Will these bad guys finally do some serious time?

Will the left be mad about this as well? They’ve been defending drug runners since President Trump has ordered action to sink their boats in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of America, so this ought to get them grinding their teeth as well. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

How law enforcement built a sprawling case against a longstanding Kensington drug gang

Philly police and federal authorities used wiretaps, cameras, and confidential informants to target dealers on Weymouth Street.

by Chris Palmer and Jesse Bunch | Tuesday, November 25, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST

Ramon Roman-Montanez knew the police were watching.

One day last April, as Roman-Montanez prepared to hand out free drug samples to users on Weymouth Street — a common tactic that dealers use to attract customers — he stood in the middle of the Kensington block and spotted a problem.

The cops had put up a pole camera.

Using binoculars, Roman-Montanez scouted out the new device at the end of the block, prosecutors said in court documents. But he had a business to run — and so, after talking with a few associates in the street, he decided that giveaway day would move forward as planned.

Clearly, Mr Roman-Montanez and his “associates” — is that the new euphemism for gang-banger? — did not see it as very much of a problem, not in a city in which George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police hating Larry Krasner is the District Attorney. If caught, what would they get, a slap on the wrist?

Whatever their thought processes, they (allegedly) went ahead and did it.

The camera, however, was just one hint of what authorities now say was a sprawling, multiyear investigation into the gang Roman-Montanez helped lead — a group that sold thousands of doses of heroin, fentanyl, crack, and cocaine over the course of more than a decade, and effectively took over a residential block in a neighborhood that has long suffered from crime, open-air drug dealing, and neglect.

The results of the probe came to light last month, when FBI Director Kash Patel came to Philadelphia to announce that 33 people, including Roman-Montanez, had been indicted for drug crimes. Patel called the case a model for law enforcement across the country, and an example of how to take out a drug gang terrorizing a community.

The most important part of this? This is a federal case, so Mr Krasner can’t deal out lenient plea bargains!

In August, for example, Roman-Montanez was charged in state court with drug possession and related crimes after police found fentanyl, crack, and $20,000 in cash in his house — the result of a raid on Weymouth Street that was part of the investigation into his gang.

But a few weeks later, his attorneys persuaded a Philadelphia judge to reduce his bail and he walked out of jail. The 40-year-old — who federal prosecutors now say was the de facto chief operating officer of one of the city’s biggest drug conspiracies — was only taken back into custody this month, when federal authorities unsealed his indictment.

No wonder Mr Roman-Montanez didn’t see much downside: in the state prosecution, which means the prosecution under Mr Krasner, nothing happened.

Other interesting paragraphs:

In 2020, Angel Rios-Valentin was convicted in federal court of illegal gun possession after officers found him carrying a loaded handgun that he’d taken from Roman-Montanez’s house. He was sentenced to five years in prison and was on supervised release when he was arrested again last month.

Police found four guns in Rios-Valentin’s house, a discovery that prosecutors said showed his ongoing commitment to the gang.

Roman-Montanez, meanwhile, was arrested twice in the last three years, court documents show — but in both cases managed to avoid significant consequences.

In October 2022, police searched his house and found 96 grams of fentanyl, four loaded guns, and nearly $125,000 in cash, prosecutors said. Roman-Montanez was charged in state court, but the case was withdrawn.

The article continued to tell us that scheduling issues with attorneys and witnesses delayed proceedings for more than a year, and prosecutors — there’s that Mr Krasner again! — withdrew the charges.

The investigation has dragged on for years, and the (alleged) principals managed to distribute tons of drugs into Kensington. There’s a reason that neighborhood is internationally infamous — the government of Mexico has actually used photos of Kensington in ads to discourage drug use in Mexico! — and is simply a waste case, because years and years of law enforcement looking the other way, the city government being oh-so-sympathetic as far as drug use and junkies are concerned, have left the bad guys in charge, the addicts littering the streets, and the decent people living there stuck in their homes, afraid to come out of doors any more often than absolutely necessary. After eight years of neglect under former Mayor Jim Kenney, current Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins has made some moves to do something about the neighborhood, but Mr Krasner has attempted to throw roadblocks into that effort where he can.

The federal investigation dates from the beginning of President Trump’s first term, continued through the Joe Biden years, and finally, nine months into Mr Trump’s second term things are getting done. I only have to wonder how quickly new ‘entrepreneurs’ will replace the 33 gang-bangers now under arrest.

How can Israel and the Arabs live next to each other in peace if an “Islamic scholar” cannot sit in the same room in NYC with a Jew?

So many good and kind Americans believe that the solution to the strife between the Israelis and their Arab neighbors is a simple one: an independent Palestinian nation, living in peace, side-by-side with Israel. What could possibly the objection to that?

