There’s a big anti-Trump protest in St Cloud this weekend. We’re not having such a good event here in Morris, although I did overhear two old ladies in the coffee shop this morning, and while they also complained about the Democrats, they grumbles a lot about Elon Musk. They really hate Musk, which was heartwarming.

I couldn’t be at any protests today, but I did spawn an individual many years ago who carried on for me.

Good work, young man!

Does this man look like a far-right conservative advocate for manliness?

Maybe. He does have woman assistants posing to help him sell shaving products while their sterna are exposed. He is a weird, twisted macho man — that’s Jeremy Boreing, one of the founders of The Daily Wire, along with that shaved chipmunk, Ben Shapiro. He was responsible for that weird conservative “comedy”, Lady Ballers, that proposed that men would dress up as women en masse so they could form a whole basketball of “transgenders,” who would then win all their games. That’s Jeremy Boreing. Sexist, not funny, and with ambitions to make movies to support his conservative beliefs, because reality doesn’t do the job for him.

Say goodbye to Boreing, he’s out at the Daily Wire.

The Daily Wire is seemingly undergoing a rapid and dramatic implosion following the resignation of co-founder Jeremy Boreing.

According to a Twitter/X thread compiled by journalist James Li, the company has laid off roughly 25% of its workforce, including the complete shutdown of its kids division, and fired Alyssa Cordova, the vice president of public relations.

Cordova is alleged to have played a central role in crafting an aggressive and controversial PR strategy, which included stalking former employees online and maintaining dossiers on perceived enemies.

Internal sources blame Boreing’s leadership for the current crisis, claiming his departure should have happened sooner to prevent job losses.

With leadership in disarray and significant layoffs, questions loom about the future stability of The Daily Wire and its high-profile personalities like Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles.

Oh yeah…Matt Walsh (“What is a woman?” he asks, since he doesn’t know) and Michael Knowles (sick little Catholic fundamentalist) all work there, too. Maybe they’ll be kicked off the gravy train soon.

Would you believe the Daily Wire had a kids’ programming division? They were making a knock-off of Bluey to inoculate children with conservative values. It’s going, too.

This is what happens when oil billionaires like Dan and Farris Wilks, who funded the Daily Wire try to force support for an unpopular agenda, rather than responding to popular interests organically. They flounder and fail repeatedly, and while the big money men might think the message is great, billionaires tend to be unimpressed with stuff that just costs them cash with little return.

Hey, let’s hope PragerU is next to decay.

Israel has done it again. They are blatantly committing atrocities in their ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.

Some of the bodies of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, killed by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave nine days ago in Gaza, were found with their hands or legs tied and had gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to two witnesses.

The witness accounts add to an accumulating body of evidence pointing to a potentially serious war crime on 23 March, when Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance crews and civil defence rescue workers were sent to the scene of an airstrike in the early hours of the morning in the al-Hashashin district of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.

Paramedics and rescue workers are not terrorists, but the Israeli soldiers who gunned them down are.

No more aid or military assistance to Israel, because that would be contributing to war crimes.

I’ve been watching this race for the Wisconsin supreme court. It was a contest between a liberal (that is, sane) judge, Susan Crawford, and a conservative (that is, insane) judge backed by a Koch brother, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk, and it was pretty much a demonstration of the power of rich people to buy elections. Elon Musk was actively campaigning for Brad Schimel, the right-wing wackaloon, throwing tens of millions of dollars at him and appearing at rallies, where he was awkwardly jumping to make a schlubby “X” shape, doing his usual inarticulate, stammering speechifying, and handing out million dollar checks.

It’s not just how much Musk and his groups have spent—more than any donor to a judicial election in US history—but how he has spent this money that makes Musk’s intervention in Wisconsin so alarming.

In addition to funding two dark money political groups that ran TV ads against liberal Judge Susan Crawford and sought to get out the vote for conservative candidate Brad Schimel, Musk resurrected a controversial scheme from 2024, paying voters $100 for signing a petition from his America PAC opposing “activist judges.” He then awarded Scott Ainsworth, a mechanical engineer from Green Bay, $1 million for signing the petition.

