So the Trump administration has released a second tranche of alleged UAP files, which do nothing but raise the same questions people have had since the flying saucer craze of the 1940s: Why Are There No High-Quality UFO Photos Despite Frequent Sightings? Or put another way, why are the photos we see such cheesy fakes?
Take the example in the tweet above, a video which the poster claims to be "an intelligently controlled trans-medium swarm of UAPs flying around a submarine." My own reaction was that, at least with my eyes, I couldn't see a swarm of anything. But the comments raise even more questions:
Not a US sub.
U.S. sub? LMAOđ¤Ł
Accordoing to Chrome AI mode (which still hasn't tried to flatter me, chat me up, or otherwise seduce me, contra Glenn Reynolds),
A modern U.S. Navy submarine looks like a massive, matte-black steel cigar, ranging from 370 to 560 feet in length. It features a single cylindrical hull, a raised bridge-like structure (the "sail") on top, and an aerodynamic cross-section. Only about 10% of the vessel sits above the water's surface.
The "sub" in the tweet looks like something out of World War II. Other comments say the "swarm" is most likely seagulls, although I can't see anything but the U-boat itself. According to CBS News,
The 51 videos included in the second release include the type of grainy infrared footage captured by military cameras and sensors that has become familiar over the past several years.
In the description accompanying the videos, the Pentagon noted that the footage was requested by House lawmakers in March. The videos were found by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, the military office responsible for investigating UAP encounters. The Pentagon noted that "[m]any of these materials lack a substantiated chain-of-custody," and the descriptions note when and where they were likely taken.
One notable video appears to show the moment a fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron in 2023, a high-profile incident that came after a Chinese spy balloon traversed the U.S., leading to heightened fears of UAPs. Later reports indicated that the object might have been a balloon operated by a hobbyist group.
âMy initial reactions were positive and pleasantly surprised. I thought some of the videos contained truly anomalous phenomena,â said retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, a former oceanographer of the Navy, pointing to footage of right-angle turns and formation flying craft.
. . . âThe fact that this was the first time that an administration openly admitted that UAP files have been shielded from the public was promising. However, the ambiguity of the video content in particular is concerning as no metadata was included,â he said. âTherefore, it is impossible to conclude that any of the objects were truly anomalous.â
The bottom line is that people who were already on the UAP bandwagon see the release of the files as "encouraging" and "promising", but even they are conceding that so far, there's been no big revelation. Among the skeptics, there have been no conversions, but people keep asking why all we ever see is fuzzy, grainy photos that could be anything:
Seriously, I've been following this subject for most of my adult life. One of my biggest gripes about this topic is that literally EVERY single video that might show an alien is just potato quality, and you cant make hardly anything out. How is there not ANY clear, 4k quality pics? Even the videos released by governments and militaries are dog shit. How can this be?
I think this question is rising to the level of Fermi's paradox: if by the Darwinian paradigm, there are X to the 27th Earth-like planets, and thus life could have evolved on a bodacious number of them, why aren't we seeing evidence of alien life all the time? And if in fact there are all these UAPs that carry evidence of alien life, why are there no good pictures?
One possible answer has always been that the government is covering the good evidence up. But now, Trump has ordered the government to release everything, and so far, it's just the usual grainy photos and hokey fakes. One answer, of course, is it's like the Epstein files, Trump will just talk a good game, but the real stuff will still never be released. The people who believe in space aliens will likely keep on thinking that way.
Gavin Newsom, who's term limited as California governor and leaves office on January 4, 2027, is clearly gearing up to run for president in 2028. Apparently he's waking up to what will be a major vulnerability when he starts his campaign, the California High Speed Rail Project:
Californiaâs HSR is perhaps the greatest infrastructure failure in the history of the country. And the reason it failed is because of a gross failure of state governance, one on such a grand scale that it is nothing short of a betrayal of Californians.
The extent of the betrayal is only slowly coming to light, in part because legacy media reporters simply can't get their heads around an enterprise this size, and in part because they enable the whole fraud-based ecosystem. Independent analyst-journalists like Christopher Rufo and Nick Shirley have been working on the fringes of medical and welfare fraud in places like Minnesota and Los Angeles, but the level of high speed rail goes beyond immigrant entrepreneurs and extends to respectable consulting firms, labor unions, and the political establishments of both parties.
The link above from 2023 gives a bare-bones sketch of the project's history:
In 2008, California voters approved $9.95 billion of state bond funding as seed money to build an 800-mile high-speed rail (HSR) network connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the Central Valley to coastal cities, at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour, with an expected completion date of 2020.
