January 26, 2026
A NEW SUBSTACK ESSAY FROM ME: Of Squids, Ink, and Minnesota’s Corrupt Machine: Tim Walz, et al., try to change the subject, even at the expense of supporters’ lives.
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SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS RESTING COMFORTABLY: Saudi Arabia to scale back flagship NEOM project.
According to the report, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who chairs the NEOM project, now envisions a development that is “far smaller” than originally planned, reflecting growing acknowledgement within Riyadh of delays, cost overruns, and flaws in the project’s initial conception and execution.
NEOM, launched in 2017 as part of the kingdom’s economic transformation plans, stretches along the Red Sea coast and covers an area roughly the size of Belgium. Its most ambitious component, The Line, a proposed 170-kilometre linear city, is expected to be radically scaled back and reimagined.
People familiar with the review told the FT that The Line could be redesigned into a more modest project that makes use of infrastructure already built, while NEOM itself may pivot towards becoming a hub for data centres as Saudi Arabia pushes to position itself as a global player in artificial intelligence.
The project was always unlikely at best.
1492 AND ALL THAT: Is It Time to Offer Spain’s Jews Asylum?.
THERE WILL BE MORE BLOOD ON HIS HANDS: Just When You Thought You Couldn’t Get Any More Sick of Barack Obama…
NOT THEIR BEST WORK: After a Bad Weekend, the Trump Administration Cleans Up Its Messaging on Gun Rights.
STAY IN SHAPE: Putnen Under Desk Elliptical Machine. #CommissionEarned
JOHN NOLTE: Staff Melts Down as Serial-Lying Washington Post Faces ‘Massive Layoffs.’
To begin with, over the weekend, we learned that after spending tens of thousands of dollars, making reservations, and securing over a dozen credentials, the cash-strapped Washington Post reversed course and announced it would not be covering the upcoming Winter Olympics.
Then we learned that “massive layoffs” are imminent — I should say “more” massive layoffs because the Incredible Shrinking Washington Post has already suffered massive layoffs.
We’re told this new round of “massive” [tee hee] layoffs” could kill off its entire sports desk and decimate its foreign desk.
That’s a shame:
We might care if it weren't for all the lying.
Y'all shouldn't have done all this lying:
· The ICE Detains Five-Year-Old Hoax
· The Hegseth ‘Kill Everybody’ Hoax
· Trump “Destroying” White House Hoax
· Photo of Starving Gaza Baby Hoax
· Israeli Troops Murdered Food-Seeking… https://t.co/24WbELSSVS— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC) January 26, 2026
UPDATE: “Stewards:”
Bezos isn't a steward. He's an owner. Lewis isn't a steward. He works for Bezos. Newspapermen are often comical in their inability see the difference between the view they hold of their own importance…and the fact that they are not. I worked for newspapers for 35 years. https://t.co/DULQvznlXR
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) January 26, 2026
THANK GOD FOR X: Independent journalists have done a huge public service in exposing the reality of the professionally managed and funded anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Lord knows, the Mainstream Media has no interest in exposing such facts.
IT’S FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN: Newly released records reveal 725% increase in Medicaid for Illinois children without SSNs.
After more than a year of digging, Statehouse candidate Bailey Templeton’s most public records collection shows 1,085 Illinois children under 18 without SSNs had Medicaid bills of $66 million in 2025. That’s up 725% from $8 million for 450 children in 2021.
“It’s roughly $40 million spent on inpatient treatment, that’s a lot of time for children to be in hospitals,” Templeton told The Center Square Friday.
The data only generates more questions for Templeton.
“It raises questions about what would be called medical trafficking, where things are conducted on to children when they’re too young to be able to consent to these things,” she said.
Or whether there were any medical services — or even kids — at all.
OLD AND BUSTED: “I’m Not a Witch.”
The New Hotness? Kanye West apologizes for ‘reckless’ antisemitism in full-page Wall Street Journal ad: ‘I am not a Nazi.’
Kanye West has issued an apology to Black and Jewish communities after years of spewing racist and antisemitic beliefs.
“I lost touch with reality. Things got worse the longer I ignored the problem. I said and did things I deeply regret. Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst,” he wrote in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal.
“You endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to have someone who was, at times, unrecognizable. Looking back, I became detached from my true self,” West, 48, added.
