Posts on Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Chinese penetration of Western countries has been going for a while. In the U.K., they are getting worried about it: MPs and members of the House of Lords have been warned by MI5 that they face a significant risk of espionage from the Chinese state. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has circulated a new “espionage alert” issued by the security services. In a message to MPs, Hoyle said Chinese state actors were “relentless” in trying to “interfere with our processes and influence activity at parliament”. This article, in the London Times,

“Don’t give up the ship.” The phrase was made famous by Captain James Lawrence as he lay mortally wounded from the battle between his USS Chesapeake and British frigate HMS Shannon off the coast of Boston during the War of 1812. Unfortunately for the captain, even though his phrase became legendary within the Navy, his ship was in fact captured by the Brits. Now, a group of Democrat lawmakers is reviving the exhortation in a minute-and-a-half video that urges military troops and intelligence officials to defy orders from above that they deem illegal. Although Donald Trump is not mentioned by name, it’s clear that they’re referring

A House Freedom Caucus-led bid to strip a member of the House Democratic Caucus of her role on a high-profile committee after her ties to Jeffrey Epstein were revealed earlier this month failed on Tuesday night. Lawmakers voted against censuring Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I., the Virgin Islands' nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives, over newly surfaced text messages between her and Epstein that were exchanged during the February 2019 congressional testimony of Michael Cohen.

In a startling first, a Washington state man has been infected with a strain of bird flu previously only detected in animals and never before in humans. The “severely ill” man was hospitalized with a high fever, confusion and respiratory distress earlier this month and confirmed to have H5N5, a subtype of avian influenza carried by wild birds like ducks and geese. The Washington State Department of Health described the unidentified patient as being “older” and having “underlying health conditions.” The agency noted that the man has a “mixed backyard flock of domestic poultry” at his home in Grays Harbor County, on the southwest Pacific coast of the state.

Back in 1989, President George H. W. Bush talked about a “thousand points of light.” He meant it as a tribute to America at its best: the churches, charities, volunteer squads, neighborhood helpers, and everyday citizens who quietly held the country together. It was a gentle, optimistic image: millions of small acts of service lighting up the dark, proving that the American character didn’t depend on Washington but on the decency of ordinary people. Bush believed the culture was strong, the institutions were stable, and the nation’s story was still intact. A thousand civic lanterns, he thought, were enough to keep the republic lit. He was wrong —

New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D.) is backing a far-left candidate for New York State Assembly who said 9/11 was a manifestation of America's "system of capitalism," "racism," "white supremacy," and "Islamophobia." Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, endorsed Palestinian activist Aber Kawas at a DSA meeting on Wednesday, the New York Daily News reported. The endorsement, the mayor-elect's first foray into local politics since his election win, is already garnering pushback because Mamdani did not support Kawas's primary opponent, a Spanish speaker with close ties

In the end, it turns out that radical transparency for a sex-trafficking ring doesn't actually look all that controversial. Only one member of the House of Representatives voted against a bill forcing the release of all documentation in the Jeffrey Epstein investigations. The bill will now go to the Senate after passing on a 427-1 vote:(Snip)After months of anticipation, the House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill ordering the release of the Justice Department's files on late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It passed 427-1 -- with GOP Rep. Clay Higgins as the only vote against the measure.

President Trump on Tuesday said Jamal Khashoggi was “extremely controversial” and claimed Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman “knew nothing” about his murder, contradicting the conclusion reached by U.S. intelligence services which found that Salman ordered the late Washington Post columnists’s brutal assassination. An ABC journalist asked Trump about Khashoggi’s assassination on Tuesday as the president met with bin Salman in the Oval Office. Trump said bin Salman has done a “phenomenal job.” “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” the president said of Khashoggi, “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about.”

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to compel the Trump administration to release the federal government’s files on deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The House voted 427-1 on a bipartisan legislative measure to have the Department of Justice release all investigative materials related to Epstein after President Trump gave House Republicans his blessing to support the effort. Representative Clay Higgins (R., Texas) was the lone no vote. The measure now heads to the GOP-controlled Senate.

A project heralded by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and accelerated by President Donald Trump stands to deal a huge blow to China’s dominance in the nanotechnology, energy and automotive sectors as the GraphiteOne project near Nome uncovered vast reserves — for which Beijing previously accounted for 90% of production. As of 2024, the U.S. was at least 93% import-dependent on both rare earth elements (REEs) and graphite itself, according to the International Energy Agency, and the Graphite Creek deposit near Nome has already been dubbed the largest such tranche in the U.S. But, this week’s announcement that REEs were discovered in addition to the

Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations on Tuesday. The designation will allow for heightened enforcement actions against the organization and its affiliates by authorities within the Lone Star State. In a Tuesday morning press release issued at the state capitol, Abbott offered the following comments regarding the designation saying, “The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world. The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through

Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday. The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.

