Melissa O'Sullivan

Melissa O'Sullivan has a background in security related issues.

[Melissa O'Sullivan @RedStatemaven]

Re Russiagate/ODNI Dir. Gabbard's releases: "so the the significance of this episode it that it’s truly the turning inward of the CIA’s regime foreign government overthrow playbook against the American people and against a duly elected American President"

That is the 'money line' from the great Michael Shellenberger in his conversation with great Sean Spicer. The whole discussion is excellent, but for the Cliff Notes, see excerpt below- emphasis mine:
“…all of that was just to run an information war against Trump…and that trick, by the way Sean, of basically painting your enemies as a puppet of Putin- and this was not new with Trump-it was/ it’s been a strategy of CIA linked color revolution/regime change operations in Eastern Europe for decades, that’s a big part of how you discredit your political enemies is you associate them with Putin, so the the significance of this episode it that it’s truly the turning inward of the CIA’s regime foreign government overthrow playbook against the American people and against a duly elected American President and that has never happened before at least as far as we know and should continue to shock us and, and continue to require us to demand more transparency and more reform.”
https://t.co/XHvNoIA4MT

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I needed to move a sofa.

I mentioned this to an American. He said, "You know anybody with a truck?"

I did not know anybody with a truck.

He looked at me with real concern. Not pity. Concern. The way you look at a man who has told you he does not have a name.

"You gotta know somebody with a truck."

I asked how one acquires such a person.

He said, "You just do."

This is the third time I have received that answer in this country. It is the answer to everything here. You just do. There is no process. There is only the eventual fact of having.

He said, "Ask Kevin."

I do not know a Kevin. He said Kevin like I should. He said it the way you say a shared uncle.

I met Kevin four days later. Kevin owns a truck. Kevin does not own a truck for himself. Nobody owns a truck for themselves. Kevin owns a truck for a fifteen mile radius.

Inside I said: THIS MAN HAS TAKEN A VOW. HE DID NOT ANNOUNCE IT. HE SIMPLY PURCHASED A BED AND ACCEPTED THE CONSEQUENCES.

Kevin arrived on Saturday. He brought the truck. He also brought a second man.

I had not asked for a second man.

The second man's name is Tony. Tony came because Kevin came. Tony did not know me. Tony did not ask what we were moving. Tony brought gloves.

They moved the sofa in eleven minutes.

I offered them money. Both of them laughed at the same time, which felt rehearsed and was not.

I asked what I owed them.

Kevin said, "Buy the pizza."

That is the price. That is the entire economy. The truck costs one pizza and the pizza is not negotiable and the pizza is also not expensive and everyone knows what size.

Inside I said: THE FEE IS FIXED ACROSS THE ENTIRE NATION AND WAS SET BY NO ONE.

We ate on the floor because the sofa was against the wall and none of us wanted to be the first to sit on it.

Tony told me his daughter plays soccer. I asked if she is good. He said, "She's aggressive."

I still think about that.

Three weeks later, Kevin texted me.

"You free Sunday? Helping Tony move a fridge."

He did not ask if I wanted to. He informed me of a fridge.

Inside I said: I HAVE BEEN CALLED UP. I DID NOT ENLIST. THE PAPERS WERE FILED ON MY BEHALF.

I went. I moved the fridge. I have no truck. I contributed only arms.

Afterward, a man I had never met asked me if I knew anybody with a truck.

I said, "Yeah, I got a guy."

I have a guy.

I am somebody's guy now, too. Tony has told two people about me.

He describes me as "the guy who's strong for his size."

I have never been prouder of a sentence in my life.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Today they buried him...

And the world's media, the college campuses, no one is talking about the war this regime waged against us Iranian people.

Every single day, the Islamic Republic executes another protester. Every single day, another family is shattered…
💔😔

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

RFK Jr. says Fauci funded a technique used for HIDING human fingerprints on lab-created bugs.

The technique is called “seamless ligation.”

Kennedy explains the only reason anyone would try to hide where a bug came from would be for a “NEFARIOUS purpose.”

"He [Fauci] funded Ralph Baric to develop a technique called seamless ligation. And that is a technique for hiding the engineering project.”

"So, normally, when you do that kind of engineering, you can see it, and you can say, 'That bug was created in a lab.’”

"He [Ralph Baric]] developed a way of hiding all traces [of what] was developed. And he taught that to the Chinese scientists — to Shi Zhengli.”

“There is no public health [reason for this]; it is the OPPOSITE of what you would do if you are interested in public health... To teach people how to hide that only has a nefarious purpose."