Well, Yassir Arafat, then President of the so-called ‘Palestinian Authority,’ objected, because even though President Bill Clinton had gotten Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to agree to an independent Palestine in 97% of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza, and a land swap from Israel proper to make up for the 3% in the ‘West Bank’ which had Jewish settlements, it didn’t include the ‘right of return’ for displaced ‘Palestinians’ to return to their homes in Israel. That, at least, was his stated reason, though the real reason was that he knew he would be assassinated by the irredentists who would never agree to allow Israel a single foothold in the Levant.

In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon forced all Jewish settlers to evacuate Gaza, turning it all over to the ‘Palestinians’ to do with it what they would. What Israel and the rest of the world hoped they would do is create a peaceful enclave, the type of thing which would prove that the Arabs could and would live in peace beside Israel. Instead, Hamas took over governing control of Gaza in 2007, and what was built were tunnels from which to attack Israel.

Still, that was all seven time zones away from the United States. Arabs and Jews could live side-by-side in peace here, right?

‘Imam’ tells CUNY Muslim students to leave interfaith event because a ‘Zionist’ is present

By Carl Campanile | Wednesday, November 19, 2025 | 6:54 PM EST

So much for kumbaya.

A self-proclaimed imam speaking at a CUNY City College interfaith event went into a Jew-hating tirade, urging Muslim students to leave in protest after complaining that a “Zionist” was present.

The City University of New York said it is now investigating the shocking incident last week that targeted Ilya Bratman, an adjunct lecturer at Baruch College and the director of the Hillel Jewish campus organization.

“I came here to this event not knowing I would be sitting next to a Zionist and this is something I am not going to accept,” said the Islamic scholar Abdullah Mady, referring to Bratman, according to an audio recording obtained by The Post.

Gaza is 5,689 miles away from New York City, but Mr Mady couldn’t sit next to a Jooooo who was in no way threatening him.

“My people are being killed right now in Gaza,” he said. “If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately.”

About 100 students in attendance took up the call and walked out, leaving about 20 Christian and Jewish students who remained in the room stunned, Bratman said.

The New York Post story does not tell us how many of the 100 or so who walked out were Muslims.

Campus security then escorted the remaining attendees, as the whole thing broke up, outside, to protect them from any hostile demonstrations from the ones who had walked out.

The advertising poster for the meeting, pictured above, uses the silhouette of a Jewish menorah as one of the various religious symbols, but Mr Mady was surprised that there was a Jew there? If an “Islamic scholar” could not sit beside an adjunct lecturer from a Jewish college, a quarter of the world away from the scene of the war, how can anyone ever expect Israel and an independent ‘Palestine’ to share a border in peace?

The slow growth of the Catholic Church

Stations of the Cross, St Elizabeth’s Church, Lent 2024.

Our own parish, St Elizabeth’s, is too small to draw any conclusions from seeing new members, but we currently have two new attendees taking OCIA, Order of Christian Initiation for Adults, classes, and a third young man showed up last Sunday and is interested. For a parish with only 24 families, this is a very big deal, but statistically invalid as far as any big picture is concerned.

But our parish isn’t the only one seeing new members:

Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse — driven by pandemic, internet, ‘lax’ alternatives

By Rikki Schlott | Thursday, April 17, 2025 | 11:00 AM EDT

Sydney Johnston grew up in a nondenominational Christian household — but now the Upper West Side millennial is a devout Catholic.

“There’s just something so beautiful and transcendent about the rituals and the ancient history in the Catholic Mass that’s been preserved,” Johnston, 30, told The Post. “The church really communicates a degree of reverence that I didn’t find in the more liberal, laissez-faire approach of nondenominational churches.”

Confirmed in December 2024 at the Church of Notre Dame in Morningside Heights, Johnston is one of a growing number of young people turning to the Catholic Church from other denominations, religions and even no faith at all.

According to the National Catholic Register, some dioceses are reporting year-over-year increases of 30% to 70% in new converts. The Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, for instance, experienced a 72% jump in converts just from 2023 to 2024.

There’s much more at the original, and the New York Post, our nation’s second oldest continuously published daily newspaper, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, is not hidden behind a paywall, so you can follow the link freely.

Yes, I had heard, anecdotally, of a surge in Catholicism, which some have attributed to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the accession of Pope Leo XIV, an American from Chicago, but the Post article predates both of those events. But it was the following article which really caught my attention:

More than one in three Catholic ordinations are former Anglican clergy, says new report

More than one third of priestly ordinations in the Catholic Church in England and Wales from 1992 to 2024 were former Anglican clergy, according to a report published today.

Ruth Gledhill | Thursday, November 20, 2025

Around 700 former clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales or Scottish Episcopal Church have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992, including 16 former Anglican bishops and two “continuing” Anglican bishops. From 1992 to 2025, five Anglican permanent deacons and 486 Anglican priests were ordained in the Catholic Church.

The report shows that 29 per cent of diocesan priestly ordinations from 1992 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy, while 35 per cent of combined diocesan and Ordinariate priestly ordinations from 1992 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy.

Convert Clergy in the Catholic Church in Britain: The role of the St Barnabas Society by Stephen Bullivant, Fernanda Mee and Janet Mellor is published by the St Barnabas Society and the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.

