In today’s newsletter, we examine the widening federal investigation involving former Rep. Eric Swalwell. Elsewhere, we look at what this week’s primaries may tell us about the November elections, and the enormous financial costs of the Democratic Socialists’ economic agenda. Finally, we cover President Trump’s remarkable reconciliation with his former attorney Michael Cohen and the Army’s reassessment of its drone strategy.
Reading time: 12 minutes
For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, fear not; I will help thee. Isaiah 41:13
Political analysts are still sifting through the Tuesday primary results, looking for trends and omens, and in some cases, grasping at straws and making fools of themselves.
For instance, some liberal media outlets predict that the Republicans are in trouble in Florida because GOP gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds is black and so many Republican voters (whom they’ve never met or talked to) are racists. These same outlets are also high on the prospects of Democratic socialist Angie Nixon to be elected to the Senate, conveniently forgetting that she’s also black and quite radical about it. If there’s a big enough contingent of racists to swing statewide votes, then how will they defeat Donalds but not Nixon?
Speaking of Florida and judging people by their skin color, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is being attacked by black Democrats for switching from her old district (that was redrawn to be more Republican-friendly) to District 20 and winning there. Democrat critics are slamming the white Schultz for beating several black candidates so that voters in that historically black district will no longer have a representative who “looks like them.”
We’re no fans of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but isn’t it doubly racist to claim that not only should Congress members be chosen by skin color, but that black voters shouldn’t be allowed to vote for anyone they want, regardless of skin color?
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In the immortal words of Barbie, “Math is hard.” Math is also proving to be a bigger enemy of socialism than Ronald Reagan was.
The “Democratic” Socialists are rising in popularity among miseducated young people based on their false promises to make life easier and more affordable by simply waving a magic government wand and providing free money and stuff, with the bill going to someone else. But now that it’s looking as if there’s a danger that some of these deluded socialist halfwits will actually make it into Congress to join the deluded socialist halfwits who are already there, some people have started applying math to their promises to see how they hold up. As we expected, they hold up about as well as store brand toilet paper in a monsoon.
For instance, an analysis by the Libertarian Cato Institute estimated that the cost of all the promises in the DSA platform would be somewhere between $71 trillion and $212 trillion in additional federal spending over the next ten years. The socialists claim they’ll pay for it by confiscating the wealth of billionaires. They seem to believe that billionaires all keep their money in big Scrooge McDuck-style money vaults and not invested in businesses that would have to be liquidated, eliminating countless jobs as well as the taxes generated by them.
Fox News reported that if you raised the top income tax rate to 40% on everyone making over $1 million (that’s million, not billion), it would raise only about half a trillion dollars in government revenues. If you taxed them at 90%, assuming they would actually pay that instead of fighting it or moving overseas, it would raise less than $2 trillion. By one estimate, their “Medicare for All” scheme alone could cost $1.67 trillion a year just for the 14 million illegal aliens Democrats have already let in. Plus they want to eliminate borders and give it to everyone who pours in later.
Another idea by these economic geniuses is to create a federal minimum wage of $25 an hour, triple the minimum wage in some states. Once again, the proponents of socialism would like us to ignore all the historic evidence of the failure of their policies, such as the steep job losses and business closures after California hiked its minimum wage.
A new study by the conservative Employment Policies Institute (EPI) predicts that a national $25 minimum wage would be a “total job killer,” artificially jacking up the cost of doing business so much that it would eliminate over 5 million jobs nationwide.
Ironically, the job losses would fall most heavily on young workers and women, the two groups most likely to vote for “Democratic” socialists.
We can all agree that it would be nice if everyone got a big raise, but the government doesn’t decide how much a job is worth; the market does. The math proves that, as always, the real minimum wage is zero, and that’s exactly what a lot of Americans will be making if these boneheads ever get into power.
President Donald Trump and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen staged a remarkable public reconciliation Thursday. Years after he became a key witness against his former boss, Cohen, who is now seeking a presidential pardon, interviewed Trump for his New York radio program. During the interview he repeatedly called Trump “boss,” and delivered a six-minute monologue about friendship and forgiveness before declaring that the two men had forgiven one another. Trump responded warmly, telling Cohen he respected that he had “recanted everything you said.”
