The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presents itself as an innocuous Muslim civil rights group—a reputation it reinforces with litigation and claims of anti-Muslim bigotry. But the group finds itself under increasing scrutiny for alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas. Last November, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated CAIR a terrorist organization. The following month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis followed suit, citing CAIR’s being listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorism financing case.
But as other states move to sideline CAIR, California is embracing this alleged terror front. CAIR-CA, the organization’s largest statewide affiliate, is flush with taxpayer cash. In the last five years, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has rubberstamped at least $41 million in funding to the group. The vast majority of that money, it turns out, comes from the federal government. These federal dollars are flowing into CAIR-CA’s coffers even after it was the target of a recent Department of Justice investigation.
The article goes on to describe the evidence that CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood front. I’ve read about it before and find the argument quite compelling. I remember first hearing about CAIR after 9/11, raising the “Islamophobia” charge in order to somehow turn the whole thing into a defense of Muslims in the US.
More:
“You can’t look at what CAIR is doing today in isolation,” Burns said. “The government established the fact [during the trial] that a conspiracy existed among these organizations, including CAIR, to support Hamas, and that acts were taken in furtherance of that conspiracy. . . . CAIR’s role was to operate an entity out of Washington, D.C. that would serve to defend the interests of the rest of the network—against scrutiny from the media, against scrutiny from law enforcement. . . . In my opinion, the executive director, Nihad Awad, and other components of CAIR that were a part of this original infrastructure, are still operating CAIR in furtherance of an agenda to support Hamas.” …
One would think that CAIR’s ties to an Islamist terror group would make government agencies pause before providing it with public funds. But under Governor Gavin Newsom, California’s state government has seemingly never met a “marginalized group” it did not want to shower with other people’s money. CAIR-CA is rolling in tax dollars.
NOTE: I seem to be writing a lot about California today.
I’ve just started following the race for LA mayor, which features a rather unusual candidate named Spencer Pratt, whose previous work experience seems to be on reality TV. That doesn’t exactly sound like a recommendation, but there was a debate yesterday in which he acquitted himself quite well. It helps that he doesn’t really talk a lot of politician-speak, but sounds like a real person speaking common sense:
This particular exchange especially illustrates what I mean:
I’m not naive enough to think someone like Pratt will necessarily win. I hope he does, but the entrenched leftism of a place like LA is formidable. But I wish him luck. I’ve known LA well over the last fifty-plus years, and I’ve seen some of what’s happened to it.
Some of Pratt’s appeal comes from a series of campaign ads that have gone viral; not all of them are made by his actual campaign:
There’s also the California governor’s race. Could a Republican have a chance? It’s hard to believe, but there’s an outside possibility (the accent doesn’t hurt):
Remember when the Indiana Republicans refused to play the redistricting game that’s all the rage now? The MSM covered it this way at the time (December, 2025):
Indiana Republicans withstood immense pressure from President Donald Trump, ignoring anonymous threats on their lives as they defeated his plan to redraw the state’s congressional map and dealt him one of his most significant political setbacks since his return to the White House.
The GOP-controlled state Senate on Thursday voted down 31 to 19 the map that would have gerrymandered two more safe red seats, imperiling the party’s chances at holding control of Congress next November.
What heroes, standing up bravely against the arm-twisting meanie Trump – who happens to want the GOP to win in November of 2026, unlike these members of the Indiana GOP. Were they resisting because they hate Trump, the vulgarian? Probably [emphasis mine]:
“The forces that define (the) vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrat(ing) the political affairs in Indiana,” Indiana state Sen. Greg Goode, a Republican, said in his floor speech before voting against the measure. “Misinformation. Cruel social media posts over the top pressure from within the state house and outside, threats of primaries, threats of violence, acts of violence. Friends, we’re better than this.” …
Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager and adviser to Fair Maps Indiana, a dark money group that blitzed the state with ads in recent weeks, threatened retribution to Senate Republicans who voted against the bill.
“You have a state full of MAGA Republicans run by Republican MAGA haters,” LaCivita said in a pre-vote interview, mentioning Bray, former Gov. Mitch Daniels and Vice President Mike Pence. “If you don’t defend a political movement from those that stand in the way — then it’s not a movement at all — a handful of politicians in Indiana will now know what standing in the way really means.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better statement of why GOP voters have turned to Trump: he fights, and people like the aptly-named Goode don’t, and in the current atmosphere fighting is necessary.
Five and perhaps six of those who voted with Goode have now been primaried out, although Goode himself is the only one still standing:
Just one of the seven Indiana GOP state senators who faced primary challengers backed by President Trump over their opposition to redistricting has won his Republican primary, according to Decision Desk HQ. One race has yet to be called as of Tuesday evening. …
Incumbent Sen. Greg Goode, who represents the 38th District, is the only incumbent, so far, who has fended off a challenger supported by the president.
Both when it first happened, and now, the MSM frames the battle as Trump versus the Republican senators who bravely defied him. So do the ousted legislators themselves, such as state senator Travis Holdman, defeated by 20 points in this primary:
Well, I have one lesson for people: revenge and retribution is not a Christian value. And that’s what this is all about. And I’m not bitter about it, it’s just a fact. And there’s life after serving in the Indiana Senate, and I’m going to find out what that’s like.
Here’s s the story of the night: Donald Trump remains the king of the Republican Party.
If he wants you gone, he gets rid of you.
Just ask the 6 Indiana Republican state senators who just lost because they didn’t support Trump’s desire to redistrict the state.
That’s the story all right, as told by the media. It’s highly insulting to the GOP voters of Indiana, who were the ones who actually went to the polls and are being considered by the likes of Cillizza as programmed robots who obey the commands of the Leader.
No, the people actually felt betrayed by their own representatives and decided to turn them out. Yes, Trump agreed with the people and was vocal about it, but the people themselves had had enough of the defeatist voting of the Pence/RINO wing. That shouldn’t be so hard to understand, but it doesn’t fit the MSM narrative.
It hardly worth it to read the news on Iran these days. On this, though, I can hardly blame the reporters, because Trump bobs and weaves – purposely – in a way that’s pretty much impossible to predict as far as outcome goes.
President Trump threatened Iran on Wednesday with “higher level” military strikes if it doesn’t accept a peace deal, but he says it’s “too soon” for new direct talks with Iranian officials in Pakistan after reporting “great progress” in negotiations to end the war.
Iran has yet to react publicly to President Trump’s announcement of a pause in the brief Project Freedom mission to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which prompted the first Iranian attacks on vessels in the strait and against U.S. Gulf allies in almost a month.
Mr. Trump put Project Freedom on pause Tuesday night, saying it was to see if “a Complete and Final Agreement” to end the war with Iran could be nailed down amid what he called “great progress” in negotiations brokered by Pakistan.
I read all sorts of alarming things about the possible deal in the works. I won’t even link to them because, if previous experience is any guide, they are meaningless.
I also note that fuel prices are high, but not as high as in 2022 (Biden administration):
Gasoline prices across the U.S. surged to an average of $4.54 a gallon on Wednesday, the highest since July 2022, according to AAA data.
The price of regular gas has jumped 52%, or $1.56 per gallon, since the start of the Iran war in late February, as disruptions to oil flows in the Middle East drive up costs for motorists. The cost is approaching the highest-ever gas price, when it reached $5.02 a gallon in June 2022 during a pandemic-era spike in inflation.
But who can remember back that far? So hey, let’s elect Democrats because they’re so good at holding down gas prices!
You may recall the death of Paul Kessler two years ago, in which the 69-year-old Jewish man was struck with a megaphone by a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, fell, hit his head, and died. Now the perpetrator has been offered a plea deal rather than going to trial. The trial had been scheduled for next week, so the plea deal is very timely. But he has agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in exchange for a one-year sentence followed by probation.
The perp’s name is Loay Alnaji, described here as “a Moorpark resident” (Moorpark is an LA suburb in Ventura County). Alnaji is a naturalized citizen originally from Jordan, something the yahoo article neglects to mention, but which is noted in this Legal Insurrection piece. He also is (or perhaps was) a professor of computer science at a community college in Moorpark.
The case wasn’t one of murder, but nevertheless the low penalty is disturbing, plus now we will never get a hearing on the facts of the case. Alnaji’s counsel states the swiping with the megaphone was accidental, but whether or not that is true, or whether this was more sinister, will never be heard in a court of law. What’s more strange – to me, at least – is that the judge made this deal over the prosecution’s objections:
Senior Deputy District Attorney David Russell said both the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office and Kessler’s family opposed the judge’s offer and instead requested the maximum possible sentence of four years in state prison.
“This is over the people’s objection,” Russell told [Judge] Malan.
It’s my impression that this is highly unusual. Ordinarily it’s the prosecution offering the deal, and it’s the judge rubber-stamping it. In fact, in a search just now I can’t find a similar case, although perhaps they exist.
My guess is that the judge wanted this case to go away. The defense attorney has claimed that the judge said it was a situation in which “two old guys had a dispute and an accident happened.” Wow. Wouldn’t that be something to determine after the evidence has come out in a trial?
(1) I believe that Democrats wanted Platner as the Maine senatorial candidate rather than Mills. After all, the money poured into his campaign, not hers; the reason she gave for quitting was lack of money, which doesn’t seem to have bothered him.
If that’s the case, then why, with all his weaknesses, did they support him over her? I think the answer is rather simple: he polled better against Collins., and they want to win at all costs. Among other things, they are betting that youth will be the draw, because Collins is also old (as is Mills), and that they can cover up or rationalize away the more “problematic” things Platner has said and done. These are people who kept seeing phantom “dog whistles” of Nazism in people like Musk, but have no problem whatsoever with the glaring evidence of an actual Nazi tattoo if it’s on a Democrat.
Platner could indeed win the election. This video shows why; Platner’s message here is exactly and precisely what Democrats want. Who or what Platner himself might be is not even an issue for many people, if his election would bring this about:
Graham Platner wants to “shut this White House down."
He offers a preview of a Dem-controlled Senate:
“I want the Trump administration not to function, because everyone in the White House is being hauled under subpoena in front of a Senate committee, day after day after day." pic.twitter.com/vDc1lqFpym
(2) There is a SCOTUS feud, in which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has been going her own way, sometimes even in regard to her fellow liberal justices:
The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for Louisiana to redraw a hotly contested congressional map that the court ruled days earlier was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, a highly technical decision that nevertheless sparked a bitter back-and-forth between three conservatives and a member of the court’s liberal wing.
The brief order dealt with a question about when the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act took effect in Louisiana. The state is quickly gearing up to redraw its maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections and suspended its US House primaries following the high court’s ruling Wednesday.
More notable than the decision itself, which was widely expected, was the tension it exposed in brief writings by Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal.
Writing in dissent, Jackson said the post-decision “developments have a strong political undercurrent.” And she suggested that the court should have stayed on the sidelines “to avoid the appearance of partiality.”
Translation: in order to avoid a result that might help the Republicans, the Court should not order its own ruling implemented, but instead keep in place a system that favors the Democrats.
And of course Jackson herself is not the least bit politically partisan.
More:
Alito snapped back at Jackson’s dissent, describing her points as “trivial at best” and “baseless and insulting.”
“The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power,” Alito wrote in a brief concurrence joined by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. “That is a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”
No one else signed on to Jackson’s dissent. Sotomayor and Kagan appear to be giving her a wide berth.
The suspect has been identified as Michael Marx, 45, law enforcement officials tell NBC News.
Marx, as of Tuesday morning, remained hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds, which aren’t considered life-threatening, reported. …
The incident occurred as President Donald Trump took the stage inside of the White House’s East Room for a Small Business Summit. And authorities sent the press into the briefing room for safety precautions while areas were placed under lockdown.
The Secret Service said the shooting took place at 15th Street Southwest and Independence Avenue after plainclothes agents at about 3:30 p.m. spotted, then confronted a “suspicious individual that appeared to have a firearm “and confronted him, said Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn.
Raymond Eugene Chandler III, of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested Friday for allegedly leaving a series of menacing voicemails for a member of Congress, in which he threatened to slit the throats of both the lawmaker and his daughter if he did not kill President Donald Trump.
According to Pittsburgh’s Action News 4, Chandler is facing charges of “Influencing, Impeding or Retaliating Against a Federal Official by Threatening a Family Member and by Threatening a Federal Official,” and “Influencing, Impeding or Retaliating against a Federal Official by Threat.”
The court documents were unsealed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Although the documents do not identify the lawmaker, the suspect refers to him as “Senator” in the second voicemail …
Who is Raymond Chandler (and by the way, I wonder whether he was named after the writer of detective stories)? Why, he seems to have been running for the Senate himself. You can read his chilling messages at the link, but here’s a bit of one:
You’re probably getting quite used to my voice. Sir, I’m calling this evening because what I want you to do is I want you to take a firearm. I want you to put it in your hand. I want you to walk into the Oval Office. I want you to put that firearm to the President’s head, and I want you to pull the trigger and I want you to kill him. I am petitioning you, Senator for redress of grievances. My redress of grievances is that this president is awful . . . He’s a liar among all liars. He’s a great deceiver. He’s the antichrist. I want you to walk into the Oval Office with a gun in your hand. I want you to put it to his temple, and I want you to pull the trigger. That is what I want you to do as my agent.
(5) Speaking of the antichrist, there’s Tucker Carlson doing just that. Carlson demonstrates his m.o. in a NY Times interview, and it’s not pretty. But he lies with such utter conviction that I think that, like the most accomplished of liars, he actually achieves the trick of willing himself to believe his own lies:
Why is the New York Times so eager to sit down with Carlson for two hours? His closest media friends were out on X over the weekend — in the face of scoffing over that clip of him being called out as a bald-faced liar — to demand that people “watch the whole interview,” as if I’m about devote 110 minutes of my life to this exercise in cynicism. (Reading the partial transcript was bad enough.) What these supporters don’t want to admit is that there is a reason Carlson was given the opportunity to speak at length at the New York Times: He is of use to them ideologically.
Most of the voices on the right that the Times has given elevated coverage to, from Carlson to Marjorie Taylor Greene to Nick Fuentes, share a special characteristic: They are members of a “new right” antisemitic fringe, the faction most enraged by Trump’s preference for Israel over Hamas and Iran in the Middle East. A cynical man might suggest that the Times seeks to craft a political narrative for its readers wherein the Republican Party is safely cast as forever captive to culturally scary hard-right lunatics. An even more despairingly cynical man might suggest that the Times subconsciously realizes that the “anti-Zionism” of the modern right-wing fringe holds a surprisingly comfortable mirror up to the views of their own readers.
(6) The accused Palisades arsonist fancies himself as a Mangione RobinHood-esque type.
The left and Trump-haters say that Trump and the military have no idea what they’re doing in Iran (or anywhere else, I suppose). I don’t think that’s the case, but one thing that does seem true is that Trump and company don’t want the Iranian regime to be able to predict what the US will do.
The left and Trump-haters also say that Trump has yet to make his goals in this war clear. I disagree. He actually has said many times that he wants to degrade the regime’s capacity to make war and eliminate its capacity to make nuclear weapons, plus recover the nuclear material they already have. Oh, and regime change would be very very nice, but is not absolutely necessary.
The left and Trump-haters would like him to fail. I would like him to succeed. Plus I really really would like regime change in Iran as well. But you can’t always get what you want.
Wars are unpredictable.
