May 22, 2026

SPENCER FOR HIRE:

As Stephen Miller tweets, “If you tackle and dent or even solve rampant homelessness, a lot of people lose their jobs and a lot of the funding and donations cease and that’s why there’s a sudden flood of negative media going his way. They aren’t scared of him winning. But they are scared that once people realize problems can be solved, a whole lot of the slush funding dries up.”

17 years ago in Northern California, SF Weekly stumbled into the Fox Butterfield effect, when one of its writers observed, “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.” In L.A., Pratt wants to break that cycle. Do the city’s leftist residents who foot the bill?

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DEBRA SAUNDERS: The bell tolls for Facebook staffers.

Ahead of the big tranche of layoffs Facebook implemented on May 20, I finished reading “Careless People: A story of where I used to work,” a memoir by one-time Facebook (then Meta) big-shot Sarah Wynn-Williams. The memoir, first published in 2025, is a cautionary tale.

Wynn-Williams and I have very different politics. Still, I was drawn to her story of a New Zealand native who went to work for Facebook with the belief that the social-media platform would change the world for the better. It’s a life lesson that extremely smart people can be really stupid.

“Employees are encouraged to believe they’re changing the world, not working for a corporation,” Wynn-Williams writes. And: “Changing how people communicate will aways change the world.”

Problem: Practically no one at FB HQ knew how the world would change, and there was little consideration of the possibility that social media could affect modern life in a bad way.

At the beginning of 2016, Bloomberg’s Justin Fox suggested, “You want to ‘change the world’? Keep it to yourself.”

Whenever I hear people saying they want to “change the world,” I get suspicious. Do they want to change it for the better or for the worse? If it’s the former, what makes them think they know enough to do that? Wouldn’t it be more realistic and less arrogant to try to change their companies or their neighbourhoods ― or maybe just themselves?

Still, it’s a popular goal. There are books, college courses and conferences on how to do it. There’s also a new documentary film called How to Change the World (it’s about the origins of Greenpeace), and a not-so-new Eric Clapton song called “Change the World” (I think it’s about love). In a related and timely vein, the World Economic Forum, meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week, tells us that it is “committed to improving the state of the world.”

Changing the world seems to be most popular, though, in and around Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal’s Yuliya Chernova once did an analysis of LinkedIn profiles and found that “change the world” was far more likely to show up in San Francisco Bay area profiles than those from any other region. “Here, the goal is to change the world,” LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman [pre-TDS] matter-of-factly wrote in October. “We have a greater capacity to change the world today than the kings and presidents of just 50 years ago,” former Facebooker Justin Rosenstein declared, somewhat more grandiosely, in 2012.

In September of that same year, at the Foundation for Economic Education, Donald J. Boudreaux explored “The Problem with Wanting to ‘Change the World.’” Only one?

Most people who want to change the world seldom pause to ponder what, exactly, about the world needs changing. After all, much about the world is pretty darn good, and, hence, is likely not an appropriate candidate for the wiles of any “change-agent.” Worse, most people who want to change the world have in mind schemes that involve forcing others to behave in ways that they would not otherwise.

Our world has massively changed, mostly for the better, over the past two or three centuries. And nearly all of this change came in doses so small that the names of those who performed each beneficial change were never widely known, and are today lost forever in the thick mists of history. Most – although by no mean all – of the “change-agents” whose names are known were human butchers (e.g., Hitler and Stalin) or arrogant ‘men of system’ (e.g., Clement Attlee and Franklin Roosevelt) who saddled others with counterproductive burdens and restrictions even if the destructiveness of these efforts is today still largely denied.

Evergreen question: “What Is To Be Done About Facebook?”

Posted at 4:31 pm by Ed Driscoll

SOMETHING TO HIDE? Lawyer claims Wisconsin ‘desperately’ trying to keep voter list secret. “The Wisconsin Elections Commission has received about $77 million over the last two decades from the federal government to maintain its computer systems, which includes the statewide voter registration database. The feds now just want the opportunity to inspect what they are largely paying for,” Lennington told The Center Square. “They do this all the time in other areas like Medicaid, unemployment, and other federally funded areas.”

Posted at 3:52 pm by Stephen Green

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: It’s the Every Man but Florida Man Edition. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, I have so many reports lined up from seemingly every state except for Florida, that I figured maybe he deserved a break this once.”

Posted at 3:21 pm by Stephen Green

DON’T DO THE CRIME IF YOU CAN’T PAY THE FINE: Trump Admin Looks to Charge Some Immigrants $18k to Deport Them.

The Trump administration is considering tripling the amount some immigrants are fined if they miss court hearings and are later deported.
According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the amount immigrants currently pay is not enough to cover the cost of U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents locating, detaining and deporting them.

The proposed change comes amid a sharp rise in people failing to appear for immigration court hearings, which experts say is a result of multiple factors, including fear of detention.

“The move to 18K for in absentia orders, where it is not clear if the recipient even knew about the hearing is extreme,” Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official, told Newsweek.