On the Friday before the election, he dramatically escalated this sketchy tactic, saying he would travel to Wisconsin to “personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.” Unlike paying a Wisconsin resident to sign a petition, these million-dollar checks were contingent on someone actually voting. Legal experts quickly pointed out that Musk’s pledge violated the state constitution, which prohibits offering “anything of value…in order to induce any elector to…vote or refrain from voting.”

Musk backtracked, saying the money would only go to people who signed his PAC’s petition, holding a rally in Green Bay on Sunday where he hand-delivered two $1 million checks. The Wisconsin attorney general sued to stop him, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to intervene before the event.

This was criminal activity, but he’s a billionaire, so no one stopped him. He was openly and brazenly trying to buy an election, and nothing was done. This was particularly ironic, given that…

Republicans have been alleging for years that Democrats have been buying elections, usually with the help of liberal billionaires like George Soros. Indeed, election deniers, including Musk, widely promoted a conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was “bought by Mark Zuckerberg” because an organization he funded directed election grants to blue areas to juice Democratic turnout. (In reality, it gave grants to both red and blue areas for routine election administration activities to help offset the Covid-19 pandemic.)

If this happened in any other country, the US would be quick to declare that the elections were corrupt…that is, if a pro-USA candidate didn’t win. Schimel also ran a dirty campaign, altering images of Crawford. It was an all-around disgrace to democracy.

But, good news: Crawford won!

Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford will win Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, CNN projects, maintaining the liberal majority on the court in a key battleground state less than three months into President Donald Trump’s second term.

Crawford, a liberal circuit court judge in Dane County, will beat the conservative candidate Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County judge who received Trump’s backing in the final stretch of the campaign. The race was officially nonpartisan, but Crawford’s victory will be seen as a bright spot for Democrats in Wisconsin and nationwide as voters handed the president’s preferred candidate a defeat in the first major political test of the second Trump era.

I’m wondering if one contributing factor to her victory was that the few remaining principled conservatives, if such a thing exists, must have been appalled at the spectacle. Patriotic Wisconsinites must have been embarrassed at the sight of this South African carpetbagger putting on a show. He looks so small and stupid.

Although, I must admit, I was hoping that my daughter or son-in-law, both Wisconsin citizens, might have been handed a million dollar check. Unfortunately, that big money give-away was rigged (of course it was!) and only MAGAs could win.

Guess who’s considering running for governor of Minnesota?

MAGA election conspiracy theorist and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell has eyes on what could be his next gig. And it isn’t selling pillows.

Lindell on Monday teased a run for Minnesota governor, a race that could see him face off against popular incumbent Tim Walz, who is said to be sizing up a third term in the post.

“I live here in Minnesota,” Lindell said of his potential opponent. “Everywhere I go, no one wants Tim Walz. They don’t.”

Everywhere I go, we all laugh at Mike Lindell. I suspect there might be some consistent differences in the company we run with.

I hope he does run, though. He’ll siphon off money from anyone who is a competitor to the DFL candidate for the position.

Teen Vogue is the surprising vanguard. Here’s an article by a former Democratic staffer who has some strong criticisms of the Democratic leadership.

I walked away from my job as a writer for Senator Chuck Schumer after realizing the cost wasn’t just political fatigue — it was my values and mental health. I spent a year on Capitol Hill in 2019 crafting messages for Senate Democrats. Every day, I wrote essays that trapped me between the progressive principles I held and centrist compromises that felt like betrayals. Eventually, the disconnect between my ideals and the institution I served became impossible to ignore. Leaving my job in the Democratic Party wasn’t just a career move; it was survival.

This summary hits the nail on the head.

