Commentary Culture Investigations

Dell Cameron, Wired

The cover-up begins.
The post Iryna Zarutska’s Murderer Gets a Pass appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

The crowd was considerable.
Safe to say, the ballroom and surrounding rooms of the Penn Harris hotel were filled to overflowing with Pennsylvania conservative activists from across the state as they gathered in suburban Harrisburg for the annual get-together of the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference.
The PLC, as it is known, advertises as follows:
The Pennsylvania Leadership Conference is the premiere gathering of public policy conservatives each year in the Keystone State.  It is the largest and longest-running of the state-based conservative conferences regularly attracting a long list of conservative elected officials, scholars, journalists, and activists for three days of speeches, panel presentations, workshops, and networking.
As a regular attendee myself, I always look forward to this spring festival for Pennsylvania conservatives. This year, the featured speaking attractions are Chris Ruddy, the founder and CEO of Newsmax; Linda McMahon, the Trump administration’s secretary of education; Stacy Garrity, the Pennsylvania state treasurer and the state GOP’s 2026 soon-to-be nominee for governor, and the area’s 10th District congressman, Scott Perry. And for sure, I will be appearing on a Saturday panel with Newsmax colleague John Gizzi and Grove City historian/The American Spectator managing editor Paul Kengor to discuss the state of the Conservative Movement.
The Conference reports:
This year’s Pennsylvania Leadership Conference will provide attendees with an expanded menu of workshop sessions on Thursday and a new welcome reception on Thursday evening.
Workshop sessions include: From Community to the Capitol: Recruiting the Right Leaders; Stop Shapiro’s Tax Hikes; Getting Stuff Right: Protecting Life, Families & Religious Liberty; Are Your Ready to Run: Questions to Ask Yourself Before Running for Office; Show Me the Money: Putting the Fun in Fundraising; Faith & Politics: Appealing to Conservatives of Faith; Social Media: Battling the Keyboard Warriors; Public Speaking: Overcoming the World’s # 1 Fear; Capturing the Youth Vote: Engaging a New Generation: The Real Nature of Politics; Powering Pennsylvania: Energy Policy, Prices and Jobs; Roadmap to an America First Immigration System: Election Integrity & Litigation: Inside and Outside the Commonwealth; Pennsylvania’s Shifting Coalitions; A History of the Republican Party.
The 2026 Pennsylvania Leadership Conference will feature five panel presentations including: The Health Care Check Up: Why Competition Beats Bureaucracy; Ain’t Got Stuff Done: Examining Governor Shapiro’s record; Ideas to Impacts: Entrepreneurship in Pennsylvania; Protect Women’s Sports; and Powering the Future: Energy and AI in Pennsylvania.
The PLC notes that portion of the conference will air live on the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) and their streaming platform PCN Select – Home. It will also stream on the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference Facebook page.
Why would this be notable this year? This is, of course, a midterm election year. In Pennsylvania, while there is no U.S. Senate election (Republican Dave McCormick won the last Senate race), there is a hot race for governor. Incumbent Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro, frequently mentioned as a potential 2028 Democrat candidate for president, is facing the GOP’s seriously popular State Treasurer Stacey Garrity. If she wins, Garrity would be Pennsylvania’s first woman governor, something that is giving her considerable attention right now. Shapiro is, in fact, a tough opponent for any GOP nominee, but Garrity is decidedly out there on the campaign trail giving her race everything.
Pennsylvania, where I grew up, starting with high school days, is what might be called a purple state politically. Places like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh are as blue as might be expected from urban areas. But Central Pennsylvania and parts of the state’s northeast and northwest sections are either solidly red or, at a minimum, purple. On the presidential level, the state has voted both red and blue over the decades, depending on the candidates and the political issues of the moment.
So all of this combines to make the PLC a serious contributor of activists and money in an election year. And as I can attest from attending my share of workshops thus far, and talking with PLC attendees. Suffice to say, they are determined to turn out the conservative base across the state this November.
So we shall see. There are months to go until the November election day. But the conservative grass roots are, it can be safely said, already swinging into action.
Which is to say the PLC, led by Chairman Dave Taylor and President and CEO Lowman Henry, is decidedly focused and on the job. All of which promises to make the 2026 election at all levels in Pennsylvania a serious focus of political activism.
This political year in William Penn’s Commonwealth will not be dull.
READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord:
Trump: A Real Commander-in-Chief
Trump Winning in Iran
Netanyahu Applauds Trump on Iran

