May 26, 2026

INCENTIVES MATTER: With no options left, a Venezuelan family living in Colorado walks into ICE custody, seeking to go back home.

Cecilia stood outside a federal immigration field office in Centennial, chewing her lip and weighing the few choices left to her. Behind her, piled in a car, was what remained of her family’s life in the United States.

It was early May, and a few feet away, her three sons took turns sticking their shoes into old prairie dog holes in the dirt, the youngest’s Crocs breaking through cobwebs. As the boys looked from the ground to their mother, she explained that if she returned to the office the next day, immigration agents had promised to detain the family and arrange their return to Venezuela.

The Centennial office building was similar to one into which her husband and the boys’ father had disappeared late last year. But unlike Ronald, who’d been arrested at what he thought was a routine appointment, Cecilia arrived that day hoping that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would take them away.

She and her three children — ages 12, 9 and 6 — had walked for three months to get to the United States in 2024, crossing notorious expanses of jungle and mountains for the prospect of a stable future and a reunion with Ronald, who’d come earlier that year. But like other families split by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, they now found themselves struggling to make ends meet in a single-parent household, with no regular paycheck and few options.

That was quite a struggle. Next time, do it without breaking our laws.

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

BOMB CANADA, THE CASE FOR WAR:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

I DID NAZI THAT COMING:

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green

GREAT MOMENTS IN MULTICULTURALISM: AOC’s Former Chief of Staff ‘Threatens’ a Fellow Dem (Who’s Jewish) for Refusing to Back a Nazi *Popcorn*.

In a move that perfectly captures the modern left’s priorities, former Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign manager Saikat Chakrabarti is melting down because Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss dared to call out a Nazi tattoo on Graham Platner as personally disqualifying—and suggested voters might feel the same way.

Well, maybe Nazi-adjacent or certainly willing to look the other way at those who were. Here’s a flashback to Chakrabarti’s sartorial excesses in 2019: AOC chief of staff criticized for wearing shirt touting Nazi collaborator:

Chakrabarti’s choice of apparel is receiving a fresh round of criticism after Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, positively quoted Nazi sympathizer Eva Perón, the former first lady of Argentina.

Saikat Chakrabarti, the chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came under scrutiny for having worn a T-shirt that featured Nazi collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose.

In December 2018, following his boss’s congressional victory, Chakrabarti did a video with NowThis News, titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff on Acting Fast in Congress,” in which he wore a T-shirt with Bose’s face.

As I wrote last year, before Chakrabarti explicitly endorsed Platner, “If he wins and takes office at the beginning of 2027, I assume Chakrabarti would want to pack in as much legislating as possible before it’s too late (possibly working with potential Senator Graham Platner, another enthusiast of Germany’s post-Weimar era, if he’s elected as well). While Chakrabarti was serving as AOC’s ghostwriter, she assured us all that the world would be coming to an end in 2030.”

Related: Dave Portnoy EMBARRASSES Graham Platner’s Team for Thinking He Would ‘Play Footsy with a Nazi’ (Emails)

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

ALLIES:

Translation: “Poland has received preliminary approval from the U.S. Department of State to produce PAC-3 missiles for Patriot systems in its domestic defense industry – Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk announced. In addition to Patriot missiles, Poland plans to also produce missiles for HIMARS systems as well as Hellfire. The production is to be joint in nature, benefiting both Polish and American companies. This is an important step toward reducing dependence on foreign supplies.”

Posted at 11:25 am by Stephen Green

21ST CENTURY DATING: The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends.

New research has revealed that one in five boys aged 12-16 is either in or knows of a boy their age who is in a romantic relationship with an AI companion. A report carried out by men’s organisation Male Allies UK and published last month spoke with more than 1,000 boys aged 12-16 in focus groups in 37 schools – public and state, grammar and comprehensive, and across a range of Ofsted ratings – up and down the country. Peer-to-peer focus groups were set up where boys could speak freely, with the aim of diving into their behaviour and attitudes, and it was the boys who wanted to talk about AI technologies. The findings make stark reading: eight in 10 boys (85 per cent) have had a conversation with a chatbot, with 43 per cent saying they talk to bots so they can ask questions without feeling embarrassed. More than a quarter (26 per cent) say they like the attention and connection over real-life equivalents, and (36 per cent) admitted that they prefer speaking to AI chatbots rather than to their family and friends at times.

The most popular apps for creating these AI “companions” are Character.AI (which has 50 million downloads), Replika (30 million downloads), Candy AI (tagline: “Your smart and emotionally aware AI companion”, with 50 million registered users) and OurDream AI (“Create your dream AI girl”; 36 million monthly visits).

This stuff isn’t for kids.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES:

Posted at 10:23 am by Stephen Green

CHRISTIAN JOSI: Put Your Clothes On: A Misogynist’s Tale. “Ultimately, this column is about respect. Respect for hotel workers. Respect for waiters. Respect for the person next to you when you are in an airport or a hotel — not blasting their mobile conversations for everyone to hear (there are things called earbuds, you morons). Respect for law enforcement. Respect for those who have served and, as I am writing this on Memorial Day, for those who have sacrificed.”

Posted at 10:08 am by Stephen Green

GETTING THE SAUDIS ON BOARD WOLD BE YUGE: Trump says more countries should normalize ties with Israel in any Iran deal.

While restoring commercial traffic through the strait has been a top priority for U.S. allies, Trump on Monday added an apparent demand that any peace deal should require more countries to extend full diplomatic recognition to the state of Israel.

“[I]t should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote on social media.

The Abraham Accords, first signed in 2020 during Trump’s first term, normalized relations between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Kazakhstan, Morocco, and Sudan are also signatories.

Trump now says Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia should agree to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel.

Egypt is officially at peace with Israel, and has been since 1979 — but it was never a very warm peace.

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green

WHEN YOU’RE TOO UNELECTABLY INSANE FOR ACTBLUE:

To be fair, ActBlue doesn’t give a damn that Galindo is insane, just that she’s unelectable

Posted at 9:21 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Let’s Dispel the Lie That President Trump Is ‘Polarizing.’ “It’s amazing that such a ‘polarizing’ president could bring a Democrat into the fold like that, isn’t it? President Trump is first and foremost a patriot whose love for this country and our military is always on display. The Democrats don’t have a place in their party for people like that.”

Posted at 9:06 am by Stephen Green

SEDUCTIVE AI: The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends.

Related: Asking AI for personal advice is a bad idea, Stanford study shows. “A new study in the journal Science found that AI models are far more sycophantic than a human friend or stranger. . . . ‘People who interacted with this over-affirming AI came away more convinced that they were right and less willing to repair the relationship, whether that meant apologizing, taking steps to improve things or changing their own behavior,’ Cheng said. Participants also preferred sycophantic AI, judging it to be trustworthy, no matter their age, personality or prior experience with the tech.”

If only there had been some sort of warning.

Related: AI and the Screwfly Succession.

Posted at 8:41 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE? Congress Moves to Limit Investor Home Buys.

Bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate, according to Politico, have backed legislation that would block large investors from purchasing more single-family houses.

Housing analysts say the measure may have only a limited effect on affordability nationwide.

“We want homes for people, not for corporations,” President Donald Trump said in his State of the Union address in February while endorsing the proposal.

Large institutional investors own less than 1% of single-family houses and about 2% of single-family rental properties nationally, according to figures cited in the debate.

What we need even more is deregulation at the state and local level.

Posted at 8:35 am by Stephen Green

OH, CANADA:

Posted at 8:19 am by Stephen Green