But wait, which “true self” is that? The one who in 2005 blurted out on live TV during a Katrina fundraiser that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” or the one who was photographed wearing a swastika chain while hanging out with Nick Fuentes and recording a song titled, “Heil Hitler?”
So what’s the next phase for the man whom 20 years ago Time magazine dubbed “the smartest man in pop music?”
If you understand the game that's being played, you understand that Kanye kind of mastered this kind of extreme shock contrarianism that Fuentes and others followed.
So now don't be surprised if/when Kanye converts to Judaism.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 6, 2025
TIM WALZ CALZ HITLER!
Here’s Walz yesterday, comparing the children of Somali grifters to Anne Frank: Tim Walz Criticized for Minnesota Anne Frank Comparison.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has prompted a backlash after comparing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities to the terror of the Holocaust documented by Anne Frank.
Walz, a Democrat, made the remark during a press conference on Sunday after the latest deadly shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal officers in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti’s death on Saturday came just weeks after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” he said. “Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
The remark quickly drew condemnation on social media, primarily from conservatives, though some defended the comparison.
Here’s Trump today: “Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength. I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”
John Hinderaker writes, “Did Walz really call the President to suggest they work together? It is hard to imagine, but that is what Trump says. Tom Homan’s presence in Minnesota can only help, although the situation here is so far gone that the 11th Airborne may be a more practical solution.”
How badly were Walz and Harris gaslit by their internal polling last year? When Walz was constantly redlining the Godwin meter whenever he mentioned the Bad Orange Man, didn’t he ever stop think, “Hey, if Kamala loses, I’m going to have to work with this guy. Maybe I should dial the rhetoric back a notch or twenty.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Man Stabs Victim for Saying He’s a Christian.
NEVER MIND: Thinking about ‘mindfulness.’
At Brown’s School of Public Health, students can earn a master’s in public health specializing in mindfulness or a certificate in mindfulness-based stress-reduction teacher training. Yet, across campus from the Mindfulness Center, Brown’s clinical and affective neuroscience laboratory has researched the adverse effects of mindfulness meditation, which include loss of emotion, motivation or joy.
Some universities claim their courses are rooted in Buddhist philosophy, offering a “thin, romanticized” version of Buddhism “as an academic veneer for spa treatments.”
Universities in the U.K. and Australia also offer mindfulness master’s degree, he writes. At the University of the West of Scotland, students can earn a master of science in mindfulness and compassion degree.
Mindfulness practice “can make students calmer but also less inclined to think hard, plan ahead, or engage in demanding work,” writes Schilling, citing a study.
So it’s basically soma.
OLD AND BUSTED: Social Distancing.
The New Obtrusiveness? Nine Bureaucracies Walk Into Your Browser and Ask for ID.
BRIAN TRANSEAU, CALL YOUR OFFICE: South African San rock art reveals trance dances and initiation ceremonies.
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: At 88, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton Will Not Run for Reelection.
WELL, GOOD: Trump Sends Tom Homan to Minnesota.
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: On Weather Forecasts and “Trusting the Science.” Notes from a blizzard that didn’t happen. Plus a few thoughts on the current political situation.
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I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: The pandemic’s hidden toll: Millions of chronic conditions left undiagnosed.
HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS TIKI BAR: The California Post heralds a new era for the Golden State — we will fearlessly tell you the stories that really matter.
As I wrote in August, when the New York Post first announced a West Coast edition, they’ve got to do a better job than the L.A. Times, which for decades has been dull-as-dishwater, despite being located in a town that supplies an endless stream of over the top celebrity news.
OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Govt gave $3.3 million science grant to Northwestern for ‘safe space ambassadors.’
“The funding is designed to address the dearth of under-represented minorities in the life sciences,” the news release stated.
However, Christopher Neefus, spokesperson for Open the Books, told The College Fix that the tax dollars spent on the project detracted from real scientific inquiry. Open the Books is a fiscal watchdog organization based in Illinois where Northwestern also is located.
“The extravagant spending highlighted by Senator Paul comes at the expense of more funding for essential, truth-seeking science,” Neefus said in a recent email. “Rigorous pursuits are too often being sidelined in favor of ideologically charged, discriminatory projects that have nothing to do with research and development.
“Those fighting changes to the status quo have lamented ‘attacks on science,’ but safe spaces and ‘inclusive excellence’ hardly qualify,” he told The Fix.
Yes, but it provides makework for otherwise unemployable lefties.
