Where’s The Beef?

American Thinker 

Peter Navarro, one of President Trump’s trade and economics advisors, insists on blaming meat packers for persistently high prices and manipulating the beef supply:

Meat packers have long been convenient villains, accused of exploiting supply shortages and rigging prices. Yet no one asks why beef supplies and prices differ from pork and chicken prices, considering that all are processed by many of the same villains.

What is Peter Navarro missing or purposely ignoring?

Look, punishing beef processors for alleged price fixing and anti-competitive conduct may be warranted. This is especially true if the alleged cartel is unlawfully imposing price caps on producers, which would indeed discourage ranchers from increasing their herds, while forcing many to retire or declare bankruptcy.

However, the overall mathematics of beef prices is governed by beef cattle herd-size management bio-math, not by some nefarious boardroom titans.

Here’s a quick tutorial on animal protein economics, which is dominated by mathematical constants—animal biology, gestation periods, offspring per gestation, and costs in raising to slaughter-maturity, and capital investment over maturity durations.

Today’s biological supply of beef cattle is depleted, and sits at levels not seen since the 1950s. Reasons are varied, but they’re primarily due to COVID-related supply and labor constraints during the Biden years.

Now, just staying even is a struggle for most beef cattlemen/ranchers. The time from pregnancy to market weight for slaughter is a minimum of 2 years for feedlot animals and up to 3 years for grass-fed animals. Because a cow has one calf per year, of which only half are females, for a given herd size “N” to stay even, a rancher can only afford to slaughter .5 of his breeding animals per year or 1.0 every two years.

If the rancher wants to increase his herd size, he must reduce the slaughter rate to less than 50%, allowing extra females to reach fertility age plus produce, say, seven to ten years of calves, at that slow rate of one per year. This means he must invest in idle capital for an extended period with no assurance of profitable slaughter prices at full maturity. If the rancher slaughters a fertile female earlier, he’ll need to replace her with another fertile post-heifer stage female.

If the rancher sells off more than 50% of his herd, he will automatically further deplete it. To reach parity again, let alone increase beyond the starting equilibrium, he’ll be strapped with more idle capital, with reduced cash inflow. It is a straightforward mathematical equation.

Expansion is painfully slow, even as cash-flow pressures—bank credit terms, loan repayment maturities, and livestock losses due to disease and drought—immediately thwart growth. Consistent profitability is elusive.

Now compare beef cattle math factoids with pigs (and chickens):

The gestation period for sows is less than one-half of that for a beef cow. Pig litters are 10 to 1 versus cattle, and a sow can have two litters per year. Absent disease or feed supply issues, hog production is robust up or down. Investments in equipment, grazing land, and livestock, plus variable costs to raise and feed hogs, are fractions of the investment capital and working capital costs for beef. Three hogs in 6-8 months produce the same pounds of retail meat as one beef animal over 2-3 years.

This is why, under global protein economics, worldwide pork production is nearly twice as much as beef, and chicken even more than pork.

Now, let’s take a short excursion into beef protein math—herd growth factors—that are expressed in first-order linear distance time series equations.

The factors for beef production include 1) the starting point herd size including fertile breeding females, 2) the biological reproduction rate (gestation, time to maturity, calving proportions of males/females), 3) slaughter rates, 4) market prices for slaughtering, 5) herd culling through disease, drought, cattlemen/rancher exits, 6) costs to raise and feed females to breeding maturity, and 7) accumulating idle capital costs and opportunity costs resulting from a reduced slaughter rate for females so that the herd size of females can increase.

Here are the issues facing the beef industry today, as expressed in today’s herd math:

There are approximately 87 million beef cattle, of which 28 million are fertile females, 33 million are calves, and the remainder are steers (bulls are negligible). The number of fertile females is down from 32-33 million in 2019, before the COVID pandemic. The slaughter rate is around 32 million. Ergo, the herd is still shrinking.

For the overall herd to return to 2019 and prior levels, cattlemen/ranchers must invest in breeding and retaining 3-4 million additional females for at least 5 years to allow multiple calving cycles. That can only happen if slaughtering rates decline over the next 3-4 years, which will inevitably raise prices further.

Retail beef prices are up 30-40% since 2019. To unwind 40% higher prices, we need a capital infusion into the cattle/ranch producers on the order of $16 billion—4 million retained female heifers at roughly $4,000 each, including all cost outlays for feed, operating equipment, grazing land, veterinary services, labor, and borrowing costs, as well as lost revenue.