In recent years, Democrats like Newsom and Schumer have embraced centrist, incremental approaches to issues that are fundamentally about humanity and dignity. That disconnect continues to push young voters away. But it doesn’t stop with trans rights. Whether it’s watered-down climate policies or half-measures on student debt and health care, the Democratic Party’s reluctance to take bold, unapologetic stances clashes with what young people expect from a so-called progressive movement. To be clear, we’re not asking for perfection — we’re demanding urgency, empathy, and courage. Instead, we’re met with compromises on core values, as if basic rights are up for negotiation. For a generation facing existential crises, that’s not leadership — it’s alienation.

Young voters have historically trusted Democrats to work against outdated policies and toward systemic change. But the shift in party dynamics has left many young voters increasingly disaffected by politics and disconnected from a party that once felt aligned with our values. Reflecting on my time on Capitol Hill, I notice this rupture more than ever.

Resign, Schumer.

I should read more Teen Vogue.

This video from Some More News has some good suggestions about what how to resist a fascist takeover. One little suggestion I want to bring up is that the video recommends a pamphlet, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a book published by the US government during WWII to provide ideas for the citizens living under the Nazi regime. Suddenly, the old is new again!

The book first talks about how to motivate citizens to become subtle saboteurs. Spread the news around!

To incite the citizen to the active practice of simple sabotage and to keep him practicing that sabotage over sustained periods is a special problem.

Simple sabotage is often an act which the citizen performs according to his own initiative and inclination. Acts of destruction do not bring him any personal gain and may be completely foreign to his habitually conservationist attitude toward materials and tools. Purposeful stupidity is contrary to human nature. He frequently needs pressure, stimulation or assurance, and information and suggestions regarding feasible methods of simple sabotage.

(1) Personal Motives

(a) The ordinary citizen very probably has no immediate personal motive for committing simple sabotage. Instead, he must be made to anticipate indirect personal gain, such as might come with enemy evacuation or destruction of the ruling government group. Gains should be stated as specifically as possible for the area addressed: simple sabotage will hasten the day when Commissioner X and his deputies Y and Z will be thrown out, when particularly obnoxious decrees and restrictions will be abolished, when food will arrive, and so on. Abstract verbalizations about personal liberty, freedom of the press, and so on, will not be convincing in most parts of the world. In many areas they will not even be comprehensible.

(b) Since the effect of his own acts is limited, the saboteur may become discouraged unless he feels that he is a member of a large, though unseen, group of saboteurs operating against the enemy or the government of his own country and elsewhere. This can be conveyed indirectly: suggestions which he reads and hears can include observations that a particular technique has been successful in this or that district. Even if the technique is not applicable to his surroundings, another’s success will encourage him to attempt similar acts. It also can be conveyed directly: statements praising the effectiveness of simple sabotage can be contrived which will be published by white radio, freedom stations, and the subversive press. Estimates of the proportion of the population engaged in sabotage can be disseminated. Instances of successful sabotage already are being broadcast by white radio and freedom stations, and this should be continued and expanded where compatible with security.

(c) More important than (a) or (b) would be to create a situation in which the citizen-saboteur acquires a sense of responsibility and begins to educate others in simple sabotage.

Then the fun stuff. There are many little ideas about how to screw up the smooth operation of factories, but reading it first made me think of annoying high school pranks. One of the unfortunate side-effects of disseminating this information is you can expect to see more exploding plumbing in the toilets of your local public schools.

(1) Ruin warehouse stock by setting the automatic sprinkler system to work. You can do this by tapping the sprinkler heads sharply with a hammer or by holding a match under them.

(2) Forget to provide paper in toilets; put tightly rolled paper, hair, and other obstructions in the W. C. Saturate a sponge with a thick starch or sugar solution. Squeeze it tightly into a ball, wrap it with string, and dry. Remove the string when fully dried. The sponge will be in the form of a tight hard ball. Flush down a

W. C. or otherwise introduce into a sewer line. The sponge will gradually expand to its normal size and plug the sewage system.

