Somalis in Minnesota are Defrauding the Government By Claming Autism, and Then Sending American Tax Dollars to the Somali Terror Group Al-Shabaab

—Ace

The biggest funder of the Al-Shabbab terror organization is the American taxpayer.

Are we still pretending that these are Americans, transformed into tricorn-wearing patriots simply by touching magical American soil?

These are foreign terrorist invaders, and criminals, and conquerors.

It is time to send them back.

And of course the Somalis' partner in funding terrorism with US taxpayer dollars is Tim Walz.

"The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer"

How some of the state's welfare funds ended up in the hands of a terror group

Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch.

And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots.

In many cases, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota's sizeable Somali community. Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source put it: "The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer."

Our investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy, when imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior. The predictable result is graft, with taxpayers left to foot the bill.
If you were to design a welfare program to facilitate fraud, it would probably look a lot like Minnesota's Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program. The HSS program, the first of its kind in the country, was launched with a noble goal: to help seniors, addicts, the disabled, and the mentally ill secure housing. It was designed with "low barriers to entry" and "minimal requirements for reimbursement."

Nonetheless, before the program went live in 2020, officials pegged its annual estimated price tag at $2.6 million.

Costs quickly spiraled out of control. In 2021, the program paid out more than $21 million in claims. In the following years, annual costs shot up to $42 million, then $74 million, then $104 million. During the first six months of 2025, payouts totaled $61 million.

On August 1, Minnesota's Department of Human Services moved to scrap the HSS program, noting that payment to 77 housing-stabilization providers had been terminated this year due to "credible allegations of fraud." Joe Thompson, then the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, went even further, stating that the "vast majority" of the HSS program was fraudulent.

On September 18, Thompson announced criminal indictments for HSS fraud against Moktar Hassan Aden, Mustafa Dayib Ali, Khalid Ahmed Dayib, Abdifitah Mohamud Mohamed, Christopher Adesoji Falade, Emmanuel Oluwademilade Falade, Asad Ahmed Adow, and Anwar Ahmed Adow--six of whom, according a U.S. Attorney's Office spokesperson, are members of Minnesota's Somali community. Thompson made clear that this is just the first round of charges for HSS fraud that his office will be prosecuting.

"Most of these cases, unlike a lot of Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren't just overbilling," Thompson said at a press conference announcing the indictments. "These are often just purely fictitious companies solely created to defraud the system, and that's unique in the extent to which we have that here in Minnesota."

...

"What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending," Thompson said. "I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away."
On September 18, the same day that the HSS fraud charges were announced, the U.S. Attorney's Office reported that a man named Abdullahe Nur Jesow had become the 56th defendant to plead guilty in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.

...

In 2019, Feeding Our Future received $3.4 million in federal funding disbursed by the state. In the months after the Covid-19 pandemic began, however, the nonprofit rapidly increased its number of sponsored sites. Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children. In 2021, Feeding Our Future received nearly $200 million in funding.

In reality, the money was being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya. In 2020, Minnesota officials raised concerns about the nonprofit's rapid expansion. In response, the group filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination related to outstanding site applications, noting that Feeding Our Future "caters to . . . foreign nationals."

...

The fraudsters have leveraged their growing political influence to cultivate close ties with Minnesota's elected officials. Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to, or appeared publicly with, Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minneapolis. Omar's deputy district director, Ali Isse, advocated on behalf of Feeding Our Future. Omar Fateh, a former state senator who recently ran for Minneapolis mayor, lobbied Governor Tim Walz in support of the program. And one of the accused, Abdi Nur Salah, served as a senior aide to Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey.

Just days later, on September 24, U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson announced his office's first indictment in yet another fraud case. This time, the scheme involved federally funded autism services for children.

...

Hassan and her co-conspirators "approached parents in the Somali community" and recruited their children into autism therapy services. It didn't matter, prosecutors suggested, if a child did not have an autism diagnosis: Hassan would facilitate a fraudulent one.

When gnarled raiders clamber over America's gunwhales, the idiots of the communist left cry "They're here to help us row the ship!"

No. They are pirates. They are here to kill, despoil, and plunder.

Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury and Democrat Party Wise-Man Larry Summers Is Booted from Harvard's Classrooms as the Leftwing School Examines His Relationsip with Pedophile Financier and "Wing Man" Jeffrey Epstein

—Ace

And when I say he was a wing man of Jeffrey Epstein, I do in fact mean the Jeffrey Epstein, not a Jeffrey Epstein.

Larry Summers, the former Harvard University president who served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, is stepping back from teaching and resigning from the board of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, as Harvard looks into his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Harvard is reviewing information of people associated with the university -- including Summers, its president from 2001 to 2006 -- that were featured in the Epstein documents to "evaluate what actions may be warranted," spokesperson Jason Newton said on Wednesday. Congress released documents last week showing the men remained in close contact after Epstein pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution in 2008.

Summers's spokesperson also said on Wednesday that his co-teachers will complete the remaining three class sessions of the courses he has been teaching this semester. "Summers is not scheduled to teach next semester," the spokesperson added. He will keep his tenure.

Summers said in a statement on the same day that he has resigned from the board of OpenAI -- one day after he announced that he would step back from his public commitments.

...

On Nov. 12, the House Oversight Committee released a trove of documents that included emails illuminating Epstein's ties to a network of world leaders, business tycoons and American politicians from both parties -- connections that continued long after Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008.
...

After the files were released, a series of boards and think tanks severed their relationships with Summers, including the Yale Budget Lab, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development and the Center for American Progress.

CAP, a left-leaning think tank, said in a statement that it had paused the launch of a working group focused on economic proposals, which Summers was supposed to help lead. For decades, Summers has been a key player on economic policy in Washington.

The Democrat Party protects its own:

Tosca Austen
@ToscaAusten

💀EPSTEIN'S Ghost Claws Out
Of A Long-Sealed Vault.

LARRY SUMMERS --former U.S. Treasury Secretary For Bill Clinton falls first, steps down from the Board of Open AI.

Let's talk about privilege.

Imagine being so powerful that even after texting Jeffrey Epstein--the day before his arrest, bragging about canoodling with the daughter of a top CCP banker--and getting caught red-handed in the Epstein Estate files...

And after all that, you STILL get to keep your Harvard office.

You STILL get to shape the next Democratic administration.

You STILL get to walk FREE. That's Larry Summers in 2025. Insulated from the inside.

And Nobody is canceling him Yet.

For 30 years Summer WAS the Democratic Party's brain:

-->Clinton's Treasury Secretary who deregulated Wall Street and opened the door for China's WTO entry.
-->Obama's economic czar who ran the recovery
-->Biden's inflation prophet and quiet advisor
-->The guy Socialists love to hate but centrists can't live without

Life was good for Larry Summers.

Until the House dropped the Epstein emails this week and the mask slipped off completely.

Hundreds of messages:

-->Summers whining to Epstein that his 20-something "mentee" Keyu Jin (daughter of Jin Liqun, the godfather of China's Belt & Road) won't sleep with him unless he keeps mentoring her

-->She can't have it without sex" -- direct quote to Epstein, a convicted sex trafficker

-->Epstein replying "she's doomed to be with you" like it's locker-room banter

-->Summers texting Epstein literally 24 hours BEFORE the 2019 raid
-->Summers wife Elisa hitting Epstein up for poetry-project cash and inviting him to dinner

All while Summers, as HARVARD president, took Epstein's millions and let him roam campus like a VIP.👀

And the CCP angle? Keyu Jin's dad isn't just some banker -- he's the founding head of the AIIB, Xi's answer to the World Bank.

Beneath our noses, Summers was chasing the princess while selling America on "strategic interdependence" with Beijing.

He's been radioactive for days and the silence from the big Dem accounts is deafening.

Why is that?

Because Larry Summers is the living bridge between Wall Street, the CCP, and the Jeffrey Epstein blackmail network -- and for decades that made him untouchable instead of unemployable.

This guy literally heaped praise on a Red Chinese official charged with expanding the Red China Empire's tentacles across the world in order to induce his daughter to fuck him.

Even without him asking his "wing man" Jeffrey Epstein for advice on how to seduce a much-younger woman, this is a firing offense. And I mean "firing from all positions of public and especially governmental trust."

