Allison Brennan

NYT bestselling author. 5 kids, 1 husband, & other assorted pets. I read, I write, I procrastinate. SF Giants fan. RaiderNation. Murder She Writes.

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

In four more weeks ... the next installment in the Angelhart Investigations series ... Booklist says: “Confidently paced and plotted, this addition will satisfy fans of the Angelhart series.”

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

@Raider_Strong I agree. We are fighting to win (if we forget the Patriots game) and I’m super optimistic for not just this year but the near future.

[Bridget Phetasy @BridgetPhetasy]

We really need to stop calling events where people burn buildings down and loot and rob people “protests.”

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

The Limoges Town Hall survived two world wars and stood as a symbol of French history.

Now it will be remembered as a symbol of the country’s downfall.

This is so incredibly tragic.

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

❤️❤️❤️

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

A newborn's blood has more than double the adrenaline of the mom who just gave birth to him.

So when you see a baby lying there minutes after delivery with his hands behind his head like he's at a cabana in Cabo, you're watching a kid come down off the biggest rush of his life so far.

A Swedish pediatrician named Hugo Lagercrantz spent years measuring this, and he's the one who coined the phrase "the stress of being born." His group found that babies born vaginally had about 10 times the noradrenaline in their cord blood compared to babies delivered by planned C-section. Every contraction squeezes the baby and briefly cuts into his oxygen supply, and his body answers by dumping stress hormones. He needs that flood to survive the next few minutes.

Here's why. For nine months his lungs were full of liquid. A baby's lungs actually pump fluid into themselves in the womb because that's how they grow, which works great right up until the second he needs to breathe air. The adrenaline from labor flips a switch in the lining of the lungs, and they start soaking that fluid back up right before the first breath. Scientists bred mice missing that switch, and the pups died after birth because they couldn't clear their lungs.

The same rush breaks down his stored fat and sugar for energy, since the umbilical cord just stopped feeding him. It even keeps his pupils wide open under bright hospital lights.

Once all that's done, babies settle into what researchers call the quiet alert state, where the body goes still and the breathing evens out. In one study that tracked newborns minute by minute, they spent about 40 of their first 60 minutes in it. Then comes sleep, and babies get more deep sleep on the day they're born than on the day after, which researchers think is recovery from birth itself.

And that white stuff in his hair is called vernix. As far as scientists know, only human babies make it, and almost a third of the proteins they've found in it attack germs directly. So he came out wearing his own antibacterial lotion, and now he's sleeping off a hormone rush that kept him alive. Honestly, he earned the pose.

[County Highway @countyhwy]

Everyone knows that the burning of European cities is the product of two related factors: Unassimilated mass migration and three decades of economic stagnation. In other words, the destruction of Europe is the product of a set of policy choices about immigration and economics that were ratified by European voters at the ballot box. Socialism was a choice. Europe was a choice. Mass low-skilled immigration was a choice. The destructive consequences of those choices are plain.

America is now confronted by a similar set of choices:

—Mass migration of unskilled people who hate the West vrs. encouraging immigrants with needed skills and crafts who embrace Western liberal values.

—Sectarianism and group preferences becoming more embedded in the law and institutions vrs. a legal order that promotes individualism and merit-based hiring.

—More government-mandated bureaucracy vrs. using new technology to de-bureaucratize our institutions and our economy.

—Embracing centralized control and redistribution vs. a market-oriented economy that puts a premium on innovation and growth.

—Teaching our children that our country is generally a force for evil rather than a force for good.

The consequences for Europe of fifty years of well-meaning policy choices approved of by generations of experts are plainly disastrous and probably irreversible. We still have time to choose our own fate and renew the social contract on which this country was founded. But only if we are willing to stop making excuses or blaming others and learn from what is happening in front of our eyes.

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

@SilverJames_ There apparently is a book but someone said it’s very dry and just the facts. Absolutely should be a movie!

