Korro Bio, Inc. (Korro) (Nasdaq: KRRO), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing a new class of genetic medicines based on editing RNA for both rare and highly prevalent diseases, announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation to the investigational medicine KRRO-110 for the treatment of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (AATD).
KRRO-110 is the first RNA editing development candidate from Korro’s proprietary OPERATM platform and is currently being evaluated in the Phase 1/2a REWRITE clinical study for AATD. Dosing of the first two single ascending dose cohorts in healthy adult volunteers has been completed, and an interim readout is expected in the second half of 2025.
President Donald Trump specialized in shattering conventional wisdom and challenging the status quo on his road to the White House in 2016. To this day, our president believes Americans are getting ripped off by unfair trade practices where country after country has gotten comfortable taking advantage of the United States due to our unparalleled generosity and wealth. So, he’s focused like a laser beam on fair trade and leveling the playing field so our manufacturing workers can compete with foreign competitors and prosper. President Trump has declared that by implementing targeted tariffs on foreign countries that hurt American workers, “our country will be extremely liquid and rich again.”
Having served as President Trump’s deputy campaign manager in 2016 and as an advisor to his campaigns in 2020 and 2024, I was delighted to see him reelected in 2024 with a huge mandate to fight for our manufacturing sector and usher in a “Golden Age” in America. Make no mistake, our 45th and 47th president is determined to finish the revolution on American trade policy that he began by fixing the mistakes of the Biden-Harris years and strengthening Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel.
As part of the shock-and-awe action of his first one hundred days in office, President Trump signed new proclamations to bolster the fair-trade policy introduced during his historic first term in office. By elevating tariffs to 25% on aluminum and restoring the 25% levy on steel, the Trump administration is making clear that they have the backs of thousands of American aluminum and steel workers and are resolute in their mission to create a multitude of new manufacturing jobs.
While the globalists in the economic establishment and mainstream media react to targeted tariffs with their customary Trump-deranged hysteria, American manufacturers reacted with both joy and relief because President Trump is making good on another campaign promise. It must be repeated again and again – because the fake news media refuses to tell the truth – that this president supports robust trade, but it must be trade that is fair and reciprocal. This is the linchpin of the policy.
Under the “America Last” mindset of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, foreign countries were free to exploit loopholes in Section 232 to flood the domestic aluminum and steel industry with cheap products. Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Argentina locked arms with D.C. swamp creatures to secure exclusions and exemptions, to the detriment of American workers. Australia’s aluminum exports into the U.S. have increased sharply and at the same time China and Russia have used loopholes to move aluminum through Mexico and Canada to flood our market. As a result of foreign countries cheating, Alcoa announced the permanent closing of its smelter in Washington State. Other closures have included a Century Aluminum plant in Kentucky, which idled production in 2022, and Magnitude 7 Metals in Missouri, which was forced to close in 2024.
Many globalists claim that the aluminum tariffs will raise costs for consumers. This is the same stale argument we heard in the first Trump administration; it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. The tariffs didn’t impact the amount of steel or aluminum consumed, didn’t weaken the economy, and didn’t cause massive job losses. Conversely, capacity utilization for aluminum increased during President Trump’s first term and now major investments in the steel industry have been announced. While some globalist companies attack President Trump’s targeted tariffs, some are telling their investors that “if all countries are getting a tariff, the impact for us is zero.” And while some globalist leaders who own aluminum smelters in Canada attack President Trump’s 25% tariff, the reality is that he was elected to bring back good-paying manufacturing jobs to American plants, and this is a commitment he plans to keep. As President Trump has said time and time again, America is done subsidizing Canada and the rest of the world.
Aluminum and steel manufacturing are critical to America’s defense industrial base. Continued dependence on foreign suppliers leaves us vulnerable and jeopardizes our national security interests. President Trump is putting America first, which means a do-it-all, do-it-now policy supporting domestic manufacturing, no more loopholes, no more exemptions, and no more of the failed Biden agenda. America’s “Golden Age” will only be achieved if we have a strong and stable industrial base. President Trump’s aluminum and steel tariffs will help save America and make our country great again.
David Bossie is the president of Citizens United and served as a senior adviser to the Trump 2024 and 2020 campaigns. Bossie served as deputy campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President in 2016 and deputy executive director for the Trump Transition Team.