Jasmine Ratchet Demonstrates Again Why Her Nickname Isn't "Jasmine Sentient"

—Ace

Defending her fellow Strong Black Woman Who Takes Orders from White Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein -- Stacey Plaskett, I mean -- Jasmine Ratchet took the difficult action of standing on the floor of the House (difficult for the floor of the House, I mean) and declared that many Republicans had taken money from "a Jeffrey Epstein," including Mitt Romney, George Bush, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

Democrats Urge the Military to Stage a Coup, Trump Gently Cautions Them That the Punishment for Sedition is "DEATH!"

—Ace

A group of Democrats did another coordinated propaganda session, this time all repeating the seditious demand that the military resist "illegal orders" -- by which they mean policy decisions the duly-elected Commander in Chief makes, like using the National Guard to quell insurrections -- and promises that the Democrats will make sure they're all pardoned and taken care after the coup.

Democrat House Member Charged With Stealing $5 Million in FEMA Funds for Her Own Benefit

—Ace

She used the stolen money partly to fund her congressional campaign, so that she was in a position to steal more money.

Nick Sortor @nicksortor

🚨 BREAKING: The DOJ has just charged Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (FL) with stealing $5 MILLION in FEMA funds meant for disaster relief

If convicted, she faces 53 YEARS in federal prison.

FINALLY! Time to EXPEL her as well, @SpeakerJohnson.

Sheila also is alleged to have used a lot of that stolen FEMA money to fund her Congressional campaign.

What a piece of trash. Lock her up.

More from Bill Melugin:

Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_

BREAKING: DOJ charges Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) with stealing $5 million in FEMA funds, laundering the proceeds, and then using the money to support her 2021 Congressional campaign. She faces up to 53 years in prison if convicted.

According to the indictment, DOJ says:

"Cherfilus-McCormick, 46, and her brother Edwin Cherfilus, 51, both of Miramar, worked through their family health-care company on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract in 2021. In July 2021, the company received an overpayment of $5 million in FEMA funds.

Of course covid was part of this, as well as the Biden Money Spigot for his left-wing frenz.

The indictment alleges that the defendants conspired to steal that $5 million and routed it through multiple accounts to disguise its source. Prosecutors allege that a substantial portion of the misappropriated funds was used as candidate contributions to Cherfilus-McCormick's 2021 congressional campaign and for the personal benefit of the defendants.

The indictment further alleges that Cherfilus-McCormick and Nadege Leblanc, 46, of Miramar, arranged additional contributions using straw donors, funneling other monies from the FEMA-funded Covid-19 contract to friends and relatives who then donated to the campaign as if using their own money.

The indictment also charges Cherfilus-McCormick and her 2021 tax preparer David K. Spencer, 41, of Davie, with conspiring to file a false federal tax return. According to the indictment, they falsely claimed political spending and other personal expenses as business deductions and inflated charitable contributions in order to reduce her tax obligations."

The Morning Rant: AI...Is It A Bubble?

—CBD

So...is AI a financial bubble, or is it an evolution in computing, customer service, data management, and research of all kinds?

Yes.

40% of the S&P500 market cap is directly or indirectly involved with AI, which is a disturbing concentration. But whatever one thinks of AI, and to be honest, I don't think much of it, it has penetrated American and world business very quickly as tangible products and tools. And unlike the typical bubble, we do not (yet) have overcapacity. In fact, RAM prices are skyrocketing because of undercapacity. Is there cheap and abundant credit available to build overcapacity? Not as much as before the Global Financial Crisis, or the oil boom and bust. Will that change? Absolutely. Are the financial markets going to create complex instruments to increase credit availability? You betcha! It is already issuing debt collateralized by GPUs!

The real question is: What will happen to demand for AI products for the foreseeable future? As it becomes more sophisticated, it will gradually replace rote tasks and, increasingly, low-level customer interaction. That is already occurring, and it is occasionally useful, but often extremely irritating. It is also cheaper, or at least has the promise of saving labor costs, so regardless of its quality, it will be implemented by many companies.

But one limitation is power. Everyone knows that AI requires oceans of power, and not the fake, sometimes-on-sometimes-off green crap. It requires nice reliable natural gas, or oil, or coal, or nuclear power to run the vast server farms that it needs. And that is a very good thing. It will provide a stable demand for domestic energy production, and drive the new generation of nuclear. There is nothing like the promise of profit to end American corporation's fixation on green energy.

And if AI is a bubble, and it bursts? What happens to all of that now-excess power generation? Some will get mothballed, but some will be repurposed for the mundane but vital powering of the rest of the economy.

I doubt that AI is revolutionary. For the casual user, it is a bit more than a toy, but not yet an integral part of life. For the dedicated user it is a very useful tool to speed up tasks that are easily doable, but take time. Can it innovate? No. Can it invent? Well, yes, but those are appropriately called "hallucinations," and is the AI industry's dirty little secret!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Street In Joliet
Aaron Bohrod

The Morning Report — 11/20/25

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids.

Per the lyrics to a classic from The Who: I hope I die before I get old Well I'm at the point of wishing that upon if not the entirety of today's younger generation(s) then certainly an alarmingly large number of that cohort. And to be fair, retroactively they can take quite a few of the Baby Boomers to whom Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey were referring, with them straight to Hell. Because it was they who begat this insanity, and if only they had indeed died before they got old and became, teachers, thought leaders and politicians perhaps we could have avoided the cultural rot and madness that now threatens to drag whatever vestiges of civilization that are represented by America as founded that yet remain and have not been set alight like a sleeping passenger on a NYC and now a Chicago subway train.

It is to weep. But here we are, and we cannot know the future. Perhaps Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk weren't one-offs. Only time will tell.

Yet, on the heels of our latest episode of the podcast, where CBD and our good friend Jim Lakely, VP and Dir. of Communications at the Heartland Institute discussed the latter's latest nightmare polls about the rise in popularity of Socialism (linked here and in the sidebar as well as available on the outlets listed at the bottom of this post) . . .

Heartland has released this poll which is just twisting the rusty knife in the open wound.

41% of likely voters aged 18-39 voiced support for a proposal to give an advanced AI system authority to control public policymaking decisions 36% of likely voters aged 18-39 said they would support a proposal that would give AI the “authority to determine the rights that belong to individuals and families, including rights related to speech, religious practices, government authority, and property” 35% said they would support a proposal to give AI authority to control all the world’s largest militaries

And speaking of the world's largest militaries, what of our own?

“Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection.” . . .There must have been a time in American history when six sitting lawmakers urging members of the military to defy the commander-in-chief would have been viewed as outright sedition — and those lawmakers would have quickly faced justice. In the age of Trump, however, those days are long gone.

Touting their prior military and intelligence service, Democrat Sens. Elissa Slotkin (MI), who organized the video, Mark Kelly (AZ), and Reps. Chris Deluzio (PA), Maggie Goodlander (NH), Chrissy Houlahan (PA), and Jason Crow CO), launched a surreal video on Tuesday in which they called on troops to refuse to carry out what they consider to be President Donald Trump’s “illegal” orders.

Unlike others of "my generation" I was raised with a respect for and a trust of our military. Considering what an alarming number of our top intelligence and law enforcement officers had done in engineering the Russia Collusion hoax, as well as the attitudes of individuals like Mark Milley, Mad Dog Mattis and other high-ranking brass, as well as the destruction of morale and preparedness in the ranks that swept through them, from Buck Private all the way to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff brought about under Barack Hussein Obama, (this on top of the malign influence of the military industrial complex and the warmongers of the neocon and other varieties that still exists) — and considering all we have seen over the past decade or more given the rot and corruption in and out of government, I no longer have confidence that there exists a shocking number of service members who will hear and obey this siren song of sedition.

GIven the insane rise in popularity of socialism which didn't appear out of thin air but has been inculcated for decades, my fear about our military is not necessarily irrational in this light, or is it?

And lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
• “This is not America. This is an insurgency,” Lang yells over the shouting. “They are taking over our country. They want us all dead.”
  Muslims Surround Conservative Protesters Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ In Dearborn, Michigan
  
• “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection.”
  Sedition? Six Congressional Democrats Urge US Troops to Defy Orders From Trump
  
• Victor Davis Hanson: Rigid ideologies like DEI, climate dogma, and anti-Trump obsession keep collapsing under their own contradictions, leaving their loudest champions looking increasingly absurd.
  The Embarrassments of Ideology

Daily Tech News 20 November 2025

—Pixy Misa

• The EU is considering scaling back the GDPR rules after learning that every website on the planet uses cookies. (The Verge)
  
  Finally.