But now, 15 years after the bond issue, three years after the expected completion date, not one train has left the station. Not one route has been completed, even though nearly all the $9.95 billion seed money has been spent. And the original budget of about $33 billion for the entire 800-mile system is now inadequate to build just one route (Bakersfield to Merced), whose cost pencils out to $207 million per mileâa cost that will almost certainly rise in the future, and for a route that may not be ready for ten years. Or more. Or perhaps ever.
The shortening of the proposed route, originally meant to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco, was a result of Newsom's first campaign for governor in 2018. Originally, he was a strong supporter as San Francisco mayor, but as opposition to the project grew -- the 2018 election came just two years before the system was supposed to be complete, but there had been minimal progress on basic construction -- he became vague on what he'd do, and following his election, he announced the project would be shortened to a "first phase" connecting Merced to Bakersfield in the hot, hardscrabble Central Valley. The link above concludes,
There is no path to completion for the fantasy rail system that was falsely sold to voters 15 years ago. Finishing the Bakersfield-Merced route, which will cost in excess of $35 billion, and which wonât be operative for ten years [2033], doesnât come close to penciling out. The only reasonable decision is to end a project that should never have begun.
According to a new report from the Legislative Analystâs Office reviewing the California High-Speed Rail Authorityâs Draft 2026 Business Plan, Gavin Newsomâs bullet train project may not even reach downtown Merced or downtown Bakersfield. The report says the northern end would stop roughly 3.5 miles south of downtown Merced, while the southern end would land about six miles north of the previously planned Bakersfield station.
That is not a punchline. That is the plan.
And remember, this is already the scaled-down version.
The under-construction photo at the top of this post was one I took in 2023 near Shafter, a little farther north than the route is now projected to end, six miles from Bakersfield. You can see what the country looks like in the area, and you can see what a thrill it will be to catch a limo to downtown Bakersfield from the station. But it gets worse:
The Trump administration has cut off all communication and cooperation with the California High-Speed Rail Authority â including freezing all environmental review, engineering and safety work dating back to last year â which the state says is putting the already embattled project at risk of further delays and cost increases.
âThis disengagement by the [Federal Railroad Administration] represents an unprecedented federal government action to cripple the advancement of a project it has helped fund,â the Authority wrote in its project update report released Wednesday.
The Legislative Analystâs Office report says 144 of the planned 162 miles could now operate on a single track. In real-world terms, trains traveling in opposite directions may [not "may", "will"] have to wait for one another at sidings rather than running continuously on dual tracks.
Californiaâs âworld-classâ bullet train is starting to sound like a one-lane country road with better branding.
The report also notes that the stations themselves are being simplified into âat-grade stations with single-side platformsâ â bureaucratic language for another downgrade.
Why? Because the costs have gotten so absurd that Sacramento is now trying to cheapen the project enough to keep pretending it is still viable.
. . . That is not a cost overrun. That is a civic humiliation.
It goes without saying that both Trump administrations have seen the project as a waste of federal funds. As of 2019,
The Trump administration has cut off all communication and cooperation with the California High-Speed Rail Authority â including freezing all environmental review, engineering and safety work dating back to last year â which the state says is putting the already embattled project at risk of further delays and cost increases.
âThis disengagement by the [Federal Railroad Administration] represents an unprecedented federal government action to cripple the advancement of a project it has helped fund,â the Authority wrote in its project update report released Wednesday.
The Biden administration late on Thursday restored a $929 million grant for California's high-speed rail that then-President Donald Trump revoked in 2019.
Trump had pulled funding for a high-speed train project in the state hobbled by extensive delays and rising costs that he dubbed a "disaster." Trump repeatedly clashed as president with California on a number of policy fronts, prompting the state to file more than 100 lawsuits against the Republican Trump administration.
But the second Trump administration has continued the policies of the first. According to Chrome AI mode,
As of late 2025 and early 2026, the federal government has terminated major funding for the California High-Speed Rail project.
In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) pulled approximately $4 billion in federal grants for the project.
In February 2026, Congress formally rescinded an additional $928 million for the project in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026.
California dropped its lawsuit against the federal government in December 2025 regarding the terminated $4 billion, opting to move forward without federal support.
But the idea of finishing anything at all without federal money looks, as various links have pointed out, more and more like fantasy. But this brings us to Gavin Newsom's electoral dilemma: to be any sort of contender in 2028, he has to put the high speed rail project out of the picture as an issue:
Three months ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an extraordinary achievement. Standing on the site of a new railyard, with trains all around him, Newsom proudly explained that the stateâs high-speed rail project had a new marshaling facility to support the transition to busily laying track.
. . . Two weeks ago, talking to Bill Maher, Newsom defended the high-speed rail project with these words: âWeâre actually laying track.â The railhead is the signal that a new phase has arrived: Thereâs a construction yard full of material, with trains to move it. Itâs the really-making-stuff moment, the time for active, provable success. Thereâs a place where you can go look at all the iron thatâs moving into place.
