Matthew Evanson

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

She was never meant to matter.
Just a pretty young translator in the room.

But in 1940, after German forces took control of France, Jeannie Rousseau’s father put his 21-year-old daughter forward to work as an interpreter for Nazi officers in Brittany. She spoke flawless German. She was elegant, warm, and disarming. The officers relaxed around her. Relaxed enough to speak openly, even when they shouldn’t have.

Jeannie listened.

At first, she kept everything in her head. Then she began passing along what she heard to the French Resistance.

In 1941, the Gestapo arrested her on suspicion of spying. Her case went before a military tribunal. But the German officers in Dinard who knew her defended her fiercely. They swore she was innocent. She was released, but ordered to leave the coastal area.

So she went to Paris. And got another job as a translator.

This time, she worked for a French industrial organization that regularly interacted with German military leadership. Then, during a chance encounter on a night train, she ran into an old university classmate named Georges Lamarque. That meeting changed everything. Through him, she joined a spy network known as The Druids. Her codename: Amniarix.

Lamarque remembered her from the University of Paris, where she had graduated top of her class and shown an extraordinary gift for languages. He asked her to work for the network.

She agreed without hesitation.

Her technique was brilliant because it seemed so harmless. She listened carefully. She asked innocent-sounding questions. And when German officers described things that sounded unbelievable, she acted doubtful.

In 1943, some of the same officers she had known in Dinard began discussing a terrifying new weapon. Rockets that could travel enormous distances. Faster than any aircraft. A weapon of terror that could reshape the war.

Jeannie widened her eyes and played the skeptic.
“That can’t be real,” she told them. “You must be exaggerating.”

They pushed back. Said it was true.

She kept doubting them. Again and again.
“What you’re saying is impossible,” she insisted. Over and over, maybe a hundred times.

And that worked.

They became so determined to convince her that one officer actually showed her technical sketches of the rockets. Full details. Plans. Information about the testing site — Peenemünde, on the Baltic coast.

Jeannie wasn’t an engineer. She didn’t fully understand the science.

But she had one gift the officers never suspected:

an almost photographic memory.

She memorized it all. The figures. The dimensions. The descriptions. Every important detail. Then she repeated everything, word for word, to her Resistance contacts. Those reports were passed to British intelligence in London.

What she uncovered was staggering.

Germany was developing the V-1 and V-2 rockets — weapons capable of striking British cities from hundreds of miles away. Weapons that could slaughter thousands of civilians.

British intelligence officer R. V. Jones received her reports. When he asked who the source was, he was told only that it came from “a young woman, the most remarkable of her generation.”

And her information changed the course of the war.

In August 1943, Britain sent 560 bombers to attack Peenemünde. The strike disrupted the Nazi rocket program. It slowed production. It interrupted testing. And it saved thousands of lives.

Jeannie kept working through 1944. She traveled deep into Germany with French industrialists, watching, listening, and reporting everything back. British intelligence was so impressed by her accuracy that they arranged to bring her to London for an in-person debrief. They called her a “human tape recorder.”

The extraction was set for spring 1944, from the town of Tréguier in Brittany. But the French agent assigned to guide the team through the minefields was captured at the rendezvous point.

The mission collapsed.

Her cover was blown.

The Gestapo arrested her and sent her to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Then to Torgau. Then to yet another camp, each worse than the one before. She spent the final year of the war being moved through three concentration camps.

And still, she said nothing.

She never revealed what she had done. Never gave up the intelligence she had gathered. Not as her body weakened. Not as tuberculosis consumed her. Not as starvation brought her close to death.

When the Swedish Red Cross liberated her in 1945, she was barely alive.

She slowly recovered in a sanatorium in Sweden. There she met Henri de Clarens, a survivor of both Buchenwald and Auschwitz. They later married and had two children.

After the war, Jeannie worked as a freelance interpreter for the United Nations and other organizations. She stayed away from attention. She avoided journalists. She avoided historians. For decades, most people barely knew her story.