This is not about greed. It is all about the beef protein economics/biology supply curve. Today, that curve is in a downward destructive pattern and won’t change because a) selling cows at high prices is rational, and b) retaining cows is a long-dated high-risk proposition.

And so, beef is the de facto luxury protein price leader. Lower beef prices in the future will require enduring years of higher prices, reduced slaughter rates, and reduced retail supply, accompanied by billions invested in idle restorative biological financial capital.

Instead of hurling accusations at beef producers, Navarro and Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins (a lawyer more than an Ag economist) ought to propose meaningful multi-year capital investment incentives encouraging ranchers to invest in long-cycle capital commitments in livestock expansion. Even so, increasing the US herd by 1/3 will still require 6-8 years.

For example, the USDA could create a beef cattle biological investment reserve (heifer retention reserve), similar to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, where contracts with cattlemen would include government support for all operating costs for five years, with guaranteed downside price supports upon contract maturity, and drought/feed supply contingencies, along with some sort of opportunity cost mitigation. The cattleman/rancher would agree to the five-year retention, pledging to house and care for each animal during the contract period under Grade A USDA animal husbandry standards, and neither slaughter nor export their cattle.

Beef herd bio-math is easy enough to master. But the real-life economics of beef herd management are brutal. Left to free market forces with no outside incentive to invest in herd expansion, beef will remain a luxury good, as today’s depleted beef cattle herd becomes the constant equilibrium, at best, or suffers further erosion at worst.

Meanwhile, get used to pork tenderloin, chicken wings, and ham and cheese omelets.

Podcast thread for March 1st

 

Good day to binge a show.

From Loyal Opposition to Sabotage

American Thinker 

I was raised to believe that democracy came with duties as well as rights. You voted. You accepted the outcome. You argued your case, made your peace with defeat when it came, and waited for the next election. Politics was competitive, sometimes bruising, but it was not meant to be an existential threat. The opposition’s role was to hold the government to account, not to weaken the country for political gain.

That older civic instinct now feels rather quaint.

In theory, the idea of the “loyal opposition” remains central to democratic life. But in practice, it is disappearing before our eyes. We still have opposition parties, of course. What we increasingly lack is: loyalty to anything beyond political allegiance.

Recent events have made this vividly clear. The State of the Union address, where political rivals once observed a shared civic ritual, has now descended into open contempt. Shouting from the chamber, orchestrated walkouts and the conspicuous absence of large numbers of opposition members were not acts of principled dissent, but of deliberate delegitimization. More telling still was the decision to stage a competing event at the same time as the address was being delivered—a symbolic rejection not just of the speaker, but of the institution itself. This is no longer opposition in any meaningful constitutional sense. It is a shift toward political sabotage, where the objective is not to challenge governance, but to undermine the framework in which governance occurs.

The phrase “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” emerged in Britain for a reason. It captured a delicate balance: one could oppose the government vigorously while remaining loyal to the constitutional order, the nation, and the legitimacy of the democratic process itself. The opposition was not an enemy of the state. It was an alternative government-in-waiting, tasked with scrutiny, restraint, and the discipline of knowing it might soon inherit the same institutions it was criticizing.

You could fight fiercely over policy, but you did not burn down the house you might one day be asked to lead.

In healthier eras, opposition meant holding power accountable. It meant asking hard questions, exposing incompetence, preventing abuses, and offering a competing vision. It did not mean opposing everything reflexively. A loyal opposition would support measures that were clearly in the national interest, disaster relief, security concerns, major infrastructure, basic governance, even if the governing party received the credit. That was part of democratic maturity: the country came first, political advantage second.

So, what happened—and when did the watchdog become a wrecking ball?

The decline did not occur overnight. It has been a long, slow erosion, accelerated over the past few decades by forces that reward permanent outrage over sober accountability.

One of the most obvious changes is that politics has shifted from being about policy to being about identity. In the past, you could disagree with your opponent’s ideas and still recognize them as a legitimate participant in the democratic process—arguing over taxation, welfare, foreign affairs, or immigration without treating the other side as an enemy. Today, disagreement is increasingly framed as moral failure. The other side is not merely mistaken, but dangerous—no longer simply misguided, but illegitimate. Once politics becomes about tribal identity, losing is not an inconvenience, it is an existential threat. And if every election feels like the end of the republic, then no outcome can ever be accepted with grace.

Democracy depends on the losing side accepting that, “We lost, we will regroup, and we will have another chance.” When that belief collapses, elections become less a process of renewal, and more a battlefield of delegitimization.