Several days ago, President Trump and his national security team issued a stark ultimatum to Iran’s regime: reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the full destructive power of the U.S. military — power plants, bridges, oil terminals, and the entire civilian infrastructure that keeps a modern society running.
To many’s surprise, the Iranian regime did not budge. Their calculation was simple: If Trump carried out the attack on the infrastructure and economic lifelines, he would risk being accused of being an international war criminal. (RELATED: A Mad Defense of Madness)
Right before the deadline of the ultimatum, the Trump administration declared a ceasefire and a decisive victory against the regime.
That is a very wise move. By stepping back from a strategy that targets infrastructure — an approach that is ineffective at subduing dictatorships — the United States avoids strengthening the regime’s narrative, limits international backlash, and preserves its leverage for more effective options. To understand this, we need to go back a little bit. (RELATED: It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause.)
When the Trump administration issued the ultimatum, the logic was straightforward and, on the surface, compelling. No government, the thinking goes, can watch its people suffer without water, electricity, or fuel and remain in power. In any civilized country, such neglect would trigger elections, impeachment, or revolution. But that assumption rests on a fatal error: it projects the moral and political constraints of a democracy onto a dictatorship that operates by entirely different rules. Iran’s rulers do not serve the people; the people serve the rulers. And history — both ancient and recent — shows that dictators will, without hesitation, let their citizens starve, freeze, or die by the thousands as long as they can maintain their control.
The Iranian regime has proven this point with chilling consistency. In November 2019, when fuel-price protests erupted nationwide, security forces killed at least 321 people in a matter of days — Amnesty International’s figure, though some estimates run higher. In 2022, after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, state forces killed hundreds of protesters, including children. And in the winter of 2025–2026, as economic desperation boiled over again, the regime unleashed another severe crackdown, with reported deaths in the thousands, though exact figures remain contested. In every case, the regime’s response was not negotiation or reform but violent repression, internet blackouts, and live ammunition. The Supreme Leader and his inner circle — shielded by the Revolutionary Guard and the vast Setad economic empire, often estimated in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in assets — never missed a meal or a night’s sleep.
This is not incompetence; it is doctrine. Dictatorships view their populations as expendable resources. The Chinese Communist Party demonstrated the same calculus in 1948 when it besieged the city of Changchun. Rather than storm the Nationalist garrison, the PLA simply sealed the city and waited. Between 150,000 and 300,000 civilians starved to death until the defenders surrendered. Mao reportedly told Khrushchev that China could endure nuclear attacks, losing “a few hundred million” people and still prevail. Khrushchev, himself no bleeding heart, was stunned. These are not aberrations; they are the operating manual of totalitarians. The people are cannon fodder. The regime’s survival is the only non-negotiable.
Trump’s earlier “maximum pressure” campaign (2018–2021 and revived in 2025) offered a controlled experiment. Sanctions slashed Iran’s oil exports to near zero, collapsed the rial by two-thirds, drove inflation above 40 percent, and pushed the economy into deep recession. Yet the regime did not buckle. It accelerated its nuclear program, deepened ties with Russia and China, and enriched its proxies — Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas — through smuggling and shadow banking. The suffering fell overwhelmingly on ordinary Iranians; the Revolutionary Guard and clerical elite simply shifted into black-market profiteering. Economic pain, far from weakening the regime, became propaganda fuel: “See how the Great Satan starves our children while we stand defiant.”
[T]he only measure that has ever forced a totalitarian regime to sue for peace is the credible threat — or reality — of its own physical destruction…
Destroying infrastructure will only intensify this pattern. Power outages and fuel shortages will not topple the mullahs; they will give them fresh excuses to mobilize their loyal militias, blame the U.S., and tighten the noose on dissent. Even if American and Israeli strikes eliminate individual leaders, the system is designed for seamless regeneration. New hardliners step forward, often more radical than their predecessors. The regime’s true “center of gravity” is not bridges or power plants. It is the Revolutionary Guard, the clerical patronage networks, and the ideological apparatus that rewards loyalty with privilege and punishes disloyalty with death.
None of this means the United States should do nothing. It means that any serious strategy must discard the comforting illusion that dictators share our humanitarian calculus. Precision strikes on nuclear sites and proxy command centers remain necessary. But the only measure that has ever forced a totalitarian regime to sue for peace is the credible threat — or reality — of its own physical destruction, which, with increasing clarity, requires ground operations. Anything short of that is theater—expensive, destructive theater that leaves the real enemy alive.
Trump’s instincts on Iran have been refreshingly clear-eyed, in contrast to the appeasement of previous administrations and Europe. Yet even the clearest-eyed leader can stumble when he applies the logic of a free society to a regime that has never known one.
Dictators do not fear the destruction of their people and economy; they fear losing their power. Until American policy recognizes that distinction, no amount of bombs dropped on power grids will force the Iranian dictatorship to give up. In other words, even if we completely destroy Iran’s infrastructure and economy, it alone will not subdue the Iranian dictatorship and its military. We must first understand the logic behind dictatorships and assess what it would take to make it surrender before we take our next step. And Trump’s declaration of the ceasefire is a timely break to allow us to do just that — and precisely in this sense, it is a good idea for America.
READ MORE from Shaomin Li:
Zhang Youxia’s Arrest: Xi Jinping’s Paranoia Leaves CCP Elites in Fear
Iran Is Not That Simple
China’s Spy Network in America: A People’s War Against an Open House
Shaomin Li is a professor of international business at Old Dominion University.
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

