July 25, 2025

UNDOING BIDEN’S CRISIS BY DESIGN: DHS started flying illegal immigrants out of Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Friday that the Department of Homeland Security has started flying illegal immigrants out of his state’s “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility.

“I’m pleased to report that those flights out of Alligator Alcatraz by DHS have begun,” DeSantis said, Fox News reported. “The cadence is increasing. We’ve already had a number of flights, in the last few days, we’ve had hundreds of illegals [that] have been removed from here.”

“This provides an ability to enhance the mission, to increase the number and frequency of deportations. And so what’s been done here has really been remarkable,” he added.

I’d add, “More like this, please,” but it looks like there will already be plenty more like this.

Posted at 3:52 pm by Stephen Green 96

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Since When Is Drunk-Mowing the Toll Road a Crime? It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn where not to take your lawnmower out for a drug-fueled spin, why Planet Fitness isn’t the place to do… any of that, really, and how Alabama Man became the new master of disguise.”

Posted at 3:21 pm by Stephen Green 27

THOSE RUSSIANS SURE LOVED REAGAN:

Obama lies, scorpion stings frog, dog bites man…

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green 119

RUY TEIXEIRA: Today’s Non-Progressive Progressives. They’re not on the right side of history anymore:

Here are some of the ways that “progressives” have bid farewell to progress.

Colorblindness, anti-discrimination and equal opportunity. The quintessential moral commitment of midcentury progressives was to make American society truly colorblind. It was unfair and egregious that racial discrimination could truncate the life chances of black people and visit misery upon them. Therefore, progressives advocated and marched for ending discrimination and unequal opportunity. They won the argument. Not only was legislation passed to make such discrimination illegal but anti-discrimination and equal opportunity became as close to consensual beliefs as you can get in America.

Americans today believe, with Martin Luther King Jr., that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” In a 2022 University of Southern California Dornsife survey, this classic statement of colorblind equality was posed to respondents: “Our goal as a society should be to treat all people the same without regard to the color of their skin.” That view elicited sky-high (92 percent) agreement from the public.

Similarly, a 2023 Public Agenda Hidden Common Ground survey found 91 percent agreement with the statement: “All people deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, no matter their race or ethnicity.” This is what Americans deeply believe in: equal opportunity not, it should be noted, equal outcomes.

And it is what progressives used to believe in—indeed, mounted the barricades for. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century.

Read the whole thing.

But this isn’t “today’s” self-described Progressives. The original Progressives of the first-half of the 20th century were thoroughly racist, from H.G. Wells to Margaret Sanger to Woodrow Wilson. Calvin Coolidge noted they weren’t on the right side of history a century ago:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

As the late Fred Siegel wrote in The Revolt Against the Masses, American progressives rebranded as liberals in the 1920s after the disastrous Wilson administration. The American left went back to calling themselves progressives after liberalism became an increasingly tainted word during the last decades of the 20th century. What will be the next rebranding effort?

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 42

20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Democrats Are Going to Run Hunter Biden, Aren’t They?

Part of me thinks that surely, SURELY, they’ll look at their abysmal approval ratings and learn a thing or two about how unpopular their agenda really is with the majority of Americans and maybe even run a more blue-dog Democrat this next time around. You know, more of a typical, traditional Democrat although if I’m being honest, I’m not sure what the heck that even looks like anymore.

The other part of me sees crap like this from The Atlantic and thinks Democrats are actively trying to destroy their own party and would consider running another Biden. You know, the degenerate crack-head version.

He’s William S. Burroughs meets MAHA:

Posted at 2:25 pm by Ed Driscoll 136

I KNOW SOMEONE WHO’S BEEN “MICRODOSING” TO LOSE A COUPLE OF POUNDS A MONTH WITH NO SIDE EFFECTS: If GLP-1 Drugs Are Good For Everything, Should We All Be on Them? “Studies show that the obesity and diabetes medication also reduces heart attacks, cancer risk, migraines, and memory loss. How is that even possible? And at what point should we all be on it? . . . When I initially read this study in January, it seemed too good to be true. Miracle drugs don’t exist. Perhaps, I thought, there were nuances that I’d missed. So I called up a co-author of the study, the Washington University physician-scientist Ziyad Al-Aly. On my podcast Plain English, Al-Aly told me that GLP-1 drug use really was associated with improvements across every biological system they studied.”

That said, the steady flood of good news leaves me a bit suspicious that it’s a PR push where we aren’t getting the downside.

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 88

THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS: Israel’s 12-Day War Revealed Alarming Gap in America’s Missile Stockpile.