Hyperlink not in the original, but added by me. The original is a 24 page long .pdf file, and is available without charge.

It reveals that by comparison, just 9 per cent of diocesan priestly ordinations from 2015 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy and 19 per cent of combined diocesan and Ordinariate priestly ordinations from 2015 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy.

The Church of England General Synod voted to ordain women priests in 1992, and the first women were priested in 1994

In the foreword, Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols, acknowledges that the movement of clergy from the Church of England into full communion with the Catholic Church in recent times is a story of many parts and says that until now, those parts have not been drawn together.

In July of 1980, His Holiness Pope St John Paul II issued the Pastoral Provision, allowing Anglican/Episcopal priests who convert to Catholicism to be ordained as Catholic priests, even if they are married. The Anglican/Episcopal female priests can convert to Catholicism, but cannot be ordained as Catholic priests.

The Church of England has been falling and failing for a long time now. The Catholic Herald reported, last April, that, driven by younger churchgoers, Catholics were on a pace to outnumber Anglicans in England, for the first time since King Henry VIII forced the Reformation on the island nation. Somewhere in Heaven, St Thomas More is smiling.

These fine people were demonstrating in support of a government which forced them to flee their home country!

That Donald Trump sure is a malevolent, four-dimensional chess master evil genius. Who would ever have thought that he could get the American left out on the streets, protesting in favor of street crime, of criminal illegal immigrants, and drug dealers? But here we are. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

‘Hands Off Venezuela’ protesters in Philly call for a stop to U.S. aggression amid attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats

The U.S. has been conducting military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since September.

by Michelle Myers | Saturday, November 15, 2025 | 4:59 PM EST

More than 60 people gathered on the north side of Philadelphia City Hall Saturday afternoon and then marched through city streets to protest what they called the U.S. war on Venezuela.

“Long live Venezuela, long live the Venezuelan people, enough Yankees, enough, Venezuela will live on,” the protesters chanted.

Well, of course they did!

In response to the newspaper’s advertising of the article on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — George Tausell commented, “Philadelphia doesn’t want any disruption of drugs coming into their city.” The good people of the city, having just re-elected the George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, it seems to me that Mr Tausell’s comment is right on target. We previously reported on Mr Krasner’s displeasure with Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ plans to try to clean up Kensington, the infamous Philly neighborhood that’s been destroyed with homeless junkies sleeping in the streets and SEPTA’s Allegheny Station.

The “Hands off Venezuela” demonstration comes two days after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put a name to the military strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that the U.S. has been conducting since September: Operation Southern Spear.

“This mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,” Hegseth announced on X. “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood — and we will protect it.”

So, the protesters are appalled that the Trump Administration is trying to reduce the flow of narcotics into our country. Skipping down a couple of paragraphs:

Calling for a diplomatic solution and the respect of Venezuela’s right to self-determination, a coalition of local peace organizations marched in Center City Saturday afternoon to protest the Trump administration’s escalation of military aggression.

“CodePink Greater Philadelphia proudly adds our voice to the call to end the U.S. government’s attempt to meddle in the affairs of yet another sovereign nation, militarily or otherwise,” CodePink Philadelphia organizer Steve Malloy said in a statement.

What “self-determination” by Venezuela does Mr Malloy support? What “affairs of yet another sovereign nation” does he want left alone? The ‘right’ of Venezuelan gangs to ship illegal narcotics to the United States?

A few decades ago, Venezuela was the most prosperous country in South America. Then the ‘Bolivarian Socialist’ Hugo Chavez was elected President, and started destroying everything. Who knows? Perhaps Señor Chavez really believed that socialist bovine feces he spewed, but he, and later his successor — President Chavez died in 2013 following a years-long battle with cancer — Nicolas Maduro have transformed Venezuela from a prosperous, capitalist nation into a militarily-backed authoritarian dictatorship, wracked with poverty. The United States should stay out of Venezuelan affairs to the extent possible, but we do need to defend ourselves from drug shipments, and I have yet to figure out why anyone enjoying the fruits of American freedom and society would be defending the authoritarian dictatorship that Venezuela has become, unless it’s just a reflexive response generated by #TrumpDerangementSyndrome.

Even the Inquirer couldn’t ignore it:

Some of the protesters expressed support for the Venezuelan militia, the very forces that have prompted many Venezuelans to flee the country over the years, and were critical of U.S. capitalism.

These idiots fine people were supporting a regime that forced them to flee their own country! Can someone make sense of that?

Well, fine! ICE should arrest any of the demonstrators who are here illegally, and ship them right back to Venezuela, since they love it so much. Venezuela would doubtlessly refuse to take any of them back, so the US should simply put them on a boat, beach it, and just push them ashore.

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Drug criminal released early under President Biden caught back to his old ways

Khyre Holbert, mugshot by Omaha Police Department, and is a public record.