The mainstream media has played a major part in this disintegration by pouring petrol on the fire. Mid-century democracies were shaped by a limited number of mainstream news institutions, often restrained by professional norms and a shared sense of national cohesion. Today we live in an ecosystem of 24-hour commentary, algorithmic outrage, and viral incentives. Calm analysis does not travel. Fury does. The politician who speaks carefully is ignored. The politician who accuses loudly is amplified.

Outrage is profitable. Restraint is not.

Delegitimization is no longer only confined to domestic headlines. Increasingly, politicians carry these narratives abroad, travelling to international conferences, summits, and media platforms to denounce their opponents before foreign audiences. Instead of presenting a united front in the national interest, they seek validation overseas by portraying rival leaders as uniquely dangerous or immoral. The result is that partisan warfare is no longer merely internal; it becomes internationalized, amplified, and harder to contain.

It is no longer enough to argue that a policy is flawed: one must suggest it is malicious. It is no longer sufficient to say the government is incompetent: one must imply it is tyrannical. Politics has become theatre, with the opposition permanently auditioning for attention rather than preparing for governance.

The rise of the career politician has only deepened this dynamic. In theory, elected office was meant to be temporary. However, for many, it has become a lifelong career. 

A politician who wants to remain in office for decades is not incentivized to repair institutions. They must survive the next news cycle. That survival often depends less on serving the nation and more on appeasing the partisan base.

In earlier generations, politicians frequently had relationships across the aisle. They lived in the same communities, attended the same civic events and belonged to overlapping social worlds. Those bonds acted as guardrails. Today, political life is increasingly siloed. The opposition is not simply the other party. It is the other tribe.

And tribes do not compromise. Tribes wage war.

This is the deeper problem: opposition has shifted from opposing bad ideas to opposing legitimacy itself. Instead of “We disagree with your policies,” the message becomes “You have no right to govern.” Instead of “We will defeat you at the ballot box,” the implication becomes “Your victory cannot be accepted.” This is not accountability. It is sabotage.

A loyal opposition asks, “How do we make the country better?”

A toxic opposition asks, “How do we make them look worse?”

None of this is to suggest that governments should be shielded from criticism. Power without scrutiny can lead to corruption. But there is a difference between scrutiny and scorched earth. There is a difference between holding leaders accountable and dehumanizing them and the citizens who voted for them. There is a difference between opposition and showing contempt for the nation itself.

A country cannot function if half its population is taught to regard the other half as morally illegitimate. A democracy cannot survive if every election result is treated as a catastrophe, every opposing leader as an existential threat, and every compromise as betrayal.

The question is whether democratic societies can recover the older civic discipline: the ability to lose without hysteria, to oppose without hatred, to criticize without dehumanizing, and to remember that loyalty to country must come before loyalty to party.

Democracy cannot survive without disagreement. But it cannot survive without loyalty either. The opposition must be a watchdog, not an arsonist, because when politics becomes scorched earth, it is the nation itself that burns.

A War Next Door? Pakistan-Afghanistan Clash — And Why India Is Watching Closely | Exclusive

India is closely watching the situation as tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have spiralled into fresh cross-border conflict. For India, the stakes go beyond immediate security concerns, touching upon strategic stability in its extended neighbourhood, the risk of militant spillover, and shifting geopolitical equations involving China and the United States.

Pakistan had initially welcomed Kabul's fall and the Taliban's return to power in 2021, with then-Prime Minister Imran Khan saying that Afghans had "broken the shackles of slavery." But tensions started rising between the two neighbours as Islamabad found that the Taliban were not as cooperative as it had hoped. Pakistan has been accusing Afghanistan's Taliban government of supporting "anti-Pakistan terrorists" who it blames for carrying out suicide attacks in Pakistan, including a recent one at a mosque in Islamabad.

Analysts in India said that it was shocking to witness Pakistan accusing Afghanistan of being involved in what it has been doing for decades - sheltering and backing terrorists. "There is a certain Karma at play here since Pakistan is accusing the Afghan Taliban of doing exactly what it does to India: encourage cross-border terrorism. Pakistan should really aim at a zero terrorism South Asia by not allowing terrorism across the border in India and asking Afghanistan to do the same," former IFS officer Ajay Bisaria, who has served as India's envoy to Pakistan, told Times Now.

