What's Really Going On In Ceuta?

The official version of the Ceuta crisis is that it's over, the migrants have mostly turned around and gone home, everything's back to normal. In reality, it's very difficult to check. Yesterday, I embedded an X post from the UK Spanish embassy that said as of this past Friday, July 31, they'd mostly gone back home. If this is the case, then the photos and videos of the migrants overrunning tbe streets should date almost entirely from Thursday, July 30.

However, I embedded another X post yesterday from the UK's Tommy Robinson dated Saturday, August 1, apparently filmed the day before, that shows significant numbers of migrants still on the streets. The Nick Shirley video embeddded above, by far the most comprehensive report from the crisis, speaks of Juy 31 in the past tense, so I think it's reasonable to assume it was filmed over the weekend and released yesterday. Although it has some shots of migrant groups being escorted by Spanish guardsmen, there are many more of migrants still wandering the streets in small groups. According to Reuters as of yesterday,

Spain estimates that about 69,500 migrants have returned to Morocco over the past four days, exceeding initial estimates of around 50,000 arrivals in Ceuta on Thursday. The official death toll on the Spanish side of the border stands at 72, with 11 deaths on the Moroccan side.

. . . Ceuta's leader Juan Jesus Vivas told broadcaster Telecinco between 3,000 and 5,000 migrants remained in the enclave, adding that its two migrant reception centres — one for adults ​and another for minors — had "collapsed".

It's been clear throughout the crisis that the numbers released by government sources are intended to minimize the problem and create an impression that it's been solved. The actual numbers remaining are likely much higher than these estimates. But farther down, the piece carries information on how the invasion was organized:

[Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares] said Morocco had immediately offered police support and had not attached conditions to its cooperation, allowing for the ‌rapid return ⁠of most of those who crossed.

But Ceuta's Vivas was critical of Rabat, saying there was a widespread perception within Ceuta that it had allowed — if not orchestrated — the crisis.

"Morocco has shown us that it isn't reliable. There's no alternative but to put in place whatever means are necessary to ensure it cannot do this again," Vivas told newspaper El Pais.

Morocco's Interior Ministry on Sunday blamed the surge on misinformation on social media, human trafficking networks and misinterpretation of a Spanish court ruling banning immediate ​returns of migrants intercepted at sea. That ​was in line with Madrid's official ⁠view.

According to reports by El Pais and Cadena SER radio, citing officials familiar with the matter, Spanish intelligence services have concluded that Morocco did not plan the mass crossing, but allowed it to happen.

Moroccan border controls were gradually relaxed during July and were allegedly removed as crowds surged toward the Tarajal crossing during Morocco's Throne Day holiday, the ​reports said.

The UK Guardian opens up the possibility of another explaination:

But there has also been speculation that the Moroccan authorities may have opened the border to signal their displeasure at Sánchez’s recent visit to Algeria, which supports efforts to free the disputed territory of Western Sahara from Moroccan occupation.

Morocco’s ambassador to Spain, Karima Benyaich Millán, said Rabat was not happy about the mass crossing, adding that it hoped those in Ceuta would return.

Moroccan government sources told the Europa Press news agency that the surge of people entering Ceuta was down to “criminal organisations” and insisted that Rabat’s cooperation with Spain remained “exemplary”.

In May 2021, Rabat loosened border controls – allowing 10,000 people to cross into Ceuta over the course of two days – during a diplomatic standoff triggered after Madrid allowed a Western Sahara independence leader to be treated for Covid-19 in Spain.

The crisis has become an extremely sensitive issue for the EU:

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s migration policies have weathered withering criticism as leaders from across the European Union met Tuesday following last week’s rush of migrants to the Spanish territory of Ceuta in North Africa. /p>

The sudden arrival of 72,000 migrants on Thursday and Friday sparked a humanitarian crisis in Ceuta and reignited the immigration debate in the 27-nation bloc, though most of the migrants soon went back. More than 80 migrants died, including some who drowned or were trampled in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier, according to Spanish and Moroccan authorities.