  "We have all the ingredients in the EU to succeed. But our companies, especially our start-ups and small businesses, are often held back by layers of rigid rules," said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president for implementing layers of rigid rules at the European Commission.

  You don't say.

Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - November 19, 2025 [Nostalgia Rex]

—Open Blogger

Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety. What? A double shenanigans link?! Yep - just for tonight. Because you're special (and it fits with the theme).

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another random assortment of interweb morsels and mystery clicks. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. Good will offerings of amusing puns are happily accepted. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. Don't be a traffic cone.

"Aayyyy! Time for Wednesday ONT content!"

***

Today is World Toilet Day according to the United Nations. Happy toilet day! No, this isn't AI and I did not make it up. In the spirit of the celebration, commenter number 2 will win the Official ONT Toilet Bowl Award for the day.

***

Imagine the work of an archeologist that attempts to construct a picture of what life was like based solely on fragments and pieces. Egyptologists work to figure out the story of ancient Egypt based on sculptures, tombs, ruins of buildings, and hieroglyphs. Dinosaurologists (otherwise known as paleontologists) attempt to imagine the life of dinosaurs before the unfortunate asteroid incident.

What will people of the future use to reconstruct our world? What could they look at? What would they think if they used only magazine covers?

The ONT is here to tackle the hard questions (in the name of science). What year? Let's give 1978 a try.

"This is going to be very random, isn't it?"

Yes. Yes it is. Enjoy!

Please excuse tankdemon for being late. He is STILL digging through his collection of Compute! magazines looking for the issue with Hunt the Wumpus cheat codes.

***

Exit question: How many are still being published today? ( I don't know the answer - I just ask questions.)

Because I knew you would ask, "Weeds, Trees and Turf Magazine" made it until 2000 before being absorbed by Turf Magazine which continues to publish quality content in hard copy and virtual form for "green industry professionals, offering insights on business management, greenskeeping, lawn care, landscape design, irrigation, snow and ice management, and the latest landscaping equipment." Carl Spackler approves.

***

Top ten magazines in the US in December 1978 by average paid circulation:

1 - TV Guide - 19,137,406
2 - Reader's Digest - 18,108,000
3 - National Geographic - 10,184,000
4 - Better Homes and Gardens - 8,006,357
5 - Family Circle - 7,503,124
6 - Woman's Day - 7,003,456
7 - Good Housekeeping - 5,406,799
8 - Ladies' Home Journal - 5,402,131
9 - McCall's - 5,305,189
10- Playboy - 5,206,111

***

The Pittsburgh police scanner keeps giving. Thank you people of Pittsburgh!

Not sure why you'd call the police, but...

The good news is that it isn't an intruder. The bad news...

Grand finale:

***

ONT Department of Legal Mumbo Jumbo - are you following the court battles on gerrymandering? On a 2-1 vote, a Federal district court on Nov 18 decided that redrawn congressional district maps in Texas were invalid because they were "racially gerrymandered." Ace covered the story yesterday.

If you are following this story, you'll be interested to know that a separate dissent was released today. Highly unusual. Want to know why? Read the dissent.

Other than general information, why am I posting this? The dissent is brutal. Brutal - on a personal level, on the legal merits and on the facts. It makes the majority opinion look even worse than originally thought. It is worthy of the book thread. It even has its own docket entry (for reasons). I believe an appeal is skipping the 5th Circuit and headed to SCOTUS. Stay tuned.

***

Venus Hum and some guys in blue paint for the big ONT finish with the nod to Donna Summer from 1978:

***

Written correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Are you lurking ?? This ONT was not re-imagined by Ken Burns. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Close it up

Squirrel Aggression Display Cafe

—Ace

Secret Beach, Oregon
by DanielSnaps_

Inside a squirrel's nest. I mean a hole in a tree, not those nasty things they build.

Okay, now I understand that these "if you're left brained you see an X, if you're right brained you see a Y" memes are clickbait. No one sees X or Y. Everyone sees Z, the thing that it obviously is. There is no one who doesn't immediately recognize this silhouette and it's not a f***ing turtle or rabbit, I can tell you that.

And here's another one.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... we can't get fooled again!

No wonder we all saw a cow. I feel very dumb. And I apologize for the Fake News.

Teacher creates a cult for her students with herself as the Cult Leader.

Something something from that Lion King movie. Based on the videos I see, meerkats spend all day hanging out with warthogs. Nothing to see here.

Art with frost.

Polite dogs wait for their slow friend to come to dinner.

Handsome cow.

Steampunk decapitation device.

Oh, to have one tenth of the joy and rizz of this dog.

Rabbit trembles at having his nails cut. Animals just hate this.

Leopard's skills at stalking from a reclining position are unmatched.

Playing with your cat.

So you like worms, Olivia?

All beings love a slide.

Caretaker runs with his elephants. Looks fun, and also, very dangerous. You have to have a lot of faith in the agility of elephants.

James Comer: I'll Give Bill and Hillary Clinton the Steve Bannon Treatment -- Prosecution Then Prison -- If They Continue to Refuse to Testify

—Ace

If only, if only.

We'll see. We certainly have adequate justification and adequate provocation given that Biden sent Steven Bannon and Peter Navarro to prison for refusing to testify before the J6 illegal committee.

The Clintons are demanded to testify about a matter the Democrats claim must be fully exposed and aired out, the Epstein Pedophile ring.

So what excuse can they offer the Clintons for refusing to tell us what they know?

Just The News:

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Tuesday said he would give former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the same treatment Democrats gave Steve Bannon if they do not comply with congressional subpoenas to testify on their alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

House Democrats referred Bannon for prosecution after he failed to comply with a House January 6 subcommittee subpoena. He was later convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison in 2022.

Comer said the Clintons are two Democrats that his committee has not heard back from regarding subpoenas for their testimony on their ties to Epstein, and that continued silence will be met with criminal referrals.

"We expect to hear from Bill and Hillary Clinton," Comer said on the "Just The News, No Noise" TV show. "Donald Trump answered questions for years about Jeffrey Epstein. Every day he gets asked questions about Epstein, and he answers them in front of the American people. We've subpoenaed Republicans and Democrats.

"Other Democrats have sent letters saying they knew nothing about Epstein, which would hold in court if something ever comes out that they did know something, then they've committed perjury there," he continued. "But the Clintons have never responded. They're the one group in this investigation that's never had to answer questions in front of a credible reporter, and they've never certainly answered questions from attorneys or members of Congress.

"So we expect the Clintons to come in, or I expect the Clintons to be met with the same fate that Bannon and [Peter] Navarro were met with when the Democrats were in control," he concluded.

Comer also noted that other Democrats have not helped bring the Clintons in to testify because they are too focused on trying to criminally connect Trump to Epstein.
"

Two Partisan Hacks Ignored Supreme Court Precedent to Claim the Texas Redistricting Map Was Illegal.
Judge Smith Dissents

—Ace

And what a dissent.

Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night!"

I dissent from the entirety of Judge Brown's opinion granting a
preliminary injunction.

* * * * *
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

I append this Preliminary Statement to dispel any suspicion that I'm
responsible for any delay in issuing the preliminary injunction or that I am or saw
slow-walking the ruling. I also need to highlight the pernicious judicial
misbehavior of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown.

In my 37 years on the federal bench, this is the most outrageous conduct
by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved.

In summary, Judge Brown has issued a 160-page opinion without giving
me any reasonable opportunity to respond. I will set forth the details. The
readers can judge for themselves.

This three-judge district court held a nine-day evidentiary hearing/trial
on the motion for preliminary injunction. That hearing was concluded Friday
October 10. The judges immediately retired to confer. Judges Brown and
Guaderrama voted to grant the preliminary injunction. I voted to deny. It was
understood that the majority judges would begin putting together an opinion.
During the next 26 days, there was silence--nary a word from either
judge.

On Wednesday November 5, Judge Brown sent me a 13-page outline of
the expected majority opinion "so that you and your chambers might be able to
begin preparing your dissenting opinion."

Nothing else for a week.