“It is striking that Pakistan today finds itself in open tension with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a movement it was widely perceived to have supported over several decades. Islamabad currently argues that the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) operates from safe havens inside Afghanistan, posing serious security challenges to Pakistan, conveniently forgetting how it shelters several terrorist organisations,” Dhananjay Tripathi, Senior Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations at the South Asian University (SAU), told Times Now.

What Pakistan-Afghanistan Conflict Means for India

The recent clashes, if not resolved through dialogue, could trigger instability in the region, which could have implications for counterterrorism efforts and wider South Asian security calculations for New Delhi. "From India’s perspective, regional stability remains critical. A politically destabilised Afghanistan could generate security spillovers affecting the wider South Asian region. Any escalation between Pakistan and Afghanistan therefore carries long-term strategic implications for regional security. The key concern for regional actors, including India, should be preventing renewed instability that could once again transform Afghanistan into a theatre of proxy competition,” Professor Tripathi said.

 

"Pakistan has often sought strategic depth in Afghanistan, while successive Afghan governments have resisted external influence. The current friction appears partly driven by the Taliban’s attempts to assert political autonomy and diversify diplomatic engagement, including outreach to regional actors such as India," he added.

India’s Stand in Pakistan-Afghanistan Conflict

India has so far maintained a cautious distance, and there have been no official statements as of yet. However, New Delhi's past positions and regional interests offer key clues to how it may respond if the crisis deepens. India has traditionally supported an independent, sovereign, and stable Afghanistan and invested significantly in development and infrastructure projects there, Tripathi said.

After Sunday strikes, India’s Ministry of External Affairs had denounced the deaths of Afghan civilians. "India strongly condemns Pakistan's airstrikes on Afghan territory that have resulted in civilian casualties, including women and children, during the holy month of Ramadan. It is another attempt by Pakistan to externalise its internal failures," MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had said.

In October last year as well, India had come out in support of Afghanistan, lashing out at Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism and then blaming its neighbours. “Three things are clear – one, that Pakistan hosts terrorist organisations and sponsors terrorist activities. Two, it is an old practice of Pakistan to blame its neighbours for its own internal failures, and three, Pakistan is infuriated with Afghanistan exercising sovereignty over its own territories," Jaiswal had said.

Ceasefire Falters, Fresh Conflict Between Pakistan-Afghanistan - What's Next

On Thursday night, Afghanistan launched strikes on Pakistan along the border in retaliation for the Sunday strikes. Pakistan's several check posts along the border were captured, and soldiers were killed in the attack, according to Afghanistan's Taliban government. In response to this, Pakistan carried out airstrikes in multiple cities of Afghanistan, including its capital Kabul, Kandahar, and Paktia province in the southeast on Friday morning, under 'Operation Ghazab lil Haq'.

On Sunday, Pakistan's military carried out strikes along the border with Afghanistan, saying it had killed at least 70 militants. However, Afghanistan rejected the claim, saying dozens of civilians had been killed, including women and children and called the strikes a violation of the country's airspace and sovereignty.

Pakistan has declared an "open war" against Afghanistan, and the fresh clashes mark a sharp escalation in tensions between the two Asian neighbours and threaten the ceasefire mediated by Qatar and Turkiye.

 

https://www.timesnownews.com/india/pakistan-afghanistan-clash-and-why-india-is-watching-closely-experts-tell-exclusive-article-153716723

Trump Has the Courage to Take on Iran

Townhall 

My whole life, the monsters running Iran have been a thorn in the side of the world. There may not be a country on the planet that has not had at least one citizen killed, directly or indirectly, by the terrorist regime in Tehran in its 47-year existence. Wait, it’s been around for 47 years and now the 47th President of the United States is making sure it doesn’t see a 48th? That’s a win for the world, and it’s about damn time.

How long was the civilized world supposed to keep taking punches from 6th century troglodytes?

For a while, geopolitical considerations had to be taken into account – these “religious scholars” running the place had joined forces with the largest Godless entity around, the Soviet Union. I’m sure they squared that circle to their mindless followers by pointing out how the religion they devoutly practiced allows for lies under circumstances they determine, and for teaming with people “infidels” for political gain. I’ve never read the Koran, but it’s often treated like The Art of War or The Prince by governments declaring their fealty to it.

Well, the Soviet Union is gone, and China is a poor substitute. Iran has spent the better part of 3 decades desperately trying to remain afloat while paying proxies to be irritants around the world. I use “irritant” because that’s what they are. They don’t take over and control, their proxies are the kid smacking you in the back of the head on the bus. Iran couldn’t afford to have them run things, as they are barely able to afford to run things in their own country. Terror is much cheaper than governance. 

During that time, Presidents after Presidents all labored under the belief that Iran had to be “held in check.” But Iran is a cancer, and you need to eliminate cancer, not hold it in check. 

How many people died because the western world tolerated this tumor of a government in the name of “stability”? Too many. 

And the only thing missing from that “stability” in the Middle East was…oh, what’s the word I’m looking for…oh, yes: stability.

The entire region has been a mess not in spite of the Iranian regime, but because of it. 

That is just one of many reasons why the world should have acted long ago to take out these Dark Ages holdovers, and why the sooner they’re in Hell the better the world will be.

There are many, both on the left and on the so-called right, who believe Iran is too powerful for the United States to defeat militarily without mass casualties and years of struggle. The only place this belief could come from is wish casting, as it is not based in reality. 

Iran fought Iraq to a draw for almost a decade, and that was them throwing everything they had at it. We, twice, walked through the Iraqi military in a matter of days. Our government definitely screwed up the aftermath, but the military conflict part was never in doubt or, honestly, all that difficult.

Before both wars with Iraq, there was nonstop talk of how tough the “Republican Guard” in Iraq was. They might have been, compared to Iran. They were not compared to the United States. We hear the same thing about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They may be just as dedicated to fight to the death, but that doesn’t make them immune from death, and our military is quite willing and able to activate their commitment. 

Honestly, if we can’t defeat the Iranian military in short order, I want a refund on the tens of trillions of dollars we’ve spent on the Department of Defense over the years.

Of course, we can. Israel had already wiped out the majority of their air defenses and air force back when we took out their nuclear facility, so they’re even weaker than they were before. All they seem to have is throwing missiles in general directions – toward Israel, mostly – which are mostly shot down. 

In other words, Iran doesn’t have much left of what Iran didn’t really have all that much to begin with.

The Iranian regime should not have been allowed to exist for as long as it has, honestly. Not only because of how they treated their own people, as evil as that was, but because of the actions they took toward the rest of the world. There has to be a price for terrorism beyond sanctions. Sanctions hit citizens, ultimately, as the thieves running the government will still steal whatever they want, leaving only scraps for the people, no matter how sanctioned they are. 

Iran is a cancer on the world; it has been allowed to fester and metastasize for far too long. Thank God Donald Trump has the courage to say “no more.”

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

Trump Administration Dept of War VERSUS Anthropic, Claude AI

Conservative Treehouse 

A remarkable conflict has revealed itself amid the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) software, the United States Government (USG), the Dept of War (DoW) and the AI software company Anthropic.

At the core of the issue is the USG contracting with Anthropic for the use of their Claude AI system for use in military operations.  The Dept of War has a contract with Anthropic to use their software in combination with various military and weapon use systems.  However, Anthropic is putting restrictions on the military application of their AI.

Anthropic says the AI cannot be used for defense dept autonomous weapons that do not utilize human triggering.  Additionally, Anthropic is saying their system cannot be used to surveil U.S. citizens. Anthropic engineers would be the decisionmakers on the government use.

The Trump administration has rejected the demand of Anthropic, saying they will not permit a Silicon Valley group of engineers to determine deployment of U.S. applications, thereby replacing the decision-making of elected officials, military commanders, the Joint Chiefs’ of staff, and ultimately the President of the United States and even military servicemembers who are facing life or death decisions.

It is a key moment for the use of AI as it applies to government application and private sector.

♦ After several weeks of conflict between U.S. government officials and the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, President Trump finally said enough and told all agencies of government to stop using Anthropic products.

President Trump via Truth Social: “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.

Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.

WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

♦ Secretary of War Pete Hegseth then responded via X:

“This week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon.

Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic.

Instead, AnthropicAI and its CEO Dario Amodei, have chosen duplicity. Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission – a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.

The Terms of Service of Anthropic’s defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield.

Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable.

As President Trump stated on Truth Social, the Commander-in-Chief and the American people alone will determine the destiny of our armed forces, not unelected tech executives.

Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles. Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered.

In conjunction with the President’s directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service.

America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.”

♦ Anthropic then responded:

“Earlier today, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth shared on X that he is directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk. This action follows months of negotiations that reached an impasse over two exceptions we requested to the lawful use of our AI model, Claude: the mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons.

We have not yet received direct communication from the Department of War or the White House on the status of our negotiations.