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

Wow, I never knew this before.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

May 5, 1945. Hitler has been dead for five days. The war in Europe is almost over.

In a castle in the Austrian Alps, American soldiers, German soldiers, and a group of elderly French prisoners grab rifles and get ready to fight the SS.

Together.

The castle was called Schloss Itter. The Nazis had turned it into a prison for very important people. Not ordinary prisoners. Trophies.

Inside were two former prime ministers of France, Paul Reynaud and Édouard Daladier. Two of France's top generals, Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin. A famous tennis champion, Jean Borotra. And the older sister of Charles de Gaulle.

As the Reich collapsed in early May, the SS guards panicked and ran. The prisoners suddenly found themselves in charge of a castle, with weapons left behind, and a serious problem.

Waffen-SS units were still roaming the area. Fanatics who would gladly kill them all.

They needed help. Fast.

One of the castle's prisoners, a Yugoslav handyman, slipped out on a bicycle to find the Americans. Separately, a German army officer named Major Josef Gangl also went looking for them.

Gangl was a Wehrmacht officer who had turned against the Nazis and was secretly working with the Austrian resistance. He wanted to protect the prisoners too.

He found an American tank commander named Captain Jack Lee.

Lee was 27, tough, cigar chewing, and willing to do something insane. With a single Sherman tank and a handful of American soldiers, he drove up into the mountains alongside Gangl and a few of his German troops.

They reached the castle on May 4.

The French prisoners were not exactly thrilled to see a tiny rescue force. They had expected an army. Instead they got a few Americans, a few Germans, and one tank.

The next morning, the SS attacked.

Somewhere between 100 and 150 Waffen-SS troops hit the castle with machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank weapons. The defenders fought back from the walls and windows. Americans and Germans side by side.

The French prisoners refused to hide. Some of them, including Reynaud, picked up weapons and joined in.

The Sherman tank was knocked out. The defenders were running out of ammunition. It looked like the castle would fall.

Then Jean Borotra, the tennis star, volunteered to make a run for it. He jumped the wall, slipped past the SS, and sprinted through the countryside to find American reinforcements.

He found them. And he insisted on coming back with them to finish the fight.

During the battle, Major Gangl saw Paul Reynaud exposed to gunfire and moved to pull him to safety. A sniper shot Gangl dead.

He had survived the whole war as a German soldier, only to die defending French prisoners from the SS in its final days.

That afternoon, the American relief force arrived and broke the attack. The SS were scattered and captured. The prisoners were saved.

Jack Lee received the Distinguished Service Cross. In Austria, Josef Gangl is remembered as a hero, and a street is named after him.

It is believed to be the only battle of the war where American and German soldiers fought together on the same side.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Democrats discovered billionaires in politics were a threat to democracy the exact day one stopped writing them checks.

When Michael Bloomberg spent around $1 billion of his own money in the 2020 primary, then another $100M to help Biden in Florida, nobody called it an attack on democracy.

When George Soros put $125M into a single Democratic super PAC and became the largest political donor of the 2022 cycle, it was "civic engagement."

When Reid Hoffman, Dustin Moskovitz, JB Pritzker and Tom Steyer wrote eight- and nine-figure checks cycle after cycle, it was "saving democracy." When Bill Gates reportedly gave around $50M to a pro-Harris group in 2024, silence.

In 2020, dark money groups spent over $500M backing Democrats, more than double what went to Republicans. In 2024, Kamala Harris raised more than $1 billion in under three months. Democrats outspent Republicans and lost.

So the problem was never billionaires in politics. The problem is a billionaire who doesn't fund your side.

And here's what nobody in DC wants to say out loud: old billionaire money is quiet money. It funds the foundations, NGOs, think tanks and consultants that make up the permanent establishment. It doesn't challenge the system. It is the system. It freezes the picture: same insiders, same incumbents, same experts, every single cycle.