Mark it on your bingo cards: Radical left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed fell back on the favorite dodge of all radicals, comparing himself to Jesus, who was “considered radical in His time, too.” Yes, but He wasn’t considered a radical Islamic socialist.
One step forward, two steps back. The US Army is scaling back its drone warfare efforts. This AP story hints at bureaucratic infighting and indecision, rather than genuine learning. This unexpected move, after this story, feels somehow related.
Fentanyl deaths are down: Fentanyl-linked overdose deaths fell sharply last year, and the Trump administration is crediting its border-security and anti-cartel policies. According to Fox News, CDC figures cited by the White House show deaths involving synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, dropped 22% in 2025, while overall drug-overdose deaths declined 14%. The White House attributes the improvements to Trump’s border crackdown, pressure on Mexican cartels and ICE arrests of foreign nationals previously convicted of fentanyl-related crimes.
In an embarrassing moment for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, city officials took potential vendors for his government-run supermarket on a tour of the “construction site,” complete with hard hats. Turned out they didn’t need them because all it was was an empty parking lot with trash blowing across it. We didn’t expect it to look like that until a year or so after it opened.
We don’t know why it’s so sad to report this, since we had no idea it was still around, but the Columbia House Record Club (“Get 7 albums for one penny!”) is officially shutting down on September 15th. Chris Queen at PJ Media has the story, and it will probably give some of you strong twinges of nostalgia – or maybe guilt for not buying those full-price albums you were supposedly obligated to accept.
Consumer Alert! First it was explosive diarrhea due to tainted lettuce, and now the FDA has issued a “highest risk” recall of frozen blueberries and mixed berries due to a possible E. coli outbreak. You can find full details at the link. In the meantime, stay safe and healthy by only eating meat.
Swalwell’s DC home was searched, too, and we know more about Pelosi’s role in protecting him
Yesterday’s newsletter featured the breaking story of former Congressman Eric Swalwell being met at San Francisco International Airport by FBI agents with a warrant to confiscate his electronic devices as part of a federal criminal probe. They came away with Swalwell’s iPhone and a MacBook Pro, along with a charging cable and wall adapter.
Funny, that warrant seems to have been executed almost a week ago, last Saturday at 8:25 PM. The following day, agents executed additional warrants at Swalwell’s Washington DC residence, where they seized other potential evidence, according to a source for the New York Post.
Just wondering, if Swalwell’s laptop turns out to be full of sexual sleaze and corruption involving the CCP, will 51 former intel officials write a letter saying it has the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation? One thing we all know about the Democrats’ strategies: they tend to go to the same well over and over. Lather, rinse, repeat. They apparently saw the movie GROUNDHOG DAY and took it to heart.
Also, if the subject of these warrants had been a Trump associate, we’d bet CNN would’ve already been stationed in both locations with their cameras ready to roll. But the news about Swalwell didn’t even begin to break nationally for several days, and that was in the British press, the UK Daily Mail.
The San Francisco Standard had one early report, saying that according to the federal statute cited in the warrant, 18 U.S.C. 242, authorities appear to be building a civil rights case against Swalwell. The warrant was signed by an FBI agent in the San Francisco field office’s Public Corruption and Civil Rights Squad. According to the DOJ, someone convicted of violating this statute could, in the most severe cases, be sentenced to life in prison.
Oddly, this is the same statute, “Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law,” that was used to prosecute the officers involved in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Perhaps its application in 2003 is more pertinent: Philip Giordano, then-mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut, was convicted of violating this law by using his office and connections with police to threaten into silence two girls whom he had sexually abused.
As the Standard reports, “The statute is most often filed against law enforcement officers who deprive people of their rights.” A former federal prosecutor, Tony Brass, advised them that one potential connection (he was speculating here) might be that Swalwell was using his position to intimidate witnesses.