Thereâs nothing there. There are rail lines, but they run into an empty and unpeopled yard next to a bunch of dirt. There are no construction materials. There are no construction workers. There are no warehouses. They ran a bunch of trains in, posed in front of them, and then returned the site to its normal empty condition. Nothing is happening there. Nothing.
I walked the site. I walked up and down the tracks, worried that I was missing something. I drove up to Wasco, then back, up and down dirt roads along the tracks â old tracks, for BNSF freight trains.
. . . The railyard where Gavin Newsom declared âreal progressâ while standing next to train cars is the center of no construction activity at all. I walked around the fence and stood on the tracks today in the empty yard. I was alone.
Not only that, in the video, he now refers to a "119-mile first phase", when up to now, for instance via Chrome AI mode, the "first phase" has been generally understood to be 171 miles from Bakersfield to Merced. Under the Legislative Analyst report linked above, it is thought now to be slightly shortened to 162 miles, allowing for stations well outside Bakersfield and Merced, but at least nominally connecting them -- but now, without explanation, Newsom has it down to 119 miles.
I asked Chrome AI mode, "If I travel 119 miles on Highway 99 north of Bakersfield, where will I be?" The short answer is Fresno, or as Bakersfielders call it, "the big 'No". It sounds like there's been a big reduction of the first phase, and it should probably be called Bakersfield-Fresno. Amtrak, by the way, has already had conventional trains on this route since the 1970s, and has already ordered new equipment to operate on it, presumably for the next 20 years or more.
This is a big story. Sounds like Amtrak doesn't expect high speed trains to replace anything on its own Central Valley route for decades to come. They probably have good inside info. Will Nick Shirley or Christopher Rufo follow up, let along legacy media? Somebody needs to be asking Gavin Newsom serious questions.
I keep wanting to dismiss the Spencer Pratt campaign, but it's been attracting serious attention from as far away as Australia, as the clip embedded above shows. Yesterday, Trump gave him a quasi-endorsement:
Speaking to reporters Wednesday before boarding Air Force One, the president of the United States and former host of âThe Apprenticeâ declared that Spencer Pratt â the villain of MTVâs âThe Hillsâ and current candidate for mayor of Americaâs second-largest city â is âa big MAGA personâ whom heâd âlike to see do well.â
Just like that, Prattâs insurgent meme-filled campaign for Los Angeles mayor, which is giving incumbent Mayor Karen Bass a run for her money in Californiaâs sprawling deep-blue metropolis, took yet another unpredictable turn.
Pratt, a 42-year-old reality TV star who launched his candidacy in January after losing his Pacific Palisades home in the devastating 2025 wildfires, is running as an independent, building his campaign around voter fury at incumbent Bass and her handling of the disasterâs aftermath. He has worked carefully to cast himself as a nonpartisan outsider â âI represent all of Los Angeles,â he has said â even as MAGA-aligned personalities have applauded his combative social-media driven rise.
The same link at Real Clear Politics -- the site that touts its reputation by averaging garbage-in-garbage-out polling to come up with meaningless numbers -- concludes that Trump's endorsement is "a kiss of death":
The city Pratt is running to lead is not fertile ground for Trumpâs blessing. Los Angeles County broke for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election by 65% to 32%. The city has not elected a Republican mayor in nearly three decades. And only 18% of registered city voters are Republicans.
Against that backdrop, veteran Democratic strategists were quick to render their verdict.
âA Trump endorsement only helps with Republicans,â Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio told RealClearPolitics. âIn Los Angeles, itâs a kiss of death. Pratt might get protest votes in June from Democrats. But when push comes to shove, Los Angeles, with its heavily Latino and black populations and deep blue Democratic base, isnât going to elect a mayor who is embraced by Trump.â
âAnd you can be sure that Mayor Bass will do everything she can to remind voters that they are MAGA twins,â he added.
Bassâ campaign didnât wait long to make exactly that point. Within hours of Trumpâs comments, a campaign Bass went on offense.
âNo surprises here â both Trump and Pratt want ICE to invade our city and kidnap our neighbors,â she tweeted.
The Pratt campaign was already anticipating this line of attack:
âHeâs an outsider candidate. Heâs a celebrity candidate. Heâs very clever, very strategic, and very skilled at social media,â said Republican strategist Kevin Spillane. âThere arenât many candidates that Iâve seen that are that skilled in a long time.â
Pratt regularly refers to Mayor Karen Bass, now seeking a second term, as trash, swapping her last name out for basura, Spanish for garbage. He has described supporters of Bass as âBassholesâ and backers of another mayoral contender, Councilmember Nithya Raman, as âRamaniacs.â
. . . âHeâs being brash, confrontational, sensational and operating beyond political norms â all things that Trump has done and continues to do,â said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant.