Another one of the violent criminals released early by Biden White House staffers misusing the President’s autopen signature — no, no one will admit that it was one of the staffers, but I’d bet 20€ that’s what happened — has returned to his previous life, a life of violent crime, to the surprise of absolutely no one. From Fox News:

Felon freed by Biden arrested after shooting, raising fears of more ‘second chances’ gone wrong

Case highlights concerns over 2,490 inmates freed in Biden’s final clemency wave for drug and gun offenses

By Stepheny Price | Sunday, November 9, 2025 | 8:00 AM EST

A Nebraska felon whose prison sentence was reduced under a Biden administration clemency initiative is accused of possessing a gun linked to multiple crimes, intensifying scrutiny over whether reform efforts have come at the expense of public safety.

Federal prosecutors say 31-year-old Khyre Holbert, who had served roughly seven years of a 20-year federal sentence for gun and narcotics offenses, was arrested after an Oct. 4 shooting in Omaha’s Old Market district.

Investigators allege Holbert discarded a loaded handgun fitted with a high-capacity magazine as officers closed in, a weapon later tied to several other violent crimes across Nebraska.

Holbert’s sentence had been commuted in January 2025 despite objections from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which warned of his gang ties, long criminal record and prior weapons convictions. Months later, he’s accused of reoffending and his case has thrust former President Joe Biden’s clemency program back into the national spotlight.

This is where the Fox News headline is bad. “(S)econd chances”? Mr Holbert has a “long criminal record and prior weapons convictions,” so it would seem to me that “second chances” were far back in his rearview mirror.

I have said it before: we should allow leniency, some leniency to first-time offenders, in the hope that a reduced sentence and some probation might show them the error of their ways and give them a chance to straighten up and fly right. But second and subsequent offenses? Such criminals have clearly not learned to become civilized men, and should be sentenced to the maximum allowed under the law. At second and subsequent offenses, justice should be about protecting the public.

Mr Holbert (allegedly) discarded a gun following a shooting in a public place, a firearm with an extended magazine, and which was ballistically linked to other crimes. It would seem that Mr Holbert simply went back to the same group of bad guys he ran with seven years earlier.

The linked story continues to note other felons released under the autopen clemency program; Mr Holbert is not the only one who quickly returned to a life of crime.

For Michael Rushford, founder and president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, Holbert’s arrest is more than a tragedy. It’s a warning. . . . .

This is my morning coffee as I write this!

“You have to look and see if there was a real injustice in the case,” Rushford said. “With the Biden administration, I’m not sure that was done. The Justice Department under him was not really interested in fighting crime.”

The concern extends beyond Nebraska. In March 2025, authorities in Alabama arrested Willie Frank Peterson, another Biden clemency recipient, on new drug- and gun-related charges, just months after his release.

According to a federal complaint, Peterson, who had served more than a decade of a 20-year sentence, was caught with cocaine, meth and a loaded handgun. His sentence was also commuted in Biden’s Jan. 17, 2025 clemency wave, which freed 2,490 inmates, mostly for drug and gun offenses, according to the DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney.

Rushford said that by the time offenders reach federal prison, most have already exhausted their “second chances.”

Mr Rushford also questioned whether President Biden was really directly involved with the clemencies, implying what I stated directly, that I believe that many of the pardons and commutations were begun by young, #woke staffers, with little if any input from the doddering Delawarean. Mr Biden was, as a Senator before he began losing his marbles, involved in passing stricter sentences for drug dealers and traffickers.

Now what we have is an epidemic of crime by previously caught criminals, criminals released by judges — often with little choice — and criminals arrested but not prosecuted by criminal-loving and police-hating prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner. The time has come, the time has long passed, when we need to protect the decent, law-abiding people in our society rather than give the bad guys uncountable second chances. Remember: the criminal who is in jail is not out on the streets committing more crimes.

I check Bluesky so you don’t have to! Teen Voguer bemoans losing his job writing hard left politics for an online magazine supposedly focused on teen fashion and beauty.

Lex McMenamin (they/them) describes himself[1]As our Stylebook specifies, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in … Continue reading in his Bluesky biography as:

permanent Philadelphian in NYC, opinions mine
WAS politics @teenvogue.com
member @transjournalists.org
@leximcmenamin elsewhere
linktr.ee/leximcmenamin

As you can see, Mr McMenamin, who puts plural pronouns in his signature line on Bluesky, is going to be a flaming liberal, as the list of his online articles shows. Alas! she skeeted today:

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

I admit to being almost totally unfamiliar with Teen Vogue. What little I do know comes from Robert Stacy McCain, who has mentioned the magazine’s normally silly political articles several times. See this and this — noting how Teen Vogue was ceasing print publication — and this. But it has to be asked: why did an online magazine supposedly concerned with fashion and beauty for teenaged girls need “political staffers”?

I dislike the fact that anyone, other than illegal immigrants in our country, has lost his job, and certainly do not celebrate a “permanent Philadelphian” losing his, but Condé Nast ceased print publication of Teen Vogue because it wasn’t making money, despite, somehow, the magazine’s turn to the political left.

