I left the Candace Owens / Hunter Biden interview feeling disappointed. She did not ask him ANYTHING about foreign influence peddling, all the shell companies, all the financial transactions with Ukraine and China... this was a missed opportunity.
Hello Senator Thune,
I'm replying to your post from yesterday: "Despite Democrats' partisan games, we're still going to get the entire federal government funded."
Today, you sent the Senate home... not because of Democrats. Because of you.
Here's what actually happened.
On May 18, the DOJ announced an Anti-Weaponization Fund: $1.776 billion to compensate Americans harmed by Biden-era DOJ abuse. Your own caucus revolted. After a two-hour closed-door meeting, you departed for Memorial Day recess without a vote. ICE and CBP funding, punted to June 1. The "partisan games," it turns out, were yours.
Your stated objections: no congressional authorization, no eligibility standards, no legal precedent, executive overreach. Fine. But let's talk about November 2025, when you tucked a provision into the government funding bill.
The FBI had quietly seized phone records from eight Republican senators without notice, under an investigation codenamed "Arctic Frost."
Your provision gave those senators, and only those senators, $500,000 per violation, retroactive to 2022. The House voted 426-0 to repeal it.
The critics weren't opposed to compensating victims of DOJ abuse. They were opposed to senators compensating themselves while doing no other structural reforms.
Lindsey Graham held the Senate hostage to preserve it. He delayed a spending deal in January 2026 to secure a floor vote on his revised version.
Let's put the two columns next to each other:
➤ DOJ abused senators: $500K/violation payout, senators only, no hearings, no process, no eligibility debate, no floor vote on substance.
➤ DOJ abused Americans: "very legitimate questions," two-hour meeting, Senate goes home, reconciliation punted, June 1 deadline in jeopardy.
You told Punchbowl News you "did not personally see a need for this fund."
You personally saw a need for the fund when the targets were you.
Go cry harder to your Punchbowl friends @JakeSherman and @AndrewDesiderio, because at this rate, they'll soon become the only people who are buying what you're selling.
I am sad to see that Thomas Massie lost his race. I greatly respect his fight to cut government spending and advocate for libertarian principals. I wish him the best on his next endeavor.
A MIT professor gave a 1-hour lecture in 2019 that has 18 million views.
He died 5 months after recording it.
It was his final gift to the world.
Patrick Winston taught at MIT for 50 years.
The smartest engineers on earth sat in his classroom.
And he spent his last lecture teaching them the one skill their degrees never covered.
How to speak.
15 lessons that will change how you communicate forever:
Never open with a joke. Your audience is not ready to laugh yet. Open with a promise of what they will know by the end.
Your ideas are like your children. You are too close to them. What is obvious to you is invisible to everyone else. Explain the obvious.
The 5-minute rule: the first 5 minutes of any talk determine whether people will listen for the next 55. Spend more time on your opening than anything else.
Repeat your most important idea 3 times in 3 different ways. Once is never enough.
Build a fence around your idea. Tell people what it is NOT before you tell them what it IS.
Verbal punctuation. Pause. Let the idea land before moving to the next one.
Ask questions nobody will answer. Then wait 7 seconds. The silence is not awkward. It is processing.
Never read your slides. Your audience can read. They cannot listen and read simultaneously.
Use the board not the slides. Writing forces you to slow down. Slowing down forces clarity.
Inspire before you inform. Nobody learns from someone they are not inspired by.
End with a contribution not a summary. Tell them what you gave them. Not what you said.
Never say thank you at the end. It is weak. End with something that lands.
Stories make ideas stick. Data makes ideas understood. You need both. In that order.
The quality of your communication determines the quality of your ideas in the eyes of the world. Not the ideas themselves.
Practice is not preparation. Practice IS the skill.
Patrick Winston understood something most people spend their entire careers missing.
Your ideas are only as powerful as your ability to transfer them into someone else's mind.
You can be the smartest person in the room and be completely invisible.
Or you can master communication and make average ideas feel like breakthroughs.
He chose to spend his last lecture teaching this.
Watch it tonight.
Bookmark this first.
Follow @cyrilXBT for more lessons from the people who built the future.
CORRECTED VERSION: We’ve updated the list to ensure every name is accurate because accountability starts with the facts. 📢
Only 65 out of 435 members of Congress voted for full transparency. The other 357 voted to keep ethics records hidden. We pay their salaries, yet we have to beg for a list of names? A "fund" to hide misconduct shouldn't even exist in a government that works for US. It’s time to stop the secrecy! 🏛️🚫
The President of the United States has flown in from Tel Aviv to inform Donald Trump how many Christians will be required to die overseas in Iran.
Stay tuned.