âThatâs why I think thereâs potential for him to unlock a constituency that wasnât going to vote for a Rick Caruso,â he said, referring to the developer who lost to Bass in 2022.
(By the way, the Bass-Bassura pun went completely over my head in this post two weeks ago.) But are the Democrat strategists who say Trump's almost-endorsement is "a kiss of death" missing something?
Normally U.S. presidents approaching the midway point of their second term are beginning to experience the effects of declining political capital as lame ducks. But not Donald Trump, who continues to wield the power of election endorsements with unparalleled success.
Americaâs 47th president kept his impressive 2026 primary winning streak rolling Tuesday night, with more than three dozen Republicans winning outright or advancing to a runoff in states like Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
But the nightâs biggest prize for Trump was the ousting of one-time ally Rep. Thomas Massie, who was defeated by Trump-backed rival Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL and Kentucky farmer, in one of the most expensive congressional races in American history.
The one certain thing about Pratt at the moment is that he's getting a great deal of attention. This has got to count for something, if not in the LA mayoral election, at least in his future prospects for whatever. He's getting all this attention for a reason.
Mayor Karen Bass has turned Los Angeles into a magnet for the street homeless. The numbers are shocking:
⢠64% are from outside the City of LA ⢠40% are from outside California ⢠6% are from outside the United States pic.twitter.com/4HHsSQM2Xw
— Christopher F. Rufo âď¸ (@christopherrufo) May 19, 2026
Christopher Rufo's reporting on the Haitian migrant problems in Springfield, OH and Charleroi, PA for City Journal had an impact on the 2024 election. In those pieces, he showed the economic interdependency of NGOs, landlords, sweatshop employeers, car dealers, and others in making money out of resettling Haitian migrants in "temporary protected status". Such programs have major impacts on native-born members of surrounding communities, including landlords who evict longtime tenants to get higher rents from overcrowded units rented to migrants, for instance.
Los Angeles hosts the nationâs largest unsheltered homeless population. In recent years, despite billions in city and county spending, L.A.âs once-pristine streets have become littered with tents, drugs, and feces. City leaders have made elaborate promises about managing the homeless problem, but few seem to have asked a simple question: Where, exactly, are these people coming from?
There is a reason for that. In 2020, the city-county Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) found that one-third of âunsheltered Angelenosâ became homeless outside of Los Angeles County. In 2024, the nonprofit RAND Corporation reported that 41 percent of the street homeless surveyed across three Los Angeles neighborhoodsâHollywood, Venice, and Skid Rowâwere âlast housedâ somewhere other than L.A. County.
In other words, even if Los Angeles has some type of "affordable housing shortage" or other conditions that put people on the street, why would people nevertheless seek out LA as a place to live? There must be many places that have equivalent good weather but where housing might be more easily available. Something about LA is serving as a magnet for the potentially homeless over and above locations in, say, Arizona, Texas, or Florida.
Both reports cut against the narrative of left-wing politicians and activists, who insist that any claim that out-of-town homeless are flooding L.A. is a âmyth.â In 2021, LAHSA stopped publishing previous-location data. In 2025, RAND removed the metric from the organizationâs annual report and included it in a separate, lesser-read âannex.â
We asked LAHSA and RAND why they buried this data. LAHSA said it stopped publishing previous-location figures because of respondentsâ âvarying interpretations of the question.â RAND claimed that it moved the data to the annex âdue to a need to save costs on publishing,â and confirmed that the data would remain there in the groupâs upcoming report.
Another reason might be that the massive migration of homeless people to Los Angeles violates progressive pietiesâand these groups would rather suppress those data than face their implications. (In response to this accusation, LAHSA said it stopped publishing results for the previous-location question âsolely due to the statistical uncertainty,â but noted that the âquestion is in the queue for revision and validationâ; RAND again cited âscarce resourcesâ and the need to âstreamline the main report.â)
The usual leftist explanation for homelessness is that there's a "shortage of affordable housing", although in recent years there's also a tacit acknowledgement that many homeless are unable to sustain a life pattern that enables them to afford housing at any price due to mental illness or addiction.
For years, Los Angelesâs homelessness policy has been rooted in the idea that the condition is a housing problem. The city and county have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on âhousing firstâ and âharm reductionâ programmingâin a nutshell, providing housing and drug paraphernalia instead of mandating treatmentâwhile failing reliably to punish quality-of-life crimes, such as public camping, drug consumption, and petty theft.
. . . The implications of our survey are clear: just building housing wonât solve Los Angelesâs homelessness problem. The wrong kind of housing program might even make it worse. Giving more homeless people a permanent home, with no strings attached, simply inspires nonresidents to come here.