From the same people who cracked down on church services during COVID comes the push to reopen gay bathhouses.
Minneapolis considers a series of ordinances that seek, among other aims, to “eliminate stigmatizing language” in existing ordinances and provide “new definitions to be inclusive of establishments where sexual activity between consenting adults may be facilitated.”
In other words, it looks to rescind the bathhouse ban that it belatedly passed in 1988.
More than four decades ago, as AIDS decimated the population of gay men, cities wisely closed the sex clubs that served as the force multipliers of the disease. In a demonstration of how a mania for sex distorts judgment, gay activists compared Ed Koch, Dianne Feinstein, and other liberals (including gays) putting the baths out of business to the Nazis; to everyone else, the baths themselves resembled the concentration camp “showers” that administered poison.
“Out of the Baths, Into the Ovens,” male protestors in towels chanted in response to San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s rather belated shuttering of the bathhouses.
“Now that you’ve succeeded in closing down the baths,” New York Native publisher Charles Ortleb asked epidemiologist Jim Curren, “are you preparing the boxcars for relocation?”
The proponents of the sex clubs showed themselves not just indifferent to human life but dishonest in combining hyperbole with euphemism. At least a restaurant proprietor who touts glass sandwiches on his menu practices truth in advertising. Bathhouses clean up the dirty (and dangerous) in their hygienic name.
This Orwellian quality characterizes the rhetoric of the Minneapolis Safer Sex Coalition, the pressure group focused on reopening that city’s sex clubs after a 38-year ban.
“Social science research tells us that commercial sex spaces, like gay saunas, are important for promoting safer sex practices, enhancing HIV prevention, and increasing access to testing and treatment,” the Safer Sex Coalition contends. “These spaces also enhance feelings of identity, camaraderie, authenticity, and belonging.”
No, those places exist to facilitate anonymous sexual encounters between strangers. That is the alpha and omega of gay bathhouses. And anonymous sexual encounters between strangers does not promote “safer sex practices” or enhance “HIV prevention.”
One might look upon this project to reopen bathhouses more sympathetically if its proponents did not dress up their aims in Newspeak. Bathhouses exist for fleeting, anonymous sexual encounters between men. The presence of posters that admonish patrons to embrace safe sex or a table that distributes free condoms does not erase this reality.
People will contract diseases in these establishments. Some closeted men will pass on these diseases to their wives; upfront gays will pass them on to other gays.
Does not Grindr already exist for this purpose?
The fact that the diseases contracted in the establishments in 2026 will likely kill very few of the patrons, and the diseases contracted in the establishments prior to 1988 did kill very many of the patrons, helps to partly explain the public policy reorientation on sex clubs. It does not explain why the public health crusaders who have established fines for bicyclists who ride without a helmet, frightened youth football programs into extinction, and taxed cigarettes from the respite of trailer-park denizens to a luxury item for the comfortable provide a pass to gay bathhouses.
Big Brother watches us all. But for Black Lives Matter protestors at the height of COVID or gay bathhouse enthusiasts during the post-AIDS era, Big Brother takes a holiday. To paraphrase from another Orwell classic: all humans are equal, but some humans are more equal than others.
Unfortunately, all of those afflicted with the most severe case of buyer’s remorse from Big Daddy’s Bath House, the Locker Room Baths, and other of the long-shuttered Minneapolis institutions cannot testify before the city council to the dangers of such clubs. These new ordinances can resurrect Big Daddy’s Bath House. No such luck awaits that club’s long-dead patrons.
READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:
President Trump Makes Case for Military Action in Iran
The People Who Once Laughed With John Cleese Are Now His Punchlines
Cesar Chavez, Rapist, Pedophile, Progressive Icon