However, it isn’t only Mr McMenamin who has lost his job:

Teen Vogue Will Fold Into Vogue.com

By Danya Issawi | Monday, November 3, 2025 | 2:23 PM EST

One of the last remaining publications dedicated to teens and young adults is undergoing a transformation. Today, Condé Nast announced that Teen Vogue will now live at Vogue.com and that the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Versha Sharma, will be stepping down. Chloe Malle, Vogue’s new head of editorial content, will oversee the publication in Sharma’s place. The move follows last week’s news that Vogue Business will officially move under the Vogue.com umbrella as well.

According to the announcement, Teen Vogue will remain “a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission.” The magazine had already ceased printing, releasing a final print issue with Hillary Clinton on the cover in December 2017 before becoming a digital-only publication. During that time, and continuing under Sharma’s direction, the outlet had shifted its focus toward discussing politics and human rights head on, laying a strong stake in the media landscape as a reliable place for young people to seek out sociopolitical coverage. From interviewing Zohran Mamdani on the campaign trail to catching up with Greta Thunberg fresh out of her detention in an Israeli prison to breaking down the lessons that Black Lives Matter taught protestors, Teen Vogue has been considered a platform for young progressives inside the glossy confines of Condé Nast. The company’s announcement makes no explicit mention of the future of the outlet’s political coverage.

It doesn’t take much to see that that last paragraph was written with a leftist bias! But no leftist bias can cover for the fact that Teen Vogue is being subsumed into Vogue, and this move is very similar to others in the credentialed media: they have to cut costs because profits are increasingly scarce.

As for Mr McMenamin and Miss Sharma? It’s not great that they have lost their jobs, and new jobs in the media are tough to find. Some of my friends would retort, “Learn to code,” after the “advice” given to blue-collar workers being laid off — though The New Republic says it’s an evil reich wing meme — but I would say something different: learn to drive a truck! There will be a lot of jobs opening up soon!

References

References
1 As our Stylebook specifies, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in cases in which the sex of the person to whom a pronoun refers is unknown, the masculine is properly used, and does not indicate that that person is male, nor is it biased in favor of such an assumption. We are uncertain as to Mr McMenamin’s actual sex, his biological sex, and thus use the masculine pronouns throughout.

“Now, only the best will drive”

In the aftermath of two illegal immigrants causing fatal accidents while driving tractor-trailers, there are a lot of stories, mostly in social media, about increased federal commercial driving regulation enforcement, particularly along Interstate 40 through Oklahoma. Drivers are being tested for the ability to read English, which is mandatory for holders of commercial driver’s licenses (CDL). It’s not just road signs, but the driver must be able to read manifests and the material warning data on potentially hazardous loads.

I’m old enough to remember the publicity when the federal government mandated CDLs to drive certain vehicles. “Now, only the best will drive” was the slogan. At the time, I had what was called a chauffer’s license in Virginia, and I occasionally drove dump trucks. The company for which I worked brought in all of the drivers one Saturday morning, to take the CDL written test, with their road tests grandfathered. I didn’t bother because we had a concrete pour out of the plant in Newport News Shipbuilding, I was doing the quality control work, and I hadn’t driven a truck in a while. I never bothered with getting my CDL because I didn’t really want to drive anyway.

That the fee for the CDL was $40.00, while a regular operator’s license was just $5.00 might have had a little bit to do with it as well.

Now, “only the best will drive” means that commercial drivers have to meet qualifications. They’re getting tested for English proficiency by being asked to read a passage out of a children’s book; it’s not quantum physics. They’re being pulled for wearing flip-flops, when regulations require full shoes while driving, supposedly because sandals can slip off your feet and get caught under the pedals. That one seems silly to me, but it’s still the rule, and virtually every truck has air conditioning these days, so it’s not as though the driver’s feet will get too hot.

I particularly liked this one:

He’d driven trucks for fifteen solid years, mastering every highway curve and weather condition. At a weigh station stop, an officer slid a simple kids’ book across the counter: “Read this.” The words blurred, the sentences tangled; he couldn’t. License gone in an instant. After all those miles, it wasn’t the road that ended his career—it was the system.

Say what? The driver had, allegedly, been driving here for “fifteen solid years” and he still hadn’t mastered enough English to read a passage from The Cat In The Hat?

A lot of the stuff on Facebook pictures drivers who are Sikh or Indian, and there’s no way to tell if the driver pictured is the one who lost his CDL on the spot, but it’s important to know that the story is real, even if the social media picture is possibly faked.

US bars 7,200 truck drivers for failing English tests, Indian-origin truckers hit hard

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the crackdown on October 30. It comes close in the heels of a crash involving an Indian-origin truck driver

Written by Manraj Grewal Sharma | Updated: All Soul’s Day, November 2, 2025 | 03:11 PM IST

More than 7,200 commercial truck drivers have been disqualified across the United States this year after failing mandatory English proficiency tests, in an aggressive enforcement campaign by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) after a series of fatal highway incidents involving Indian-origin drivers.

