Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, the former DOGE engineer, is now helping build the Trump administration’s new digital front door to the federal government. Coristine told Fox News Digital that America.gov is designed to give Americans one place to find government information and, eventually, complete services now spread across thousands of federal websites. He also detailed plans to make first-time passport applications fully digital, reflected on his time at DOGE and spoke about the origin of the nickname that put him in the national spotlight. Full story here foxnews.com/politics/big-bal…

Today, I received a threatening letter at my Grand Rapids, Michigan office that contained unidentified white powder. The letter, which claimed to be from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), made a direct and specific reference to an impending “civil war” beginning after the election. The letter sent to my office is similar to those received at other congressional offices across the country. The DSA has not yet addressed the attacks, either to condemn them or to take or deny responsibility. The Grand Rapids Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) responded immediately. Threats and extremism are not signs of strength—they are signs of a weak mind and weak character. Political intimidation has no place in our democracy, and leaders must condemn it, not excuse it. I’ll keep standing up to bullies on the right and the left.

🚨🚨THE DEMOCRACY FILES, PART 2: WHEN AND HOW TO DECLARE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ILLEGITIMATE 🚨 Some questioned whether a group of 200 ex-USAID officials could actually pull off their ambitions to rewrite the Constitution. Here, they describe exactly how it works. They aren't working alone. The videos all come from Renew to Thrive (R2T) group and associates. Danielle Reiff and Paul Zeitz play key roles within R2T. R2T sits inside a much, much larger umbrella called United Democracy Alliance (UDA), which is an extremely hush-hush control plane of leaders from major "blocking" NGOs such as 50501 and Indivisible fulfilling various functions. UDA decides when protests get deployed, timelines, how to respond, all that. R2T's role within UDA is concerned with "the day after tomorrow" - in other words, their function is to conceive what a rewritten American government will look like after the rest of UDA fulfills its purpose. As will be shown, Erica Chenoworth is credited with conceiving UDA in the first place under the Horizons "Big Tent" initiative. Note here that National Security Leaders for America (NSL4A) is credited for operationalizing UDA. NSL4A is a group of 1,600 ex-military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials. They are led by Rear Admiral Michael E. Smith (Ret). NSL4A also played a key role in the "illegal orders" messaging which targeted Pete Hegseth. Zeitz is also a member of NSL4A. It must be emphasized that the choice of a military-oriented organization to coordinate NGOs across domestic protests is an interesting one all in itself - especially in an umbrella conceived by a regime change expert like Chenoworth. You will have a hard time finding any mentions of UDA in the public. They are extremely hush-hush and selective who they talk to. Mike Smith himself makes a personal appearance in other calls, coordinating Insurrection Act exercises and roleplaying with R2G as one of the participants. As the audio transcript shows, they have outlined a sequence of "redlines" in which case the federal government should be declared illegitimate. Invoking the Insurrection Act against "peaceful" protesters is one of the most discussed redlines. I will post the illegitimate criteria below, but basically, almost any effective pushback against NGOs is a measure of illegitimacy according to them. Important to understand: The audio shows they shopped this idea around governors, but the reality is that governors do not have to explicitly sign on to the pact to play their role in the coup. All they have to do is refuse troops in their state and let UDA / R2G do the work of dissolving the federal government.

@realdonaldtrump ordering the shut down of USAID was a great victory for the American people. It was an honor to serve with @elonmusk and @doge. But as this recording shows, USAID's threat to freedom, and its color revolutions on our soil, are still very real. 🙏🇺🇸

You can tell this is a lie because he could just do it now

Elissa Slotkin’s threats to prosecute conservatives moves America closer to civil war trib.al/LS0xGbg

I assume the goal of this video is to make Amish culture seem foolish, given this girl’s slight speech impediment and awkward mannerisms, but what exactly is the problem here? There’s no promiscuity or baby killing or digital prostitution; I’m supposed to think that’s bad?