The data is in, and the conclusion is depressing: Planned Parenthood killed 434,450 babies in 2024, according to a new report released this week.
That totals up to an impressive kill-to-patient ratio: 434,450 murders and 2.09 million patients “treated.”
This of course shows that abortions are all Planned Parenthood cares about. The additional services they render, like STD testing and pap smears, are just window dressing for their systematic murder machine.
This year’s numbers showed that reality more than ever. Even as abortions increased year over year by 8 percent, cancer screenings fell by 8.6 percent, pap smears decreased by 2.5 percent, and preventative care visits fell by 3.2 percent.
Some of the other numbers Planned Parenthood gave show how little they accomplish that is actually beneficial. They only provided miscarriage care 2,852 times in the whole year, and they only provided prenatal services 7,685 times. Of course, it’s no wonder mothers don’t want their babies to receive prenatal care at a place that exists to execute children.
This data does not yet show the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s defunding of Planned Parenthood via its restriction of federal Medicaid payments to abortion providers. Next year, we’ll see how effective that tactic was in stymying the number of abortions. There are some signs that the defunding has had an impact, as 50 Planned Parenthood clinics have closed since that law was passed, and Planned Parenthood said in its latest report that an additional 200 “health centers” — read: killing centers — are at risk of closure due to the law. President Donald Trump’s new budget proposal seeks to leave that defunding mechanism in place, offering hope that more Planned Parenthood clinics will indeed close.
However, given the increasing degree to which abortion pills are purchased online, including from overseas “pharmacies” and domestic criminal abortion providers, it remains less clear that closing Planned Parenthood clinics will actually cause a substantial decrease in the number of abortions in the United States. Causing the numbers to truly fall will require actually tackling the criminal trafficking of abortion pills, which the Trump administration has so far been reticent to do. (READ MORE: Why Is RFK Jr.’s FDA Allowing Abortionists to Flood Red States With Pills?)
The sad conclusion from this new Planned Parenthood report is that conservatives’ yearned-for reversal of Roe v. Wade has not brought about even a small decrease in the number of children slaughtered in abortions. In fact, abortions have increased markedly, despite the fact that 20 states now have laws that limit abortions before viability in some way. (Thirteen states have a total ban on abortions, while five additional states ban abortions after six weeks’ gestation, around when the baby has a heartbeat.)
This is because women travel out of state to obtain abortions — Planned Parenthood reported spending $3.7 million to “help” women with these travel expenses — as well as the fact that abortions can easily be obtained online. We can’t know, of course, the number of abortion pills that are illegally purchased online, but they are surely making the picture much worse than this 8 percent year-over-year increase presents. Planned Parenthood performs about 39 percent of abortions in the U.S., but, again, it’s hard to know the true number because of the high number of illegal abortions.
Other data has borne out Planned Parenthood’s claim that abortions are increasing post-Dobbs. The Guttmacher Institute said last month that an estimated 1,126,000 abortions were performed by U.S. clinicians in 2025, which it said was largely unchanged from 2024. This represented a 21 percent increase in abortions since 2020, the previous year for which the organization had data. Unfortunately, this number failed to capture the many abortions that take place via foreign online pharmacies and criminal domestic providers.
Defunding Planned Parenthood is not going to stop abortions in the U.S., and it is likely to have only a marginal impact on decreasing them. Also, federal defunding can only do so much. Democratic states are so dedicated to aborting babies that the government grants Planned Parenthood received in 2025 were actually higher than in 2024. According to the new report, Planned Parenthood received $832 million in government grants in fiscal year 2025, a 5 percent increase over 2024. (RELATED: Confederate Liberals)
Only tactics like banning the abortion pill, banning abortions via telehealth, and going after foreign pharmacies and domestic clinicians illegally providing abortions would truly make an impact amid this abject disaster that we face: Abortions increasing after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes:
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“Donald Trump prides himself in his ability to strike a deal. But the real estate mogul turned president’s negotiating strategy has not worked with the government of Iran,” gloated the Financial Times before this week’s announced ceasefire.
The FT fails to mention that the Iranian bureaucrats exchanging messages with Trump report to Ahmad Vahidi, an international terrorist fugitive leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, who has survived Epic Fury and now calls the shots. His legitimacy rests on the control of a diminishing stock of ballistic missiles, thousands of kamikaze drones, some enriched uranium, Basij militia thugs operating with Chinese surveillance systems, and foreign terrorists coming in from neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan to boost the IRGC’s depleted ranks. This is “The Government of Iran.” (RELATED: Trump Confounds Critics Again)
His well-honed clandestine skills have kept him out of the crosshairs of Israeli killer drones so far, and he is the rump regime’s murky decision maker.
Vahidi has alternated between every key military and intelligence position under the now largely departed mullahs, including defense minister, chief of the armed forces, intelligence director, and most importantly, commander of Quds Force, the IRGC’s external spy agency and special operations unit that virtually runs Iran’s foreign dealings. He is the effective replacement of General Qassem Soleimani, assassinated by Trump in 2019. His well-honed clandestine skills have kept him out of the crosshairs of Israeli killer drones so far, and he is the rump regime’s murky decision maker.