The real way to solve Los Angelesâs homelessness crisis is to reverse the polarity of the magnet: enforce drug and camping laws, mandate treatment, and insist on clean and orderly streets. The only alternative is lawlessnessâthe end result of an approach that has turned the City of Angels into an open-air homeless encampment.
In Skid Row, I was personally on the ground in disguise while wearing an old LA Raiders hat and a Mother Mary hoodie with ripped up pants. Being there showed me how far our society has fallen.
Needles, dead animals, rotten food, and people sleeping on the streets have made parts of LA look like a city that has completely succumbed to hell.
On top of all of that, criminals were taking advantage of the homeless by selling votes for a few dollars. Reports over the years had claimed that election fraud is going on in California. But we showed
â for the first time ever â not circumstantial evidence, but real, live exchanges of cash for votes. Darkness, overshadowing democracy, for a mere $2 a voter.
Federal officials have charged a Marina del Rey woman with paying individuals to register to vote, including homeless residents of L.A.âs infamous Skid Row.
In a press release issued Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice said Brenda Lee âAnikaâ Brown Armstrong is charged with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote.
The 64-year-old has already agreed to plead guilty.
According to the DOJ, which cited her plea agreement, Armstrong periodically worked as a âpetition circulatorâ for roughly two decades.
âIn that role, she was paid by individuals and entities â known as âcoordinatorsâ â to collect voter signatures on official petitions that qualify initiatives, referendums and recalls for California state ballots,â the DOJ said.
Upon gathering enough signatures, Armstrong would return the petitions to the âcoordinators,â who then paid her a set amount for each signature, although officials said it varies depending on the specific ballot initiative. She âendeavoredâ to ensure the signatories were registered voters because the people who paid her only gave her money for signatures attributable to registered voters, according to federal officials.
. . . Skid Row was a convenient place for Armstrong to collect signatures because of its high concentration of people in a relatively small area who were willing to sign petitions in exchange for payment,â the DOJ said, adding that overall, Armstrong would give individuals $2 or $3 in cash to âinduce themâ to sign her petitions. âMany of Skid Rowâs homeless population were not registered to vote [and] some homeless people did not have an address to put on the forms ⌠On several occasions, Armstrong provided a homeless individual with her own former address in Los Angeles so they had something to write on the registration form.â
But this is just one racket within the overall homeless ecosystem. Organized retail theft can involve homeless people who in effect have a "job" shoplifting from low-level retail stores and turning their hauls over to coordinators who pay them. Another highly lucrative activity, equivalent to the NGOs that resettle migrants, is the homeless non-profit racket, which Spencer Pratt is attempting to expose in his mayoral campaign:
Spencer Pratt just NAILED the homeless grift in LA đĽ âHomeless ânonprofitâ execs are raking in over $1 million a year on the homeless problem â guarantees the problem is NEVER solved.â Drive around LA. More tents, more death, more money for the suits. 6 people are dying EVERY⌠https://t.co/sJyikmCkzC
— Lillian L. Carranza (Retired)đşđ¸ (@LAPDCARRANZA) May 19, 2026
However, as I've been pointing out, even if Pratt winds up in the top two after the June 2 primary, his chances in the November election are a long shot -- although the national effect of his campaign, which is Quixotic at best on the local level, may succeed in elevating the issue as a national priority. But whoever wins the executive local elections in California, whether for city or state government, will face leftist supermajorities in city councils and the state legislature.
The only real progress will have to be made via federal anti-fraud envforcement, as we see above with a homeless vote fraudster's guilty plea.
A week after a university commencement speaker was canceled because of a tweet claiming that Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, the allegation leapt into the pages of The New York Times.
The columnist Nicholas Kristof included the claim in a column alleging widespread sexual abuse against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Detailing the account of an unnamed Gaza journalist who says guards summoned a dog when he was imprisoned in 2024, Kristof writes, âHe tried to dislodge the dog, he said, but it penetrated him.â Linking to a range of pro-Palestinian sources, he notes that other prisoners had recounted similar experiences elsewhere.
The article drew widespread reactions around the world, including protests and calls to cancel subscriptions. On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saâar threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper for libel against the State of Israel. Israeli officials and the Israel Prison Service have completely denied the claims, and Netanyahu called them baseless.
Alan Dershowitz gave a summary of the legal issues in the YouTube interview embedded above. At 3:40
In those countries that allow nations and groups to bring lawsuits for defamation, it seems to me that it's a very, very strong case. Not in the United States, Israel can't bring a lawsuit. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs can't bring a lawsuit. Only individuals or corporations, etc, can be defamed. But there's no doubt in my mind that defamation has occurred, and under the law of probably Great Britain, Canada, maybe Australia, maybe Israel,
these claims can be tested in a court of law. So, no, not in the United States, but yes, in other states that permit defamation actions for hate speech.