Notice how, in the space of a few days, the estimate of migrants has crept upward from 50,000 to 72,000. This would also affect the number remaining in Ceuta if "most" of the 72,000 have gone back; it seems much more likely that those remaining are still in five digits.

While ministers seemed to rally back around Sanchez after meeting Tuesday, Europe displayed a deeply damaging disunity in the aftermath of Ceuta as it faces security threats from Moscow, instability with Washington and economic tension with Beijing, said Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific and Middle East for the financial firm Natixis.

“Europe has shown weakness again,” she said. “Massive weakness.”

EU leaders quickly pounced on Sanchez once videos from Ceuta went viral. Many blamed the incident on his government's progressive policies and publicly rallied for new border checks at sea, air and land ports of entry.

So far, only Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic has blamed the Ceuta crisis on the far right.

Ceuta: Nothing To See Here

Almost everyone who entered Ceuta yesterday has now returned to Morocco.

It is not possible to travel from Ceuta or Melilla to mainland Spain without presenting identification at a police checkpoint. The integrity of the Schengen area is fully guaranteed. https://t.co/F2s3JWN4bF

— Embassy of Spain UK (@EmbSpainUK) July 31, 2026

Anne Applebaum, a Yale legacy, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, board member of the National Endowment for Democracy and Renew Democracy Initiative, editorial board member of The American Interest and the Journal of Democracy, member of the international board of directors of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, and former Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), where she co-led a major initiative aimed at countering Russian disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), has delivered the establishment line on Ceuta at The Atlantic, a pet project of Laurene Powell Jobs, whose net worth is estimated at $11 to $14 billion: The Far Right Is Distorting Ceuta.

Mostly young, mostly male Moroccans crawling onto beaches, climbing hills, scaling walls, jumping over fences, surging past police in order to get into Europe: The photographs and videos that emerged from Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, on July 29 and 30 looked very much like migrant-terror videos, deliberately designed to be broadcast by the international far right. So closely did this incident resemble the “invasion” that MAGA and its European friends have long said is under way that it was hard not to suspect that it had been orchestrated.

Aha! There you have it! Shadowy forces connected to the far right have cooked this up as a provocation!

Last week, according to El Pais as well as other Spanish, international, and Moroccan media outlets, many Moroccans saw a TikTok video nevertheless claiming that “the Spanish border is open and you can cross without papers,” meaning they could reach the European continent. . . . Other messages, many of which have now disappeared, told people where to buy wet suits, flippers, goggles, floats, and even waterproof bags for documents and cellphones. Screenshots from Google Maps told them which sections of the Ceuta beach might have fewer police. Moroccan border guards were either unwilling or unable to stop them.

. . . Vice President Vance posted a link to a wildly dishonest Fox News segment that incorrectly described the migrants arriving in “Northern Spain” rather than Northern Africa. “Thank God,” he wrote, “@POTUS was elected and our country’s border no longer looks like this.” Others made more specific threats. Robert Jenrick, a high-profile member of Reform, the British far-right party, wrote that “Ceuta is our future if we don’t secure our border. These men are on their way to Calais.” Nigel Farage, the Reform Party leader, posted a video also claiming that the Moroccans were en route to Britain. Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), declared that “Germany is the likely destination.”

These were lies. The Moroccans who swam to Ceuta were never going to make it to Britain, Germany, or anywhere else in Europe.

On the other hand, the Spanish government itself blames traffickers:

Spain’s Interior Ministry argued an earlier court ruling is behind the latest influx, stating it “believes that human trafficking networks are exploiting a court ruling to encourage the flow of undocumented migrants, mostly young people.”

In addition, reports dating well before last week's crisis in Ceuta make it plain that, contra Ms Applebaum, migrants can and do cross the Strait of Gibraltar and make it to the European mainland, just as they cross the English Channel:

Morocco is a primary gateway for thousands of Africans seeking to reach Europe. At its narrowest point, the Strait of Gibraltar is 14 kilometers (9 miles) wide.