The ceasefire agreed with Trump this week came after the U.S. president brutally threatened to “bomb Iran back into the stone ages” by taking out all of its bridges and electric power stations, which would have left IRGC units unable to communicate and move units to counter possible U.S. ground operations and internal uprisings. (RELATED: It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause.)
According to intelligence analysts, Vahidi had been reorganizing the IRGC into cell-structured groups able to continue fighting with limited centralized support. But this may prove insufficient against major U.S. ground challenges like taking Kharg Island. IRGC could not intercept a battalion-sized landing in the middle of Iran to rescue a downed F-15 pilot over Easter weekend. (RELATED: The Iran Rescue: The Payoff of Painful Lessons)
Vahidi is wanted by Interpol for directing a series of truck bombings that killed over a hundred people in Argentina, where he operated under diplomatic cover during the 1990s, rising to head Quds following the U.S. assassination of its founding general, Qasem Soleimani. His personal management of the IRGC’s external alliances, largely engineered by him, is now crucial for the group’s survival and geopolitical power plays involving closures of the Hormuz strait which he tentatively reopened this week under Trump’s threats of complete annihilation.
He is the very embodiment of the terrorist bureaucrat…
“The Government of Iran” is hated and despised by the vast majority of Iranians, 40,000 of whom have given their lives to topple this murderous bureaucracy, which produced Vahidi, who exercises power entirely through a criminally motivated police system, rarely if ever making speeches or public pronouncements. He is the very embodiment of the terrorist bureaucrat, the latest of a model started by Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It still holds much appeal to budding totalitarians of failed states and woke Europeans pulling out plugs to sabotage Trump’s efforts against Iran’s barbaric ruling caste.
Vahidi started as a covert Quds operative when the unit was developed in the 1980s. He trained with Hezbollah in Lebanon when the group was initially being armed by Syria’s Assad regime, recruiting suicide bombers from Lebanese Shia communities. IRGC-controlled cells rose to dominate Hezbollah, which went on to stage some of the most spectacular terrorist attacks on record. The 1983 truck bombing of a U.S. Marine base in Lebanon, which killed over 250 Americans, paid rich dividends: the U.S. pulled out of Lebanon, letting Hezbollah grow into the country’s shadow government, accumulating a massive military arsenal pointed at Israel’s throat.
Vahidi became general and was sent as military attaché to the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires when Quds was hustling the Argentines for nuclear and missile technology. Israel was getting in their way. His solution was to bring over the Hezbollah cell chief who pulled off the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, Imad Mughniyeh, to blow up the Israeli embassy. When some of Israel’s diplomatic functions were switched over to the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association, that building got blown away as well, together with 85 people.
It was an elaborate operation, requiring smuggling explosives and suicide drivers through Paraguay, handing out quarter-million-dollar bribes to police officials, and penetrating Argentina’s spy agency, which lifted surveillance of the Iranian embassy and a warehouse where the truck bombs were assembled, on the morning that AIMA was hit.
Despite being put on Interpol’s wanted list, Vahidi remained highly active internationally. He visited Cuba, personally meeting with Fidel Castro weeks before the Cuban dictator went to Iran in 2001 to declare before cheering Revolutionary Guard aspirants at the University of Tehran, “Cuba and Iran together will bring America to its knees.” That was two months before 9/11.
He set up IRGC/Hezbollah bases in Venezuela, where members of the cell involved in the Argentine attacks remain under state protection. In 2011, Vahidi, by then defense minister, appeared at an official military ceremony with President Evo Morales in Bolivia. The leftist government of Cristina Kirchner in neighboring Argentina at the time neglected to request his arrest, as would be required under “international law.”
Vahidi played a key role in organizing Hezbollah in Iraq and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to mount deadly guerrilla attacks against U.S. occupation forces, imparting IED technology for their roadside bomb attacks that dismembered and killed thousands of American troops.
These groups are now crossing into Iran in mile-long convoys of Toyota trucks waving the flags of their respective factions. Some have been observed manning checkpoints in Tehran, replacing IRGC and Basij militia units that have been decimated by air strikes on their bases, bunkers, supply depots, and private residences.
Iraqi Hezbollah is simultaneously launching pre-emptive strikes with drones and ground units against U.S. bases in Iraq and Kurdistan, where Mossad and the CIA have been trying to arm Iranian Kurdish rebels for planned revolts and guerrilla attacks on the IRGC.
Steve Witkoff’s proven patience in the psychological decryption of schizophrenic messages delivered through Pakistani intermediaries by a pathological regime trying to hold the world hostage may have played a role in securing a very tenuous ceasefire. But the real negotiators are CENTCOM’s admiral Brad Cooper and the 82nd airborne division commander, General Brandon Tegtmeier, recently arrived in theater, who is a Special Forces Ranger. (RELATED: Trump: A Real Commander-in-Chief)
“We negotiate with bombs,” said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in his most recent Pentagon briefing. U.S. precision-guided high-explosive munitions will need to remain locked and loaded as the U.S. keeps dealing with the world’s most experienced and dangerous terrorist, who will continue using deception, blackmail, and brutality in his global hostage standoff, as America’s traditional allies SIT, incapacitated by TDS-induced Stockholm syndrome.
READ MORE from Martin Arostegui:
Seizing Iran’s Gulf Islands
Putin, Iran, and Europe in a Post-NATO World
It’s Now or Never in Iran
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