The North American Punjabi Truckers Association estimates that 130,000–150,000 truck drivers work in the US, coming directly from Punjab and Haryana due to established recruitment networks, and many of them have been impacted.

Announcing the crackdown on October 30, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that 7,248 drivers were declared “out of service”—effectively debarred from driving—in 2025 for failing real-time roadside English Language Proficiency (ELP) checks. The figure, drawn from real-time data in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) national inspection database, marks a dramatic jump from roughly 1,500 such debarment orders until July 2025.

The move comes in the wake of several high-profile accidents, including a devastating pileup on a California highway in October involving an Indian driver accused of killing three Americans. According to Department of Transportation (DOT) sources, the driver, an illegal alien who was able to secure a California Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), failed the English test multiple times before the incident. DOT officials allege that the state’s lax adoption of Trump-era language rules enabled the tragedy, with Secretary Duffy publicly criticizing “sanctuary states” like California for flouting new federal guidance.

In another case earlier in August, Indian national Harjinder Singh was involved in a deadly triple-fatality on the Florida Turnpike despite questionable English language proficiency credentials, according to safety records. Both cases have intensified scrutiny of Commercial Driver’s License issuance practices, especially toward non-domiciled drivers from India and other South Asian countries, a demographic increasingly prominent in US trucking owing to persistent driver shortages.

When trucking companies can pay non-citizen drivers 52¢ a mile and get haulers, many don’t want to pay 75¢ or 80¢ to get a real American citizen who can read Green Eggs and Ham.

And here’s the money line:

The revived rule, 49 CFR 391.11(b)(2), requires all Commercial Driver’s License holders to read and speak English well enough to converse with the public, understand signs, communicate with officials, and maintain accurate reports. Enforcement was relaxed under an Obama administration memo, which since 2016 had discouraged inspectors from removing drivers solely for English language proficiency (ELP) deficiencies. This changed after President Trump’s 2025 executive order and a series of directives by the transportation department mandating immediate debarment for failing English language tests as of June 25, 2025.

In other words, the two fatal accidents reported in the article can be directly traced to the feet of Barack Hussein Obama! It’s not that immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans won’t do, but that immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans won’t do for 52¢ a mile. And when CDLs are being issued to “non-domiciled” drivers — meaning: drivers with no home address, drivers basically living in their trucks — those “non-domiciled drivers” can afford to work for 52¢ per mile, because they aren’t paying for a house and wife and kids.

It makes me wonder: how many “non-domiciled drivers,” men living in the sleeper cabs of their trucks, having little better to do, are maintaining separate logbooks to conceal how many hours they’re driving?

This is not to say that real American truck drivers don’t have accidents; they absolutely do. If there are any statistics showing a difference in accident rates between citizen and non-citizen drivers, I have not found them. But Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy noted that several states, including California, were improperly issuing CDLs to non-domiciled drivers and was working to get the practice within regulations.

It’s worth noting that the previous Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, whom Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff wanted as her 2024 running mate, but decided against it because he is openly homosexual, and who has aspirations of running for President in 2028, did not take any actions to get unqualified drivers off the roads.

Will this cost consumers? Yes, it will, but perhaps not that much. The difference between 50¢ a mile and 75¢ a mile, over a 1,000-mile delivery — and most are less than 1,000 miles — is an extra $250.00 for the driver, but if he’s hauling 50,000 lb, is only ½¢ a pound. Using some rough measurements, a 53 ft trailer, loaded to the max with toilet paper, not exactly a heavy load, could carry 15,500 rolls of TP, so $250 extra for the driver would add 6.45¢ to the cost of a four-roll pack, over that same 1,000-mile delivery. That, to me, is worth getting unqualified drivers, especially illegal immigrant drivers off the road. When they find that they can’t work anywhere, they’ll eventually head back to India, or Mexico, of from wherever else it is they come.

Democrisy: the left said that no one is above the law, right up until the law impacted the people they favored.

Our good friends on the left spent much of the Biden Administration years telling us what Senator Dick Durbin did in a tweet pictured to the right, telling us that no one is above the law. Letitia James said the same thing, many times, in her witch hunt against then-former President Trump, yet, today, she’s denying that she has any responsibility as far as her clearly fraudulent mortgage applications are concerned. And one of my favorite columnists, Will Bunch, was appalled, aghast, everything rolled into one that Mr Trump wasn’t thrown in prison and that, upon returning to office, pardoned the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers as well as some police officers, even though the vast majority of them had been punished, having already served their sentences.

Yet somehow, some way, our good friends on the left believe that illegal immigrants are above the law!

How an ICE shake-up will bring Chicago-level terror to Philly

The brutal arrest tactics and stepped-up immigration raids that have roiled Chicago are coming to Philadelphia after an ICE shake-up.

by Will Bunch | Thursday, October 30, 2024 | 1:33 PM EDT

There was sheer terror and panic in the voice of the sobbing woman who dialed 911 in Chicago on the afternoon of Oct. 4. It was a day of utter chaos along Kedzie Street in a heavily Latino neighborhood on the city’s South Side, as federal agents led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brutally arrested brown-skinned residents and clashed with a growing group of protesters.