On Wednesday November 12, Judge Brown sent a message stating, "We
currently anticipate issuing our injunction on Saturday, November 15. We will
endeavor to get you a draft before we issue it. Sadly, we do not believe we can
wait for a dissenting opinion before we rule--the fuse is simply too short in light
of Purcell. We will, however, note on the opinion that you are dissenting. We are
not trying to cut you out, we just don't have the time. Ideally, of course, we'd
have liked to have seen your dissent before we issue our opinion, but that will
also be impossible."

So, in other words: They withheld their corrupt and lawless decision from him so that he couldn't construct a dissent, and then rushed out the ruling claiming there was suddenly a big hurry that would not permit him to review it.

Yes, you heard it right. To summarize, in case the reader doesn't get the point: Judge Brown was announcing that he would issue an opinion three days later--an opinion that I hadn't even seen and might not be furnished before its issuance. That is unthinkable, but it occurred--and not accidentally.

I'm omitting further details about this game of hide-the-salami the other judges played with the dissenting judge. See the actual dissent for those details. I want to get to the forest without seeing each stalk of bamboo one-by-one.

This outrage speaks for itself. Any pretense of judicial restraint, good faith, or trust by these two judges is gone. If these judges were so sure of their result, they would not have been so unfairly eager to issue the opinion sans my dissent, or they could have waited for the dissent in order to join issue with it.

What indeed are they afraid of?

Judges on multi-judge courts understand how important is the
deliberative process to fair and accurate judicial decisionmaking. As I say later
in this dissent, judges get paid to disagree as well as to find common ground.
Judges in the majority don't get to tell a dissenting judge or judges that they can't
participate. If the two judges on this panel get away with what they have done,
it sets a horrendous precedent that "might makes right" and the end justifies the
means.

...

When I was a newer on the bench, a friend asked me, "Now that you've
been a judge for a few years, do you have any particular advice?" I replied,
"Always sit with your back to the wall."

Now Judge Smith names names -- specifically, George and Alexander Soros, who are funding this lawsuit and many other lawsuits challenging Republican redistricting.

The main winners from Judge Brown's opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent.

..

The resulting dissent is far from a literary masterpiece. If, however, there
were a Nobel Prize for Fiction, Judge Brown's opinion would be a prime
candidate.

Judge Brown could have saved himself and the readers a lot of time and
effort by merely stating the following:

I just don't like what the Legislature did here. It was unnecessary, and it seems unfair to disadvantaged voters. I need to step in to make sure wiser heads prevail over the nakedly partisan and racially questionable actions of these zealous lawmakers. Just as I did to the lawmakers in Galveston County in Petteway, I'm using my considerable clout as a federal district judge to put a stop to bad policy judgments. After all, I get paid to do what I think is right.

In 37 years as a federal judge, I've served on hundreds of three-judge
panels. This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever
witnessed.

There's the old joke: What's the difference between God and a federal
district judge? Answer: God doesn't think he's a federal judge. Or a different
version of that joke: An angel rushes to the head of the Heavenly Host and says,
"We have a problem. God has delusions of grandeur." The head angel calmly
replies, "What makes you say that?" The first angel whispers, "He's wearing
his robe and keeps imagining he's a federal judge."

Only this time, it isn't funny.

I'm omitting another long passage, in which Smith establishes that Judge Brown loves claiming that any Republican redistricting efforts are necessarily racist, and they all must therefore be stopped.

Smith previously dissented in another case of leftwing judges invalidating legislators' redistricting decisions, and the reviewing court found that he was right and the leftwing judges were wrong.

Speaking of fortune: Just a few weeks ago, the Fifth Circuit answered the
main question at hand, holding that "[t]he most obvious reason for mid-cycle
redistricting, of course, is partisan gain.3 The question for this three-judge
district panel is whether the Texas Legislature did its mid-decade congressional
redistricting to gain political advantage or, instead, because the main goal of
Texas's Republican legislators is to slash the voting rights of persons of color.

Once again, here we go again: Criticizing the behavior of DOJ lawyers in
last decade's redistricting battle, I noted the following:

It was obvious, from the start, that the DoJ attorneys viewed state officials and the legislative majority and their staffs as a bunch of backwoods hayseed bigots who bemoan the abolition of the poll tax and pine for the days of literacy tests and lynchings. And the DoJ lawyers saw themselves as an expeditionary landing party arriving here, just in time, to rescue the state from oppression . . . . The [DoJ] moreover views Texas redistricting litigation as the potential grand prize and lusts for the day when it can reimpose preclearance via Section 3(c).[4]

"Preclearance" is the old regime in which southern states -- states of the former Confederacy -- could not change their election laws at all without prior approval -- "pre-clearance" -- from the federal government. This regime was finally ended about ten years ago-- but leftwing judges are trying to bring it back through the back door.

...

Because the "obvious reason" for the 2025 redistricting "of course, is
partisan gain," Judge Brown commits grave error in concluding that the Texas
Legislature is more bigoted than political.

...

It's all politics, on both sides of the partisan aisle. George and Alex Soros
have their hands all over this.

One of the plaintiffs' top experts is Matt Barreto. He is a paid Soros
operative and does not attempt to hide it. His CV confirms it. He expects to
receive $2.5 million6 from George and Alexander Soros. Nor is this something
new. Soros has been pumping money into Barreto's UCLA Voting Rights
Project for years.8 And this steady supply of money won't stop until 2026, at the
earliest. Unsurprisingly, Barreto has been on quite a road show for years,
parading across the country opposing Republican redistricting.

That is the tip of the iceberg. The lawyers are involved as well.

...

To his credit, the lead counsel for plaintiffs does not try to hide it, either.
Chad Dunn acknowledged so in open court--he works with Barreto at the same
Voting Rights Project11 that receives Soros funding. Dunn is a respected attorney
in Texas election law cases, most recently serving as counsel in the Jackson
case,12 in which the Fifth Circuit squarely declared the political nature of mid-
decade redistricting. Mr. Dunn, along with his Voting Rights Project colleague
Sonni Waknin, also represented the plaintiffs before Judge Brown in the Petteway
case, which was overturned by the en banc Fifth Circuit.

Mark Gaber also appeared in Petteway and Jackson. He is the Senior
Redistricting Director at Campaign Legal Center, a Soros-funded group.

It does not stop there. The Elias Law Group draws from the Soros
coffers, too. Counsel for the instant Gonzales plaintiffs, David Fox, is a partner
at Elias, which "has collected more than $104 million" from Democrat Party
committees and donors, including Mr. Soros.15 Firm Chair Marc Elias formed
entities, "tucked inside large existing nonprofits," that "raised tens of millions
of dollars from some of the richest donors on the left--including from
foundations funded by Mr. Soros."

On a silver platter, Judge Brown hands Soros a victory at the expense of
the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. Judge Brown won't tell you that. I
just did.

Relatedly, Gavin Newsom took a victory lap in Houston to celebrate the
Democrat redistricting win with Proposition 50.19 Indeed, he did so "on rival
Gov. Greg Abbott's home turf Saturday and called on other blue states to push
back on a GOP effort to retain control of the U.S. House." And after the
improperly premature issuance of Judge Brown's opinion, the Houston Chronicle
pointed out that Governor Newsom quickly tweeted, "Donald Trump and Greg
Abbott played with fire, got burned -- and democracy won . . . This ruling is a
win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections."21
That tells you all that you need to know--this is about partisan politics,
plain and simple.

...

Regardless of one's political slant, it's obvious what Texas is trying to do in 2025. The Republicans' national margin in the House of Representatives is LULAC
so slim that squeezing out a majority might even depend, day-to-day, on whether
some seats are vacant because of deaths or resignations.

In 2021, the Texas Legislature, with both houses controlled by
Republicans, devised a strategy of creating safe seats for both Republicans and
Democrats, but with a decided majority of the state's delegation still Republican.
Whether (as a matter of political clout) that was the wisest strategy is disputed
and indeed was fulsomely debated in 2021.

In mid-2025, the strategy changed: The new plan was to make more seats
winnable for Republicans by moving some Democrats incumbents from their
districts and rendering other districts unwinnable by Democrats. That sacrificed
the wider margins in some of the old districts. The tradeoff is obvious.

There is some speculation that this new strategy will backfire on
Republicans in 2026 because, if they do poorly in the mid-terms, the new
Republican seats created in 2025 will be a Pyrrhic victory, because they will lose
elections in the closer districts. That is purely a matter of political strategy that
federal judges have no business touching.