I decided, since there is a… ahem! “ceasefire” in the Iran war, that I’d do something different this week. Which is to banish Iran from the 5QT.
If you want that stuff, check out yesterday’s column. I don’t think much of anything has changed since it went up. (READ MORE: It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause.)
We’re on to other things. Starting with…
1. Melania Weighs In on the Epstein Thing
You probably saw this on Thursday…

🚨 BREAKING: In a massive moment, First Lady Melania Trump demands Congress allow Epstein’s survivors to PUBLICLY TESTIFY about what happened to them, saying Epstein did NOT act alone
WOW! This is about to ROCK DC
“Now is the time for Congress to ACT. Epstein was NOT alone.… pic.twitter.com/pHxZM8PwdU
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 9, 2026

Is it a bombshell that Melania Trump would go off like this and demand that Congress platform Epstein’s victims?
The thing about the idea of having a hearing and getting testimony from the women in the harem Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell built is that a lot of them got paid to sign an NDA. Then, this scandal turns into… well, what it’s turned into, and some of them have a lot to say but can’t say it. (RELATED: Ghislaine Maxwell and Bill Clinton’s ‘Close’ Relationship: They ‘Got Along Terribly Well’)
But if you subpoena them to testify at a Congressional hearing, what does that do to the NDA?
Hey Grok, what effect does a Congressional subpoena have on a non-disclosure agreement? Does it supersede an NDA?
Yes, a Congressional subpoena generally supersedes a private non-disclosure agreement (NDA). A recipient of a valid congressional subpoena has a legal obligation to comply (by producing documents or testifying), and an NDA does not provide a valid basis for refusing to do so.
NDAs are private contracts between parties. They cannot override or nullify Congress’s constitutional authority to issue subpoenas as part of its investigative and legislative powers. Federal law and congressional subpoena power take precedence over such agreements.
Well, there you go.
The thing to remember is that not all of the “victims” of Epstein and Maxwell’s recruiting drives were underage girls. They were of age, they knew what they were doing, they were getting something out of, essentially, selling their bodies in service of his various sexual/influence honey pot schemes, and they took a nice check to go away when they were ready to get out (or when they were getting cut). That’s why we don’t have a whole lot from most of them.
And that’s probably not going to change based on Melania’s statement Thursday.
On the other hand, there are undoubtedly some who do have some juicy/damaging things to say, maybe about Epstein, but more likely about his clients and confederates, which we’ve not heard because of those NDAs.
She’s getting involved in this because the Epstein mob has attempted to tie her to him, going so far as to claim that it was Epstein who introduced her to Trump. She did have one nice email she sent to Maxwell one time, and that has come out, but Melania is forcefully denying she ever had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
And this is her doubling down, because she knows or at least suspects that if the subpoenas come and wipe out the NDAs, what will tumble forth is a whole lot of nasty dirt on people who’ve been critics of her husband for a long time.
The Epstein scandal is about a 98.4 percent Democrat scandal. Virtually all of his clients and confederates were Democrats, including some very well-known heavy hitters in left-wing politics and advocacy. Maybe a fresh round of testimony from people not previously heard from might make that point clear.
At that point, Melania probably figures, we’ll see the end of this chatter trying to connect her to Epstein.
2. Canada Is Too Far Gone
I know you’ve seen this…

WATCH: Canadian Lawmaker Despairs at Fate of ‘MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+’ People
NDP MP Leah Gazan blasts Canada’s 2026 budget over sunset cuts tied to Indigenous programs.
“They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+,” she said.
“Rates of violence are… pic.twitter.com/U5hnvFVSju
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 9, 2026