Most migrants trying to reach Spain do so by sea, but there have been several incidents where migrants have scaled the border fences between Morocco and Spain's North African exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

As the European Union's only territories on the African continent, migrants can claim asylum in either exclave.

So far this year [2019], more than 15,000 people have made it to Spain, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). However, more than 200 have died in the attempt.

The standard line, repeated by Ms Applebaum, is that the migrants have mostly turned around and returned to Morocco:

More to the point, nearly all of those who swam over the border had returned to Morocco by Sunday morning. The Spanish government negotiated their return with the Moroccan government.

But an on-the-ground report indicates that as of Saturday, migrants still overwhelmed the city:

Locals on the ground immediately called it a lie. One Ceuta resident posted that around 50,000 invaders remained, the city was collapsed, and the official numbers were pure spin. Video filmed that same afternoon showed streets still packed, nothing like the “most have left” story.

A morning ride through conquered Cueta. pic.twitter.com/ADaAnvb8SD

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) August 1, 2026

There can be little question that the Ceuta crisis is an embarrassment to the Spanish government, and so far, Ms Applebaum's position that it was engineered by the "far right", or as Elon Musk would put it, people with normal views, appears tp be unique:

It remains unclear who created the viral posts that encouraged the would-be migrants to believe that they could get to Europe from Ceuta. But those who want to weaken the Spanish government, boost the European far right, and create turmoil inside the EU lost little time in promoting the photographs as soon as they arrived.

But the current reponse by the EU is just kabuki:

Italy said on Friday it ‌was suspending the European Union's border-free Schengen arrangements with Spain for one month in response to a mass influx of migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco.

. . . Critics of Meloni's right-wing government dismissed the new border checks as largely symbolic, saying there was no indication that migrants arriving in Ceuta had any desire to travel onwards to Italy. Meloni's coalition, which came to power in 2022 promising to reduce illegal immigration, has faced strong pressure from ⁠a new far-right party led by former army general Roberto Vannacci, whose anti-migrant rhetoric has resonated with some voters.

With migration once again dominating headlines, the government has sought to promote a tough stance on security, however centre-left opponents accused ⁠the government of pandering to populists and undermining ties with Spain.

I see, it's the "far right" against the "centre-left". But don't worry, everything's under control.

More Fauci Fallout

Here are a couple of more recent takes on Dr Fauci's Senate testimony this past Wednesday. First, from Alan Dershowitz:

Let me begin with Fauci’s constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Yes, he was pardoned for any past crimes but the pardon does not operate prospectively. The committee was trying to prove that he had committed crimes not only before his pardon but after it. He surely had the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment as to any potentially incriminating information that would allow prosecution for post-pardoned crimes.

. . . Senator Rand Paul tried to avoid this constitutional barrier by specifically asking him questions that are clearly covered by the pardon President Biden gave him. This may make it appear that Dr. Fauci had nothing to fear from answering questions limited to that period. But that ignores a line of Supreme Court cases that hold that if a defendant answers some questions about a particular subject, he may not refuse to answer other questions about that subject. He may not turn the spigot on and off. Once he opens the door by answering questions about a subject, he may not close it in response to other questions.

So any good lawyer will always advise a client who seeks to invoke the Fifth Amendment to invoke it across the board and not try to pick and choose safe areas. That’s what Dr. Fauci’s lawyer did here, and that’s what I would’ve done had I been Dr. Fauci’s lawyer.

But that doesn't solve Fauci's contempt of Congress problem:

The congressional committee may well recommend that he be held in contempt. And congress may vote to hold him in contempt. The Trump Justice department could indict him and he would have to litigate these issues. Although there is no guarantee that he will win, the law seems clearly to be on his side. Moreover it may take a considerable amount of time for this case to work its way through congress and the courts.

Dr Fauci is 85 years old. I'm not sure what good it would do to prosecute the guy at this stage, especially when the sociopolitical mechanisms that put him where he was are fully intact. Alex Berenson touches more on this issue, but he doesn't quite get there:

Throughout the Covid epidemic, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci didn’t know what he didn’t know.