A glamorous woman in an unglamorous job, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy sits in a cavernous office that is entirely empty other than the leftover computers and keyboards still scattered about from when the last administration vacated the premises, leaving old copies of federal budgets bound in blue, red, and grey, stretching back decades and stacked nearly from floor to ceiling.
It is not exotic like a dusty cafe in Karachi. It isn’t as chic as an art gallery in Shanghai. All the same, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, or AFK as aides now abbreviate her name, is happy with her new post.
“I like to be in the plumbing,” says the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Once the youngest female CIA officer at 22 and whose memoir of a life spent undercover was optioned to Hollywood, she adds, this place “is where you can have the most impact.” She is speaking from the Office of Management and Budget across the alleywayfrom the White House where, during her first interview since joining the new administration, the ventilation system can be heard kicking on and off.
The onetime spy is now the associate director for Intelligence and International Affairs at OMB, a first-of-its-kind position and an assignment that is as influential as her path to it is ironic.
President Trump had considered Fox Kennedy for CIA deputy director.Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, intervened. Lawmakers worried that if given that role, AFK might shatter America’s premier espionage agency. Their fears were not entirely unfounded. Since leaving the agency in 2010, she has become a prominent CIA skeptic. She has made the declassification of the JFK assassination files a personal mission. She managed the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year as he promised to renew the work of his late uncle, President John F. Kennedy, who once vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”
Any attempts to assuage concerns failed. Her call, and a subsequent call from the White House to set up a meeting with Cotton, went unanswered. She was torpedoed behind the congressional curtain.
Rather than working inside just one three-letter agency to reform it, the director of the Office of Management and Budget asked, why not bring the entire espionage apparatus to the president’s heel? Fox Kennedy accepted. Passed over for a job at CIA, she now oversees the entire CIA budget as well as the budgets for the 17 other agencies that collectively make up the intelligence community.
This makes her the tip of the fiduciary spear, so to speak, in the ongoing White House war against what they see as a “woke and weaponized” government security establishment. The budgets, like the ones collecting dust next to her desk, and other bureaucratic authorities known only to the nerdiest of wonks, Fox Kennedy insists, are the very best tools “to put the Leviathan on the chain.”
All of this delights Vought, who calls her addition to OMB “a huge deal,” a step toward policing the shadowy corners of the federal government he described as “nearly untouchable.” No clandestine budget or compartmentalized program will be beyond her purview. Instead, AFK will be free to follow the money. “The federal government has been weaponized against the American people, including our president, in ways most Americans have yet to realize,” the budget chief told RCP before likening the enterprise to “our own Church Committee within OMB to end the weaponization for good.”
But what would you say you do here exactly? “My job is to arm Tulsi and John,” AFK replies, referring to Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, like old friends, “and all the amazing men and women in the intelligence community with everything they need to do their job – to do it safely and efficiently, protect this country, and execute the president’s agenda.” She continues with standard boilerplate about ensuring that “not a penny of taxpayer dollars is wasted.”
A wonk would talk about the efficiency of government systems, while a spook would say something about an attempt at omniscience. She talks that way, too, to be sure, but AFK is unusual in that she attempts to humanize budgetary questions of national security. Every taxpayer dollar that comes through the door, says the mother of three, is a dollar that will not go to “a family’s vacation” or “someone’s kid’s ballet lessons.” Misuse of those funds, she has concluded, is nothing short of “a sin.”
While she can sound a little like Marianne Williamson, the gadfly guru and perennial presidential candidate, years spent undercover while living as an art dealer abroad and recruiting arms dealers as assets has given AFK a hard edge. She reserves a special derision for those in intelligence who see themselves as separate from, and unaccountable to, civilian control.
“Even when I was there,” she recalls of past colleagues at the CIA, “they would talk about both Democrats and Republicans, whoever was in the White House, as the temps. ‘Oh, we don’t want to bother the “temps” with that – they’re going to be gone in four years.’” As a result of that attitude, there were entire departments and “parallel command structures,” AFK reported, “that ‘the temps’ have never been allowed in.” Now, as a political appointee and a temp herself, her mandate is to break down those doors.
“You can’t fund anything like the lawfare and weaponization President Trump encountered in his first term without a firehouse of money,” she said, adding that there was initially “a learning curve in the first administration around how to put the Leviathan on the chain and keep it there.” As a result, AFK continued, “the Leviathan made damn good use of that time. It had a head start.”