I love human psychology. And there's one concept I keep coming back to when I try to understand people in power: the Dark Triad. Yesterday I argued that Macron isn't cynical, that he sincerely believes in a worldview built on false axioms. A lot of you replied: "Sincere? Come on." Fair challenge. So let me go one level deeper, because I think both things are true at once, and the Dark Triad explains how. First, what it is. The Dark Triad was described by psychologists Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams in 2002. It groups three personality traits that overlap but are distinct. Important point: these are not diagnoses. They're dimensions. Everyone sits somewhere on each spectrum. What matters is how far along you are, and in what combination. The first is narcissism. Grandiosity, a sense of being exceptional, a deep need for admiration, and above all a fragile relationship to being wrong. For a narcissist, admitting a major mistake isn't an intellectual update. It's an injury to the self. The second is Machiavellianism. Strategic thinking applied to people. Long-term planning, reading others to use them, a willingness to do whatever the objective requires. The Machiavellian is patient, calculating, and treats relationships as moves on a board. The third is psychopathy, in its subclinical form. Low empathy, emotional coldness, a certain detachment from the consequences your actions have on others. Not the serial killer from the movies. More the person who can make decisions that hurt thousands of people and sleep perfectly well. Researchers have found these traits overrepresented in positions of power. Which makes sense: the path to the top often rewards exactly the qualities that make someone harder to live with. Now let's look at Macron through this lens. Not a diagnosis, nobody can give one from the outside. Just his public behavior, measured against the three dimensions. Narcissism is the easiest to see. Before he was even elected, he explained that the presidency should be "jupiterian," a president above the fray, like the king of the gods. He built a movement from scratch with his own initials. He speaks in long monologues, in a register of someone explaining things to people who haven't quite understood yet. Machiavellianism shows up in the strategy. In 2017 he walked into a political system dominated by two parties and dismantled both of them in a matter of months. "At the same time" is not just a slogan, it's a method: occupy every position so nobody can occupy any. The 2024 dissolution of the National Assembly was a pure chess move, taken almost alone, with consequences the whole country is still living with. The third dimension is the one I'd be most careful with. But there's a pattern in his words. "People who are nothing." "I cross the street and I find you a job." "We spend a crazy amount of money on welfare." "Gauls resistant to change." "I really want to piss off the unvaccinated." Each one, taken alone, is a slip. Together, they draw a relationship to ordinary people that is distant, abstract, sometimes contemptuous. People as variables in a model, not as lives. Now here's where it connects to yesterday's thesis. The Dark Triad doesn't contradict sincerity. It locks it in place. Remember the gear spinning in a vacuum, the flawless reasoning built on false axioms. Why doesn't he ever stop and say "I was wrong"? Because for a high narcissist, that sentence is almost unbearable. Admitting the axioms are false would mean admitting the last fifteen years were a mistake. So the dissonance doesn't get resolved. It gets defended. Machiavellianism then does the rest. Sincere about the ends, ruthless about the means. You can genuinely believe you're saving the country and still treat every institution, every ally, every election as a tool. And the emotional distance makes the cost invisible. When reality hurts people, a more empathetic person would feel it and start doubting. When you see society from far above, the pain stays abstract. It doesn't reach you. It doesn't correct you. The last ingredient is intelligence. Macron is clearly very intelligent, but it's a specific kind: verbal, academic, brilliant at building coherent systems and at arguing for them. Much less at testing them against reality. And research on motivated reasoning points to something counterintuitive: intelligence doesn't protect you from self-deception. Often it makes you better at it. The smarter you are, the more convincing the justifications you build for what you already believe. Put it all together: a strong verbal intelligence, high narcissism, strategic coldness, and an emotional distance from consequences. You get someone who can't see that he's wrong, who has every tool to stay in power anyway, and who doesn't feel the cost of his mistakes. That's not a villain. It's something more dangerous: a brilliant mind sealed off from feedback, with no internal mechanism that would ever force it to change course. The real question isn't whether Macron is good or bad. It's how a system ends up putting this exact profile at the top, and why it keeps doing it.

California bakery owners blame backlash over pro-Palestine stance for closure after 50-year run trib.al/RYfTgNj

Spare me the pearl-clutching — especially from Republican Members of Congress and online MAGA grifters who have cheered President Trump's weaponization of the government against those he doesn’t like, as recently as last week. This is a subject I know something about: Less than a year ago, Trump directed the DOJ and FBI to investigate me, and then tried to criminally indict me for a 90 second video, exercising basic free speech. The same free speech you’re exercising now, lying about what I said in this clip. If not for an anonymous group of grand jury members standing up for America's laws, I’d be criminally indicted for sedition. President Trump has turned the government against people, with raucous support from you and virtually all D.C. Republicans. So spare us the manufactured outrage. America must be a place where the rule of law still matters. Those laws should apply to everyone equally. If you have aided in the corrupt use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit the President or his family, or you have violated the law in order to carry out guidance from the President, you should be held accountable. And given how rampant that corruption appears to the average American, people looking to work for his Administration should realize that while the Supreme Court has granted the President immunity, it has not done the same for those who do illegal things at his behest.

Atheists as well.

As E. Digby Baltzell wrote in his 1988 essay "The WASPs Last Gasp":

My lefty friend said this about Musk; "The guy writes cheques. About it. If he actually produced things himself I might have some sympathy but he’s an entitled little goblin that is contributing nothing positive to the human experience." It's quite hard to reconcile that with any shared reality.

The Trump administration’s cuts to weather satellites will set the country back nearly a decade, experts say. The loss of data used to observe, forecast and research extreme weather could prevent the US from making major advances in weather prediction in the coming years. cnn.it/4k6eD4o

You can tell this is a lie because he could just do it now

Elissa Slotkin claims that the only reason that she's being attacked for threatening lawfare against young conservatives for serving in the Trump administration is because she's a woman. 🙄