Normally I wouldn’t do anything so facile as to blame inflation on a particular politician, but given that the Democrats are pinning their hopes on hanging the “affordability crisis” around President Trump’s neck, a little historical perspective is in order. Thus, from the Unleash Prosperity Hotline: We went back to January 2020 when the pandemic started. We found that 13.5% of cumulative inflation (prices are 24% higher today) has happened under Trump, while 86.5 percent of cumulative inflation happened under Biden. So the “affordability crisis” is the hangover effect of Bidenomics when the White House dumped some $4 trillion of helicopter money out the windows. This chart shows it nicely:

President Trump has often remarked that the originating charter for the United Nations could well have served a mission for global peace and stability, were it not for the influence of bastardized small-minded politics and corruption that comes with itYesterday, the U.N Security Council voted to support President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, despite the significant hurdles that remain. The U.N. vote was needed by several nations who have expressed a willingness to send military as part of the international stabilization force.VIA President Trump – “Congratulations to the World on the incredible Vote of the United Nations Security Council, just moments ago, acknowledging and endorsing the BOARD OF PEACE,

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule” -Thomas Jefferson The other Founders were similarly scornful of pure democracies. John Adams proclaimed: “Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. James Madison said: “Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention.” Alexander Hamilton warned: “Pure democracy is as much a fallacy as the idea of eternal vows and permanent alliances.” Ah, you might say, but what about the democracy of ancient Athens? I’m glad you brought that up. Athens was indeed a pure democracy in the sense that the people voted directly on matters of governance. But not all the people.

I’m a gamer. An old-school tabletop role-play gamer. There, I said it. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons when I was thirteen, right around the time Mazes and Monsters hit theaters and scared the living daylights out of every suburban parent in America. That was the era when people honestly thought dice and graph paper could summon demons. I lived through the “D&D is satanic” panic — the tracts, the sermons, the moral hysteria. My own father once threw my little brother’s entire hardcover Second Edition collection into the foundation of a house he was pouring, including the first-print Monster Manual. Somewhere out there, a basement’s

President Donald Trump is no longer fighting the release of the Epstein files. But that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it. Trump threw his support behind a congressional effort to release all the files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after it became clear that he could not halt its momentum and that he risked suffering an embarrassing blow on the House floor, people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Before the global warming catastrophists held sway in our politics and in the media, we were warned that another ice age was in our near future. But that prediction was overwhelmed by fearmongers who have been telling us for decades that we’re burning our world with greenhouse gas emissions. Now we’re hearing again that the big freeze is coming. What do we do with this new information? Best just to ignore it, since predicting the future climate based on human activity is a narcissistic folly. In 1970, University of California, Davis ecologist Kenneth Watt pulled the alarm handle. Our planet,

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) plans to increase shipping prices in January as it attempts to stabilize its finances while adapting to a rapidly changing postal delivery market. The proposed changes—which were recently approved by the service's governors—follow the release of its fiscal year 2025 financial results, which showed losses of $9 billion, despite a fairly modest revenue growth. The proposed changes will increase rates by 6.6 percent for Priority Mail, 5.1 percent for Priority Mail Express, 7.8 percent for USPS Ground Advantage, and 6 percent for Parcel Select.

One of the college basketball players banned by the NCAA for participating in sports-betting operations has acknowledged his role in a gambling scheme. Former University of New Orleans guard Dae Dae Hunter said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he participated in point-shaving. “I did go out there and not do my best: basically shooting the ball and not actually trying to make it,” Hunter said on the show, which aired Monday. “I just had a child. The school wasn’t paying me, so I was trying to get money to actually take care of my child.” Hunter and two New Orleans teammates are among six players whose eligibility was revoked by the NCAA

The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on Monday in support of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan in Gaza, and Trump has been named chairman of the Board of Peace. The resolution passed the council 13-0-2, endorsing the president’s plan, which Hamas agreed to on October 8 and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially endorsed in a signing with Trump on October 13. Congratulations to the World on the incredible Vote of the United Nations Security Council, just moments ago, acknowledging and endorsing the BOARD OF PEACE, which will be chaired by me,

The late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein texted compliments and advice to a Democrat member of Congress while she questioned President Donald Trump’s former attorney in a February 2019 hearing, newly released documents reveal. Thousands of pages of emails, texts, and other documents from Epstein’s estate were released last Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee, uncovering shocking communication between the convicted predator and Del. Stacey Plaskett (D) of the U.S. Virgin Islands as she prepared to question Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer-turned-critic.