We have tried in good faith to reach an agreement with the Department of War, making clear that we support all lawful uses of AI for national security aside from the two narrow exceptions above. To the best of our knowledge, these exceptions have not affected a single government mission to date.

We held to our exceptions for two reasons. First, we do not believe that today’s frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America’s warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights.

Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action—one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company. We are deeply saddened by these developments. As the first frontier AI company to deploy models in the US government’s classified networks, Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so.

We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government.

No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.” (source)

There are multiple alternative companies rapidly developing various AI models that could be used to replace the Claude system within the Dept of War.   In fact, the DoW is likely to partner with Open AI as a replacement for the Anthropic contract.

However, this conflict about use is one that has not only erupted within Anthropic but has also surfaced within Palantir AI.  Palantir CEO Alex Karp highlighted the issue in his own discussions about the Pentagon vs. Anthropic standoff.

“The core issue is who decides,” Karp says.  The issue is not whether the use of the government use of AI is right; the issue is not whether you agree with the mission of the Dept of War.  The real issue surrounds who will decide its use.

Karp notes, “It’s commonly known that our software is used in operational context at war.” “Do you really think the warfighter is going to trust a software company that pulls the plug because something becomes controversial?” Let that sit for a second. “Currently, when you’re a warfighter, your life depends on your software.” A group of tech engineers in Silicon Valley does not get to replace the decisions of the elected experts in national security and the commander in chief.

Kamala Tests Her Clout With Primary Push of Jasmine Crockett

RedState 

It's not often one can look at a news story involving a primary election and be completely unable to resist bursting out in laughter, but that happened on Saturday. The story? The worst presidential candidate in American history, former Vice President Kamala Harris, has announced her backing for the worst United States Senate candidate in American history, Democrat Representative Jasmine Crockett (TX-30). 

Yes, really. This right here is a case of the blind leading the terminally clueless.

“Hi, this is Kamala Harris, and I’m calling to encourage you to please go vote for my friend Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary,” Harris says in a pre-recorded message, which was first reported by the Texas Tribune.

“Texas has the chance to send a fighter like Jasmine Crockett to the United States Senate. Jasmine has the experience and record to hold Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies accountable,” she continues. “It’s time to turn Texas blue.”

Harris’ endorsement marks a major jolt for Crockett in her intensifying primary fight with Texas state Rep. James Talarico on the final day of early voting in the state. The outcome of the Democratic primary, and the equally turbulent Republican primary, could prove pivotal in determining whether Democrats have a chance of taking control of the Senate.

Crockett looks to be handily winning the Texas Democratic primary, scheduled for March 3rd. This should have Texas Republicans turning cartwheels for the sheer joy of it.

This is just too funny. Kamala Harris may have just endorsed the one Democrat who suffers from a greater degree of utter clue-impairment than she does. Her presidential campaign in 2024 was a combination of incompetence and an utter lack of self-awareness. Kamala herself managed to be an even worse candidate than Hillary Clinton, joining her in being not only the first two female presidential candidates, but the two presidential candidates who lost elections to Donald Trump.

We might note that, when Kamala Harris suffered that catastrophic 2024 loss, the United States dodged, not a bullet, but an entire ammunition factory, along with the plants that manufacture brass cases, primers, powder, and bullets. Republicans and independents hit their knees every morning in gratitude that Kamala Harris isn't president, while simultaneously pleading for her to run in 2028, so the Republican candidate can handle her as adroitly as then-OH Senator JD Vance destroyed Kamala's running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in that famous 2024 VP debate. 

Vance won the debate, not only on substance, but with that one famous fourth-wall break, when he delivered his bemused smirk directly into the camera. Kamala Harris and Jasmine Crockett have no similar instincts. Jasmine Crockett has all the charm and charisma of a tube of Preparation H, and no matter who wins the Republican contest, they should feel pretty confident - although, I would caution them, they had better run the campaign like they are 10 points down, right up to election day.

Here's the onion:

The endorsement offers a test of Harris’ political capital in the wake of the 2024 election. In interviews and appearances tied to her book tour detailing the whirlwind presidential campaign, Harris repeatedly refused to rule out running for political office in the future, despite passing on running for governor of California.

Yeah, she's likely going to run for president again. Sadly, for Democrats, her primary opposition right now appears to be the impeccably coiffed Governor Gavin Newsom of California, whose tactic of choice is to deal with opposition by punching himself repeatedly in the face.