That’s the point, Claire.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Oh, Now We See Why Democrats Love Homeless Drug Addicts “Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ update, where this week, Oregon voters spanked Democrats. Not a typo. Washington leftists coined a new type of ‘refugee,’ and taxpayers discover that they’re underwriting the cosmetic surgeries of prison inmates. Spencer Pratt takes the lead in fundraising in the Los Angeles mayor’s race — and in political ads. And I discovered this week why there’s an incentive for Democrats to keep drugged-out zombies on the streets.”

Posted at 2:19 pm by Stephen Green

ROD DREHER: What the San Diego Mosque Shooters Believed.

According to the 75-page unfinished manifesto left behind by Caleb Vazquez, 18, and Cain Clark, 17, the pair hated Muslims, Jews, blacks, legal migrants, illegal migrants, Latinos, Asians, industrial society, gays, trans people, Donald Trump, “MAGAtard boomers,” liberals, conservatives, moderates, and women.

Oh boy, did they hate women. “After the Jew the most evil creature in this world is the woman,” wrote Vazquez, in his contribution to the two-part document. He identifies himself as a short man on the autism spectrum. This, he believed, is why women ignored him.

“Being short, especially now more than ever, is nothing short [of] a torturous humiliation ritual. As someone who’s been short my whole life, trust me, I know from experience and they’ve never let me forget it.”

“When a girl is shy or introverted it’s cute, but I, as a guy, for being the exact same, am seen as weird and awkward,” he continued. “When a girl is autistic it is seen as quirky, but I, being an autist as a guy, am treated like a retard.”

The manifesto reads like what you might expect teenagers marinated 24/7 in intersecting currents of internet hate to produce: crude, stupid, self-pitying, and overflowing with rage at all the people these self-described National Socialist Ecofascists identify as the Enemy. Clark calls himself a Christian, but Vazquez, who is Latino, said, “my religion is the white race.” In fact, Vazquez acknowledges that some will consider him a Latino who pretends to be white, “but that’s honestly fine and I could care less.”

Related: San Diego mosque shooter Caleb Vazquez’s family breaks silence on terror attack, say autistic son was brainwashed online.

The family recognized the attack caused devastating and irreversible pain for the victims, their loved ones and the broader Muslim community, adding that no apology could ever make up for the loss and trauma inflicted by Vazquez.

“We reject hatred, extremism, bigotry, and violence in every form. We stand firmly against the ideology and actions that led to this tragedy. These actions do not reflect the values we raised our family with or the beliefs we hold in our hearts,” Vazquez’s family said.

The Vazquez family added that their son’s beliefs and actions are completely at odds with the values they raised him with, emphasizing their family’s diverse background and longstanding belief in acceptance, compassion and respect for people of all cultures and religions.

“Our son was on the autism spectrum, and it is painfully clear to us now that he struggled not only
with accepting parts of his own identity but also grew to resent them,” they said.

Vazquez and Clark released a manifesto, obtained by The California Post, before the shooting in which they shared hateful imagery and messages — campaigning for a race war. The weapons they used in the attack were covered in racist messages, including “Race War Now.”

Exit quote from Dreher:

The Clark-Vazquez manifesto is the logical extension of the antisemitism that has been normalized in these circles of “educated” Zoomers of the left and the right. Last fall, I asked a group of U.S. college students why so many of their generation are antisemitic. One young man told me that it’s not through reading, but through relentless social media exposure to memes.

Clark understood this. In his part of the manifesto, Clark urged would-be imitators to take up memeing and shitposting, which “has done more to radicalize the masses than any book or manifesto ever could. . . . This is how we win.”

This is happening all over with Generation Z, the first generation to grow up fully immersed in digital culture, which simplifies and amplifies the passions as radically as that new technology, radio, once did. And we older people barely notice it.

QED:

 

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

DEVELOPING: Tulsi Gabbard resigns from Trump Cabinet. Her husband Abraham was recently diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer, she wrote in her resignation letter.

Posted at 1:20 pm by Ed Driscoll

YOU DON’T SAY: Leftist Seattle mayor admits Starbucks criticism ’caused more harm than good.’

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is walking back earlier comments urging consumers to boycott Starbucks, as tensions grow over Seattle’s relationship with major employers and the coffee giant expands its footprint outside Washington state.

Wilson, a democratic socialist elected last year on a progressive, labor-backed platform, told The New York Times this week that comments she made during a Starbucks worker strike last fall were not productive.

“Those comments were not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good,” Wilson told the outlet.

The remarks marked a notable shift in tone from comments Wilson made shortly after winning Seattle’s mayoral race in November, when she joined Starbucks workers on a picket line outside the company’s former Reserve Roastery on Capitol Hill and urged residents to boycott the hometown coffee chain.

Not much of an apology, really, and her anti-business policies likely won’t change, either.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

HEY, IT’S NOT LIKE HE DID A DONUT ON A RAINBOW CROSSWALK:

Posted at 12:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds