Uncensored Free Speech Platform

What argument might the U.S. Supreme Court use to defend Texas' gerrymandering law and not California's?
This looks less like justice and more like strategy.

It's midterm year in the United States and I just read California's Republican congress is asking for the Supreme Court to overturn the new congressional map.
What reason would the Supreme Court have to block California's new map and not Texas' new map?

Navy Under Secretary Hung Cao says personnel discharged over vaccine mandate were 'failed'
This feels like a quiet policy shift.

The Department of the Navy issued an apology letter Friday to former military personnel "unjustly removed" from service because of the COVID vaccine mandate during the Biden administration.
Under Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao emphasized that the Department of War is committed to "righting past wrongs" and welcoming back former service members who were dismissed during the pandemic.
"To the sailors and marines who were wrongfully discharged during COVID, we failed you," Hung said in a video posted on X. "We will never allow this to happen again, not on my watch. We are ready for you to come back, and we want to correct your records."
Cao, the Department of the Navy’s chief operating and chief management officer, overseeing roughly one million Navy, Marine Corps and civilian personnel, acknowledged the impact of the mandate on those it forced out.
HEGSETH ORDERS ABOUT FACE ON PENTAGON'S SLIPPING GROOMING STANDARDS
"We are righting this wrong and it starts with this formal letter of apology," he said.
President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14184 shortly after returning to office last January, directing federal agencies to identify service members affected by the former vaccine requirement and take steps to reinstate them or restore certain benefits.
The order applies to former members of the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, Space Force and Coast Guard who were discharged solely for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
VA REVERSES BIDEN ADMIN POLICY PROVIDING ABORTION SERVICES AGENCY CALLS CONTRARY TO FEDERAL LAW
The former secretary of defense mandated in 2021 that all service members receive the COVID-19 vaccine, a policy that was rescinded in 2023.
"The military unjustly discharged those who refused the vaccine, regardless of the years of service given to our Nation, after failing to grant many of them an exemption that they should have received," Trump's executive order states.
The Department of War issued guidance to all the secretaries of military departments to contact former service members with information about potential reinstatement and to correct their discharge records.
TRUMP DECLARES ‘REAWAKENING’ OF ‘WARRIOR SPIRIT,’ UNWAVERING SUPPORT FOR MILITARY: ‘I HAVE YOUR BACKS’
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 8,000 service members were separated after the Biden administration’s Department of Defense issued the vaccination mandate.
"It is unconscionable that thousands of former Service members who held true to their personal and religious convictions were not just separated, but separated with general (under honorable …

The Biggest Takeaways From Our Investigation Into Grazing on Public Lands
How is this acceptable?

The federal government allows livestock grazing across an area of publicly owned land more than twice the size of California, making ranching the largest land use in the West. Billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies support the system, which often harms the environment.

As President Donald Trump’s administration pushes a pro-ranching agenda, ProPublica and High Country News investigated how public lands ranching has evolved. We filed more than 100 public record requests and sued the Bureau of Land Management to pry free documents and data; we interviewed everyone from ranchers to conservationists; and we toured ranching operations in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Nevada.

The resulting three-part investigation digs into the subsidies baked into ranching, the environmental impacts from livestock and the political clout that protects this status quo. Here are the takeaways from that work.

The system has evolved into a subsidy program for ranchers.

The public lands grazing system was modernized in the 1930s in response to the rampant use of natural resources that led to the Dust Bowl — the massive dust storms triggered by poor agricultural practices, including overgrazing. Today, the system focuses on subsidizing the continued grazing of these lands.

The BLM and Forest Service, the two largest federal land management agencies, oversee most of the system. Combined, the agencies charged ranchers $21 million in grazing fees in 2024. Our analysis found that to be about a 93% discount, on average, compared with the market rate for forage on private land. We also found that, in 2024 alone, the federal government poured at least $2.5 billion into subsidy programs that public lands ranchers can access. Such subsidies include disaster assistance after droughts and floods as well as compensation for livestock lost to predators.

Ranching is consolidated in the hands of some of the wealthiest Americans.

A small number of wealthy individuals and corporations manage most livestock on public lands. Roughly two-thirds of the grazing on BLM acreage is controlled by just 10% of ranchers, our analysis found. And on Forest Service land, the top 10% of permittees control more than 50% of grazing. Among the largest ranchers are billionaires like Stan Kroenke and Rupert Murdoch, as well as mining companies and public utilities. The financial benefits of holding permits to graze herds on public lands extend beyond cattle sales. Even hobby ranches can qualify for property tax breaks in many areas; ranching business expenses can be deducted from federal taxes; and private property associated with grazing permits is a stable long-term investment. (Representatives of Kroenke did not respond to requests for comment, and Murdoch’s representative declined to comment.)

The Trump administration is supercharging the system, including by further increasing subsidies.

The administration released a “plan to fortify the American Beef Industry” in October that instructed the BLM and Forest Service to amend grazing regulations for the first time since the 1990s. The plan suggested that taxpayers further support ranching by increasing subsidies for drought and wildfire …

Could the Senate Trigger Another Shutdown in a Week?
What's the endgame here?

With the House having passed its final batch of appropriations bills, it is now up to the Senate to pass the spending package or risk sending the federal government into a partial shutdown.

Despite the pressure to keep the government open, however, a significant number of Senate Democrats and Republicans have complaints about the spending bills.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., one of the eight Democrats who voted to reopen the government after the longest-ever shutdown in November, signaled his opposition to the spending package as a whole.

“If the Senate were to vote on these appropriations bills individually, I would support some of them,” Kaine wrote. “But the House is bundling six bills into a single package a week before a budget deadline and skipping town to try and jam senators into a single up or down vote.”

Tim Kaine will oppose the funding package next week due in part to the DHS funding bill & concerns about ICE.

Notable because Kaine was one of the eight Senate Dems who voted with R’s to reopen the gov’t back in November
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) January 23, 2026

Kaine refers to the House Republicans’ use of procedural mechanisms to send the Senate four funding bills passed on Thursday combined with two passed the week before.

On Thursday, the House passed its last remaining appropriations bills to fund the government. The bills came out of conference, meaning they were the product of bipartisan negotiation between appropriators in the House and Senate.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., had applauded what he saw as a return to a “committee-led, member-driven approach” to funding where spending bills were approved by various House committees before coming to the floor for a vote.

This arrangement, however, will force Senate Democrats to vote for a larger package funding both items they oppose, such as deportations, and items they support, such as foreign aid projects.

Top Senate Democrat appropriator Patty Murray of Washington has already granted the homeland security funding bill her blessing, so Republicans may not need Kaine’s vote to pass it.

Senate Fiscal Hawks

There are already signs of dissatisfaction among the Senate’s fiscal hawks.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who voted against the November funding extension that reopened the government, has excoriated the earmarks in the package coming to the Senate.

“Just read the minibus Congress plans to pass this year. An unbelievable over $5 billion is going toward refugee welfare programs,” Paul wrote Tuesday on X after House Republicans unveiled their funding package.

“I am going to fight like hell to get this removed. In the meantime, call your Senators and tell them to vote NO, and to put an end to the refugee rip-off,” he added.

Paul has specifically criticized the renewal of funding both for refugee benefits and the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization some Republicans have criticized for promoting left-wing causes abroad.

Earmark Backlash

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., filed an amendment to strike funding for earmarks in the package that passed the House Thursday, but his measure failed when 76 House Republicans …

The states fighting to be at the front of Democrats’ 2028 presidential primary
We're watching the same failure loop.

At least a half-dozen states applied to be in the early nominating window for 2028’s Democratic presidential campaign, kicking off a contentious battle for securing an influential perch inside the primary calendar.

The usual suspects — New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Michigan, who made up the early states in Democrats’ 2024 primary calendar, though not in the order set out by the Democratic National Committee — are all back, per their state parties. So is Iowa, hoping to reinsert itself into the process after it was bounced four years ago. Georgia also applied.

Virginia and North Carolina are both seriously considering applying, according to three people familiar with the state’s thinking and granted anonymity to describe private conversations, ahead of the deadline later Friday. Other wild-card states may also still apply before the cutoff, and the DNC declined to comment on which states have applied so far.

The presidential nominating calendar — which states are in it and in what order — will affect how Democratic presidential candidates tailor their strategies heading into a wide-open 2028 primary. It would inform which states to prioritize, where to place staff, how much money each state will cost a campaign — all calculations that have shaped previous presidential primaries. Unsurprisingly, Democrats have a lot of opinions on how that should go.

“The day after the 2026 midterms, people are going to launch into action, so the window needs to be set,” said Jay Parmley, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “It’s possible they not only start coming, but they could start putting staff on the ground the earliest we’ve ever seen.”

The process to set the process could stretch deep into 2026. Members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee charged with setting the calendar are expected to winnow the field of applicants at their Jan. 31 meeting, according to three DNC members involved in the process and granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

States will then be invited to make presentations to the committee later that spring. One DNC member said they expected the calendar to be set over the summer and voted on by the full DNC at its August meeting, but the timeline could easily shift later into 2026.

Shaking up the presidential nominating calendar started back in 2022, after Iowa’s disastrous 2020 caucuses and accusations that the early states didn’t reflect the party’s racial diversity. Then-President Joe Biden — ahead of what was at the time expected to be a staid primary process — elevated South Carolina even earlier in the order, cut Iowa and added Michigan to the calendar.

Now, DNC officials have pledged to start the process from scratch. They’ve said they want all four regions of the country …

Invade Greenland? Of Course Not
How is this acceptable?

(John Hinderaker) In recent weeks, President Trump has threatened to seize Greenland by force. Of course there was never any chance of that happening, any more than that we would “annex” Canada. I don’t know why Trump thinks such threats are useful. In any event, he has now backed off:

Greenland was the main topic of the president’s speech to the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, where he ruled out using military force to take the island.

“I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

Of course not. I doubt whether an order to our armed forces to invade Greenland would have been obeyed, and certainly an order to attack Canada would not have been obeyed. But Trump’s other announcements, on Truth Social, were more substantial:

The fact that Trump’s proposed tariffs have been canceled is good news, and the financial markets shot up on the report. As to whether there is yet a “framework” in place to address security matters going forward, it seems doubtful.

In any case, I think it is virtually certain that an agreement will be reached with Denmark and Greenland, and perhaps other European countries, that will give us whatever free rein we need to use Greenland to enhance our (and perhaps Europe’s) security. That was never in doubt, so I think we are back where we started, before President Trump started talking about possible military action. Whether anything has been gained in the meantime is questionable.

Trump briefed on Border Patrol-involved shooting as Minneapolis mayor demands end to enforcement operation
Every delay has consequences.

President Donald Trump has been briefed after an armed individual in Minneapolis was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent, a White House official told Fox News Digital. 
Meanwhile, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey demanded that the Trump administration remove immigration enforcement officials from the city. 
A Border Patrol member shot an armed individual on Saturday at the intersection of East 26th Street and Nicollet Ave. 
Minneapolis officials have since identified that person as 37-year-old White man, a resident of Minneapolis believed to be a U.S. citizen.
BORDER PATROL SHOOTS ARMED INDIVIDUAL IN MINNEAPOLIS, FOX NEWS LEARNS
"I just saw a video of more than six masked agents pummeling one of our constituents and shooting him to death," Frey said during a midday press conference. "How many more residents? How many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end? How many more lives need to be lost before this administration realizes that a political and partisan narrative is not as important as American values? How many times must local and national leaders plead with you, Donald Trump, to end this operation and recognize that this is not creating safety in our city?"
Frey said he was tired of local officials being told to turn down the temperature, and that his community members are stirring up "vitriol" in the streets. He demanded that the administration "reflect" on the ongoing chaos in the city, and ask themselves whether they are achieving peace and safety. 
"If the goal was to achieve peace and safety, this is doing exactly the opposite," he said. "If the goal was to achieve calm and prosperity, this is doing exactly the opposite."
"So to President Trump, this is a moment to act like a leader. Put Minneapolis put America first in this moment," he continued. "Let's achieve peace. Let's end this operation. And I'm telling you, our city will come back. Safety will be restored. We're asking for you to take action now to remove these federal agents."
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told Fox News that the suspect was armed with a gun and two magazines.
DHS said that the officers attempted to disarm the suspect, who then "violently resisted."
"Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene," DHS said. "The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID — this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."
Blue state …

Bill Cassidy raises $1.65 million for reelection fight
This is performative politics again.

Sen. Bill Cassidy raised $1.65 million in the latest fundraising quarter and has $11 million in cash on hand, his team told POLITICO, as he seeks to ward off a right-wing primary challenge.

The Louisiana Republican is facing several primary challengers on the right fueled by his past criticism of President Donald Trump. Cassidy voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack against the Capitol, a stance that angered the GOP base in Louisiana.

Cassidy has consistently posted slightly higher fundraising numbers than his opponents, John Fleming, the state treasurer and a former congressman, and state Sen. Blake Miguez, but has a significantly larger war chest. Cassidy has raised more than $17 million this cycle to date. Fleming and Miguez haven’t released their latest numbers; they had just over $2 million and $2.5 million in the bank respectively as of the end of September. Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) has also flirted with a bid, though sources told POLITICO she is not expected to run; she had $2.3 million in the bank as of the end of September.

The senator will have some help. A pair of super PACs supporting Cassidy’s reelection will show they had $5 million in cash on hand at the end of 2025 and received an additional $2 million in the first two weeks of January, according to a person close to those efforts. The PACs expect to spend between $13 million and $15 million on his behalf.

Cassidy is one of a trio of GOP senators facing tough reelection fights where Trump is declining to endorse a candidate, along with Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

Cassidy’s Senate GOP colleagues are backing his reelection. On Thursday, Majority Leader John Thune will host a fundraiser for Cassidy in Baton Rouge that’s expected to bring in $600,000.

If the government hikes taxes, how are higher tax receipts a ‘windfall’?
Notice what's missing.

There are days when the general tenor of British media coverage can be a little baffling, and today is one of them. At one end of the scale, there is lots of coverage of Donald Trump and adjacent foreign affairs; at the other the Times informs us that a single pensioner “died on Christmas day after a fall on an unrepaired pedestrian crossing”. If one didn’t know better, one might assume that a country where that made the website of the paper of record was a country which had run out of problems.