We've got a couple of vitally important election cycles ahead of us - this year's midterms and the 2028 presidential race. Both will be closely fought. We can only hope that the Democrats keep putting up candidates of this caliber, because if they do, Republican victories are assured.

DHS Debunks Fake Narrative of a 'Refugee' Death Because of ICE; Jeffries and Democrats Still Run With It

RedState 

The House of Representatives already passed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, and it is now languishing in the Senate. Democrat senators refuse to vote for its passage because they want so-called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reforms before they agree. This DHS funding bill doesn't affect ICE or Border Patrol at all. Both these arms of DHS are already funded until 2029 through the One Big Beautiful Law, and Democrats in both houses of Congress know this. Yet, Democrats still chose to partially shut down the government, which directly affects the TSA, Coast Guard, and FEMA. Employees of this agency are currently going without pay, sleeping in their cars so that they can make it to work without filling up on gas, and donating plasma to make ends meet.

Yet, DHS is the agency that is cruel. 

So, one wonders why Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) feels the need to beat this drum of DHS being radical, dangerous, and needing reform when he no longer has any power to do anything about it?

Reasons, I guess.

On Friday, Jeffries posted to X about a recent story out of Buffalo, New York. Nurul Amin Shah Alam was a Rohingya refugee who was found dead, and this death is being blamed on DHS. You see, after Shah Alam remained detained at the Erie County Sheriff's Department jail for criminal trespass, assault of a law enforcement officer, criminal possession of a weapon, and other related charges, the Erie County Sheriff's Department released Shah Alam into the custody of U.S. Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) because they believed Shah Alam was an illegal alien. Once it was determined that Shah Alam was in the country legally, CBP agents dropped him off at a location that he allegedly designated and went on their way. Five days after he was dropped off by CBP, Shah Alam was found dead in another part of the city. 

Jeffries claims "DHS agents" (they were Border Patrol) "callously abandoned" Shah Alam.    

Investigative Post is a local publication digging deeper into the circumstances of Shah Alam's death. According to their reporting, the CBP agents who picked up Shah Alam assessed that he was not subject to removal and offered to give him a courtesy ride to a location of Shah Alam's choosing. The agents dropped him off at a Tim Horton's donut shop around 8 p.m. The location was closed, but its drive-thru was still in service. According to Investigative Post, this shop was five miles away from where Shah Alam's dead body was later found.

The fact that Shah Alam never made it home is troubling, to say the least, but is Border Patrol really at fault here?

As per usual, the legacy media is framing the death as exactly that, and the local elected Democrats are capitalizing on this framing while demanding investigations. 

A journalist from the Investigative Post was interviewed on the local news about the tragic tale now being covered worldwide.

WATCH:

In the meantime, DHS replied to Jeffries' post, offering more detail on how Shah Alam ended up in custody in the first place. DHS is calling the narrative and media coverage "another hoax."

Another hoax being peddled by the media and sanctuary politicians to demonize our law enforcement. This death had NOTHING to do Border Patrol.

Mr. Shah Alam passed almost A WEEK AFTER he was released by Border Patrol — he also had a serial violent criminal rap sheet.

Mr. Shah Alam’s criminal history included charges for assaulting a first responder with intent to cause injury, criminal possession of a weapon, menacing with a weapon, resisting arrest, criminal trespass, and obstructing governmental administration.

It is clear from the Investigative Post reporting that the circumstances surrounding Shah Alam's criminality and death are more muddied than anyone is revealing. Buffalo ABC7 News laid out a timeline of the circumstances that led to here, and it is also telling.

WATCH:

In peering underneath the hood of this latest narrative to blame DHS at all costs, there are several things that come into question. We'll start with what Investigative Post has written:

On the morning of Saturday, February 15, 2025, Shah Alam left his West Side home for a walk, according to his attorney and a Buffalo police report, Shah Alam, his wife and two sons had arrived in Buffalo as refugees just weeks prior in December 2024 and were in the country legally. Cooped up due to the cold, his attorney said, Shah Alam set out for a stroll when a sunny day arrived.

In need of a walking stick — and with $20 in hand — Shah Alam went to a store near his home and purchased a curtain rod, his attorney, Benjamin Macaluso of the Legal Aid Bureau, told Investigative Post.

When the weather turned bad, Shah Alam headed for home but got lost, Macaluso said. Shortly before 10:30 a.m. he wandered into the backyard of Tracy Chicone on the 500 block of Tonawanda Street in the Riverside neighborhood.

