YES:

None of this is an excuse for ICE acting improperly, but don't pretend these are ordinary people unknowingly or accidentally clashing with totalitarians. They chose to do what they did, and we need to be honest about the level of opposition to ICE and how it's actually harmful to…

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) January 26, 2026

DON’T FORGET TO THANK THE FOUNDERS, TOO: Thank God for the First Amendment — Europe Is Losing Free Speech

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS RESTING COMFORTABLY: Saudi Arabia to scale back flagship NEOM project.

According to the report, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who chairs the NEOM project, now envisions a development that is “far smaller” than originally planned, reflecting growing acknowledgement within Riyadh of delays, cost overruns, and flaws in the project’s initial conception and execution.

NEOM, launched in 2017 as part of the kingdom’s economic transformation plans, stretches along the Red Sea coast and covers an area roughly the size of Belgium. Its most ambitious component, The Line, a proposed 170-kilometre linear city, is expected to be radically scaled back and reimagined.

People familiar with the review told the FT that The Line could be redesigned into a more modest project that makes use of infrastructure already built, while NEOM itself may pivot towards becoming a hub for data centres as Saudi Arabia pushes to position itself as a global player in artificial intelligence.

The project was always unlikely at best.

THERE WILL BE MORE BLOOD ON HIS HANDS: Just When You Thought You Couldn’t Get Any More Sick of Barack Obama…

IT’S FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN: Newly released records reveal 725% increase in Medicaid for Illinois children without SSNs.

After more than a year of digging, Statehouse candidate Bailey Templeton’s most public records collection shows 1,085 Illinois children under 18 without SSNs had Medicaid bills of $66 million in 2025. That’s up 725% from $8 million for 450 children in 2021.

“It’s roughly $40 million spent on inpatient treatment, that’s a lot of time for children to be in hospitals,” Templeton told The Center Square Friday.

The data only generates more questions for Templeton.

“It raises questions about what would be called medical trafficking, where things are conducted on to children when they’re too young to be able to consent to these things,” she said.

Or whether there were any medical services — or even kids — at all.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Man Stabs Victim for Saying He’s a Christian.

NEVER MIND: Thinking about ‘mindfulness.’

At Brown’s School of Public Health, students can earn a master’s in public health specializing in mindfulness or a certificate in mindfulness-based stress-reduction teacher training. Yet, across campus from the Mindfulness Center, Brown’s clinical and affective neuroscience laboratory has researched the adverse effects of mindfulness meditation, which include loss of emotion, motivation or joy.

Some universities claim their courses are rooted in Buddhist philosophy, offering a “thin, romanticized” version of Buddhism “as an academic veneer for spa treatments.”

Universities in the U.K. and Australia also offer mindfulness master’s degree, he writes. At the University of the West of Scotland, students can earn a master of science in mindfulness and compassion degree.

Mindfulness practice “can make students calmer but also less inclined to think hard, plan ahead, or engage in demanding work,” writes Schilling, citing a study.

So it’s basically soma.

WELL, GOOD: Trump Sends Tom Homan to Minnesota.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Govt gave $3.3 million science grant to Northwestern for ‘safe space ambassadors.’

“The funding is designed to address the dearth of under-represented minorities in the life sciences,” the news release stated.

However, Christopher Neefus, spokesperson for Open the Books, told The College Fix that the tax dollars spent on the project detracted from real scientific inquiry. Open the Books is a fiscal watchdog organization based in Illinois where Northwestern also is located.

“The extravagant spending highlighted by Senator Paul comes at the expense of more funding for essential, truth-seeking science,” Neefus said in a recent email. “Rigorous pursuits are too often being sidelined in favor of ideologically charged, discriminatory projects that have nothing to do with research and development.

“Those fighting changes to the status quo have lamented ‘attacks on science,’ but safe spaces and ‘inclusive excellence’ hardly qualify,” he told The Fix.

Yes, but it provides makework for otherwise unemployable lefties.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP: Yeah, So China Just Imploded. “‘Imploded’ might be too strong a word, but Communist China just entered the growing ranks of nations with a fertility rate below a single birth per woman — less than half the replacement level. The implosion might not be here quite yet, but it is coming.”

CHANGE: Five ways weight-loss jabs are changing spending habits.

“My weekly food shop’s really gone down,” says Sam Gillson, 38, from Shropshire, who got in touch with BBC Your Voice. He’s lost more than four stone using weight-loss jabs since June.

“I’m definitely buying more fresh foods, and fewer unhealthy ready meal/easy dinner options like pizza, chips and nuggets.”

In the last few weeks, supermarkets The Co-op, Morrisons and Marks and Spencer have brought out nutrient-dense ranges of ready meals, and Ocado now sells a 100g steak, which it said was in response to the growing number of customers seeking smaller portions.

Sam says eating less means he wants to make sure that “the smaller quantity does contain all those nutrients and vitamins you need”.
And it’s not just portion size. It’s also the kinds of foods.

Protein-rich products have been appearing on the shelves as smoothies and snacks.

Jonny Forsyth, food and drink strategist at consumer research group Mintel, says many of these trends are part of a wider shift, with health becoming more important, particularly for younger consumers.

He thinks GLP-1 drugs are “changing the culture”, making it fashionable to eat more nutrient-dense foods and “adding oxygen to existing trends”.

That’s all kinds of good news.

A NEW LOW SO FAR: The Left’s Gun Rights Hypocrisy Just Hit a New Low.

DAVID HARSANYI: Sorry, AOC — protest culture is un-American.

Every loudmouth ignoramus with an opinion has a First Amendment right. You’re not special.

Yet modern left-wing protesters believe their passion and anger imbue them with moral license to demand things and speak over their fellow citizens.