Not that long ago, liberals lambasted the security state while conservatives rushed to its defense. But those roles have been entirely reversed during the Trump era. From the surveillance of the first Trump campaign and the Steele dossier to the dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian misinformation” and the subsequent social-media censorship, it is a story that has played out for the better part of a decade. “You realize the exact same offensive playbook that we used against people who were killing Americans, and were our greatest adversaries,” she said, “we are using it against the elected representatives of the people in this country, or against any American protected by the Constitution.”
This sentiment makes Fox Kennedy at home in MAGA world and a pariah to Democrats. She comes most recently from the “Make America Healthy Again” wing of the GOP, a coalition where anything big (Big Ag, Big Pharma, and Big Tech, for instance) is viewed with skepticism. She still sticks out. Republican hawks are not known for looking to Sufi mystics for inspiration or talking about the need to root out terrorism by first acknowledging the humanity of the terrorist, as AFK has done. She possesses an undeniably different outlook on the world and a particular set of skills.
The CIA assigned her a “nonofficial cover,” sending her abroad with a false identity but without any diplomatic protections. She learned beforehand, like all agents do, to lose a tail, break out of handcuffs, and in the worst-case scenario, to shoot her way out of a bad situation. That kind of training isn’t likely to come in handy at the White House. A career in analysis and human intelligence will.
She first came to the attention of the CIA while in graduate school after developing a predictive algorithm to pinpoint where terrorist cells were most likely to develop (the ratio between hookah bars and madrassas was key). The career that followed took her from the Middle East to Asia, including a stint in Shanghai where she posed as an art dealer and, per her memoir, discovered that her housekeeper was keeping tabs on her family for Beijing. While AFK has become increasingly critical of the CIA, particularly with the counterterrorism measures deployed after 9/11, she still loves the agency.
“The intelligence community, when the cancer of political weaponization and censorship and domestic propaganda is removed, I’d fund it all day long,” AFK insists, calling it “the most cost-effective, efficient, humane way to avoid war – 10 times out of 10.” The former agent says she just wants reform, specifically a return to an apolitical mission, which AFK insists yields better results anyway.
She argues that human intelligence capabilities have been diminished in recent years as the intel agencies pursue priorities contrary to their core mission. “The majority of useful information that comes out of the intelligence community, for policymakers,” she said, came from other sources and methods. Recipients of the presidential daily brief, or PDB, a summary of intelligence and analysis presented in the Oval Office each morning, AFK reported being told is “basically” the same kind of information that can be read “in the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the New York Times.”
A senior administration official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, did not dispute that characterization, telling RCP that both Democrats and Republicans have complained that in recent years the PDB intel has grown “stale.”
Reform isn’t welcome in the intelligence community, especially when those three-letter agencies are predisposed to doubt the intentions of the reformer. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said as much when he seemed to warn Trump before his first inauguration not to pick a fight with spooks. “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community,” the Democratic leader told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC in 2017, “they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
One question is whether the Trump administration’s approach to the IC, generally, and AFK’s appointment, specifically, indicate a willingness to exact payback.
“I think her intentions, at least from my point of view, are probably not all that wonderful,” said Loch Johnson, a professor at the University of Georgia whom the New York Times once dubbed “the dean of American Intelligence Scholars.” He sees an administration motivated not by good government, but by an appetite for “revenge more than anything else.”
Legally and constitutionally speaking, Johnson told RCP, there is no doubt AFK “has a right to go out to the CIA and look at their budgets up and down.” Comparisons to the Church Committee, though, the Senate select committee that famously called the intelligence agencies to the carpet in the 1970s, may be premature.
“The Church Committee was bipartisan, fact-driven and with strict adherence to the law,” said Johnson, who served as the top aide to the late chairman of the committee, Idaho Sen. Frank Church. “So no, I don’t think this is like it.” What Johnson thinks is all but certain is a clash.
“You’re going to have Fox and others making public charges against these agencies, and that’s when they better have their facts right because the CIA and FBI – I don’t think this is inappropriate – have their own professional contacts on Capitol Hill,” Johnson concluded. “They will seek recourse.”
The White House has already started its long march through the federal bureaucracy. Elon Musk shuttered USAID. Ratcliffe thinned the CIA herd of recently hired officers, though AFK predicts that only a “very small portion” of federal employees in the intel agencies, those who “allowed their trade craft to be turned inward against Americans,” will end up “on the chopping block.”