. . . [In London], there used to be what was called "tourism defamation", that is, people would purposely sue in London, even though they didn't have any connections to London. The courts are very concerned there about that. The problem with Israel, of course, is that you can bring lawsuits in Israel, and you can win, but you're going to collect almost nothing. So the issue with Israel is to bring the lawsuit and get a determination. Now, it won't have the same credibility that a lawsuit in another country might have, and they won't collect a lot of money, but the issue is not collecting a lot of money from the New York Times, it's discrediting it.
. . . it's getting discovery, and sitting down with the lawyers from the New York Times,and with Kristof and others, and putting them under deposition, and questioning them about who their sources are.
The Israelis allege that the column was intentionally posted ahead of the release of an independent Israeli report that found Hamas had systematically used sexual violence in the onslaught of October 7, 2023.
It is unclear whether the lawsuit will be filed on behalf of individuals, groups, or the nation as a whole. Regardless of the framing, the defamation action could allow Israel to delve into the paperâs journalistic practices and alleged bias.
Under the higher âactual malice standard,â Israeli counsel would likely need to prove that Kristof and the Times acted with knowledge of the allegationâs falsity or in reckless disregard of the truth.
. . . The newspaper has been repeatedly called out for slanted and sometimes false reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. For example, after Israel attacked Gaza in response to the October 7th massacre, the Times reported on an alleged Israeli strike that destroyed part of the Al-Ahli hospital. The Times seemed to rush to get the allegation into print, with little supporting evidence.
The story was based on sources associated with the terrorist group Hamas, which is notorious for disseminating propaganda and false stories. It took a week before the Times retracted the claim. (It turned out to be a misfired Palestinian rocket that hit a parking lot).
. . . The Times has had to sever ties with antisemitic writers, or stringers, including one who said âthe Jews are sons of the dogs, and I am in favor of killing them and burning them like Hitler did to them.â
These past controversies are potentially admissible in a defamation trial to show malice and a history of reckless reporting about Israel.
So far, the Times stands by the story. At the second link above,
New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said the legal threat was part of "a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative." She added that "any such legal claim would be without merit." Another Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, defended the reporting, saying the testimonies were corroborated where possible with other witnesses and subjected to rigorous fact-checking against human rights research and testimony presented at the United Nations.
To judge from Dershowitz's interview, no matter where the lawsuit is filed, the aim is to discredit the Times once and for all. But the challenge may not be just legal. The story here continues,
Despite the official backing given to the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, many newsroom journalists have expressed significant distrust with the facts presented. According to an extensive report in Puck, later echoed by the New York Post, newsroom reporters suspect the sources behind the allegations would not have met their own professional standards.
A source at The New York Times told ynet: âWe feel the opinion section is hurting the credibility of the entire brand and repeatedly lowering the professional standard for all of us.â The remarks join testimony from another journalist who told Puck, âI am sick of being embarrassed by the Opinion section.â Other reporters are frustrated by damage to the paperâs reputation from decisions by a department they say is not subject to the same strict standards, and by opinion writers âinvadingâ their areas of coverage.
The story gives another perspective on the chances of any lawsuit, brought either in the US or Israel:
But any legal action against The New York Times in the United States, which would most likely be heard in New York state, would face a significant hurdle that would make winning the case extremely difficult. The main obstacle is the U.S. Supreme Court precedent in New York Times v. Sullivan, which sets a high bar for lawsuits involving public figures. Under that ruling, it is not enough to prove that Kristofâs column was offensive, distorted, hostile or even wrong. To survive dismissal, plaintiffs would have to prove that the newspaper or columnist acted with "actual malice" â publishing a false factual claim while knowing it was false, or consciously disregarding serious doubts about its truth.
In addition, U.S. federal free speech laws mean that even if Israel won a defamation case in an Israeli court, enforcing the judgment on American soil would be nearly impossible.
This legal complexity was reflected in Ariel Sharonâs lawsuit against Time magazine in the 1980s. A New York jury found at the time that the article was false and defamatory, but Sharon did not receive damages because he failed to prove actual malice or reckless disregard by the magazine, as required under the Sullivan standard.
"Best In The World . . . I've Never Had A Positive Encounter With Mossad."
John Kiriakou, who was a CIA officer from 1990 to 2004, has given numerous interviews covering his experiences at the CIA and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in recent years. In the one with Dalton Fisher embedded above, he talks about Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, introducing it by saying, Best in the world . . . Universally negative. Universally negative. I've never had a positive encounter with Mossad. I have never met a CIA officer who has had a positive encounter with Mossad. Because the Mossad deosn't give two shits what you think, or what you are trying to purpose on in your job. They care only about Israel. . . . Because for them, it's an issue of survival."