I can actually tell you what that alphabet salad coming out of that scowling woman’s mouth is. What she’s referring to when she unloads the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ acronym is the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and + (additional identities) community.
And yes, you have to be a certifiable stupid communist to subject your audience to that.
Canada is now more or less officially the Romper Room of countries. Canadian conservatives have been warning us for years about the collapse of their institutions and the political fallout from that collapse, and now it has gone critical. (RELATED: Secession in Alberta and the ‘Other-ing’ of Conservatives in Canada)
The public did what they could to try to arrest the country’s decline. In the last round of parliamentary elections, the Liberals — that’s the “center-Left” party in Canada — lost their majority, though they still get to govern because they made an alliance with the hard-Left parties and specifically the utterly insane New Democrat Party. The lunatic in the video clip above is an NDP member of Canada’s parliament.
But in recent weeks and months, five members of Canada’s parliament elected as Conservatives have “crossed the floor,” switching to Liberal Party. The latest happened Thursday, when Marilyn Gladu flipped. The Liberals are about to regain their outright majority, which will put the wannabe tyrant Mark Carney in a position to govern totally unfettered. (RELATED: Carney’s Canada Is China’s Vassal)
What does that look like? Well, last week they started a national gun buyback program, and it hasn’t gone well, so things are about to escalate…

Canada Law Enforcement Set To ‘Begin The Collection’ Of Prohibited Firearms
Canada’s gun buyback deadline passed March 31. Compliance is 2.5%. Owners must deactivate, surrender, or export targeted firearms or risk a knock on the door. pic.twitter.com/1UG2WPlEip
— matrixbot (@thematrixb0t) April 4, 2026

It’s very tempting to absolutely ignore Canada. On the whole, they haven’t been serious people for a long time now. But this is starting to look like something more than just an insignificant, minor country sharing a border with us — it’s turning into an object lesson.
You can say that Trump’s belligerence toward Canada sank the Conservatives in the last election. Lots of people have. Except that Canada has been getting worse for a long time before Trump even came down that escalator in Manhattan.
3. Democrats Make War on Take-Out Food in Colorado
This is one of the stupidest things you will ever see. Milt Harris at RVIVR.com has the story…
It’s nice to know that the Democrats in Colorado have their priorities straight. There are endless things that should concern them, but two of them have decided that the best way to spend their time and waste taxpayers’ money is to focus their efforts on the ever-present danger of getting an extra paper napkin, condiment, or plastic utensil.
That’s right, Democratic Colorado State Senator Lisa Cutter and Democratic Colorado State Representative Meg Froelich introduced the legislation on March 24. If passed, it will take effect at the start of 2027.
As unbelievable as it sounds, these two have proposed legislation to restrict restaurants’ ability to provide complimentary napkins, utensils, and condiments to customers in the name of protecting the environment.
Bill SB26-146 would prohibit retail food establishments and third-party food delivery services from providing single-use food service ware to customers unless the customer specifically requests or confirms that they want it, according to the bill’s text.
According to the bill, “single-use serviceware” is defined as an item that “a retail food establishment or third-party food delivery service provides to a customer to assist the customer in food … designed to be used once and then discarded.”
The bill specifically covers non-food items such as napkins, utensils, condiments, and straws, among others.
I’m with you. I’m seeing this story, and now I’ve got to know who Lisa Cutter and Meg Froelich are. Or better put, I already know who they are, and I just need to see proof that I’m right.
Aaaaaand here is Lisa Cutter…
DENVER, CO – JANUARY 30: Sen Lisa Cutter speaks during a press conference discussing the economic and human impacts of climate change on the state on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in the West Foyer of the Colorado State Capitol building in Denver, Colo. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
And here is Meg Froelich…

That’s from her bio at the Center for Climate Integrity website, where it says she “is passionate about preserving Colorado’s air, land and water, and has fought Climate Change through increased energy efficiency and by tackling pollution.”
From her Wikipedia…
Prior to entering politics, Froelich worked as a producer for CBS News, A&E Networks, and PBS. Froelich was the co-producer, writer, and director of Strong Sisters, a documentary about female legislators in Colorado. She served as director of the Colorado chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice America and executive director of the Colorado Democratic Party.
You’re going to get stupid bills like this running through Congress if these people win the midterms. They will try to pass a nationwide ban on restaurants tossing napkins and plastic forks and knives into your to-go bag at the drive-through or pickup window.
That’s how insane these busybody AWFLs are. And the Democrats’ male politicians are a collection of abject betas wholly incapable of reining them in because they’re so utterly morally compromised on multiple levels that…
Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about? Fine. I’ll show you a perfect example. (RELATED: Feminism, the Nose-Ring Theory, and Our Potential Extinction)
4. Swalwell
You didn’t think I could do an Iran-Free 5QT without talking about this flaming nincompoop, did you? Of course, I couldn’t. If you’ve been under a rock and haven’t seen the latest on Fang Fang Bang Bang, here it is.