When Trump clashed with Volodymyr Zelensky, warning the Ukrainian president he was gambling with another world war by demanding a U.S. security guarantee, AFK was on her feet across the street from the White House in the Eisenhower Office Building, cheering. “He was like Aslan,” she said, referring to the lion and protagonist of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books.
Even in an administration defined by skepticism of foreign intervention, AFK stands out. She has been vociferous in her condemnation of what she sees as a proxy war with Russia. The sentiment most in fashion during the previous administration, that the U.S. stood with Ukraine, she wrote on social media last year, was “simply a jingle.” While that country burned, she argued, “the war hawks and the bankers” prospered.
If and when that conflict ends, conservatives will clamor for an audit of the billions in financial and military aid sent overseas. David Sachs, Trump’s crypto czar, expressed such an appetite recently, telling Fox News that Ukrainian oligarchs had been “feasting” on that assistance and alleged that American weapons meant for the frontlines had been resold on the black market. A fledgling democracy, Ukraine struggled with endemic corruption even before the war, and while allegations of widespread black-market sales are yet to be substantiated, the Zelensky administration uncovered massive fraud to the tune of $40 million in weapons procurement. AFK was not surprised.
“It’s like shipping a pallet of money,” she said of weapons sent overseas, “and walking away from it and then coming back two years later being like, but do you have proof that it’s not there?”
The administration will soon resume weapons shipments to and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Zelensky agreed to a 30-day ceasefire with Russia on Tuesday. Anything approaching an audit will likely have to wait. AFK, meanwhile, focuses her attention stateside.
Hollywood had considered adapting her life into a screenplay. Apple was reportedly developing a TV series based on her memoir. Brie Larson was set for the starring role, with Fox Kennedy as an executive producer. The project has stalled since AFK entered politics, and her newest chapter, overseeing a sprawling intelligence apparatus from a quiet corner of the Office of Management and Budget, is not exactly glamorous. No one can argue that it isn’t influential.
Hamas on Friday announced it is preparing the release of hostage Edan Alexander, who is an American citizen serving in the Israeli military, along with the bodies of four other dual nationals previously slain.
Alexander was manning a military post near the Gaza Strip on October 7 when the base was overrun by Hamas gunmen pouring in from Gaza. The US-designated terror group further announced it "affirms its complete readiness to initiate negotiations and reach a comprehensive agreement on the issues of the second phase while calling for the occupation (Israel) to fully implement its obligations." The group says it wants to salvage the fragile truce which has been holding.
Hamas stopped short of issuing the names of the four deceased that it plans to release. Alexander's background is that he is a 21-year-old from Tenafly, New Jersey who volunteered to join the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after high school.
US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff has this week said that securing his release is a top priority for the White House. Newsweek and other describe this is a big diplomatic win for President Trump:
US President Donald Trump had urged the release of the American hostage along with the remaining Israeli hostages, sending an ultimatum to Hamas last week. Trump has since met with several hostages released by Hamas during a first phase of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and the militant group.
Alexander's release would be a boost for Trump's strong push to get hostages released, which has included contacts with Hamas that had surprised the Israeli government. he was the last surviving American hostage.
That the White House appears to have bypassed its Israeli ally on this is a huge blow to the Netanyahu government.
As for the Israeli prime minister, one regional report says he is currently gauging public opinion on the possibility of renewing the war in Gaza:
The Israeli public is largely tired of the war on Gaza and “convinced that Netanyahu is incapable of managing it”, Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg says.
The prime minister is gauging public opinion and “waiting to see which shoe will drop”, Goldberg told Al Jazeera.
“The shoe that calls for the continuation of the war, which demands a great deal from Israelis, or the shoe that is ultimately calling for [a discontinuation] of the war and the understanding that Israel must take home all the hostages and it has no choice.
“So far, Netanyahu has been able to read the public very well, but I’m not sure that’s the case any more,” he added.
Life in the Strip itself is still fraught with extreme dangers given how destroyed the enclave is. Humanitarian workers are reporting that civilians are getting badly hurt upon returning to their dilapidated homes. Walls or structures have crashed down on them.