[Coach Tommy Tuberville @SenTuberville]

The Senate has done NOTHING to deserve a five-week break. We haven’t funded the military, we are about to let Democrats shut down the government, and our elections STILL aren’t secure. The House has passed hundreds of bills. Other than the One Big Beautiful Bill, all the Senate has done is pass bills rebuking Trump and giving Democrats handouts. We have lost sight of the fact that our job is to deliver RESULTS for the American people.

There is no issue I hear more about when I’m back home in Alabama than securing our elections. Under Communists Joe Biden and Barack Obama, more than 15 MILLION third-world illegals invaded our country. These illegals are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars and are planning to vote in our midterm elections in just 99 days.

Because of this, the ‘traditions of the Senate’ should no longer apply. The American people didn’t vote for a Republican party obsessed with preserving their own power through the manufactured filibuster. They voted for a Republican party that campaigned on fighting back against the TENS OF MILLIONS of third-world illegals who came here under Joe Biden and are looking to destroy this country.

If we do not pass the SAVE America Act before November, Democrats will steal the 2026 and 2028 elections, and we will go back to Joe Biden’s immigration policy on steroids under the new Communist Democrat party. Now is the time to dig in, eliminate the manufactured filibuster, and start a new Senate tradition of actually getting things done for the Constitution and the American people.

I’ll be joining Senator Mike Lee in voting against any attempts to adjourn for recess. Americans didn’t send us to D.C. to take a vacation. They sent us here to preserve the greatest country on Earth.

[Catherine Herridge @C__Herridge]

Acting DNI @DNIPulte: "declassified intelligence reveals that voter registration rolls from at least 18 states have been compromised by the People's Republic of China (PRC)" NOTE: Swing States

Intel Community Suppressed Information about PRC's 2020 Election Influence Operation.

Former DNI Investigator James Erdman III led the COVID origins probe, "...we had whistleblowers say, yeah, they didn't want to touch (it.) They did not want to harm China."

[Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz]

“We will dance again…I stand with the Jews.”

May Hashem bless @BoyGeorge for his moral courage against the hateful mobs.

[Alastair Hilton @London_W4]

Sitting outside a pub in Little Venice in London right now waiting to photograph an event near here this evening. An orthodox Jewish family walked past. A husband, his wife, their toddler and a baby in a pram. An Arab girl in her twenties just walked up to them and made a gun sign with her hand and said die. Then pointed the ‘gun’ at their each child and said die. She stood there threatening and laughing as she wished them dead. I told her to fuck off and she wandered away laughing. I’m angry at myself for not videoing her instead so you can see the depths of the vermin in this country, protected by the mayor, the police and the government. Photo of where I watched it. Truly awful.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Tonight, people took to the streets in Isfahan، out of fear of public hanging of protesters.

They came out in the middle of the night because they knew what that crane in the square meant.

Dozens of Iranians are writing to me right now:

"Please ask the world to stop these executions."

Can you hear us, world?

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

Hedgie🤗

[Stefan Moore ★ @2StefanMoore]

A quiet revolution is happening in cancer treatment. 😀

Using live MRI imaging, doctors can now see tumors in exquisite detail while a patient lies comfortably in the scanner. Once the cancer is precisely mapped, they slide a needle thin probe straight into the heart of the tumor, often through just a tiny nick in the skin.

Then, in seconds, super-cold argon gas floods the probe tip, dropping the temperature inside the tumor to –100 °C or lower. An “ice ball” forms & engulfs the cancer, shattering malignant cells while healthy tissue just millimeters away stays unharmed. The entire process is watched in real time on the MRI screen, giving doctors millimeter perfect control.

No big incisions. No general anesthesia in most cases & many patients walk out the same day & are back to normal life within days instead of weeks.

This technique (MRI-guided cryoablation) is already saving kidneys, sparing men from the side effects of whole gland prostate treatment, shrinking liver tumors & helping patients who were previously told “surgery isn’t an option.”

Centers like Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering & MD Anderson are expanding its use every year, with success rates now rivaling surgery for many small to medium tumors & complication rates often lower.

For the right patients, freezing #cancer to death under MRI guidance isn’t science fiction anymore; it’s becoming the new standard of care. ❤️

[Milei in English - Official Account @jmilei_english]

After decades of isolation, Argentina is returning to the world. We're expanding market access, removing barriers, and giving our producers the opportunity to compete and grow on a global scale.

LONG LIVE FREEDOM, DAMN IT...!!!

[Melissa O'Sullivan @RedStatemaven]

@MsMelChen Great work, Ms Chen

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

It’s worth contrasting how Singapore just handled its homegrown Islamist radicalization problem with the repeated failures of Germany - and European nations more broadly - to do the same.

Three teenagers were arrested and detained over separate plots to carry out shooting, stabbing and bomb attacks. One of them planned something not unlike Abdul Ballout’s terror attack on the LGBT community. All three had self-radicalised online.