You can like or hate Musk's spending, but at least it's out in the open. If you really want money out of politics, start with your own party's donor list.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

"That's not democracy. That's a purchase order." Cute line, Elizabeth. Let's read the Democratic purchase orders out loud.

Start with yours. 2020, your presidential campaign is collapsing after Iowa and New Hampshire. A super PAC called Persist PAC shows up to rescue you. 96% of its money came from one Silicon Valley megadonor. One check. $14.6 million. Donors hidden until after Super Tuesday. You'd spent the whole primary telling everyone super PACs were corruption. Then you took the purchase order.

Now the rest of the catalog.

George and Alex Soros: $103.7 million this cycle alone, $102 million of it dumped into a single Democratic super PAC.

Majority Forward, the dark money nonprofit tied to your own Senate leader Chuck Schumer: $102 million. Donors? Secret.

House Majority Forward: $61.7 million. Donors? Also secret.

Michael Bloomberg: around $1 billion on his own 2020 primary, $100 million for Biden in Florida, and still writing eight-figure checks in 2026.

Reid Hoffman: $11.5 million into one super PAC for one Texas Senate race.

Bill Gates: reportedly around $50 million to a pro-Harris group in 2024.

Pritzker, Moskovitz, Steyer, Hastings: millions upon millions, cycle after cycle.

Kamala Harris: over $1 billion raised in under three months. Lost anyway.

Musk's money is disclosed, public, and on the front page of the New York Times article you just linked. Which, by the way, says $276 million, not "nearly $300 million." Schumer's money sits in an anonymous nonprofit nobody can see inside.

So which one is the purchase order, Elizabeth?

For twenty years, billionaire money was "saving democracy." Now it's "buying Congress." The only thing that changed is whose name is on the check.

[Dave Rubin @RubinReport]

How is it legal if you donate money to a candidate in New York they can send it to a candidate in Michigan?

The whole thing is a giant money laundering scheme…

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

Long but good.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

My dear American friends, in my last post I showed you a number that should terrify you: 70% of Millennials say they're pro-socialist. Today I want to show you why. Not with emotion. With pure logic. Step by step, A plus B, until the conclusion is impossible to escape.

Adults, this one is for you. Read it, then explain it to the young people in your life.

Start with Peter Thiel. Years ago he summed up our era in one line: we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters. His thesis is that since the early 1970s, the world of bits has kept racing forward while the world of atoms has stalled. Computers, phones, software, the internet: incredible progress. Housing, energy, transportation, medicine, education: stuck. We build almost nothing physical faster or cheaper than our grandparents did.

Why would progress stop in some places and not others? Same country, same people, same capitalism. The only thing that differs is how much the state is involved.

Here is the proof.

Step one: look at prices. Since 2000, in America, the price of TVs has fallen by more than 90%. Software, phones, toys, clothing: cheaper and better every year. Over the same period, college tuition, hospital services, childcare and housing have more than doubled.

Step two: look at which is which. The goods getting cheaper are the ones where companies compete freely and the state mostly stays out. The goods exploding in price are the ones where the state regulates the most, subsidizes the most, or controls who is allowed to sell.

Step three: look at what young people complain about. They don't complain about TVs. They complain about rent, student debt and healthcare. Exactly the three sectors the state controls the most.

That's not a coincidence. That's a pattern. Let's go one by one.

Housing. In many American cities, most residential land is zoned for single-family homes only. Building an apartment building can take years of permits, hearings, environmental reviews and lawsuits from neighbors. When you make it nearly illegal to build, supply can't keep up, and prices go up. The young don't have a capitalism problem. They have a permission problem.

Education. Washington hands out loans without asking whether the degree is worth it, so universities raise prices because they can. The money doesn't go to better teaching. It goes to layers of administrators that have grown faster than the faculty. And the accreditation system makes it extremely hard for a new, cheaper school to compete. The incumbents are protected. The students pay.