This gave me a new perspective on Rabbi Pesach Wolicki's interpretation of Old Testament prophecies in the context of the Abrahamic Covenant, which Catholic and Main Line Protestant theologians acknowledge is, like the New Covenant, eternal and thus still in effect. In Wolicki's view of Zionism, the Jews were never intended to be without a homeland forever; there are passages in Isaiah and elsewhere that predict a return.
Secular interpretations of Zionism, even those that suggest the Jews deserve a homeland in consequence of the Holocaust, don't place this, as Wolicki does, in the realm of eschatalogy. It's possible to view modern Israel as a nice thing done by the British and the US for the Jews, who'd after all gotten a bad deal, and they deserved a homeland, and for whatever reason when Madagascar or various other locations didn't work out, it just happened to be within the Old Testament borders of Israel.
Wolicki and other religious Zionists simply don't see a coincidence. This is the reestablishment of Old Testament Israel, with what appears to be the exception that the returning Jews don't intend to make the mistakes of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. And they're doing it in the context of the Abrahamic Covenant. An example is the Battle of Rephidim (Exodus 17: 10-13), where the Israelites fought the Amalekites shortly after escaping Egypt.
While Joshua led the Israelite army on the battlefield, Moses stood on a nearby hilltop holding the staff of God in the air. When Mosesâs arms grew tired, Aaron and Hur had him sit on a rock and held his arms up on either side until sunset, allowing Joshua to secure the victory. It's the responsibility of the Jews to fight for the homeland with the assistance of the Almighty, and when they falter, as they did when their spies reported that the inhabitants of the Promised Land were big and strong, and they refused to fight, bad things happened.
In short, there's little in the Old Testament to warm the hearts of "juist war" theorists. Cities are repeatedly burned to the ground, with rvery inhabitant slaughtered, including women, children, and animals. Edward Feser maintains it's a terrible sin for Donald Trump even to threaten such a thing, but this is what the Almighty tells Jonah to do to Nineveh. In fact, the difference between the God of the Old Teatament and the God of the New was one of the first problems for the early Church:
Marcionism was an early Christian dualistic belief system originating with the teachings of Marcion of Sinope in Rome around 144. Marcion was an early Christian theologian, evangelist, and an important figure in early Christianity.
. . . Marcion preached that the benevolent God of the Gospel who sent Jesus into the world as the savior was the true Supreme Being, different and opposed to the malevolent deity, the Demiurge or creator deity, identified with Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible.
But this was a heresy; ther teaching of the Church is that they are the same God. The problem gets bigger, it seems to me, with both the Abrahamic and the New Covenants still in effect, and modern Israel still conducts its military and intelligence affairs very much as though it has an obligation to the Almighty to occupy the land God has given it. At this site, a visitor asks,
I have heard a lot of anti-Israel sentiment from my friends who support the Palestinians. A good client of mine questions the validity of Israelâs existence, saying: âHow do you justify inhabiting an already populated land through force? How can you contemplate the horrors of the Holocaust and then inflict such suffering on the Arabs?â
It gives the answer,
In our time, the Jews have returned to the Land of Israel on the grounds that their ancestors not only bought this land, but were promised it by God. Moreover, the League of Nations was aware of your friend's claims, and yet they declared Israel to be the homeland of the Jewish people in 1922. The United Nations did the same in 1947. And yet the Jewish claim to the land is far deeper than any political vote by the nations of the world.
On one hand, modern Israel has been one of rhe countries that works most assiduously to avoid civilian casualties. On the other, particularly when it involved the Abrahamic Covenant, the Almighty was never a "just war" advocate. I asked Chrome AI mode, "How do 'just war' theorists accommodate all the terrible destruction God visits on cities like Jericho in the Old Testament?" It answered,
Just war theorists -- who typically argue that war should be defensive, limited, and last resort -- handle the extreme violence of Old Testament (OT) narratives like Jericho (Joshua 6) by separating them from human-initiated warfare.
The central justification is that these were not wars initiated by human choice, but specific, divine commands. Just war theorist Augustine argued that when God directly orders destruction, it is an exception to the usual, strict rules of war. In this view, it is a âholy warâ (or cherem) rather than a âjust war,â where God, not man, is the ultimate judge.
But this creates an exception not just for ancient Israel, but for modern Israel, insofar as the modern state is a re-establishment of the land promised in the Abrahamic Covenant. This may be part of the deep reservation John Kiriakou expresses over Mossad -- they're good, but they're maybe too good.
But the bottom line is simply that the God of the Abrahamic Covenant is the same God as the one in the New Covenant, and by extension, some acts in violation of "just war" theory must be accommodated in certain circumstances. I don't see how to get around that.