Gov. Kathy Hochul thought endorsing Zohran Mamdani would win over his supporters; instead they’re now threatening to oust her if she doesn’t cave to their demands. Oops. If Hochul blocks tax hikes on the rich to fund “universal child care,” warned state Sen. Jabari Brisport at a “Tax the Rich” rally Sunday, “she has to go.” Brisport complains she’s shot down such plans twice before; “If you get a third strike, you’re out,” he threatened, to wild applause. Another tax-the-rich crowd booed Hochul — to her face — when she took the stage at a Mamdani event with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders a few weeks ago.

[C]ountries such as Jordan and Lebanon had extremely negative experiences with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian armed groups who were trying to overthrow or destabilize their governments (Black September in Jordan in 1970 and the Lebanese Civil War 1975-1990). Arab leaders often make strong statements, issue condemnations of Israeli actions, and attend high-profile summits that express solidarity with the Palestinians. Their gestures, however -- apart from Iran and Qatar -- are often not matched by decisive steps... The refusal of the Arab countries to absorb Palestinians (including the ex-prisoners) is...

The Justice Department’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey is facing death by a thousand procedural errors. Federal judges overseeing the criminal case have increasingly raised concerns about the department’s efforts to investigate and indict the adversary of President Trump, from the evidence presented to grand jurors to the prosecutor who made the government’s case. Any one of the issues could do away with Comey’s charges before he’s ever put on trial. “This is what happens when you try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney.

Ex-Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers announced plans Monday to step back from public commitments amid fallout from the release of emails between him and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The former Clinton and Obama administration official had exchanged emails and text messages with the disgraced financier well after his 2008 guilty plea in Florida for sex crimes – and up until Epstein’s July 2019 arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges, a trove of documents released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee revealed last week.

Drug pushing has long been a stain on Washington Square Park, declassing its iconic arch and proximity to NYU. Parents from around the world pay some $93,000 per year for their children to attend the august institution, despite hardened street dealers operating in all-too-close proximity. While street performers sharpen their acts, chess players position pieces on stone tables and NYU kids enjoy the park as a de facto campus, there have always been shadowy dudes hissing about their loose joints and cut-rate bags of blow.

President Trump pledged that prices will come down in a speech to owners, operators and suppliers of his beloved McDonald’s Monday. Trump’s address at the fast-food giant’s Impact Summit in Washington, DC, comes as concerns over his handling of the economy and the cost of living have mounted. “Prices are coming down,” the president claimed. “I will tell you that nobody has done what we’ve done in terms of pricing,” Trump argued. “We took over a mess. We had the highest inflation in the history of our country … and now we have normal inflation.”

The New York Times reported last month on the dire situation for gay people in Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death. Many are pressured to undergo brutal reassignment surgeries to live as the opposite sex. Now, instead of effeminate gay men, they’re just run-of-the-mill straight women. Problem solved. What Iran has effectively built is a medical system that treats homosexuality as a defect to be surgically erased. The goal isn’t self-expression; it’s social conformity. Transition becomes a tool of state-enforced heterosexuality. As a gay man myself, I think that sounds pretty barbaric. Though you could say that what’s occurring in the United States is arguably worse. Here,

If you live in one of the states or municipalities that held elections in 2025 – or, really, if you've been paying attention for the last 10 years – you already know that Democrats still don't have any electoral messaging that doesn't revolve around Donald Trump. He seems to consume their every waking thought and certainly is invoked in much of their campaign rhetoric; in a party devoid of ideas and overtaken by socialists and other far-left radicals, simply being anti-Trump is their best pitch to the American people.

Could “Cats” be changing his stripes? Influential billionaire GOP donor John Catsimatidis — a fierce critic of socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — now says he wants New York conservatives to work with the incoming administration to ensure the Big Apple’s success. The grocery store magnate hosted a round-table style panel at his WABC radio studio on Monday with right-leaning bigwigs like former NYPD Chief of Department John Chell and one-time Republican mayoral candidate Fernando Mateo. “The one thing that we all hold in common is that we all love New York… and we want New York to thrive like it always has,” the Gristedes supermarket owner said during the unusual press conference.

Jeff Bezos made some significant changes at The Washington Post, most notably to the Opinion Page. The first real signal of what was coming was his decision to quash the Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris in the election, which led to an inexorable exodus from the top echelons of the paper. He instituted buyouts, and made clear that paper would no longer be laser-focused on being a shill for the Democrats and their further left-wing allies. He announced to the world that the Post was moving in a new direction, and the big question became whether that was possible, and how much things would change.

A short time ago the UN Security Council voted to adopt President Trump's peace plan for Gaza. This is being seen as a big win for the Trump administration. The United Nations Security Council on Monday approved President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, a breakthrough that provides a legal U.N. mandate for the administration’s vision of how to move past the cease-fire and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip after two years of war. The Council’s vote was also a major diplomatic victory for the Trump administration. For the past two years, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas has raged, the United States had been isolated