Apparently, the plaintiffs -- funded by George Soros -- argued that creating fewer but safer Republican seats, as they did in 2021, is obviously the correct political choice for Republicans, so that now that they've decided to go for the incorrect choice -- more seats, but each less defensible -- it can be for no other reason than RACISM.

Not changing political fortunes or strategies. No, it must be Racism. There is no other explanation.

The challenge faced by these plaintiffs The challenge faced by these plaintiffs and Judge Brown is to explain how it could be that the Republicans would sacrifice their stated goal of political gain for racial considerations. It makes no sense to advance the notion that the Republican Legislature would draw districts for the purpose of disadvantaging racial and ethnic minorities if, by doing so, they lessen the number of new Republican seats they might gain.

The plaintiffs' theory is both perverse and bizarre. They actually
contend that if the Republicans are sincere about gaining more seats, they could
have drawn not five, but six, seven, or eight additional seats and that the reason
they did not is that the real reason is racial animus. The absurdity of that notion
speaks for itself. Yet it's all that the plaintiffs and Judge Brown have to offer to
defeat the State's claim that the 2025 lines were drawn for the sake of politics
and not race.

Smith now points out that the Supreme Court seems likely to blow up the whole idea that minorities get special protection in redistricting -- but rather than wait for that coming ruling, the liberals rush to get last licks in.

Judge Brown rushes to issue this injunction before the tension between Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and racial-gerrymandering jurisprudence is resolved by the Supreme Court in the currently-pending Callais case. Given Judge Brown's creative read of the facts and novel approach to the law, he should have considered denying this injunction for that reason alone, recognizing that a fundamental shift in voting-rights jurisprudence is not unlikely. Because the power to stay proceedings "is incidental to the power inherent in every court to control the disposition of the causes on its docket with economy of time and effort for itself, for counsel, and for litigants," it would have been well within the authority of this three-judge court.

The fact that Callais may fundamentally change the nature of this case
also weighs in favor of a stay. It is reckless for this court to proceed with opining
on the merits, which amounts to nothing more than a general guess as to whether
existing voting-rights jurisprudence will survive Callais.

* * * * *

Judge Brown has a lingering habit. He correctly recites part of a legal
principle, then veers off track along a spectrum--intentionally misleading at best
to false at worst. The opinion is replete with selectively copying and pasting parts
of legal rules or standards. Beyond that, things get dicey.

This holds especially for Judge Brown's discussion of the standard for
preliminary injunctions.

He points out that Brown first correctly states the first criterion for an injunction -- a "substantial likelihood of success on the merits" (after a full trial)-- but then immediately omits the "substantial" part and just rules that the Soros plaintiffs are merely likely to win.

A modifier like "substantial" is meant to limit injunctions to only cases where the outcome is barely arguable, and the ultimate ruling mostly fore-ordained.

Instead, Brown just says he thinks one side will probably win and boom, there's your injunction.

...

He should give less consideration to the omission and more consideration
to the actual words on the page. Judge Brown accurately cuts and pastes the
following: A preliminary injunction is "an extraordinary and drastic remedy
which should not be granted unless the movant clearly carries the burden of
persuasion," and the likelihood of success on the merits is "the most important"
factor of the framework.

But the cut-and-paste job is selective. Judge Brown left out the fact that,
giving attention to the relevant cases cited in Jackson, "the most important" factor
language in Jackson27 is a direct quote from Mock v. Garland.28 And any cursory
reading of Mock easily reveals that the word "substantial"29 (the word Judge
Brown tries to avoid) is part of the first factor in no uncertain terms: "a
substantial likelihood of success on the merits."

Judge Brown doesn't tell you that. I just did.

The opinion is caught in an illogical straitjacket from which it cannot
escape.

...

This is intentionally misleading at best, disingenuously false at worst.

There he goes again.

...

If this is not judicial activism, I am not sure what would be.

...

If this were a law school exam, the opinion would deserve an "F."

Remember that recent Fifth Circuit redistricting case, the one that Judge
Brown said was procedurally and factually analogous to the instant one. Judge
Brown conveniently omits the key sentence in that mid-decade redistricting
case: The "most obvious reason for mid-cycle redistricting, of course, is partisan
gain." Judge Brown doesn't even pretend to grapple with Justice Stevens's
relevant quote. It is far from a mere coincidence that the opinion goes to the
mats over the omission of one word, when it suits the results-driven outcome,
but overlooks the most significant sentence about the most obvious reason for
mid-decade redistricting, which is partisan gain.

The combined weight of the procedural and substantive law is against
what these plaintiffs and Judge Brown are trying to do. Not only do plaintiffs
have to show clearly that they are entitled to the drastic and extraordinary remedy
of an injunction, but they must also do so when Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit
precedent is stacked against them. Nothing in any bag of results-oriented tricks
can save that wished-for result.

Judge Brown is an unskilled magician. The audience knows what is
coming next.

...

This panel decides both law and fact. The salient issue of fact is whether
the Legislature drew the new lines on account of race. The answer is easy: It
did not. And that question is not even close.

Did I forget to mention: "The most obvious reason for mid-cycle
redistricting, of course, is partisan gain."

He notes the testimony of the man who used statistical analysis to redraw the maps -- and his testimony is that the maps are based on R vs. D partisan analysis, not race.

Judge Brown ignores all of this to find the "fact" that the maps are based on race.

This order, replete with legal and factual error, and accompanied by naked procedural abuse, demands reversal.

* * * * *

Darkness descends on the Rule of Law. A bumpy night, indeed.

My take? Judge Smith's argument is sturdy and strong, built from the tallest, straightest bamboo.

The fire in this dissent, and the revelation that the other judges are naked partisans who never find a Republican election move they can't overrule, gives me some hope that the Supreme Court will stay this lawless injunction -- again -- and deal the Soroses a well-deserved loss.

Olivia Nuzzi's Got a Fuzzi and She Wants All the World to See It

—Ace

Olivia Nuzzi is -- then was -- and now is again a fantastically overpromoted "journalist."

I first noticed her suddenly appearing everywhere in media about six or eight years ago. I didn't understand why she was suddenly ubiquitous, as she had broken no major stories. She did cover... Anthony Weiner's mayoral campaign, and got the pretty minor scoop that his campaign manager had quit after he lied to her, I think probably about the affair that was revealed during that campaign.

But that's not really enough to make a media star, is it? She seemed to be yet another "on author" attitudinal writer, mostly writing slightly-disguised opinion pieces in which the primary point of view was her own and the primary subject was always herself.

She was Wonkette with a more aggressive agent.

She recently had a fall from grace -- a brief and shallow fall from grace -- when her former fiance, the damp liberal cuckold Ryan Lizza, revealed that she had been having a torrid "digital affair" -- which is a nice way of saying "sexting and dirty pictures with mutual masturbation" -- with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while writing a piece about him. And, liberals spat: as she was writing unfavorably about his then-opponent, Joe Biden.

The left hissed that this breached journalistic ethics but may I ask: what journalistic ethics? What the fuck are you even talking about?

Yes, she had a conflict of interest in that she had an emotional attachment to the subject she was writing about and therefore a bias against his political rivals.

Which she did not disclose.

This is true of the entire media, which has been having an equally torrid "digital affair" (and often, a physical one) with the Democrat Party for decades.

Yes, Olivia Nuzzi should have disclosed that she was unable to evaluate RFKJr. objectively.

And so should "former" Democrat aide and Gun Control, Inc. spokesman Jake Tapper declare that he, too, in unable to cover the object of his passionate affections with the level of objectivity the media used to pretend to require.

Anyway. Olivia Nuzzi's back in the news. She served the briefest exile from "journalism" -- I think she was fired and exiled from "journalism" for, what, a year? -- and is now hired again to be celebrity gossip sheet and reactionary liberal rag Vanity Fair's west coast editor.

She also sat for an "interview" with the New York Times as public relations for her return to "journalism."

And she's written a book, which I assume is mostly about her adventures in celebrity dick-riding.

Vanity Fair excerpted it. Here, she deploys all her Airport Thriller skill as a novelist, by which I mean she can't write worth a f**, to wax eloquently about... the worm that died in RFKJr.'s head, and how she learned to hate that worm and love that worm.