It’s hard to believe that Swalwell was at one time the frontrunner to be governor of California. (Again, you folks in California have GOT to start doing better at picking your candidates!) The skill he seems most accomplished in is making people’s skin crawl. But Fang Fang no doubt thought he might be going places; that’s why she started paying attention to him when he was a mere councilman in Dublin City, California. Swalwell resigned from his seat in Congress amidst allegations of sexual misconduct including rape, which he has denied. With the “Fang Fang” story finally picking up steam, it seems likely that any such allegations are the tip of the iceberg.
But, sane Californians, be careful what you wish for. Your political scene seems to be going from bad to worse, if that is possible. With Swalwell gone, his replacement in Congress is the radical CAIR-backed candidate Aisha Wahab, who made history as the first Afghan-American candidate to be elected to the California State Senate. Wahab accuses Israel of committing genocide and hopes to prevent ICE from deporting illegal aliens. Soros-backed American Priorities is one of the PACs that supported her.
What is likely even more important to the larger picture, more so than any sexual impropriety on Swalwell’s part, or the illegal contributions made to his campaign, or the other Chinese interns Fang Fang brought into his office, or even the pressure Fang Fang was apparently putting on him to go to China (hey, we’d gladly give him a one-way ticket), is that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually received an intelligence briefing on the relationship between him and “Fang Fang” (Christine Fang) but did nothing in response.
Agents had checked into this young Chinese national, in the U.S. on a student visa, and determined that both her parents worked in intelligence for the CCP. They believed she herself was working with Chinese intelligence. As you know, when she sensed the walls were closing in on her, she made a fast getaway back to China.
Swalwell had admitted in a closed-door session to having had a sexual relationship with her; this appears to have been a typical “honeypot” spy scheme, the kind that probably goes on all over DC. Yet, unbelievably, Pelosi chose to stay quiet about this and to let Swalwell retain his top-secret clearance and his position on (yes) THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE.
From Jonathan Turley: “So Pelosi was presumably aware that Swalwell had slept with an alleged spy and possibly received unlawful foreign contributions. The report suggests an effort to groom and advance a young politician. If so, the Chinese must have been astonished when he was put on the Intelligence Committee with access to highly sensitive secrets. Pelosi not only refused to remove Swalwell from the Committee but appointed him as an impeachment manager.”
Pelosi publicly dismissed the allegations at the time and attacked those who were calling for Swalwell’s removal. She said, “I don’t have any concern about Mr. Swalwell...I do think that it is unfortunate that [Rep. Kevin] McCarthy is trying to make an issue of this.”
As Turley observes, “Swalwell was Pelosi’s man on the Committee. The question is whether the Chinese thought he could also be their man on the Committee.” She was protecting him despite allegations --- from before he was even elected to Congress --- about his mistreatment of women. Turley sees Swalwell as a “made man”…“sheltered by the political and media establishment in Washington.”
Clearly, Democrats have shown that they don’t care one whit (however much a “whit” is) about how female staffers are treated. What they care about is how they can use sexual allegations --- or, when it suits their purposes, refrain from using them.
As Turley writes, “After Swalwell’s implosion, Pelosi immediately feigned a total lack of knowledge --- and, more importantly, responsibility --- for his record. The fact is that Swalwell was the creation of Pelosi, her attack dog who was always straining at the leash to attack her enemies.” Talk about corruption, not just on Swalwell’s part but at the highest level. Now we’ve seen just how important it was to her to have someone like that at her side.
We found more on Fang Fang, showing that some had suspicions about her from the start. From Axios in 2020: “Almost every Fremont and Tri-Valley elected official and political insider seems to hold the same vivid memories of Fang. Many remarked that she appeared to have come out of nowhere and was suddenly meeting every local official and seemingly showing up at every event. Others also described holding deep-seated suspicions about her intentions.”
It wasn’t until 2015, when the FBI briefed him about Fang Fang, that Swalwell cut off contact. A two-year House ethics investigation that ended in 2023 --- note whose administration this was --- took no further action on whether Swalwell’s relationship with Fang violated any House rules or “other standards of conduct.” Again, we have Pelosi to thank for that. How about any ethics rules SHE might have violated?
Speaking of Europe’s attempts to teach Muslim migrants not to commit rape, how are things going in that Spanish enclave that was overrun by Moroccan migrants?
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