NEW: Eric Swalwell will soon face s*xual harassment accusations from his former staffers, according to lawyer and activist @CheyenneHuntCA.
Hunt says she is working with multiple women to expose his “pattern of manipulation.”
One woman says Swalwell makes all his interns,… pic.twitter.com/5tSenj8iZt
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 6, 2026

Breitbart’s John Nolte, at the end of a great summary of the latest Swalwell follies, has this to say…
Normally, I’d be pretty disgusted with Cheyenne Hunt floating the rumor that possibly-perhaps-sometime-soon allegations of sexual misconduct will be forthcoming, even if a Democrat is the target. I really do try to be fair that way. But this is a delicious piece of karma for Swalwell, the fang-fangster who has never heard a lie about President Trump without running to the corporate media to herald and trumpet it. Swalwell is a creep and a liar, and if a lie destroys his political ambitions, he’s got that coming… and then some.
Nobody thinks this is a lie, of course. Virtually everybody who knows Eric Swalwell recognizes what an absolute creep he is. Cheyenne Hunt, the leftist activist who blew up this scandal in the first place, claims it’s been known for a decade that he can’t keep it in his pants.
Swalwell is the perfect guy for the Democrats to have thrown out there as the carrier of their more bizarre claims about Donald Trump over the past several years. The fact that he’s as morally compromised as he is means (1) he’s not a guy who’s going to hold back out of some sense of propriety or concern for his reputation, (2) if he ever did decide to grow a conscience it’s pretty easy to get him back in line given all the dirt they’ve got on him, and (3) if it all goes wrong, he’s completely expendable as a not-so-bright white dude. So they gave him dirty work to do on Trump, and when he sought to parlay that into their nomination for president in 2020, they laughed him out of the race. (RELATED: The Women Who Will Haunt Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Campaign)
Now he wants to be governor, and that’s a little more complicated. They don’t have a lot else; let’s face it, Katie Porter is even worse than Swalwell is from an electability standpoint, and it turns out there are a couple of pretty good Republican candidates running in California’s jungle primary. It seems impossible that the CAGOV race could flip red, but there were polls showing Steve Hilton and Chad Blanco occupying the first two spots, and the umpteen Democrats running were splitting up the rest of the vote, with Swalwell finishing best in an unimpressive third place.
So now, finally, his own party seems interested in taking him out. And it’s entirely likely they might.
Eric Swalwell is a political beta male. He might be a sexual alpha predator, if only in a hookup sense, but it’s the lack of moral standing that makes it impossible for him to wield any real power within that party. He’s compromised.
If you look around, you will see that’s true of the vast majority of the higher-profile male Democrat politicians around the country. My theory, which I’ll confess is pretty new, and I’ve not fully tested it, is that this is a major — if not THE major — factor in the Dems’ hard matriarchal turn of late. That party has been feminized, and its moderating forces stripped away, because it no longer can produce male politicians with traditional convictions.
I mean, how can you when you want to turn boys into girls and Trump Derangement Syndrome is your sole political currency? What self-respecting male would be willing to lead a party like that?
5. The Burger Mural of Salina, Kansas
Finally, I have this. From a Facebook post by the Pacific Legal Foundation…
Salina, Kansas has spent over $800,000 in taxpayer money trying to force a local restaurant owner to paint over a mural — because it includes burgers. Pacific Legal Foundation filed an amicus brief defending his First Amendment rights at the Tenth Circuit.
Steve Howard has run the 100-year-old Cozy Inn, a burger joint with six seats and three menu items for years. When Salina began to encourage murals downtown, Steve hired a local artist to paint a mural with UFO-shaped burgers. The city said this violated their signage laws.
City officials said that by including burgers, the mural counted as a sign. Steve paused work on the mural, applied, for a sign permit, and kept running the Cozy Inn. Salina left his permit application on indefinite hold, so Steve decided to sue.
Steve claims the city violated his First Amendment rights by censoring him based on the content of his mural. Salinas has no objective standard to distinguish a mural from a sign and uses this rule to silence creative expression from business owners.
A federal district court already ruled in Steve’s favor, calling the City’s mural-vs-sign distinction “arbitrary” and “discriminatory.” Salina appealed to the 10th Circuit anyway. Now we’re asking the court to protect the expressive rights of this small business owner.
Here’s the full link on PLF’s website. A picture of the half-finished mural…

Looks like it would be a pretty cool mural if the city would let the guy finish it. And apparently he’s going to be able to.
So if you’re ever in Salina, maybe give these guys a visit. Apparently, you can’t miss the place; the odor of grilled onions spreads several blocks away.
READ MORE from Scott McKay:
It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause.
The ‘Real’ Must Triumph Over the Fake — In Iran and Elsewhere
Five Quick Things: Bye, Pam