Later, when the affair turns cold and RFKJr. seems uninterested, she complains:

Okay, that one is not real, that one is a parody of Nuzzi's breathlessly-indiscreet style by a guy calling himself "Magilla." But I chuckled when I read that and I have to admit it took me in. I wanted you to have that same pleasure.

And given Nuzzi's actual writing, can you really blame me for falling for it?

Her former fiance, Ryan Lizza, himself an overpromoted left-wing "journalist" but nearly to the extent of his almost-wife, was a cuck before he was actually a cuckold. To fire back at Nuzzi, and maybe to anticipate nasty things she has to say about him (she has accused him of "hacking" her email and stalking her), Lizza has just dropped another piece about his former bed-partner, and it's... well it's something.

I don't know if I really appreciate this vengeance-by-online-trashing kind of article, but I can't say he doesn't reveal a few things about Olivia Nuzzi, and answer questions I had, like "How did this low-talent nothing who looks like Faye Dunaway -- and when I say that understand that I do not find Faye Dunaway actually attractive, just... "strking" -- suddenly become the It Girl of the leftwing media?"

The answer may surprise you.

Or, if you've followed the career of MSNBC's -- excuse me, MS NOW's -- Katie Tur, it might not surprise you all that much.

Lizza begins with some bad attempts to sound like a trash novelist. In this, he's competing with Olivia Nuzzi herself, who's also now attempting to sound like a bad trash novelist. They're competing to see who can get Harold Robbins to roll over in his grave the most vigorously.

Olivia had just returned from a reporting trip--at least that's what she told me it was--and her Herschel backpack, the one with the flap that never quite closed properly, was tossed beside our bed, its contents scattered on the floor.

That's when I noticed the sheets of Kimpton Hotel stationery that would alter the course of our lives.

It is surreal now to think back to that room, the one overlooking the courtyard garden that became a metaphor for our decade-long entanglement. It was dazzling during spring's full bloom and foreboding when winter stripped all signs of life. And lurking underground, way in the back, was the invasive bamboo, which grows like a cancer, and if not tamed, would march through the entire courtyard and kill everything.

Your metaphors are strained and gay. And how did we move from deciduous trees to bamboo? Pick an arboreal lane, Sir.

I spent hours hacking at the sprouts to keep the bamboo at bay, just as I had with all the secrets that Olivia and I shared.

Any chance we're going to get off the bamboo metaphor any time soon?

I tried to poison the roots, cut off the supply of water and nutrients, and repair the underground wall meant to halt their advance. I should have known that it was futile and that, at some point, the bamboo would take over the garden, and that's all anyone would see.

Okay, so this is what we're doing now. This is about bamboo now.

This is a story of bamboo.

I can still picture the hotel paper and reporting notepads spilling into the walk-in closet, where a year earlier I had spent an afternoon on my knees carefully arranging scores of her boots, high heels, sneakers, and slippers on an enormous shoe rack.

Olivia almost cried when she saw the results. "Nobody has ever done anything like that for me," she said.

It is tempting now to forget those moments, to see it as a lost decade, and to cast her as a cartoon villain. After all, she deceived me for a year and smeared me with false allegations. And not just little lies but big fantastical falsehoods-- blackmail!, (A former child actor, Olivia always had a keen sense for the dramatic.) She orchestrated a plot with the help of a senior Trump official to try to have me imprisoned, and now she's written what appears to be a largely fictitious and self-serving account about it all.

So, yes, I have reason to be annoyed, maybe even a little angry.

She was a former child actor? I don't see anything about that on IMDB, except for an appearance on Billions, which I assume was one of those grating journalist-appears-as-herself things.

Wikipedia does offer this:

In 2010, Nuzzi, as "Livvy," released a song titled "Jailbait," as part of an attempt to launch a music career.

Jailbait? That's going to be very relevant soon.

Some math tells me that Nuzzi, born in 1993, would be 17 or 18 when she recorded "Jailbait" as "Livvy."

Maybe she did her child acting work under a different name, and wants to keep that out of the press. Maybe Lizza will tells us more about it in future reports. (This is Part 1.)

Enough about Lizza's style. Here's his first dirt-drop, the first actually interesting facts he has to disclose.

But first: More fucking bamboo.

Amor fati, the Stoics advised--love your fate. I have admired that sentiment more than I have practiced it, but that's the spirit that will guide this series of posts. You have one life, so find beauty and humor and wisdom even in the seemingly darkest and most embarrassing chapters.

Besides, like bamboo, the truth has a way of forcing itself out into the open. And in this case, the true story is more bizarre, and ultimately more illuminating about politics and media and love, than anything I've ever covered, let alone experienced.

Do we have all that out of our systems now?

I just got an email:

I'm RIVETED.

Signed,

A panda

Okay, on to the actual dirt.

Remember when I said "Jailbait" would soon be important?

I wasn't just saying that. I wasn't just providing roughage and filler to this post without providing real nourishment. I was offering a scaffolding to the next disclosure.

Like stalks of bamboo, perhaps. (The panda told me to work that in.)

[I] was used to cleaning up Olivia's messes.

Not that long ago, I had helped her untangle herself from an unusual relationship with Keith Olbermann, the former MSNBC host.

What? This is an Olbermann story now?

The twists! The turns!

Keith is tall and plain and rigid and quivers in the wind.

Like, say, bamboo.

She had messaged him out of the blue. They started talking, and soon after, she fled her unhappy home in suburban New Jersey and started living with Keith in Manhattan. He paid for her to attend college, outfitted her in Tom Ford and Hervé Léger dresses and some $15,000 worth of Cartier jewelry.

She started living with him just out of college?

When she was 17 or 18?

When she was recording "Jailbait"?

This Keith Olbermann, huh?

Later, he covered her rent and furnished her apartment in a doorman building in the West Village. While Keith, who was 34 years older, was generous, there were strings attached.

What do you call it when an older man pays the rent for a much, much younger college student and expects "strings" in return?

I guess you could call it a Sugarbaby/Money-Daddy situation.

You can also call it a kissing cousin of de facto prostitution.

Olbermann himself brags that he did most of Katie Tur's work for her -- he claims he wrote her articles and edited them into a comprehensible state. So he seems to often providing money or service in kind for his much-younger SugarBabies.

Olivia had concealed the relationship from me and other friends...

This sounds like prostitution.

On the other hand, I can't blame her. Who wants a sexual relationship with Keith "This is the finger I write my Special Comments with?" Olbermann publicly known?

And if you're not a long-enough reader to get that -- a long time ago, one of his fans wrote a blog-post about him having taken her to a hotel to have sex with her. After he... digitally pleasured her, and this time I don't mean by use of a computer, he triumphantly held up his finger and boasted, "This is the finger I write my Special Comments with!"

Allegedly.

But who are we kidding?

...but one day she told me everything--too much, actually--and together we hatched a plan for her escape.

To escape the Olbermann-fronted apartment, they built a long but sturdy ladder out of ten stalks of bamboo.

Or at least, I like to imagine that's what they did. I have a feeling it was more boring than that. I would guess that Lizza had to front money to pay for her new, non-Olbermann-fronted apartment. He doesn't confirm that but I'm seeing a pattern with this Nuzzi woman. She climbs and advances chiefly on her back.

Now I will give away the main interesting fact divulged by this article. This is a spoiler, because, while Lizza's actual style is dogshit, he does in fact structure this vengeance piece to have a payoff and punchline.

So you can read it now if you like. Otherwise, I'm going to ruin it for you.

Throughout the article he leads you to believe that when he speaks of Nuzzi's return from the Kimpton Hotel, he's about to talk about his realization that she had an affair with RFKJr. Let me credit him, he builds to this well. He crafts a fine, sturdy structure of bamboo held together firmly by strips of bamboo-skin, flattened and scraped-out to serve as fine ligatures.

No but really, he keeps talking about Nuzzi's penchant for older men, for older male political men, and particularly for older male politicians with presidential ambitions. He talks about her having indiscreet relations with sources she's writing about.

And then you think, ah, the final piece of the bamboo puzzle. He's about to discover her affair with RFKJr.

As he approaches that, we get this, Ryan Lizza's bad writing framing Olivia Nuzzi's bad writing:

But one mess at a time. As I tidied up the desk, something on the Kimpton stationery caught my eye. I started to read.

"If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house," Olivia had written, "I would still thirst for you."

Unfortunately, the lack of a water tower on our Georgetown home's roof ruled me out as the note's intended recipient.