They were detained without trial under the Internal Security Act. There was no need to wait for a completed crime or a full courtroom drama. If the assessment is that someone poses an imminent threat, they are detained. This is preventive, not purely punitive.

Western critics will of course call this illiberal. But look at how European governments have repeatedly failed.

Abdul Ballout was a known Islamist in Berlin. He had tried multiple times to join ISIS. In May 2026 he was convicted of preparing a serious terrorist act of violence and related offences. He received a youth sentence of one year and ten months and was released (!!!). He remained under monitoring, weekly check-ins, phone surveillance and deradicalization sessions with counselors . In other words, he was a known danger, yet he was not kept detained.

Somehow he was still able to rent a van, drive it into a Berlin crowd and then attack people with a machete. One person died and several dozens were injured. Only afterwards did the police finally track him down and shot him. Prior convictions, failed attempts to reach jihad zones, and official flagging as a threat were not enough to keep him locked away.

European systems lean heavily on criminal-law thresholds, youth-sentencing leniency, human-rights constraints on long preventive detention, and the belief that monitoring and therapy can contain the risk. How utterly naive.

Singapore uses broad preventive authority to remove the threat before it becomes an attack, then works on rehabilitating the person. In a world where technology has made it far easier for a young idealist to become radicalized, acquire the know-how to spread terror, and plug into terror networks, stronger early, pre-emptive intervention is the only way.

Europe needs to understand that there is a real cost to treating Islamic radicalization primarily as a matter for ordinary criminal process and hope. Given the problems of mass immigration and weak borders, it is even more imperative for Europe to reconsider its approach.

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

🚨🎙️ THREAD: The Biden ghostwriter tapes are out.

Tonight the Oversight Project ( @ItsYourGov ) released roughly 70 hours of audio from Joe Biden's 2016–2017 interviews with his "Promise Me, Dad" ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, the same recordings Special Counsel Robert Hur cited in 2024. They came out only after a two-year court fight with DOJ that Biden's own lawyers tried, and failed, to block.

I've started going through them. Across five of these interviews, with no cleared person in the room, Biden pauses to flag his own notes as classified or too sensitive to hand over. On one tape he says it out loud:

"Some of this may be classified, so be careful." (April 24, 2017. Audio below.)

Oversight's Jeff Clark: "The tapes make clear that Biden disclosed massive amounts of classified information to his ghost writer."

No thesis yet, analysis is ongoing. But here are the biggest quotes so far, in Biden's own words, each with a timestamp you can check against the audio.

As always, patience as I pull together the thread. 👇

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

His master wouldn't even give him a candle. So this orphaned carpenter's apprentice taught himself to read by the light of burning scraps of wood at night. He would grow up to sign the Declaration of Independence and become a governor. Meet George Walton.

If you want the definition of self-made, it's this man.

Walton was born in Virginia around 1749 into poverty, and it got worse fast. Both of his parents were dead by the time he was twelve. An orphan with nothing, he was handed off as an apprentice to a carpenter to learn a trade and survive.

His master worked him hard and had little use for books or learning. The story that survives is almost unbelievable in its pettiness. The man wouldn't even spare young George a candle so he could read after his workday was done. Most kids would have given up right there. Walton didn't. He gathered up scraps and knots of wood, lit them, and read by that flickering, makeshift light night after night, teaching himself everything he could get his hands on.

Think about the will that takes. A poor orphaned laborer, exhausted from swinging a hammer all day, refusing to let anyone keep him ignorant, feeding a fire just to see the pages.

That determination carried him out of the carpenter's shop entirely. He moved to Georgia, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. The self-taught orphan became an attorney.

Then the Revolution, and he threw himself into it. He rose to lead Georgia's Council of Safety, was sent to the Continental Congress, and in 1776 he signed the Declaration of Independence as one of its youngest signers.

He didn't just sign, either. He fought. Walton became a militia officer, and when the British stormed Savannah, he was shot, wounded badly, knocked from his horse, and taken prisoner. He was held captive until he was finally exchanged. He carried the effects of those wounds for the rest of his life.

And still he kept climbing. The orphan who read by burning wood scraps went on to serve as governor of Georgia, twice, as a United States senator, and as a judge for fifteen years. He died in 1804 as one of the most accomplished men in his state.

A penniless orphan denied a simple candle, who lit his own fire to educate himself, and rose all the way from a carpenter's bench to signing the birth certificate of a nation.

George Walton. Nobody gave him the light. He made his own.

[Steve Hilton @SteveHiltonx]

BREAKING: Becerra Migrant Child Abuse Camps

Whistleblower confirms Xavier Becerra dismantled vetting to speed up release of migrant children.