(3) Put a coin beneath a bulb in a public building during the daytime, so that fuses will blow out when lights are turned on at night. The fuses themselves may be rendered ineffective by putting a coin behind them or loading them with heavy wire. Then a short-circuit may either start a fire, damage transformers, or blow out a central fuse which will interrupt distribution of electricity to a large area.

(4) Jam paper, bits of wood, hairpins, and anything else that will fit, into the locks of all unguarded entrances to public buildings.

Somebody needs to print out copies of this manual and hand them out at the protests at Tesla factories and sales rooms. We need to understand that Tesla and Elon Musk are the enemy. Likewise, Trump’s hotels need to be brought down. I notice that the manual has had 77,604 downlads in the last 30 days. Get yours before the government shuts it down!

I can’t really use it, though. I’m at one of the institutions targeted for destruction by the MAGA regime, and what I need is information on how to reinforce the spines of our administrators, and how to support a university under siege.

We’re all aware that the Secret Police swept in and sent a Tufts graduate student to a concentration camp in Louisiana. They also detained Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University (we also know that Columbia is chickenshit).

Now it’s the University of Minnesota’s turn.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials Thursday detained a University of Minnesota graduate student at an off-campus residence, according to an email to students and staff from the University of Minnesota.

We here at the University of Minnesota learned about this through an email message sent out by the administration.

Dear students, faculty and staff,

We are writing to inform you about a deeply concerning situation involving one of our international graduate students at the University of Minnesota.

We learned that, on March 27 at an off-campus residence, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained a graduate student enrolled on our Twin Cities campus. We are actively working to gather more details about this incident.

In cases like this, the University takes steps to ensure students are connected to internal resources and support, such as Student Legal Service and International Student and Scholar Services.

The University had no prior knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities before it occurred.

It is important to note that our campus departments of public safety, including UMPD, do not enforce federal immigration laws, and our officers do not inquire about an individual’s immigration status. Their focus remains on public safety, fostering trust and maintaining strong relationships across the University community.

As we work to gather more information, please know the University has information, resources and FAQs about federal immigration policies available on the Rapid Response website.

We understand how distressing this news may be for members of our University community. If you or someone you know needs mental health support during this time, please visit mentalhealth.umn.edu, which connects you to resources across all five campuses.

Rebecca Cunningham
President

Calvin Phillips
Vice President for Student Affairs

Mercedes Ramírez Fernández
Vice President for Equity and Diversity

They’re trying to gather more information, but the primary purpose of this email was to say “we didn’t do anything, it’s not our fault!” I’d like to know what the university is preparing to do in response, and how they intend to stop future abductions of our students by the criminals running ICE and DHS. Because that’s what’s happening: the federal government is trying to intimidate our universities by random kidnapping of our students, and we need to take strong positive action to prevent it.

It doesn’t help that the University of Michigan and Harvard, along with many others, have been in a mad scramble to surrender to the totalitarians.

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Here’s a handy list of students who have been targeted for harassment and deportation. See if you can tell what they all have in common.

Only two months into Trump’s reign, and three prominent Yale professors depart for a Canadian university. These professors started planning to leave the country back in November, which is amazing — they negotiated salaries and startup and facilities, and the University of Toronto cleared everything and made room and got them positions in only two months? That’s moving at light speed for a university.

Unfortunately the part of the story that won’t make the news is all the faculty who want to get out but can’t. Someone like me, who has a good reputation as a teacher, is a dime-a-dozen nobody; Canada has swarms of people who are excellent teachers, and plenty of people who are great researchers, so most of the professors in the US aren’t going to be able to emigrate (I’m also near the end of my career, so there’d be no point to hiring me.) A lucky few are going to be able to escape, and they’re going to have to move fast, before the pipeline is clogged.

And yeah, if I were 20 years younger I’d be putting an application package together, and mailing them off to every college in Canada. Does the Northwest Territories have any openings? I’d take it. A shack on King William Island, with a population of auks needing biology training? Sign me up.