First, why is a mostly blind and disabled 56-year-old refugee allowed to wander around an unfamiliar city in the first place? Refugees are supposed to have sponsors. Who were this man's and his family's sponsors, and why did they not supply him with proper walking canes and resources for him to get around and not end up lost? Did the organization that brought him here not have the wherewithal to supply these specialized resources? 

There is information that is being omitted because this story already does not track.

Second, why would you go into someone's gated yard? Investigative Post continued:

Chicone reported to Buffalo police that Shah Alam had opened her back gate, let her dog out and damaged her shed door with his curtain rod walking stick. Upon arrival, police alleged Shah Alam was “swinging them in a menacing manner.” Officer Christopher Mordino later wrote he believed Shah Alam intended to hurt police with his curtain rod.

Macaluso said that wasn’t true, and that his client was merely startled by the dog and the commotion. 

The homeowner's reaction and actions were justified, especially after her dog was released because of Shah Alam's actions. Did the homeowner try to confront Shah Alam and receive combative behavior in kind? There are gaps here that reflect that something more is being omitted.

Third, why resist arrest? Investigative Post obtained the complete police bodycam footage surrounding the incident, which I found highly illuminating.

My assessment after viewing this video more than a few times is that Shah Alam was teeing up to fight the Buffalo PD. Several officers tased him, yet he still would not comply. That does not reflect confusion and speaks to intent. He wasn't interested in being cooperative and was planning to enact violence had he not been taken down.

Fast forward to the months of time it took Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane (D) to even bring Shah Alam to trial on the charges against him from this incident. So, Shah Alam languished from February all the way to May before the DA bothered to address the matter. But here's the kicker: His family feared Shah Alam would be deported, so they wanted him to be left in jail. 

It was four months before District Attorney Michael Keane’s office issued an indictment via Grand Jury on the charges, according to a statement from Keane’s office. Following a hearing in late May 2025, Shah Alam’s bail was set at $5,000. Fearing that ICE would take custody and transfer him out of state, Shah Alam’s family opted to keep him in the jail where they could visit him, Macaluso told Investigative Post. 

A family friend, Khaleda Shah, confirmed Thursday that the family feared Shah Alam being detained by ICE had he been bailed out last year. 

More hearings rounded out 2025. Shah Alam spent an entire year in jail.

Months of hearings followed. Macaluso said the case was nearing trial. On February 9, Keane’s office agreed to offer Shah Alam a plea deal.

“My decision was the result of a comprehensive evaluation of his conduct, criminal history, acceptance of responsibility, medical condition, time served in pre-trial custody, and the proposed resolution,” Keane said in a statement. “I also considered the significant collateral consequences that would result from a felony conviction — including mandatory deportation.”

In the following months, while Shah Alam sat in jail, and his family purportedly visited him, they moved to a new house. Investigative Post details more confusion, particularly after Shah Alam agreed to a plea. 

Shah Alam pleaded guilty to two charges: trespassing and misdemeanor possession of a weapon – his curtain rod. His immigration attorney, Siana McLean, said those offenses did not warrant detention or deportation by ICE. She said she communicated with the agency about those charges last week and that its lawyers agreed that Shah Alam would not be subject to federal detention upon his release.

His plea to the charges, she said, “didn’t make him removable from the United States.”

Here is where the finger-pointing starts: The Erie County Sheriff's Department claimed CBP were the ones who requested Shah Alam be released into their custody. Shah Alam's immigration attorney claimed CBP was at fault for not returning him to the detention center. The beat goes on.

Christopher Horvatits, a spokesperson for the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, said it was Border Patrol that requested custody of Shah Alam upon his release from jail. Horvatits said deputies called Border Patrol agents who picked Shah Alam up upon his release from the Holding Center.

That happened just after 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. Shah, the family friend, said Shah Alam’s family waited for hours that day, hoping to pick him up from the holding center.

McLean said the Sheriff’s Office should not have called Border Patrol.

[...]

Michael Niezgoda, a Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson, said it was only after agents took custody of Shah Alam that they determined he “was not amenable to removal.” Agents then, Niezgoda said, “offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept, to a coffee shop … rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station.” That Tim Hortons, on the 2200 block of Niagara Street, was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address,” Niezgoda said.

What occurred after Shah Alam was dropped off is the mystery that needs to be solved. What we will not soon discover is the paperwork and circumstances behind why CBP picked him up in the first place. However, the legacy media and Democrats will never let a crisis go to waste, even when the crisis has holes that you could drive a Mack truck through.