But it's not RJKJR. That comes in later part.

This part is about him discovering, in 2020, after she traveled to South Carolina to "interview" another politician involved in a sex scandal, that she apparently had an affair with...

(...last chance to read it before the spoiler...)

She later explained to me that she became "infatuated" with him after their interview, that she couldn't get him out of her head, and that as her obsession intensified, she sent him increasingly risqué pictures and texts, secretly followed him on the campaign trail when she told me she was out covering other candidates, and fantasized about a rendezvous, which was consummated at his home in South Carolina one night after she went dark on me and made up a story about how she was dealing with a crisis concerning her sick mother.

I was sure our relationship was over. And certainly our book project was dead. She had crossed a journalistic red line. How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?

I looked at the date on her aborted letter to "Mark": March 5, 2020--just a few days ago.

I called my agent.

"We have a big problem," I said. "Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford."

...Mark Sanford.

You remember him, right? The Republican governor who disappeared from work without notice for a week or two only to later be found in the company of an Argentinian woman whom he later abandoned his wife for?

So that's Part 1, and we're only up to 2020. I imagine we will have multiple parts and multiple bouts of shameless infidelity before we reach 2024 and Nuzzi's "digital affair" with RFKJr.

The legend of Olivia Nuzzi's indiscretions grows rapidly -- much like the fast-growing bamboo forests of India.

And I can't lie, I am, like the panda, RIVETED.

Here's my takeaway: We must always TrUsT tHe MeDiA because they are all smart, ethical, informed, well-socialized, of unimpeachable character and powerful moral fiber (bamboo-like, one might say) and most of all sane, and have no biases at all that they routinely hide from the public.

Oh, and there's this:

Why does Hollywood think female reporters sleep with their sources? http://t.co/l74hijW4W5

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) January 19, 2015

And this:

Close it up

Hollywood Is Dying and Good Riddance

—Ace

"Dying" is overstated. But they are experiencing a reduction in status, a loss of wealth and social position, which for almost everyone, and particularly for narcissists, is a deathly bitter pill.

Did hyperfeminization -- combined with cross-sex playacting, as men act like women and women act like men -- contributed to Hollywood's reduction of status?

It's complicated but the answer is emphatically yes with a side-order of Fuck To The Yeah.

So what caused this? Conservative writers Helen Andrews and Joy Pullmann offer a compelling answer: systemic feminization. In a recent essay that has since gone viral, Andrews explains how so many sectors of the economy and academia have been feminized. Not only do women outnumber men in many institutions, but they are imposing a more feminine culture that encourages "empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition."

Although she largely agrees with Andrews's essay, Pullmann notes that this cultural transformation is not a simple switch from masculinity to femininity. Rather, it's more the takeover of a kind of transgenderism (women acting like men and men acting like women) over traditional gender division: "our society has reversed men and women's roles and in so doing abandoned both masculinity and femininity."

The result is a toxic mishmash of values that combines the worst of both. Instead of masculinity and femininity, we get some confused, aggressive, and arbitrarily applied vision of conformity and safetyism at all levels, with little concern for excellence. In such a system, people advance by maintaining the status quo, pleasing the right people, and discrediting rivals who fail to follow the rules. Success is determined by maximizing harmony and collective self-esteem, not by delivering high-quality products consistently and efficiently.

The American entertainment industry was already feminizing (or transgenderizing) since Obama's presidency--say 2008 onward--but this transformation was made complete by the #MeToo movement 10 years later. In a matter of weeks, serious male filmmakers and producers were canceled and replaced by less offensive substitutes (usually women) willing to compromise quality to push a political message. Perhaps there was some nominal cleaning up of Hollywood as a result of this, and perhaps it helped to empower some unfairly neglected women, but it all came at the heavy cost of ceasing to produce movies and shows that normal people would care to watch.

The palm-fingering Weird Sisters of the gay Oz movie have been put on hold, possibly because the studio just doesn't want them weirding the public out before the second part of Wicked debuts.

Wacko Wicked Press Tour Put on Ice After Erivo's Voice Fails and Grande Opts Out "In Solidarity" -- Did Universal Pull the Plug on Weird Interviews?

November 18, 2025

The Wicked: For Good [the part two sequel] press tour was abruptly suspended in New York City just days before the movie's release, with Hollywood outlets claiming Cynthia Erivo "lost her voice" and Ariana Grande refused to continue press appearances without her.

But the official narrative isn't sitting well with online observers. After all, since when does a singer temporarily losing her voice require a full-blown solidarity pact from her co-star, complete with the studio shutting down scheduled interviews?

It's a question fans, influencers, and industry watchers have been asking nonstop since the news broke. Speculation has only intensified because the Wicked press tour had already become something of a spectacle for reasons Universal probably didn't anticipate.

Long before the Wicked: For Good press tour was pulled, fans noticed something unusual about the promotional circuit. Instead of straightforward discussions about the film, fans were treated to a highlight reel of baffling moments featuring Grande and Erivo seemingly locked in their own private wavelength -- one that didn't always translate to the rest of the audience. Or, you know, Planet Earth...

Here, a dirty man vigorously shook Ariana Grande's hand in a "hail the victor" sort of way. She pretended her arm was injured, and her lesbian co-star kissed it to "make it better." This guy isn't a rando; it's Marc Platt, producer of the movie. He's promoting the movie, too.

Erivo always seems on the edge of a panic attack or nervous breakdown so Ariana Grande is always soothing her with uncomfortab-to-look-at hand holding.

Sometimes it's just finger-holding.

If it sounds like I'm implying a lesbian relationship, I'm not necessarily claiming that. But I am claiming that they are definitely putting on a show of lesbian touching for the largely-gay fan base of the movie. Almost every gay-crazy twitter account is celebrating this touchy-touchy cringefest, some saying "We're winning!" As in, "gays and lesbians are winning, just look at these Hollywood adult pretenders engaging in lesbian hand-play." Erivo is a very out lesbian, and Ariana Grande is either a convert or else is just role-playing. Gay 4 Pay, as they say.

Below, the lesbian-coded pair celebrate each other's "auras" and Cynthia Erivo has some kind of mental crisis over hearing a helicopter overhead. Ariana Grande responds by, as usual, touching her and soothing her.

ICE Targets Charlotte, NC for Illegal Alien Arrests; Thirty Thousand Students In Public Schools Stay Home

—Ace

Does this mean that around 30,000 of Charlotte's public school students are illegals or children of illegals? I think it does. I did not hear of any leftist campaign to Keep Your Kids Home as a protest. This was organic.

Note the number claimed earlier was 20,000, but it appears to be 30,000.

Almost 20% of the school population appears to be illegal alien children.

All paid for by American taxpayers.

On Monday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools saw a tremendous number of absences, nearly 20% of students, shortly after ICE showed up in town and illegal migrant communities became afraid of going out in public.

Nearby district, Wake County, told illegals that it will have teachers deliver Zoom lessons so that they can stay home to evade ICE.

Congressman Pat Harrigan @RepPatHarrigan

Charlotte has 900,000 residents, and more than 150,000 are foreign nationals, which comes out to roughly one in six people.

When a city carries numbers like that, it shows up everywhere. Uptown murders are up 200 percent. Aggravated assaults with knives or guns climbed from 86 to 111 year over year. Strong-arm robberies went from 26 to 31 in the same period. Families feel the strain in housing, in classrooms, and in basic public safety.

That is the environment @CBP walked into because the scale of the population shift and the rise in violent crime have outpaced what local agencies can handle on their own.

A city cannot function when the pressure points stack up like this. Charlotte has to put the safety of its residents first or the numbers will keep getting worse, no matter who pretends otherwise.

One illegal injured an officer by "weaponizing his car." I guess a new euphemism for "running down a cop" has dropped.

One person was injured after a vehicle was used to attack Department of Homeland Security agents performing a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday.

"his afternoon in Charlotte near University City, a United States citizen weaponized his vehicle, driving a large van at law enforcement while they were conducting an operation," DHS posted on X.

The officer is reported to be in stable and culturally-enriched condition.

Joy Reid: I Would Be Alarmed If I Saw a Man's Penis in the Women's Locker Rooms

—Ace

As background, Joy Reid previously admitted that she was "homophobic," stating that she would "cringe" at the sight of two men kissing, and asserted that most people would, too.