"The buildings are so damaged they’re collapsing on them. Just two days ago, we had a young man – a wall fell on him, broke his spine, and tore his left kidney off his aorta," Dr Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon with MedGlobals, told Al Jazeera. "So we had to remove his left kidney or he would have bled to death."
The doctor further described that high prices at markets and and lack of humanitarian aid mean "people are turning on each other sometimes and disputes are becoming violent."
ActBlue was founded in 2004 as a Democrat Party political action committee (PAC) ostensibly to organize and raise campaign funds from “small donors.” On its website, ActBlue describes itself as “the home for small dollar donors” that “operates as a conduit, which means donations made through ActBlue to a campaign or organization are considered individual donations.” As such they are subject to considerably less legal scrutiny than large dollar donations.
In 2008, essentially the first presidential election in which ActBlue participated, they raised and spent $54.6 million on behalf of Democrat candidates. In 2012, they increased the amount raised and spent to $151.1 million. In 2016, as the political era of Donald Trump commenced, ActBlue’s fundraising dramatically increased to $653.6 Million. While a massive increase in fundraising, this was somewhat plausible considering the onset of Trump Derangement Syndrome among the Democrats and so-called progressives.
In the 2016 election cycle, the Democrat Party and its affiliates spent $4.6 Billion on the presidential and congressional races. Four years later in the 2020 cycle, they more than doubled the 2016 expenditures by spending $10.8 Billion. In 2016, ActBlue fundraising accounted for 14% of all Democrat spending whereas, in 2020, it accounted for 40%, or nearly all the increase in spending between the two election cycles.
In 2020, the fundraising by ActBlue took a leap from $653.6 Million in 2016 to a staggering $4.32 Billion, a nearly sevenfold increase. That was followed by an equally staggering $2.4 Billion raised in the 2022 mid-term elections. In 2024, ActBlue continued this streak as their fundraising topped $3.8 Billion.
Is it remotely possible that these dramatic increases are solely due to an implausible tsunami of small-dollar donors flooding the ActBlue website, or are there other, potentially criminal explanations?
Recent congressional and private investigations have revealed that this phenomenal rise in fundraising and influence appears to be the result of an organized effort to flout and circumvent fundraising laws in order to launder money for the Democrat Party cabal in their continuing efforts to win elections by criminality, fraud, and manipulation.
In a September 2024 letter from the House Oversight Committee to then-Treasury secretary Janet Yellen requesting documents relating to ActBlue’s activities, Representative James Comer wrote: “ActBlue had not implemented standard procedures to guard against identity theft and fraud such as requiring Credit Verification Value (CVV) to process online transactions… ActBlue is also being investigated by several states’ officials in relation to contributions allegedly made via the platform fraudulently without the reported contributors' awareness.”
As David Catron points out at the American Spectator, this practice is known as “smurfing.” It is a direct form of identity theft whereby the names of the donors are repeatedly used without their knowledge to obfuscate and hide large-dollar political donations.
An examination of FEC data by David Catron revealed a single Colorado resident allegedly made 57,138 contributions -- one transaction every 1.3 days -- totaling $234,441 (or less than $5.00 per individual contribution). A Florida resident purportedly made 52,591 individual contributions totaling $387,720.00. And one California resident supposedly made 52,501 separate contributions -- an average of one transaction every 2.5 days -- totaling $884,152 (or less than $17.00 per individual contribution). There are thousands of examples with similarly implausible contribution patterns.
Independent journalistJames O’Keefelooked into these activities and interviewed a number of people who ActBlue reported as having made high-volume, low-dollar individual contributions. Those he interviewed emphatically denied donating the money in the amounts or frequency as reported by ActBlue.
What, therefore, were the potential sources of the massive inflow of funds into ActBlue that cannot be accounted for by any reasonable measure of small donations and that apparently require an active money-laundering scheme involving identity theft and credit card fraud?
First, there are the potential contributions from prominent domestic left-wing billionaires such as George Soros, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Sandler, Laurene Powell Jobs, et al, that could require the laundering of their contributions. But this is the least likely source of ActBlue funding as many of these domestic billionaires have their own PACS to support Democrat candidates and progressive causes.
A second, and far more plausible source of contributions, are foreign governments and billionaires who cannot legally contribute to political campaigns in the United States. The machinations that have thus far been exposed concerning the inner workings of ActBlue make it the perfect conduit for foreign interference via near-unlimited political contributions. It is supremely naïve to believe that numerous national governments through designated groups or individuals have not taken advantage of ActBlue’s deliberately compromised online verification process and de facto money laundering.