Worse, he didn’t care.

Fauci’s Covid “diary” — his musings about his Covid experience — have revealed his epic self-love to the world. But it’s what the diary doesn’t say that’s the real problem.

. . . Fauci had just turned 79 when the news of a potential outbreak emerged from China at the start of 2020. For a generation, he had worked mainly as an federal administrator, not a bench scientist or physician. Now he faced a novel coronavirus with a “furin cleavage site,” an unusual and frightening feature.

. . . He could have insisted on a national seroprevalence trials, like the ones the British government conducted, to track the spread of Covid infections over time. He could have pushed for fast relatively cheap studies of different medicines tested alone and in combination. (Again, the British ran such a study; it found dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, cut the risk of death in people with severe Covid.)

He didn’t do those things, or much else that was forward-looking. He didn’t push for head-to-head trials of Covid vaccines, either. Later, in 2021, he would prove to be stupidly overconfident in the mRNAs, failing to realize how quickly their protection would wane.

. . . The answer is that Fauci was not daunted by the need to keep up with the flood of information about Covid. Quite the opposite. His diary shows a profound lack of interest in nearly all the topics mentioned above. No wonder he had so much time for television appearances.

“I represent science,” Fauci famously proclaimed in 2021. “I am science.”

Dr Fauci's real problem is that he was raised up by the media, which delighted him, and he absolutely encouraged it. That he was a complete phony helped his rise, but it's led to his fall, and now, that same media has turned him into a scapegoat.

I think of this often when I’m standing in the supermarket checkout line and reviewing the latest headlines from the tabloids: an actress who has gained weight and looks grotesque in an inappropriate swimsuit, claims that dashing leading men are abusive or involved in clandestine gay relationships, divorces, rehab, etc. We all are fascinated by the beauty and life of celebrities, and even more intrigued by their delicious falls from grace. Details change a bit, but essentially it’s the same story, week after week, year after year.

What Dr Fauci really needs to do now is hire the kind of publicist that can keep him out of the news. I'm not sure if he knows that exists. He might check with Dubya, whose flacks have done an outstanding job.

Could AI Be Too Cheap To Be Profitable?

Here's an area where AI does quite well. I've been reading a lot of Henry James lately, and I discovered another of his private jokes. I asked Chrome AI mode, "In which Henry James stories does the Grand Duke of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein appear?" It answered,

The fictional realm of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein and its royal figureheads appear or are explicitly referenced in two of Henry James's works:

1. The Liar (1888)

The exact title "the Grand Duke of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein" is explicitly mentioned in this short story. He does not appear physically as a character in the narrative, but he serves as a comedic plot device. Colonel Capadose—an incorrigible, pathological liar—claims that the Grand Duke is an intimate family friend and an elite art collector. The Colonel uses the Grand Duke as an excuse to explain why a prized portrait painted by Oliver Lyon is mysteriously missing from his home, claiming they gave it to the Duke as a birthday present.

2. The Europeans (1878)

While the "Grand Duke" isn't named in this short novel, his immediate family and the fictional German principality form the entire backstory of the plot.

The Principality: The fictional state of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein is the European home that the protagonists leave behind.

The Relatives: The protagonist, Baroness Eugenia Münster, is trapped in a crumbling morganatic marriage to Prince Adolf of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein.

The Sovereign: The ruler of the realm is referred to in the text as "The Reigning Prince" (the brother of Eugenia's husband), who is actively pressuring the couple to dissolve their marriage for political advantage.

I'd read The Europeans and "The Liar" in quick succession, and I'd wondered if Silberstadt-Schreckenstein appears elsewhere, but apparently not. I would rate this answer "very probably true", but here's the rub: it appears that AI had to search the entire body of James's literary output -- or at least that very high percentage that's digitized and accessible -- plus a certain amount of academic commentary, to come up with this answer, which it did in a second or two.