The woman told the 911 dispatcher that the federal agents swarming her block had just slammed a man to the ground in front of her, according to a recording from the city’s emergency dispatch center obtained by the Talking Points Memo site.

“The agents started beating him up,” the unidentified caller said. “They have rifles and they’re pointing it at people.” She added that the man who was getting pummeled was unarmed, then said, “We have rights, we’re citizens here, please help us.”

If you’ve been following the news out of Chicago this fall, you know this 911 call wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s been about two months since Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Midway Blitz” in the nation’s third-largest city, boosted by a Trump-posted meme promising a hellish “Chipocalypse Now.”

We reported, in September, how the columnist lamented that President Trump wasn’t giving Venezuelan drug smugglers a fair chance to escape and deliver their cargoes to our shores. We noted last June that he was cheering on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, even while admitting that he did “find quite troubling the allegations of domestic abuse that caused Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, to briefly seek a protective order.”

Why then is the distinguished Mr Bunch so upset that President Trump is enforcing our immigration laws? Why isn’t he telling us that no one is above the law, including illegal immigrants?

Mr Bunch’s own newspaper reported, last inauguration day, that there were roughly 47,000 “undocumented immigrants,” to use the left’s mealy-mouth whitewashing of the more correct term, illegal immigrants. We did the math, and calculated that slightly over 3% of the city’s population were there illegally. If 47,000 illegals living in the City of Brotherly Love were sent back to their home countries, of left voluntarily, wouldn’t that help alleviate one of the city’s other problems, a lack of affordable housing, with tens of thousands of housing units becoming vacant?

If Mr Bunch specifically, and the newspaper in general, truly believed that no one is above the law, shouldn’t the Inquirer be advocating that the illegal immigrants take advantage of programs to help them return home, or, if being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, comply peacefully?

No one likes being arrested, and criminals frequently resist or try to get away, but most people have little sympathy for an accused thief or rapist or murderer winds up being rather forcibly arrested if he doesn’t simply surrender. Yet Mr Bunch complains that resisting arrest by ICE doesn’t usually work and has sympathy for those roughed up or even injured while resisting arrest.

And America has watched with shock and awe as ICE and Border Patrol agents have racially profiled and body-slammed Latinos, fired tear gas and painful pepper balls at pastors, journalists, and peaceful protesters, and indicted anyone who stands in their way, even a candidate for Congress.

Yeah, that kind of happens when people are trying to obstruct law enforcement agents in the performance of their duty. Violation of Title 18 USC §372, Conspiracy to impede or injure officer, is a federal offense, a felony which carries a sentence of up to six years in prison.

We get it: the curmudgeonly columnist absotively, posilutely hates President Trump, hates him with a white-hot passion, but should that get in the way of Mr Trump doing the right thing and enforcing our laws? Remember: no one is above the law, as our friends on the left have told us time and again, or at least they did so before November 5, 2024.

The left keep attacking Riley Gaines Barker for everything except her real argument The left are deathly afraid of discussing the real issue, that 'transgender women' are very different from real women

Judging from my Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — feed, the talking points memo has gone out: the left must attack Riley Gaines Barker, the former University of Kentucky swimmer who is now a vocal advocate for protecting women’s sports from men males who think they’re somehow women. It’s no surprise to me that the very lovely Amanda Marcotte had to join in; hat tip to Carol Marks of The Victory Girls for pointing out this article.

How Riley Gaines and the trans panic steal from horror films

Fake victims like Gaines evoke the little girls of “The Exorcist” and “The Conjuring”

By Amanda Marcotte | Monday, October 27, 2025 | 6:45 AM EDT

On paper, former swimmer Riley Gaines is a puzzling choice for MAGA’s appointed “victim” of trans people. Gaines has built an entire career on a single incident when she was a college swimmer, when she tied for fifth place during the 200-yard freestyle at the NCAA swimming championship in 2022.

As a senior at the University of Kentucky, she finished in the middle of the pack with Lia Thomas, who had drawn national attention for being trans. Logically, Gaines’s woe-is-me tale doesn’t make much sense as a moral outrage over trans women in sports. Four other swimmers outswam Thomas, which seems to be proof against conservative claims that trans women have an unbeatable advantage. Nevertheless, Gaines portrays the moment as when her “dreams” were “shattered,” but most people would hardly use such heavy language for the difference between tying for fifth place versus having that also-ran trophy by yourself.

As we note in our Stylebook, this site always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their proper names and pronouns, the names and pronouns which reflect their actual sex, not the gender they claim to be. Thus, the person who Miss Marcotte referred to as “Lia Thomas” is actually Will Thomas. However, as our Stylebook also specifies, we do not alter direct quotes from others.

