to the White House, according to Issues & Insights. No disagreement from this corner.