My sense of things with Iran right now, for what it’s worth, is that Trump continues to play for time while attempting to strangle the regime economically and precipitate a cascade of events that will cause the army and even some of the IRGC to revolt and/or give up. Without those enforcers, the Iranian regime couldn’t survive. He’s reluctant to bomb further because destroying the targets that remain might end up harming the people of Iran more than Trump would like, and so he’s betting – for now, anyway – on the financial pressure doing the trick.
Also – although I haven’t seen anything definitive on this – doesn’t the ceasefire restart the clock on the need for Congressional approval?
This is what’s been happening recently in the war or the “ceasefire”:
Iran continued strikes on the United Arab Emirates for the second day, the country’s Defense Ministry confirmed Tuesday evening.
“The UAE, a key American ally, said it came under attack by Iranian missiles and drones for a second straight day on Tuesday,” the Associated Press reported. “At least three people were wounded in attacks the day before, and a drone sparked a fire at a key oil facility in the eastern emirate of Fujairah.”
The UAE armed forces are “actively engaging” with incoming missile and drone attacks from Iran, the Defense Ministry posted on X, adding that “the sounds heard in scattered areas of the country are the result of the UAE’s air defence systems intercepting ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. …
The strikes came hours after the U.S. Navy repelled Iranian attempts to disrupt the operation “Project Freedom,” ordered by President Trump to restore freedom of navigation for commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. On Monday, U.S. destroyers secured the waterway and allowed at least two American-flagged cargo ships to sail through the waterway. …
President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the U.S. has effectively dismantled the Iranian navy. “Now they’re reduced to little boats with a machine gun on the front of them because they had a navy of 159 ships!” he said Tuesday evening. “Iran’s Navy is done.”
Here’s the first bit of news that at first glance sounds ever-so-slightly encouraging:
The European Union passed several resolutions condemning Palestinian Authority educational materials containing antisemitism and glorification of jihad, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) has reported.
In the EU’s report on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2024, it called for any future funding to the PA to be conditional on the removal of “antisemitic content, incitement to violence and the glorification of martyrdom and jihad” from textbooks.
The European Parliament’s budget report emphasized that EU financial assistance and engagement “should support education that promotes peace, tolerance and coexistence.”
This may seem like a no-brainer. But although I first read about the phenomenon of the vicious Jew-hatred in Palestinian textbooks some time during the 1990s, until now I’ve been unaware of any particular European move against them, and certainly no effective ones. Whether or not the PA complies, Palestinian society is inundated with this sort of thing. But the textbooks are an important part of it.
Doing some research now, I discover this is not a new phenomenon with the EU, although at this point their statements seems a little stronger. Here’s an article from 2021 [my emphasis]:
A study commissioned by the European Union examined 156 Palestinian Authority textbooks and 16 teachers’ guides. Eighteen texts are from 2020, the rest from 2017-2019. The report said they present “ambivalent – sometimes hostile – attitudes towards Jews and the characteristics they attribute to the Jewish people” and their “frequent use of negative attributions in relation to the Jewish people…suggest a conscious perpetuation of anti-Jewish prejudice, especially when embedded in the current political context.”
The EU provides funding for the Palestinian education system …
So the EU helps pay for the education in hatred. The article goes on to say this:
In October 2021, Britain announced it would cease direct funding to Palestinian education in the PA. The government denied it; however, the decision was related to the EU report. According to an investigation by the Jewish News [UK], roughly $137 million was spent by Britain in the previous five years, including on the salaries of the Palestinian civil servants and teachers responsible for drafting the PA textbooks.
In 2022, a group of European Union lawmakers called on the European Commission to reduce funding to the PA if it continues refusing to purge its K-12 curriculum of materials that “incite schoolchildren to hate Jews and emulate terrorists.”
But guess what? Although it appears the funding was frozen for a very short while (the article doesn’t make it clear whether it was just the British funding or the EU funding), it was restored in 2022 pending still another study. How many studies do you need? The problem with the textbooks isn’t subtle, it’s huge and overt.
According to IMPACT-se, this is the seventh consecutive year in which such condemnations have been issued.