Healthcare. In many states, if you want to open a new hospital or even buy a new MRI machine, you need a "certificate of need," permission from a board where your future competitors often have a say. The number of residency slots that train new doctors is effectively capped by Medicare funding. Getting a new drug approved costs billions. Every rule adds a layer. Every layer adds a cost. Every cost lands on the patient.

Energy. America built dozens of nuclear reactors in the 1970s. Since then, only a handful, years late and billions over budget. Not because physics changed. Because the rulebook did.

Now step four, the most important one. Who benefits from all these layers?

Not the young. Not the poor. The incumbents. The big hospital systems, the big universities, the big developers, the big pharma companies, the big unions. Every complex regulation is a wall that only the giants can afford to climb. So they lobby for more of it. They fund the politicians who write it. They hire the regulators when they leave office. That's not capitalism. That's cronyism. Capitalism is a newcomer allowed to compete. Cronyism is an incumbent paying the state to stop him.

Step five: so what do young people see? They see prices going up, a system rigged for insiders, and no way to build anything for themselves. Their anger is legitimate. Their diagnosis is wrong. They look at the result of the state's capture and call it capitalism.

Step six: and what cure are they offered? Socialism. Which means giving the state even more power over housing, education, healthcare, energy. Giving the keys of the house to the exact institution that locked them out of it.

Follow the logic to the end. If regulation creates cronyism, then total regulation creates total cronyism. If a little state control makes things expensive, total state control makes them scarce. That's not theory. The Soviet Union had a ruling class with its own shops, cars and dachas while ordinary people stood in line for bread. Stalin's collectivization caused a famine that killed millions in Ukraine. Mao's Great Leap Forward caused a famine that killed tens of millions. Venezuela went from one of the richest countries in Latin America to a nation where millions fled. Every time the state got all the keys, the insiders ate and the people starved.

So here's the conclusion, and there's no escaping it:

Where entrepreneurs are free to compete, prices fall and life gets better. Where the state controls, prices rise and insiders get rich. Young people are suffering in the sectors the state controls. Socialism means handing the state everything. So socialism gives you more of the very thing that's hurting you.

The enemy is not capitalism. The enemy is a state captured by insiders, blocking the builders who would solve your problems.

Adults, this is your job now. Don't tell the young they're stupid. Don't tell them their anger is fake. Tell them they're right to be angry, and show them where to aim it. Ask them: what got cheaper in your lifetime, and what got more expensive? Who controls each one? Let them do the math themselves.

The real counter-revolution isn't against the young. It's with them. Free the builders. Let people build homes, open schools, open clinics, build reactors. Give the next generation a stake in the system, and they'll defend it with their lives.

I come from your future. We gave the state the keys. Don't make the same mistake.

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reviewed nine of the nation’s largest banks and found all nine had policies that required, encouraged, or influenced staff to deny or limit service based on customers’ political or religious beliefs or lawful business activity.

Debanking people for their political beliefs is a threat to every American’s liberty.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

Wow, wow, wow. I just left the National Press Club where Minister of Communications @AnikaWells spoke. She repeatedly and brazenly lied about the fake accounts, claiming they were only for enforcement, even though the legislation says in black and white that the eSafety Commissioner can use them in unlimited ways for "educational" and "promotional" purposes.

One big moment came when a Politico reporter got up and said something about how mean people like @PaulineHansonOz were to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant. Seriously. A supposed reporter was white-knighting for a government official during the official Q&A. The same reporter had come up to me before Wells' speech and asked if I had criticized Inman-Grant. Who needs government censors when you have Politico?

After he asked his question, Wells showed the most emotion, describing online criticism of Inman-Grant as "abuse." She also talked about her own staff's supposed suffering. I kid you not. The mask dropped, and you could see what really upset her: people — including a sitting Senator — criticizing government officials.

After gaslighting the audience about fake accounts, Wells repeatedly insisted the government wasn't trying to censor content. She said this after filling her speech with examples of content she claimed harmed people. You couldn't make it up.