The third source of potential contributions is the American taxpayer. During the five-year period beginning in January of 2020 through the end of December 2024, ActBlue raised an astonishing $10.4 Billion whereas in the previous five years it raised $2.16 Billion. It is not a coincidence that during this same five-year timeframe the federal government spent, using the faux pandemic of COVID-19 as the justification, an equally stunning yearly average increase of 45% or $2.05 Trillion per year more than the 2019 expenditure level.
The budgets of numerous agencies, such as USAID and the EPA as well as departments such as Education and Commerce, which dole out vast numbers of grants and contracts to NGOs, experienced massive increases. For example, the EPA’s budget increased sixfold between 2019 and 2024.
Thanks to the work of Elon Musk and DOGE, the American people now know innumerable grants from virtually all agencies and departments, totaling into the hundreds of billions, were issued without any oversight to thousands of Democrat-affiliated NGOs. The inescapable assumption is that a sizable portion of those funds made their way into the laundromat at ActBlue and eventually into the coffers of the Democrat Party and its candidates.
The exposure of the potential corruption and the inner workings of ActBlue may well be what precipitated the abrupt February departure of seven senior officials, including the associate general counsel -- the highest-ranking legal officer at ActBlue -- as well as the chief revenue officer. The future of ActBlue is in legal limbo as Republicans in Congress aggressively expand their investigations. The forwarding of criminal referrals to the Justice Department appears to be inevitable.
Never in the 236-year political history of the United States has there been a more expansive, criminal, and blatant scheme to manipulate the electoral process than the actions of ActBlue in league with the Democrat Party. This lawless and corrupt alliance underscores the depravity and anti-Americanism that has become the foundational bedrock of the American Left and much of the current ruling class.
Oh, not from Donald Trump. At this point, he probably knows better than that. But from the state's rainy day "general fund," intended to pay for emergencies only.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's Department of Finance on Wednesday notified state lawmakers that California will need a $3.44 billion loan to cover costs associated with the state's Medicaid program known as Medi-Cal.
The letter did not specify why exactly the program fell short on funds. While experts note there are many factors that go into Medicaid costs, some are pointing to the money the state spends providing health insurance to undocumented people.
The letter comes weeks after Newsom's administration officials told lawmakers they had underestimated the cost.
The reporter's tweet of the letter sent is here:
Who didn't see this coming from ten miles away?
The free ride given to illegals of course cost more than original estimates -- the estimators neglected to consider that free health care, compared to the fairly reasonable rates people pay in Latin America and elsewhere, would serve as a magnet for illegals to come over, particularly those with costly cases of care. With Joe Biden and Kamala Harris waving through millions of unvetted "newcomers," no state provided a bigger benefit package than Newsom's California.
Republicans tried to warn them. But all the warnings were ignored, and being totalitarians at heart, Democrats punished those who asked questions, as KCRA 3 noted:
During a line of questioning in an Assembly budget hearing last month, Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, R-Riverside, asked about the expense. Newsom's Department of Finance said the state is estimated to spend $9.5 billion to provide Medi-Cal to undocumented people, with $8.4 billion coming from the state's general fund. The number had grown from the $6 billion that was initially projected.
Which was as cynical and unethical and sleazy a move they've ever made in their nonstop quest to succor illegals, bringing more and more in.
It made sense to Democrats at the time given that they were facing the prospect of losing congressional seats as residents fled the state over high taxes, high costs of living, and unenforced crime. Not a problem to Democrats, though, who wanted as many seats as possible, so illegals replacing the earlier residents would do nicely, some even "helping out" the Democrat side with illegally cast votes from the state's outrageously maintained voter rolls and zero-I.D. voting requirements. What better than to offer them free health care?
Well, now the piper is coming to get paid, and Newsom has his hand out for a loan from his state's general fund -- the one that's meant for disasters, such as the ones in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, the fire burnouts that forced state residents to purchase insurance from the state's bare-bones insurance company because insurers had pulled out, and which already doesn't have enough to cover all the claims even at a minimal level.
Odds are, that's who will suffer as the illegals get their medical bills paid and the legislature silences anyone talking of making them pay for their own, same as other Californians must do.