“>In July 2024, the PA signed an agreement with the EU to reform its curriculum, affirming its commitment to the process, but not all of the EU’s guidelines for the removal of violent, extremist content have been met.
As of November 2025, according to an IMPACT-se report, PA textbooks and educational materials still include content that glorifies jihad and incitement to violence.
Hard to say whether it will end up mattering this time, but it continues to be unconscionable that the EU funds this.
Maria Malmer Stenergard, Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, announced before parliamentary representatives that the government will no longer use the term “Islamophobia.” She described the concept as “problematic,” because, according to her, “it focuses on individuals’ irrational fears.”
Stenergard emphasized that the Swedish government will also seek to replace the term with “anti-Muslim racism” or “anti-Muslim hatred” in international bodies, including the European Union and the United Nations. Discussions on this matter are set to continue during the third week of May in Brussels.
The decision has been welcomed by the right-wing Sweden Democrats party. Charlie Weimers, a member of the European Parliament for the party, said, “Islamists have exploited the term Islamophobia to advance their agenda and secure EU funding.” He described the government’s action as “finally scrapping a fabricated concept.”
Faw Azzat, Secretary General of the Global Alliance for Peace and Justice (GAPF) in Sweden, also praised the decision, stating that the term Islamophobia was “coined by Islamists themselves to equate criticism of a religion with racism against people—a semantic trick dressed up as anti-racism.”
I think this is pretty meaningless as well. Whether it’s called “Islamaphobia” or “anti-Muslim racism,” the term is often applied not only to generalized hatred of Muslims but also over-applied to rational and realistic evaluations of the radical Islamist devotion to terrorism and violence against the infidel.
Up until maybe ten or fifteen years ago, in the place where I live, we still had parking meters. They took coins, too, and although the price of parking kept going up, it wasn’t too high. They even took pennies, which got you about a minute, or nickels or dimes, although they also gobbled up quarters quite nicely. If you were extra-lucky and someone had just vacated a space for which they’d bought too much time, you could coast on their extra time if you were doing a quick errand.
There were even places to park, not too far from the main streets, where there were no meters, although the parking was timed. You could park for two hours there for free, if I remember correctly.
Yes, you needed to keep coins on hand. But that wasn’t too difficult because as I said, parking wasn’t mega-expensive.
Then they removed the meters and put in parking stations – is that what they’re called? or kiosks? – where you bought a ticket that you then put in the windshield. At first it wasn’t too bad, although in the snow and sleet and rain it meant a rather nasty trip to the station and sometimes standing in line while the person in front of you paid. The stations took coins or credit cards, and with the coins you could get just a few minutes if that was all you needed.
It occurred to me early on that this had the advantage to the city of parking being non-transferable. No longer could you get the benefit of a person who’d overpaid in your spot. The fee for each person was tied to that person, and so the city got the money even if the time was unused.
Then at some point the parker had to plug into the machine the numbers of a license plate, just to make the fee extra-nontransferable.
And today, when I ran an errand in town and parked, the coin slot at the station was inoperable although it was still there. I think it’s now all credit cards, all the time. This means the shortest segment of parking you can buy has become an hour, which I rarely need and which costs a fair amount.
And then there’s the reading of the messages in the machine. If light is bright and there’s a lot of reflection, faggetaboutity you’ll have to create artificial shade to read it. And please, be quick about typing stuff in, because the machine is impatient and quite quick to say you’ve run out of time and need to start again. Today, for example, there was no diagram to tell me which way to insert my credit card. I tried every way I could think of and it rejected the card and timed out. Today I think I went through the entire protocol about four times before the machine finally had mercy on me and spit the parking permit out – and there, in the slot, I also found the permits of two previous people who’d left them there. They had their license plates on them, so I couldn’t have used them even if I’d known they were there.
Or, I suppose I could get the app. But I park in town so seldom – usually just when on official business – that I tend to forget about dong that until next time. And what guarantee would there be that the app would be any easier to use? None.