The U.S. has seven high-end Thaad missile-defense systems. During the 12-day war with Iran in June, two were deployed to Israel—and it wasn’t enough.

Operating alongside Israeli systems, Thaad operators burned through munitions at a furious clip, firing more than 150 missiles to shoot down the waves of Iranian ballistic missiles, according to U.S. officials. That is nearly a quarter of the interceptors ever purchased by the Pentagon.

The demand was so staggering that at one point, the Pentagon considered a plan to divert interceptors purchased by Saudi Arabia to the systems in Israel, one official said. The discussions were sensitive, because the kingdom’s cities and oil installations were also considered at risk during the conflict.

It wasn’t just the Thaad. The U.S. ran through large numbers of shipborne interceptors as well, and Israel quickly drained stockpiles for its own systems. Dozens of Iranian missiles got through anyway.

While Israeli officials credited the American systems for saving thousands of lives, the war revealed an alarming gap in U.S. supplies. The U.S. also discovered inefficiencies in the way it fired its antimissile systems and is scrutinizing the performance of some interceptors.

It’s a peacetime conceit that we never stockpile enough of what we need for war.

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green 170

QUESTION ASKED: Fantastic Four Review: Did Marvel Actually Deliver Something Worth Watching?

I didn’t know what to expect going into my local Alamo Drafthouse to see Disney-Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps. The company had taught me not to expect much over the past handful of years and, to be honest, the gushing reviews by the access media weren’t exactly giving me high hopes.

They also taught me that they’ll lick the boots of studios at their whim. It’s how they keep getting the access in their namesake.

But as the film kicked up I was instantly drawn in by the setting, and as the film continued I realized I wasn’t bored. In fact, I surprisingly found myself invested. Then about midway through the film, I realized that the movie had actually endeared itself to me in a way… then it got silly, but not in a way that really made me hate it.

Folks, I think we might have a decent Marvel film on our hands.

The Critical Drinker concurs: “It probably would have been considered thoroughly ‘mid’ a decade ago. But in these dark days of cinema, well, it’s by far the best superhero film of 2025. Make of that what you will.”

Earlier: James Pethokoukis on Fantastic Four’s Googie-inspired production design: Beyond The Jetsons: New Fantastic Four trailer offers a new vision of a fantastic future that never was.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 61

JOEL KOTKIN: Fascism has not come to America.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Trumpism and fascism is that Trump stands, first and foremost, for Trump. He has no true ideological lodestone, which makes the fevered attempts to discern one just silly. His appeal lies not in the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1930s but in seemingly commonsense alternatives to the truly insane policies of the increasingly left-leaning Democrats – on issues from the border and transgender ‘rights’ to the protection of the criminal class. Economically, MAGA is more reactionary than visionary, pointing, as it does, towards a return to the torpid 1950s.

In contrast, Benito Mussolini identified himself as a ‘revolutionary’ transforming society. He wanted the state to become ‘the moving centre of economic life’. Fascist corporatism was widely embraced by Confindustria, the leading organisation of Italian industrialists, which was glad to see the end of class-fuelled conflict and welcomed the state’s investment in infrastructure. This may not have made all capitalists fascists at heart, but it preserved what Mussolini called formal adherence to the regime. His approach gained a surprising amount of admiration in Britain and elsewhere.

In some ways, fascist corporatism – rejecting the autonomy of private interests – is closer to ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and the environmental ‘great reset’ than it is to Trumpanomics, with its mixture of protectionist tariffs and tax cuts.

Indeed, the fascist streak of Trump’s long-term opponents is even more in evidence when it comes to their attitude to that most critical of rights: free speech. Ever since the 1960s, traditional liberal notions of free speech have been undermined, particularly in academia, by New Leftish notions of ‘repressive tolerance’, authored by German exile Herbert Marcuse, as well as the deeply violent ‘revolutionary ideas’ concocted by Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon and Mao.

These ideas have helped birth an increasingly authoritarian mood on campuses – a mood that recalls the popularity of fascist ideology among students a century ago. This authoritarianism comes primarily not from traditional repressive rightists, but from the mainstream left, which targets what it sees as ‘far right’. This includes anyone embracing even vaguely Trumpian ideas.

Tom Wolfe famously wrote that, “the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe:” President Macron is playing with fire by recognizing Palestine. His imperious statement rewards the neo-fascists of Hamas and isolates the Jewish State.

As Jeff Goldstein notes:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 133

MY CONGRESSMAN EXPLAINS THINGS:

Posted at 1:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds 49