It did this "for free", or at no cost above the cost of licensing Chrome and an internet connection. Is Google losing money doing this? I don't know, so I asked AI: "How does Google make a profit off basic Chrome AI?" It answered,

Google does not make a direct profit from the free, basic AI features built into the Chrome browser; instead, it uses Chrome AI as a loss leader to drive its highly lucrative advertising, cloud, and subscription ecosystems.

OK, that sounds about right. It makes subtle efforts to upsell me as it gives its answers, but so far, I get stuff from Chrome AI for free that I would have to pay for if I had ChatGPT. This may not last forever, though.

AI labs aren’t much like the hyper-profitable tech giants of the 2010s. Facebook and Airbrb were relatively capital-light businesses with ultra-low marginal costs (adding a profile to Facebook or listing to Airbnb costs the companies virtually nothing). And once each gained a foothold in their respective markets, network effects enabled them to retain formidable positions without needing to constantly upgrade their products.

Building a state-of-the-art AI company is a much more involved — and astronomically more expensive — endeavor. To get to the frontier, Anthropic and OpenAI have sunk (at least) tens of billions into semiconductors, data centers, power plants, and other capital investments. Staying at the cutting-edge, meanwhile, compels them to perpetually churn out evermore costly models.

. . . All of which raises the question: Why would investors expect businesses with a cost-structure this challenging to be not merely profitable, but massively so?

For now, the AI products we most commonly see are loss leaders. And if what they're mostly doing is answering questions about how often the Grand Duke of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein appears in Henry James, it's spending a lot of money to perform parlor tricks. The problem is that as the services it provides become potentially more valuable to the customer, it's going to have to do things like recursive self-checking -- as the meme at the top of this post suggests, it's going to have to double-check its own answers, which will at least double the cost of every search, and it might increase it exponentially.

The facts on the ground at the link, which the writer doesn't seem quite to understand, are that at least for now, there are too many players in the AI market, and the competition will keep prices down and make the industry less profitable, especially since the industry requires high initial investment. The answer, which pioneer industrialists like John D Rockefeller understood, is to reduce the number of players, something we've seen most recently in banking and air travel.

The Ceuta Migrant Invasion

US media seems to have been caught by surprise by the mass invasion of the North African Spanish enclave Ceuta (pronounced "SYOO-tah" in English). Its history dates back to the Phoenicians, but according to Wikipedia,

For much of the Middle Ages, regional powers north and south of the Strait of Gibraltar vied for control over Ceuta, which was a key contested port in the so-called Battle of the Strait. In 1415, it was annexed to the Kingdom of Portugal, and subsequently, after 1580, to the Hispanic Monarchy, with the city choosing to stay in the latter after 1640. Ceuta was a regular municipality belonging to the Spanish province of Cádiz prior to the passing of its Statute of Autonomy in March 1995, as provided by the Spanish Constitution, henceforth becoming an autonomous city.

Following the decolonization of Africa, Ceuta and the Spanish city of Melilla became the only European-held territories left in mainland Africa. Along with the Canary Islands, Ceuta was classified as a free port before Spain joined the European Union. Its population is predominantly Spaniard Christians and Arab Muslims, with a small minority of Sephardic Jews and Sindhi Hindus, from Pakistan.

The Ceuta border fence has a separate entry in Wikipedia:

The Ceuta border fence forms part of the Morocco–Spain border at Ceuta, a city on the North African coast. Constructed by Spain, its purpose is to prevent smuggling and to stop migrants from entering Europe. Morocco objected to the construction of the barrier since it does not recognize Spanish sovereignty in Ceuta.

Ceuta is an integral part of Spain, and therefore of the European Union; its border and its equivalent in Melilla are the only two land borders between the European Union and an African country.

The fence consists of parallel 6 metre (20-foot) high fences topped with barbed wire, with regular watchposts and a road running between them to accommodate police patrols or ambulance service in case of need. Underground cables connect spotlights, noise and movement sensors, and video cameras to a central control booth; dozens of guard ships and patrol boats check the coast, while 621 Guardia Civil officers and 548 police officers control the shore.