Kids sent to sex traffickers, abusive workplaces, fake relatives. “We were constantly getting information that was false, and we were supposed to go with it.”

Becerra 'lost' 319,000 children. 140,000 are still missing.

“Sometimes [the sponsor] didn’t know the name of the child.” “Children were sent to sponsors who provided a fraudulent form of identification.” “We still have no proof that the child went to that address.”

More “Becerra Tapes” to follow.

[Chagos Islands Government in Exile @BiotCitize56752]

Saddened to hear that Lord Horam has died after a fall on his way home from the House of Lords. A tireless public servant, he passionately defended the Chagossian people and opposed Labour’s Chagos Betrayal.Our thoughts are with his family. Video & speech: https://t.co/f9fZ47LyIu

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The last overseas shearers Britain intends to let in are on the fells right now, working out the final weeks of their leave.

The door shut on 30 June. No vote, no debate, no announcement, just a date passing quietly in a summer when everyone was looking elsewhere. Those still working the Borders this week are here on leave that expires on 1 October, and when they fly out that is the end of it.

Understand what is walking out.

Six New Zealanders spent three months in one Northumberland valley last year and sheared nearly 90,000 sheep. Fifteen thousand head each, across farms from the Scottish Borders down to County Durham. They have been coming into Coquetdale for over thirty years. Since 2011 a concession has let up to 75 of them in each spring, and between them they take the wool off one and a half to two million British sheep in a window a few weeks long.

The Home Office rejected the application on 2 February. Twenty-six days of farmers writing to their MPs got it reinstated on 10 March for one final year, with a line about the sector having had fourteen years to train British workers and now being expected to transition to domestic labour.

Here is what that sentence is standing on. British Wool trains over 800 people a year, most of those courses are basic level, and most of the people on them are sheep farmers learning to do their own flock. Training was never the bottleneck. A top shearer clears a ewe in two or three minutes, calm hands, no panic in the animal, hundreds a day for weeks on end, and reaching that standard takes years of conditioning and a place in a global trade that follows the season around the planet.

Fourteen million breeding ewes. A few weeks to do them all. A sheep left in fleece gets eaten alive by maggots, so the job is not optional and the date is not negotiable.

Next spring those farms make phone calls that nobody answers.

Seventy-five shearers, once a year, and a government that could not find room for them.

[Melissa O'Sullivan @RedStatemaven]

@FLeffelfq @Selene_Mariposa Me too

[Selene Mariposa @Selene_Mariposa]

The World Cup ends today. One game left. By tomorrow most of you visitors will be packing up, heading to the airport, going home.

So before you go, let me say the thing I actually want to say.

A few weeks ago I wrote a silly post about all the things you were discovering here. Free refills. Free water. Ice like civilized people. Chips and salsa before you even order. Air conditioning that is a fact and not a moral debate. Drive-throughs. Ranch by the gallon. The Germans standing in the HEB meat aisle in reverent silence, finally understanding why we do not have trains. Buc-ee’s, for which there are still no words.

It blew up, because it was true, and because you were so delightfully stunned by all of it.

Even the Wall Street Journal caught on. Their headline this week: how the US lost the World Cup and won over the world. We did not lift the trophy. But apparently we lifted something else.

We even learned a few things about ourselves along the way. Like the fact that Elon Musk, the single richest man on the planet, shops at HEB. Just rolls in and queues up for fresh tortillas with everybody else. The man could buy the tortilla company, the state it is in, and the moon it sits under, and instead he is standing in line at the hot-tortilla counter like the rest of us, because that is where the good ones are. Only in America is the wealthiest human alive elbow to elbow with a mom of four at the salsa bar. That is the whole country in one aisle.

And here is the part I want every one of you to hear on your way out the door.

None of it was a show.

We did not roll all this out because you were coming. The ice was always there. The refills were always free. The grocery stores were always the size of aircraft hangars at ten on a Tuesday. The stranger who adopted your whole section, the guy who gave you a ride, the waitress who remembered your order, the family that invited you to the cookout, that is not World Cup America. That is just America. That is Tuesday.

We are exactly like this when nobody is visiting. Loud, generous, ridiculous, overfed, and genuinely thrilled you came. We will still be exactly like this tomorrow when the stands are empty and the flags come down.

So thank you. To everyone who came, who sang in our streets, who cleaned our stadiums, who turned our cities orange and filled our bars and taught us your chants. You were wonderful guests, and you made a country that just turned 250 feel young and seen and loved.

And to everyone who could not make it this time, the door does not close today. We meant all of it. Come whenever. The porch light stays on, the fridge stays full, and there is always room for one more at the table.

You found out who we are these last few weeks.

Good news. We are like this all the time.

Safe travels home.

Y’all come back now, you hear. 🦋