It's a rotten way to run a state and will likely lead to even higher taxes and more residents fleeing the state.
But Democrats will have their illegals, safely ensconced as illegal voters or congressional seat padders, all in the name of keeping their power forever. It's outrageous, and a very good case for DOGE to investigate if it ever branches out into auditing California.
At some point, they're going to run out of state funds once they start draining it for this, and then come begging Trump for a bailout. But Trump is too wise for it, and money is fungible. What they'll be looking at is what Lady Thatcher said was the inevitable result of all socialism -- "running out of other people's money."
It's sad stuff that it's coming to this fast in one-party blue Califlornia.
The true purpose behind Ukraine's attack on the Kursk region of Southwest Russia has been hotly debated, mostly because the area holds little to no traditional strategic purpose. Not all seized territory has equal value in a war; some territory has no value.
Some believe that the incursion was meant to open a door to an attack on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, which could then be held hostage or sabotaged, leaving a radioactive mess for the Russians to clean up. But the plant is too far from the border to be successfully captured by anything other than a large scale offensive force with superior logistics.
Others argue that the mere act of invading Russian soil (no matter how useless) was intended to send a message to Ukraine's western allies that Vladimir Putin's "red lines" are a false front and that he would never respond with a nuclear defense. In other words, Kursk was supposed to encourage US and European officials to enter the war with boots on the ground.
It remains to be seen if Putin would in fact use the nuclear option, but Ukraine certainly isn't worth taking the risk, at least not for the majority of western citizens.
Kyiv has claimed that the action was designed to lure Russian troops away from the eastern front where they have been making significant gains, thus slowing the Kremlin's attrition machine and giving Ukraine a better position at the negotiating table. If this was the intent, then the plan failed.
The momentum in Kursk was contained within a couple weeks of the operation and the Ukrainians have been stuck there ever since. In the past month their gains in the area have been whittled down and now their lines are imploding. It is expected that Russia will take back the last Ukrainian holdings within the next two weeks, but this is not the biggest problem Ukraine faces after the failure of their Kursk operation.
At the end of February the Russians were already initiating cross-border strikes into the Sumy Oblast of Norther Ukraine and it looks as though these strikes might turn into a full invasion.
As we noted at the end of December, the Kursk attack by Ukraine could end up backfiring in spectacular fashion. With tens of thousands of Russian troops amassed in the region, the fall of Ukrainian lines means the path is open for those same troops to come pouring into Sumy and cut the country in half.
Vladimir Putin's recent appearance in Kursk and ample geolocation data in the town of Sudzha proves that the area is well under Russian control despite claims that the Ukrainians are holding. Russian incursions into Sumy have also escalated.
The troop surge comes just as the Trump Administration positions for peace negotiations, an effort which is meeting resistance from all sides. Even US allies within NATO are insisting that the war continue until Ukraine gains back all of its lost territory (which they know is not going to happen). The precarious nature of peace talks is amplified by Putin's refusal to enter into a ceasefire agreement. Putin claims the ceasefire would serve no purpose other than to allow Ukraine to strengthen their lines.
The western media continues to promote the narrative that Russia is using thousands of North Korean soldiers as "meat waves" to run Ukraine out of Kursk. We're still waiting for any significant evidence to back this claim but none has materialized. Russia has multiple ethnic groups within the country that "look Asian" and the presence of these people on the battlefield is not proof of North Korean troops. To this day there is no evidence of "meat waves" or a large contingent of DPRK soldiers.
In any case, Kursk is lost to the Ukrainians, which will hopefully give Vladimir Zelensky and Kyiv motivation to finally agree to realistic peace negotiations. If not, then the Russians are perfectly positioned to invade Northern Ukraine and close in on Kyiv.
Putin has presented two terms for any agreement: Ukraine must give up the captured Donbas region and allow the separatists to join Russia. And, Ukraine is never allowed to join NATO.
Sadly, these were the basic terms at the very beginning of the war. Hundreds of thousands of lives (perhaps millions when the true tally is revealed) could have been saved if peace talks had not been interfered with in 2022. If peace is achieved now, at least World War III can be avoided.
What, therefore, were the potential sources of the massive inflow of funds into ActBlue that cannot be accounted for by any reasonable measure of small donations and that apparently require an active money-laundering scheme involving identity theft and credit card fraud?