Since its initial construction in 1993, there have been regular attempts to breach it, although none as large or successful as the current one.

On 7 October 2005, the border fence was assaulted by hundreds of migrants, attracting international attention. Caught between Spanish rubber bullets and Moroccan gunfire, a number of migrants died (sources put the number of deaths between 13 and 18 people) and more than 50 were wounded.

. . . On 17 February 2017, an estimated 600 migrants, some armed with clubs and shears, broke through the security gates, and 300 of them are reported to have entered Ceuta, where police attempted to locate them.

. . . On 30 July 2026, during the Throne Day celebration in Mdiq, a large number of people forced their way into the enclave at the Tarajal breakwater. Activists initially estimated more than 2000 people crossed that day and another 1500 arrived the week before according to regional authorities, but numbers of arrivals continued to increase over the next day, and Spanish authorities claimed on 31 July that some 49,000 individuals had entered Ceuta in the past 24 hours.

NEW: Spain is now deploying its military after thousands of military-aged men stormed over the border into Ceuta, Spain.

Ceuta authorities are calling on Madrid to declare a national emergency after the border "totally collapsed."

"The situation is absolute chaos. It’s not… pic.twitter.com/Mpe5Lc1xlK

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 30, 2026

According to Politico,

Spain’s opposition parties are taking aim at Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s migration policies following the arrival of tens of thousands of unauthorized migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta.

Over the past 24 hours, the migrants have forced their way into the heavily fortified autonomous city, which covers 18.5 square kilometers on the northern coast of Africa. With the Civil Guard forces that normally defend Ceuta overwhelmed, the Spanish army was mobilized late on Thursday to secure the border.

Speaking from Ceuta, where he flew to meet with officials overseeing the crisis on Friday, Sánchez characterized the situation as “an attack, a violation of the territorial integrity of Spain.”

Spain’s interior ministry on Friday said that approximately 50,000 people had entered Ceuta — whose normal population is around 80,000 — illegally. Of that total, approximately half have since voluntarily returned to Morocco. The Spanish presidency said migrants are departing from Ceuta at a rate of about 150 people per minute.

. . . Officially, Spanish authorities are attributing the current crisis to a legal decision issued by Spain’s Supreme Court earlier this month.

“These events are related to a court ruling,” Foreign Minister Albares said on Thursday.

On July 8, the top court ruled that Spain’s immediate-return procedure does not apply to migrants intercepted while attempting to swim to Ceuta and Melilla. According to the ruling, current legislation only permits unauthorized migrants to be returned without a formal deportation process if they are caught breaching a physical barrier.

Unauthorized migrants can still be sent back after crossing an unmarked maritime border, but are entitled to a formal deportation process. In its ruling, the top court said authorities should install some kind of “maritime containment measure” if they want to immediately return migrants caught in the water. On Friday, Sánchez said his government would move to create those conditions by deploying buoys off the autonomous cities’ shorelines.

My Take On Dr Fauci

The one big thing I noticed about Dr Fauci's testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governnment Affairs Committee yesterday was that he can turn the Brooklynese on and off. In the video above from 2023, he's talkimg about his fawthuh from New Yawk. But in his prepared statement to the committee in the video below, he may as well be from Philadelphia: "I serrved at the NIH forr overr fifty-fourr yearrs. . . . underr the advice of my attorrney. . ."

The commentator in the second video points out that Fauci is under a great deal of stress and anxiety, but the one thing he doesn't mention is that all of a sudden, he's dropped the Brooklyn schtick, demonstrating that when he wants to, he can speak standard English perfectly well. Of course he can; he graduated first in his class from Cornell Medical School.

So the Fauci from Brooklyn has always been an act. What's he up to? I asked Chrome AI mode, "Dr Fauci can apparently speak perfectly good standard English. Why does he affect a Brooklyn accent?" Well, much as I like AI as a research tool, there's a range of things you know you csn't ask it. In this case, ignoring the clear evidence just above, it answered,

Dr. Anthony Fauci does not affect a Brooklyn accent; it is his genuine, native dialect. He was born and raised in the predominantly Italian-American neighborhoods of Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights in Brooklyn, New York.A person's native speech pattern is a fundamental part of their identity. Dialect coaches and linguists point out several reasons why his natural accent remains prominent.

Many professionals undergo speech therapy or consciously "code-switch" to General American English to avoid regional stigmas. Fauci simply never chose to alter his natural voice.

Dr Fauci is completely authentic! It's not a bug, it's a feature! What always struck me about Fauci's public persona during the lockdowns was how annoying the guy was with the Brooklynese. I think this has been something of a life strategy; he comes off as annoying, but you're not allowed to say that, because he's authentic. If he stopped being annoying, he'd just be a 5'7" guy who faded into the crowd.

This is another strategy that comes out in the diaries: he had people on his staff who researched awards and cash prizes he could win. Then they pestered the nominating committees to nominate him and give him the prizes. He even pestered the ethics boards to declare he was eligible to get the prizes.

[Missouri Sen Josh] Hawley exhibited personal emails from Fauci’s staff in 2020, showing that Fauci directed federal employees while the pandemic was still raging to apply for and solicit over $1 million from at least eight cash prizes – for himself.

The federal employees involved included Fauci’s chief of staff Greg Folkers and Fauci’s personal assistant Patricia Conrad, as well as Lawrence Tabak, Holli Jaffe, Courtney Billet, Louis Miller, Katherine Miller, and Hugh Auchincloss .

“[Y]ou turned your staff into a full time application machine,” Hawley said. “You actually wrote to people and said, ‘do you think maybe I’d qualify?’ … You then had them go out to the ethics agencies and ethics watchdogs and demand that you be able to get the money. That's right, we've got it in your emails."

Federal law expressly prohibits using federal resources, including employees and time, to solicit cash awards or other personal benefits for federal employees.

Hawley went on,

“You may have been a good public servant at one time, I don't know. But I can tell you from reading your emails now, from looking at what you did, how you used your employees, somewhere along the line it became all about you,” Hawley told the doctor. “You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar."

Well, if I learned much of anything in the Ivy League, it was how people have hokey strategies for success that fool enough people enough of the time. They were like that by the time they were in high school. Fauci becamed captian of his high school basketball team. It's pretty clear he know how to work the system even then. He didn't become corrupt and narcissistic later in life, he started out that way.

This Isn't Vigilantism

Had been wondering when vigilantism was going to make a comeback in LA

Should have guessed some enterprising former gangsters would step in to fill the void left by city government

(Am a new subscriber to L.A. Material, which is great.) https://t.co/41i6qOx36Q pic.twitter.com/1GMeVPEFXz

— Moses Kagan (@moseskagan) July 28, 2026

Leave it to Instapundit to get things wrong. If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you're a libertarian, everyone looks like a vigilante. The post refers to a new site, LA Material, which has a detailed story on what might be called a security services provider, Ghost Town in Venice, a beachfront part of Los Angeles that has a big homeless problem.

What I think is happening here is that entrepreneurs are recognizing that there are innovative legal ways to address problems like squatting and homelessness that don't directly involve law enforcement, which may be prevented by state laws or department policies from intervening over squatters, for instance. Typically if a property owner calls the police over a squatter, the police will sympathize, but they'll explain it's a civll matter and refer the reporting party to the courts.

Tenant law in many states heavily favors squatters, who invoke tenants' rights and prolong eviction proceedings for months and years. A company called Squatter Hunters offers to bypass eviction proceedings to make life legally unpleasant enough for squatters that they'll simply agree to move out, or they can be moved out via mechanisms like building code or health department enforcement that don't involve the police.

A recent series on A&E, Squatters, documents the efforts of the company's founder, Flash Shelton, at evicting squatters, some of which have been occupying property and charging tenants rent for years. His most typical method is to get the legal owner to give him a lease on the property, which entitles him to enter the property for inspection. Once he enters the property, which he's legally entitled to do, he simply turns the squatter's tactics against the squatter and refuses to leave, announcing that the squatter has a new roommate.

Sometimes the squatters will call the police themselves, but when Shelton shows the police the lease from the owner, the police recognize there's nothing they can do and leave. At this point, some squatters will simply give up and move out. If they're still stubborn, as the new roommate, Shelton and his staff will do things like play loud music all day and all night, and eventually even the stubbornest squatters will recognize they're better off simply leaving. This is all legal, but Shelton's staff need to be pretty burly as well and able to protect themselves if they need to.

This isn't the only strategy. Often, if a building has no utilities, the local health department can declare it uninhabitable and get it cleared that way. If Shelton's inspection shows pest infestations or building code violations, the building can be cleared that way, too. All of this costs money -- Squatter Hunters lists various services and prices on their site -- but it's cheaper and faster than lawyers and the courts, and it's just as legal. There's no vigilantism involved.

From the piece at LA Material, Ghost Town appears to operate following a similar paradigm, providing paid services that conventional law enforcement can't provide due either to legal constraints or lack of resources, but that an independent service provider can legally -- or at least, not illegally -- provide at additional cost:

IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE PANDEMIC, as local government and nonprofits left a void in the increasingly high-demand encampment resolution market, Ghost Town stepped in to fill it. In my early conversations with Venice locals, I heard that the firm built much of their reputation with their work on a large encampment outside the Whole Foods on Lincoln.

In Google Street View photos, a tent can be seen on the sidewalk outside the store’s parking lot as early as September of 2022. By December 2023, the encampment’s footprint had grown larger: five tents or makeshift shelters, along with baby carriages, bikes, shopping carts, and at least one dog.

In early 2024, Whole Foods hired Ghost Town to provide property management services. Shortly thereafter, team members began engaging directly with encampment residents. Some of that work was documented by a blog, Santa Monica Closeup, which followed a Ghost Town employee in the aftermath of a city cleanup in March of 2024.

In the video, a burly man in a black Ghost Town hoodie paces the newly-cleared sidewalk, watching city sanitation workers as they throw items into a garbage truck and chatting up lingering residents of the encampment.

“You find a spot?” the man in the hoodie asks a man wheeling a bike loaded up with possessions, a dog sitting patiently in the basket.

The man with the bike replies something inaudible over the cars whizzing by.

“Yeah, well, regardless what he says, you can’t come back here,” the man in the hoodie replies. “It’s not gonna work out. This is my spot now.”

It's plain from both the Squatters series and the Ghost Town story that staff, while they don't use violence to entice squatters or homeless people to relocate, must be able, and appear to be able, to defend themselves if necessary.

I asked [founder Bobby] Luna about the rumor that his staff members were former members of Venice gangs. He confirmed it. Some of his employees had come to him after being released from prison, looking for work and a way to keep themselves on track. He is proud of those hires, but also says they’re careful not to bring on anyone who maintains ties to gang life. “It works for us because we're using people that are locals, but also people who have lived that life,” he said. “But no longer live that life.”

. . . I asked Luna about a video testimonial on Ghost Town’s Instagram page, where a business owner says he’d called the company for help with an encampment “that the cops have been here ten times to try and solve, and they can’t do anything or they won’t do anything.” Did Luna see his firm as acting as a secondary police force?

“I think a lot of people see us like that. We don't see ourselves as filling the gap,” he told me. He agreed that his company would take on jobs that LAPD wouldn’t — but that the police wouldn’t do them because they were too menial, rather than too extreme.

“Most of the time it's just talking to people, and I don't think the LAPD has time for that.”

Yes, it's just talking to people, but it involves a unique skill set to be able to talk to people while sending the message that you aren't going away. If people like Luna and Shelton can keep their businesses focused on that particular mission, more power to them -- but the intellectual welterweights at Instapundit are wrong to confuse that with vigilantism.

Maybe I could start a business negotiating with Instpundit people by offering them free memberships to MENSA if they'll just stop posting.