No lies detected.

But here's the lie: As a black leftist, she's allowed to say that, because blacks aren't down with everything gay like white leftists are.

But she got hired by MSNBC, the whitest and leftist of all white leftist organizations.

And when her blog got a fresh look, and her long history of (admitted) "homophobia" and derogatory cracks about then-Republican Charlie Crist being gay-- again, no lies detected -- she began claiming that her blog had been #Hacked, with unknown parties, possibly Russian, inserting homophobic material into her old and little-read blog, just to embarrass her in the future.

This lie was always ludicrous -- she never reported this very serious foreign #Hacking operation to the FBI, for example, because it's a crime to file a false criminal complaint -- so she has come up with a new way to talk about it. She no longer actually says she didn't write these posts, she just implies it, without reviving the ludicrous lie explicitly. Black Conservative Perspective clips this appearance on Piers Morgan in which Joy Reid -- or, as some call her, "Racial Maddow" -- insinuates that she didn't write the post, but admits she's "responsible" for whatever is "on that website." In other words, she didn't write this stuff, but she has so much integrity that she will take "responsibility" for the material that Russian #Hackers planted on her website. She's so full of integrity she'll take some blame for not having detected the #Hacking sooner.

Isn't that big of xer?

But now Racial Maddow is no longer employed by a White Leftist organization and can now go back to being a Black Leftist Commentator, and, get this, it turns out her views now more closely align with those that Russian #Hackers planted on her blog.

She now thinks it's alarming for women to see a penis in their sex-segregated places.

Federal Panel of Judges Rules That Republicans Aren't Allowed to Gerrymander in Republican States

—Ace

...because when you gerrymander to reduce Democrat seats, you're usually also reducing sets dominated by black or Hispanic voters, and these judges say you can never, ever reduce the "impact" blacks or Hispanics can have on elections.

You can, of course, always reduce the impact of white voters, as California just did.

In fact, it's legally required.

A three-judge federal panel ruled that the redrawn Texas congressional redistricting map was "racial gerrymandering" and ordered the state to use 2021 maps for the midterm elections.

Since it's a federal voting rights case, the only appeal is to the Supreme Court. It's unclear whether the high court will have time to rule before the 2026 primary filing deadline next month.

"Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings," Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement. "This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict."

Texas state law allows for partisan gerrymandering. Republicans claimed that the map was being redrawn to give them a partisan advantage and to "better reflect Texans' conservative voting preferences -- and for no other reason," said the governor. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the courts could not intervene if a map was drawn to give one side a partisan advantage.

"The public perception of this case is that it's about politics," U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling. "To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map."

Indeed, it's a lot easier to prove "racial gerrymandering" based on the number of voters of color in a new district compared to the last one. It doesn't matter if many of those black and Hispanic voters would vote Republican. The Voting Rights Act only recognized the color of the voter's skin.

GOP-aligned people filed a lawsuit against the California gerrymander that Gavin Newsom just put into action. They allege that gerrymander is also a racial gerrymander, packing Republican-leaning -- and largely white -- voters into as few districts as possible.

How much do you want to bet that that lawsuit gets laughed out of court, resulting in the de facto rule that Democrats are allowed to gerrymander but Republicans aren't?

...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was openly gloating about the decision. He had just rammed through his own Democratic redistricting map that would reduce the nine Republicans currently serving in the 52-member California congressional delegation to four.

"Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned -- and democracy won," Newsom said in a statement Tuesday. "This ruling is a win for Texas and for every American who fights for free and fair elections."

We'll see if the Supreme Court accepts cert on an expedited basis. They're already weighing whether or not the leftist-schemer-fabricated, left-wing-judge imposed doctrine of "disparate impact" -- which claims that you can never adopt any law at all which might have a "disparate impact" on black voters, no matter legislative intent -- can still stand.

In the congressional gerrymandering fight between Republicans and Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm election, a number of states are keeping watch for a potential game changer from the U.S. Supreme Court.

During the rare rehearing of a Louisiana redistricting case in October, the court's conservative majority appeared inclined to weaken the Voting Rights Act's Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in the political mapmaking process.

Such a ruling could spark a new wave of congressional redistricting, especially in the South, where voting is often racially polarized and Section 2 has long prevented the dilution of Black minority voters' collective power. Without the current Section 2 protections, Republican-led southern states may undo districts where Black voters have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates, who are usually Democrats.

This redrawing could give the GOP a sizable boost, as the party seeks to keep control of the House of Representatives.

When the Supreme Court would release its decision is crucial. Time is running out to redo maps, which have to be finalized ahead of a state's filing deadline for candidates seeking to run in a primary election for the midterms.

"The earlier the decision comes, the more likely the decision is before the date for candidates to declare that they're going to be running, and the more time there is for legislatures to meet and consider maps and redraw their maps," says Nick Stephanopoulos, a professor specializing in election law at Harvard Law School.

The next batch of filing deadlines arrives in December. Still, Stephanopoulos notes these cut-off dates are "just products of state law."

"If a state legislature that's hellbent on gerrymandering wants to do so, it wouldn't be especially surprising if that same legislature delayed the filing deadline, potentially even change the date of the primary election, in order to give themselves enough time to gerrymander," Stephanopoulos says.

As I've already said, I think Roberts is too cowardly to vote this pernicious discriminatory rule down, and Amy Coney Barrett is a liberal-leaning flake who wants her fellow liberals to accept her back into the club.

As if we needed more bad news for 2026-- Indiana RINO liberal Republican state legislators are refusing to redistrict that "red" state. A gerrymander could change the partisan balance of the state delegation from 7 to 2 to 9-0 in favor of Republicans, but "Republicans" are refusing.

President Donald Trump is unleashing his anger at Indiana Senate Republicans for not backing the GOP redistricting effort, posting his displeasure three times to Truth Social in the last 24 hours and calling President Pro Tempore Rod Bray a "Total RINO."

"In the entire United States of America, Republican or Democrat, only Indiana "Republican" State Senator Rod Bray, a Complete and Total RINO, is opposed to redistricting for purposes of gaining additional Seats in Congress," posted Trump on Monday afternoon, who has seen Republican lawmakers in four states now reject his mid-cycle redistricting scheme. In another Monday post, Trump said competitors were lining up to primary Bray.

Bray is not the only Republican in Indiana who doesn't back redistricting. On Monday, Indiana state Sen. Blake Doriot of Goshen issued a statement saying that he was a Trump supporter but that he opposed redistricting.

"I have long been a Trump supporter, and I want President Trump to continue to be successful with a Republican-led House so he can continue fixing our woke colleges, fighting illegal immigration and crime, and encouraging us to speak about our great nation and be proud of who we are as Americans -- not apologize for it," Doriot said in a statement.

The news comes as Trump is set to issue a retributive endorsement as early as Monday against one of a handful Indiana Senate Republicans who opposes the White House's mid-cycle redistricting plan.

Among the holdouts targeted by the White House: Republican state Sen. Jim Buck of Kokomo, who is facing a primary from Tipton County Commissioner Tracey Powell. Trump could back Powell Monday, according to a person familiar with his thinking speaking exclusively with POLITICO, following through on MAGA's and White House allies' long-running threats to primary opponents of their mid-decade redistricting effort intended to protect their slim House majority in the midterms next year.

Welcome to Wednesday. So far, it's not great.

Wednesday Morning Rant

—Joe Mannix

Another day, another story about ICE arresting an illegal alien who was given a CDL. Unlike the last flurry of stories about this where many of the drivers had a printed name of "NO NAME GIVEN" on their CDLs, this one does include the person's name: Akhror Bozorov. He's not only an illegal alien, he's an illegal alien who is wanted as a terrorist in his native country of Uzbekistan but was released into the country by the Biden Administration.

Like last time, however, neither DHS nor the issuing state (the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in this case), nor the press outlets covering it bring up an uncomfortable fact about these CDLs. Last time around, most of the pictures of licenses issued to Messrs. Given were REAL ID compliant licenses. So, too, was the license given to Bozorov. His REAL ID was probably fraudulent. Non-citizens may be issued them legally, but only if they have official status - green card (permanent resident), valid visa, DACA (I know) or TPS (I know). It is unlikely that Bozorov had any of these.

Mid-Morning Art Thread

—CBD

Nudes by a Stream
Louis M. Eilshemius