In 1993, she accepted the CIA’s Agency Seal Medal. In 1998, she finally agreed to speak with Washington Post journalist David Ignatius. It was the first time she had truly opened up to a reporter.

He asked her why she had done it.
Why she had risked everything when so many others kept their heads down.

She seemed almost puzzled by the question.

“It wasn’t a choice,” she said. “It was what you did. At the time, we all thought we would die. I don’t understand the question. How could I not do it?”

France had already made her a member of the Legion of Honor in 1955. In 2009, she was elevated to grand officer. She also received the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre.

Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens died in August 2017 at 98 years old.

For most of her life, she insisted her role had been small.

“I was one small stone,” she said.

But that small stone helped stop rockets from raining down on London.

That small stone helped save thousands of lives.

That small stone was a 21-year-old woman who pretended not to believe what she was hearing — and then remembered every word.

So if you’ve ever wondered what a person does when courage is the only path left, Jeannie gave the answer long ago:

You do what must be done.
You don’t stop to ask why.
You just do it.

[Truthstream Media @truthstreamnews]

There is a complete absence of honor in everything this administration is doing.

[reason @reason]

We are sad to report that Senior Editor Brian Doherty has died. Brian wrote six books, including "Radicals for Capitalism," a seminal history of the modern American libertarian movement. He had an inspiring commitment to covering the ways free people choose to live their lives, and he will be missed.

A full obituary will appear soon at https://t.co/heHRPYShz8.

[John O'Connell @jdpoc]

Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov spoke some home truths about the Murder of #ReneeNicoleGood on Fox and no-one had a comeback for her. Even at Fox, no-one could contradict her. She knows the Law and has the receipts on it.

[Turnbull @cturnbull1968]

Things that Republicans no longer believe in.

1. Limited government
2. Citizen rights to protect themselves from a tyrannical government
3. States’ rights
4. Free market capitalism
5. Independent banking system
6. Reducing the federal debt and deficit
7. Freedom of religion
8. The 19th amendment
9. No new wars
10. American soft power
11. Respect for the Judiciary
12. NATO

[Alexander McCoy @AlexanderMcCoy4]

This is what stuck with me too. Nothing that was going on in that situation justified the officers guns even being DRAWN, let alone fired.

Also note that ICE do NOT have the legal authority to pull you over or order you out of your vehicle unless they have “specific, articulable facts” which give “reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation or crime” and traffic violations or observing their activities do not count.

[Chris Vanderveen (yep…me) @chrisvanderveen]

You can already glean a few things re: Minnesota sh--ting based on the videos that are now widely available.

Things start to go south when federal officer -- hooded -- lunges toward car.

The driver at this point is reversing and wheel is turned toward left.

1/

[Kat Timpf @KatTimpf]

“Let me get this straight: We go to a country, we capture their leader, we bomb it, & then we say we run this country now — and that's not war. But when they send cocaine over here, that people are willingly snorting — that is war. That doesn't make any sense.”

[Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi]

If someone took away our president we would consider that an act of war.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

In the Global War on Drugs, the safe bet remains on the drugs

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

It would be trivially easy for Congress to say, "we're withholding as much federal Medicaid money as possibly until CON laws are repealed," and they would all be repealed in an emergency session.

[Kiyah Willis @kiyahwillis]

Privatizing student loans would fix this problem

Banks would treat education loans the same way they treat mortgages/car loans and would only give loans to people they think will pay them back

It would force college tuition prices back down to market rate and would incentivize colleges and nonprofits to give more private scholarships to people who can't afford it

But fixing this issue means no more complaining that college is a "human right" that needs gov intervention because that's how we got here in the first place

[Matthew Evanson @MPPE]

@ChrisO_wiki @TimothySandefur Disgusting. Shameful.

[Matthew Evanson @MPPE]

@grok is this accurate?