We have previously noted how Mr Thomas completely destroyed the real female competitors in the pool before he learned to hold back a bit. He won one women’s NCAA championship, and then started bagging the other races.

Despite the underwhelming facts of her tale, Gaines turned her unmemorable swim meet into the entire foundation of her career as a MAGA figurehead. She never had the chops to be a professional swimmer, but she has done well as a professional victim, devoting her life not just to eradicating trans women from sports, but to opposing trans rights altogether. Gaines compares trans women to rapists and pedophiles, and claims that LGBTQ rights activists wish to “fully eradicate women as a whole.” She even calls trans people and their allies “demonic” and aligns queer rights with Satanism.

It is absolutely true that Mrs Barker finished only fifth, tying with Mr Thomas for the NCAA 200-yard freestyle championship in 2022, but it is also true that she has a good record in Southeastern Conference championships. I am especially impressed with her gold medal in the 200-yard butterfly; I’d guess that none of her critics could swim the butterfly stroke for even a single length of the pool, 50 yards, without having a stroke, or a heart attack, themselves.

So, OK, Mrs Barker was good, but not quite good enough to become a professional swimmer or make an Olympic team. It seems that most of her critics like to slam her for that, because they don’t really want to address her major point, that males and females are not alike, and are in fact very different in ways that make a difference in competitive athletics.

There are some mixed sex teams in sports in which the size, speed, quickness, endurance, and strength differences between males and females does not make a significant difference, such as rifle teams and curling. But only a fool doesn’t recognize that those differences do exist.

That, and not her fifth place trophy, is why Gaines has become the face of the anti-trans movement. Simply put, she looks the part. Every demon possession story requires a cherubic — and ideally blonde — little girl to be the face of the “innocence” threatened by Satanic forces. Think Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” Heather O’Rourke in “Poltergeist” or the family of all daughters in “The Conjuring.” Although Gaines, at 25, is a grown woman, she has a round face and a girlish demeanor, making her able to evoke the trope of the demon-terrorized child that has captured the Christian right’s imagination for decades. . . . .

Wittingly or not, Gaines seems to understand that her ability to play the “victim” of these supposedly demonic trans forces depends on presenting herself as girlish. She favors fluffy lace, pink outfits. Despite promoting her athleticism, she avoids being seen as strong and capable, preferring sports photos that emphasize how “cute” and “lil” her clothes are. Gaines and her MAGA audience love to talk about how petite she is; in June, she even posted a video of her much-taller husband measuring her to “prove” she’s only 5 feet 5 inches tall. Since female swimmers, like their male counterparts, tend to be tall, the video only served to make Gaines look childish and came at the expense of her athletic image. Even her purported ambition — to have a swimming trophy — can be seen as childlike, especially as she never pursued a post-collegiate career as a professional swimmer.

So, Miss Marcotte is attacking Mrs Barker for her physical appearance, but not even doing that very well. The first two links take us to Instagram files and pictures which do not support the claims the author made, while the measuring the height video was in response to a tweet from gymnast Simone Biles. Of course, our fearless feminist from Philadelphia hasn’t been shy about writing disparagingly concerning other women’s appearances before, so this is not new ground for her.

Toward the end of her article, Miss Marcotte tells us that:

On a rational level, her story doesn’t make sense. Trans people haven’t taken anything from her. And with her swimming days behind her, they certainly aren’t a danger to her now.

Well, that’s technically true, but it’s like saying that, on a rational level, Miss Marcotte’s continual advocacy for abortion rights doesn’t make sense, because she’s 48 years old now, and her potential child-bearing days behind her. We all know she’d never accept that argument! That Mrs Barker is fighting for other women is a concept thar she can’t seem to grasp.

Will “Lia” Thomas, 26, accepted the “Voice of Inspiration Award” at the 2025 Violet Visionary Awards in Los Angeles on Thursday night. (Alejandro Avila/OutKick). Can you pick out the 6’3″ male?

But Miss Marcotte and all of the others seem to flee from one question: are males and females, men and women, boys and girls different, different in ways that actually make a difference in sports? The author noted that Mrs Barker’s husband is “much taller,” which is something that adult men and women normally are. She also noted that “female swimmers, like their male counterparts, tend to be tall,” which is noting that, since adult males are normally several inches taller than adult females, they have a physical advantage. Sexual dimorphism is a real thing.

Will Thomas is 6’3″ tall.

Swimming is a sport in which strength, quickness, and endurance are key . . . and men, on the whole, are stronger, quicker, and can develop greater endurance than women. I know that such a point outrages our friends on the left, but, sorry, their argument is with God, or evolution, or Mother Nature, however they wish to put it.

Miss Marcotte made a great deal about Mrs Barker’s Christian beliefs, mocking them as much as she could, but she never addressed the real question.

The supporters of transgenderism want us to believe that #TransWomenAreWomen, but to make that claim they have to ignore the physical differences between males and females. If they acknowledge those differences, their entire worldview of transgenderism falls apart.

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