Just watch the video of those self-righteous “activists” disrupting church services in St. Paul the other day, or global-warming cultists shutting down traffic in major cities, or college students using their heckler’s veto to disrupt speeches and debates.

As we’ve seen with two recent shootings in Minneapolis, protest culture can have deadly consequences.

Then again, most of these efforts aren’t organic or spontaneous expressions of political anger anymore.

They are well-funded and well-managed by organizations that see political benefit in creating chaos and turning our country into a revolutionary battleground.

From Lenin to Alinsky, forced confrontation has been a tactic of Marxist activism.

Indeed.

MINNESOTA INSURRECTION: A Special Forces Operator Has Seen This ‘From Anbar to Helmand.’

GRAY-ZONE WARFARE: Researchers say Russian government hackers were behind attempted Poland power outage.

Last week, Polish Energy Minister Milosz Motyka told reporters that the attempted cyberattack on December 29 and 30 saw hackers targeting two heat and power plants, as well as trying to disrupt the communication links between renewable installations, such as wind turbines and power distribution operators.

Motyka called the incident the “strongest attack” on Poland’s energy infrastructure in years, with the Polish government blaming Moscow for the attempt. Local media reported that the attacks could have knocked out heat and power for at least half a million homes across the country.

On Friday, cybersecurity firm ESET said it obtained a copy of the destructive malware, which it calls DynoWiper. This type of malware, known as “wiper” malware, is designed to irreversibly destroy data on computers to prevent them from working.

ESET attributed the malware with “medium confidence” to the hacking group known as Sandworm, a unit within Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU, based on a “strong overlap” with its previous research into Sandworm’s past malware, including the group’s use of destructive malware to target Ukraine’s energy sector.

Tangentially related: Poland sends hundreds of generators to Ukraine as Russia strikes energy system.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: A Friendly Reminder That Murderous Chaos Is ALWAYS the Dems’ Endgame. “Prominent Democratic elected officials are encouraging people to get in the faces of ICE and Border Patrol agents. Again, I meant what I wrote about not be remotely confrontational. Tim Walz and his ilk are out there exhorting their frothing hordes to be deliberately confrontational, with predictably tragic results.”

Getting neurotic and angry people to give their lives to cover your billion-dollar fraud is quite the flex.

A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE…: California’s massive fraud is way worse than Minnesota’s — totals $7 billion: JD Vance.

“I think we have a fraud problem that is much worse than California than it is in Minnesota,” Vance said in an interview Thursday, noting the head of US Small Business Administration gave him the shocking news.

“This is unfortunately a problem that is much bigger than Minnesota.”

The vice president also said efforts to block immigration enforcement were a uniquely blue-state phenomenon, adding that some Democratic-led states are engaged in a “small-scale civil war” with the federal government over immigration.

Just call it what it is — an insurrection — and invoke the appropriate law.

Also, I’d take the Over on California’s $7 billion fraud.

THERE IS NOT WIDESPREAD OPPOSITION; THERE IS ORGANIZED DEMOCRAT RESISTANCE TO FEDERAL AUTHORITY:

I am horrified. I cannot believe it.

I analyzed public databases and media reporting on violent confrontations with ICE over the past year.

Just 9 counties accounted for TWO-THIRDS of violent confrontations with ICE in America.

This is twice all violent confrontations in the… pic.twitter.com/PuQuntgtGF

— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) January 26, 2026

FACTS? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ FACTS: Minneapolis Police Chief Says It Doesn’t Matter if Shooting Was Justified.

I wonder what local police — those who remain, that is — think about that.

THIS IS EXACTLY RIGHT:

Because they want martyrs. https://t.co/ovV3BbbBC4

— Fusilli Spock (@awstar11) January 25, 2026

I JUST WANT PALMETTO STATE TO START MAKING AFFORDABLE KNOCKOFFS: Trump claims secret ‘discombobulator’ weapon was used to help capture Maduro.

CNN has previously reported that the ADS, according to the US military, is a nonlethal weapon that shoots an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves that can reach a little more than half a mile away. It penetrates human skin and creates a heating sensation that causes people to move away from the beam.

A few days after Maduro’s capture, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reposted comments purportedly from a Venezuelan security guard who claimed the US “launched something” during the operation that “was like a very intense sound wave.”

“Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside,” the security guard added. “We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.”

Does it work on ayatollahs?

MODERN-DAY MIRACLES:

Wheelchair bound ICE protester seems to temporarily have a divine intervention and is able to stand up out of his wheelchair and grab what he dropped

These are paid actors pic.twitter.com/6IznvwBtEU

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 24, 2026

NEITHER THE HYSTERIA NOR THE CRISIS ARE ACCIDENTAL: Hysterical Democrats Are Talking Themselves Into a Constitutional Crisis.

STOP HELPING: Google won’t stop replacing our news headlines with terrible AI. “On December 26th, Google told me that ‘Steam Machine price & HDMI details emerge.’ They hadn’t. On January 11th, Google proclaimed that ‘ASUS ROG Ally X arrives.’ (It arrived in 2024; the new Xbox Ally arrived months ago.) On January 20th, it wrote that ‘Glasses-free 3D tech wows,’ introducing readers to ‘New 3D tech called Immensity from Leia’ — but linking to this TechRadar story about an entirely different company called Visual Semiconductor. I found another that claimed to be about a GPU maker commenting on the RAM shortage; it linked instead to a Digitimes story about a RAM maker.”

ATHENA THORNE: I’ve Waited 40 Years to Dunk on Phil Collins About This. “The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. In this case, it’s been forty years since British establishment-pop workhorse Phil Collins incurred a young Athena’s wrath with his band Genesis’s mockery of the greatest president (up until then, anyway) of modern times.”