[Inna Quandary @inna_quandary]

@CollinRugg In NC

[Matthew Evanson @MPPE]

@mcuban Indiana gov signed one into law in June.

https://t.co/Q63qQNSSU1

[Sal the Agorist @SallyMayweather]

He’s right you know

[John Hudson @John_Hudson]

EXCLUSIVE: New details on Trump's quid pro quo to use El Salvador's mega prison

-El Salvador's president Bukele demanded the US hand over 9 MS-13 leaders in exchange for access to the prison

-During a March phone call with Bukele, Marco Rubio noted a problem: some of these men were "informants" to the US & under US protection, officials said.

-To deport them, AG Pam Bondi would need to terminate the DOJ's arrangements with those men, Rubio said. He assured Bukele that Bondi would complete that process and the US would hand over the MS-13 leaders

-In promising to terminate the informant arrangements, current and former Justice Dept officials say Rubio threatened to undercut years of work by U.S. law enforcement to apprehend and secure the cooperation of high-ranking members of MS-13, one of the world’s most deadly gangs

-Nixing the agreements also threatens to damage the credibility of the Justice Dept, which routinely relies on informants to build cases against high-level criminals, officials said

-At least three of the MS-13 leaders Bukele requested had divulged incriminating information about members of Bukele's government, officials said. One of them — César López Larios, was sent back to El Salvador two days after the Rubio-Bukele phone call.

-“The deal is a deep betrayal of U.S. law enforcement, whose agents risked their lives to apprehend the gang members,” said Douglas Farah, a U.S. contractor who worked with federal officials to investigate and help dismantle the MS-13 gang

-The State Department dismissed criticism of Rubio’s dealmaking, saying the secretary’s diplomacy allowed the US to deport hundreds of alleged members of the gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador. "Americans are safer as a result of these incredible efforts.��

-Story by me, @jeremyrroebuck and @schmidtsam7. More details at https://t.co/GZySt2dSA5

[Matthew Evanson @MPPE]

Yes. Very simply, Yes.

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

Scott Bessent: Tariffs are not a tax, it's a surcharge...when you pay a fee for your driver's license, is that a tax? Is it?

[Matthew Evanson @MPPE]

Not anywhere a near being a Bill Nye fan, didn’t join a No Kings movement, but support the people’s ability to protest. I doubt every protester was there to same reason but I think the answer to your question is “Yes”. And that I do agree with. And you probably do, too, Mike.

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

Bill Nye says the “No Kings” message is the same as it was in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party

So the “No Kings” message is about a large, distant, national government that taxes and regulates its people far too much—with no limits on its authority?

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

Again, this No Kings thing is not my bag. But the almost cultish refusal to understand the point by Trump’s usual apologists is bizarre. Yes: He was lawfully and legitimately elected. But Stephen Miller’s Jacksonian-Wilsonian theory that Trump has a “mandate” to do whatever he wants is anti-Constitutional hogwash (it’s amazing how the position of two of the most iconic Democrats in American history is now the religion of the GOP).

The word mandate doesn’t appear in the Constitution. It is impossible to have a “mandate” to exceed your authority under the Constitution. Even if Trump won an actual landslide (he didn’t), and all of the voters wanted him to exceed his authority, it wouldn’t (and certainly shouldn’t) matter.

I honestly never want to hear the faux right wing eggheady refrain “we’re not a democracy, we’re a republic” ever again from people claiming that Trump can do whatever he wants because “the American people voted for this.” That is the exact opposite of republicanism ffs. It’s also not true. Trump got lots of votes from people who just wanted prices lower or didn’t want Harris to be president. The idea all of his voters pre-approved everything he has done or will do is more cultish nonsense.

Regardless, if the American people want a politician to violate the Constitution that doesn’t give that politician a scintilla more right or authority to violate the constitution. I’m used to explaining this to democracy fetishists of the left. Didn’t expect to spend the last decades of my career trying to explaining it to populism fetishists of the right.