This legislation is the culmination of decades of progressives equating words with physical violence. Wells cynically compared her legislation to prevent psychological "harm" to various laws that protect people from physical harm, like seat belt laws.

BTW, Wells never said what content it was that she thought caused eating disorders. Pictures of skinny women? Dietary advice? Who knows. Nobody asked.

Another important moment came when Wells explicitly said Australia would be pursuing censorship alongside other nations, including the UK, France, and Spain—all countries where governments risk losing power to populists.

I spoke with Julie Inman-Grant before the speech began and asked about the fake accounts. She insisted they were there just for enforcement, and when I asked why the law allowed them to be used for government propaganda, she said she might write an "enforcement memo," which, of course, would have no impact on the legislation.

After her speech, I went up to Wells and asked if she was seriously saying the legislation didn't allow the government to use fake accounts for government propaganda. She refused to answer. A man who said he was from the National Press Club stepped in front of me and said I could interview her afterward. But that wasn't possible because they rushed her out the back to avoid any difficult questions.

So there you have it. The pettiest people in Australia are seeking to silence citizens and their political opponents in the name of protecting children. These deeply intolerant and cynical people want to control what you can see and say online. And they're doing it with most of the media's support. Australia has reached a new low in its rapid descent into dogmatism, intolerance, and censorship.

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

And it's because of things like this that I write thrillers ...

[Walter Kirn @walterkirn]

Memories...

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

What I'm looking for is the never-give-up attitude that the #Raiders used to have. Literally, like the #Bills v Rams on Sunday where they completely messed up but still gave 110% and ended up with a W. I'm looking for Commitment to Excellence ... we won't win every game. But we need to leave everything on the field every week. We have a great team here and fabulous coach. I see a resurgence. Playoffs? Maybe. But definitely next year.

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

Just, no. Disgusting. I just read an article about how they make it with a soy and rapeseed oil "plant-based paste" and layer it to look like meat. Yuck yuck yuck.

[Nicolas Hulscher, MPH @NicHulscher]

BREAKING: 3D-PRINTED FAKE MEAT and FISH have officially entered American grocery stores WITHOUT disclosing 3D-PRINTING on the packaging.

Israeli company Steakholder Foods is behind the rollout, selling the following products under the brand name PERFECTA:

“Marbled Steak”
“Filet Mignon”
“Chicken Breast”
“Salmon Patties”
“White Fish Patties”

The fake meat is printed using soy flour, rapeseed oil, modified starch, methylcellulose, gums, and artificial meat coloring.

I will NOT be eating this slop.

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

I just want a good game. I don’t want them to give up. Just like the Bills didn’t give up against the Rams. If we lose 30-27 and played half-ass I’ll be mad, but if we lose 30-27 in overtime and fought for every yard, I’d be okay.

[Murf 🏴‍☠️ @_Murf]

No one, including us, thinks the RAIDERS are going to hang with the Bills next week...
But if they do, it will be a testament to the resiliency of the players and the quality of this coaching staff. #RaiderNation

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

This totally made me smile.

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

This is beautiful ❤️

[Ari Fleischer @AriFleischer]

If you want to know why America is polarized, it’s the fault of the media.

Yesterday, the Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, caught Abdul Sayed in a lie when Abdul denied his family had a connection to the Muslim Brotherhood. The FB showed a tweet by his own sister saying their mother belonged to the MB.

The revelation that Abdul lied about his family ties to a radical Islamic terrorist group was ignored by NBC, ABC, CBS’s nightly news shows. The NYT and WP haven’t covered it.

This should be a screaming front page story. Instead, the MSM runs cover for Abdul.

The American people just want to know the truth about their politicians. Instead, the media are helping Abdul cover up the truth.

Abdul has a lot to hide. It’s a tragedy the MSM is part of the team helping him hide it.

[Allison Brennan @Allison_Brennan]

Ditto.

[JT @CondorSZN]

This is my current cope 🤥