There's Just No Way The UK Is In A Constitutional Crisis!
Back in February, I noted that the then-controversy over Prince Andrew's ties to Jeffrey Epstein was being called "the worst crisis for the Royals since 1936." But another crisis has been simmering, and this one is closer to the monarchy itself, and thus a little closer to the 1936 crisis for Edward VIII. The specific problem last week was that Charles was scheduled to deliver the King's Speech on Thursday (May 13), which is the formal opening of Parliament. But with the intense controversy over Keir Starmer's continued leadership, the potential appearance of the king endorsing Starmer created a delicate situation.
Sir Keir Starmer has reportedly been asked by Buckingham Palace whether or not His Majesty the King should proceed with the King's Speech as planned. It comes amid a swirl of ministerial resignations and growing demands for Sir Keir to step aside ahead of the royal speech being delivered tomorrow.
The embattled Prime Minister is said to have been urged by the Palace 'do not bring us into it' as the ongoing struggle around his premiership continues. The King is due to deliver the speech, written by the Prime Minister outlining his government's priorities for the next parliamentary session, tomorrow.
Politico, a news website, reports that people familiar with the matter have made clear to No10 officials how important it is for the King not to be used for political purposes.
"The Palace view is âwe do not want to be any part of this conversation â do not bring us into it,'" the publication was told.
This was also at the basis of Charles's granduncle Edward VIII's abdication. If he married Wallis Simpson against the wishes of the government, it would create a "king's party" in a political divide, when the king is supposed to be above politics. The problem for Charles right now is that the highly unpopular Labour government is nevertheless "His Majesty's Government". This will continue to be a problem even if Starmer steps down as prime minister, which as of this morning seems increasingly likely.
Keir Starmer has told close friends he intends to stand down as Prime Minister and set out an orderly timetable for his departure.
A member of the Cabinet told me late yesterday afternoon: 'Keir understands the political reality.
'He realises the current chaos is unsustainable. He simply wants to be able to do it in a dignified way and in a manner of his own choosing. He will set out a timetable.'
Labour's problem is somewhat similar to the Canadian Liberal Party's problem when Justin Trudeau announced he planned to resign as prime minister. The Liberal leadership selected Mark Carney to succeed him, but Carney wasn't a member of parliament. Although he could observe debate without being a member, he would have to be elected to a seat to participate actively. Following both Canadian and UK tradition, it was quickly arranged for Carney to run and be electef to a safe seat in a local election as soon as possible. However, this means that under the Canadian and UK parliamentary systems, the prime minister isn't directly elected but is installed by the machine.
The same situation is developing in tne UK now. Wes Streeting resigned as health minister in the Starmer government to increase pressure on Starmer to resign and has since made it clear that he wishes the machine to consider him as Starmer's replacement. However,
Wes Streeting has called for a âproper contestâ to replace Sir Keir Starmer and confirmed he would stand if the race is triggered, as he and other senior Labour figures make their pitch to replace the Prime Minister.
In his first public appearance since resigning as health secretary, Mr Streeting set out a fledgling policy platform for a run at the Labour leadership.
He said Britain must pursue a ânew special relationshipâ with the European Union and signalled he wanted to see the country rejoin the trade bloc in the future.
. . . His intervention comes after Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was cleared to run for selection in the Makerfield by-election.
Mr Burnham has said he is prepared to âfight to the highest levelâ, as he and other senior Labour figures jostle to lead the party in the future.
. . . Mr Streeting also said he did have enough support among MPs to trigger a contest, but suggested his challenge would âlack legitimacyâ without Mr Burnham being given a chance to return to Parliament.
Nevertheless, the language Streeter is using strongly suggests that any "proper contest" for the prime ministership is going to be a charade with only a veneer of "legitimacy", and beyond that, the contest will be between two Labour machine politicians whose policies will differ little from each other's or Starmer's -- especially pro-immigration and pro-Islamist appeasement. The next opportunity to vote out Labour, unless something major intervenes, will be in August 2029.
Yesterday's enormous Unite the Kingdom demonstration in London is attributed, at least for now, as the reason for Starmer's planned resignation:
Everyone who turned up today and behaved impeccably ended this tyrant . Thank you https://t.co/uIHDC9ViWe
— Tommy Robinson đŹđ§ (@TRobinsonNewEra) May 16, 2026
But all that results, for possibly three more years, will be a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Labour Party's Titanic. The question is whether the level of popular sentiment displayed in Unite the Kingdom will be satisfied with just a change in Labour leadership without any impact on how the country is run. The US Constitution provides for House elections every two years, which is a much better politicsl safety valve. At least King Charles and Prince William seem to be aware of the threat posed by seeming too close to His Majesty's Government.