Even the coverage of the Greenland Crisis, as the history books will probably dub it, is a little strange. On the one hand, the President’s sudden u-turn away from tariffs and war has apparently left European leaders “flummoxed”; on the other, he has apparently secured a deal, modelled on our own arrangements in Cyprus, to the effect that American bases on the island will be considered its sovereign territory, and might extend far enough to possess worthwhile mining rights. Taken together, those stories don’t paint an especially puzzling picture.

But one story at least spares the need to dig too deeply into one fallen pensioner’s love of bingo and its implications for the Conservative Party, and it is this: ‘Government borrowing falls amid income tax windfall’. Our essay question: what exactly does the word ‘windfall’ mean here?

In normal British political parlance, a ‘windfall’ is money an easy target is alleged not to have earned, and which the government is thus entitled to tax at a punitive rate. Very often that refers simply to the operation of the price mechanism, as in the case of the ‘windfall tax’ on oil and gas after energy prices rose. The long-term impact of that is that high profits don’t stimulate investment and then politicians complain about industry not investing, but in the short term there’s cash to grab.

Yet the target in this case is us, the average taxpayer, because the government ‘windfall’ in question is down to “a rise in tax revenues, mainly from higher income tax and national insurance receipts”. But that isn’t my objection. Nor is it even to the fact of the story, per se; with our fiscal responsibility hats on, a smaller deficit is a good thing, and with public spending apparently impossible to cut the public does ultimately need to pay for it.

No, the issue is using the word ‘windfall’ to describe big increases in receipts from taxes ministers have hiked. There is nothing unexpected or unlooked for there, is there?

Perhaps this is just another example of the insidiousness of ‘fiscal drag’. Freezing tax thresholds rather than adjusting them for inflation allows the Government to raise the de facto tax rate year after year whilst leaving the de jure rate the same – or indeed, in the case of the previous government, posing as …

“A Fraudulent Scheme”: New Mexico Sues Texas Oil Companies for Walking Away From Their Leaking Wells
How is this acceptable?

The state of New Mexico is accusing three Texas oil executives of orchestrating “a fraudulent scheme” to pocket revenue from hundreds of oil and gas wells in New Mexico and offload the cost of plugging and cleaning up the wells onto the state’s taxpayers. The suit, filed in late December by the New Mexico attorney general’s office, is the latest salvo in the state’s fight against oil and gas executives accused of foisting old wells onto the public.

The 72-page complaint alleges a yearslong pattern of fraud and self-dealing in which the oil executives — Everett Willard Gray II, Robert Stitzel and Marquis Reed Gilmore Jr., all of Midland, Texas — repeatedly transferred wells among “a series of shell corporations, LLCs, and partnerships they created.” On multiple occasions, the men placed companies into bankruptcy protection, only to move their profitable wells to other companies they owned or managed outside the bankruptcy proceedings, the suit said.

New Mexico faces millions of dollars in costs to plug wells the companies shed through the bankruptcies. Unplugged oil and gas wells can emit climate-warming methane and carcinogenic gases and often leak briny, radioactive wastewater, as ProPublica and Capital & Main detailed in a 2024 investigation. The newsrooms uncovered Gray, Stitzel and Gilmore’s early business dealings and use of bankruptcy proceedings.

“I will not stand by while bad actors take advantage of the system — avoiding responsibility, burdening the state with costly remediation, and recklessly endangering the health of New Mexicans,” Raúl Torrez, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement.

As part of ProPublica and Capital & Main’s 2024 investigation, the news organizations toured dozens of wells belonging to Remnant, the group of companies through which the men launched their enterprise. Some wells leaked such high volumes of methane that, if ignited, the air could explode; others emitted hydrogen sulfide at potentially lethal concentrations; and several were surrounded by oil and wastewater spills. At the time, the owner of an oil field services company that had worked on Remnant’s wells said that the men filed for bankruptcy protection without paying his company what it was owed.

The recent lawsuit is “meritless” and built on “baseless claims,” Gray said in a statement responding to questions from ProPublica and Capital & Main. “I have always acted ethically and never been involved in any activities to defraud the state of New Mexico. I strongly deny any wrongdoing in this matter,” he said.

New Era Energy & Digital, one of Gray’s companies named in the state’s complaint, ended up with 87 of the group’s best gas wells, and the company said in a press release that those “no longer align with the Company’s business model.” New Era is focused instead on building an AI data center powered by a yet-to-be-built nuclear power station, it said.

Stitzel and Gilmore didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The tactics alleged by the attorney general are commonly used in the industry to squeeze profits from old wells before companies go bankrupt. Oil and gas executives so frequently follow a similar pattern that …