Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

FBI Arrests Massachusetts Democrat State Rep. on COVID Relief Fraud Charges — Second Lawrence-Area Democrat Busted This Month

The FBI arrested Massachusetts State Rep. Francisco Paulino (D-Methuen) on Wednesday morning after a federal grand jury indicted the second-term Democrat on 11 counts of wire fraud and money laundering.

Prosecutors say Paulino treated COVID relief programs like an ATM, fraudulently obtaining more than $700,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits and Small Business Administration disaster loans.

Paulino represents the 16th Essex District, which includes Methuen and Lawrence, the same Merrimack Valley corridor that just saw Lawrence Mayor Brian DePeña arrested two weeks ago on separate $1.5 million-plus COVID loan fraud and money-laundering charges.

Both men are Dominican-born Democrats. Both, prosecutors allege, used the pandemic as their “personal cash cows.”

The 24-page indictment alleges Paulino ran the operation from roughly April 2020 through at least December 2021 — the same period he was campaigning for and then winning the state House seat he still holds. He used his Lawrence tax-preparation firm, Madison Tax LLC, as the vehicle.

Highlights from the charging documents:

In April 2020 he filed a pandemic unemployment assistance claim in the name of a 77-year-old relative without her knowledge, falsely claiming she was self-employed.

More than $39,000–$44,000 in benefits went straight into a bank account he controlled. He kept filing false weekly certifications into September 2021 and submitted fabricated documents, including purported IRS paperwork, when the state asked questions.

He obtained or modified Economic Injury Disaster Loans for his own businesses (including a Heav’nly Donuts location) and for at least one client who spoke limited English and trusted Paulino with tax records and online banking access.

In one case he allegedly increased a client’s loan without the client’s knowledge, then later asked that same client for a $200,000 loan.

Funds were funneled through intermediaries into Paulino’s personal and business accounts and used for personal expenses, real estate, loan payments, and transfers into his campaign account.

Prosecutors also say he turned around and lent some of the cheap government money to others at higher interest rates, making a profit off the taxpayers’ dime.

Paulino faces eight counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud and three counts of aiding and abetting money laundering. He was taken into custody outside a Lawrence apartment complex shortly after sunrise and is scheduled for arraignment in Boston federal court.

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Was An Obama Energy Secretary A CCP Plant?

Before Steven Chu oversaw America’s national laboratories and nuclear-weapons complex, a group inside what U.S. officials describe as the CCP’s “political warfare” apparatus listed him as an “overseas honorary president.” He later launched landmark research and technology partnerships with Beijing from inside the Department of Energy.

The organization was not simply “China-linked.” Its own records say it was led by the CCP Central Secretariat and administered by the Central United Front Work Department—the sprawling Party organ the U.S. government says works to co-opt elites, neutralize opposition and manipulate foreign institutions in service of Beijing.

Buried inside a non-searchable image on the official website of the Western Returned Scholars Association, or WRSA, is Chu’s Chinese name: 朱棣文.

The page identifies the organization’s Fourth Council as serving from 1999 to 2003. In the official roster image, under the heading 海外名誉会长—“overseas honorary presidents”—WRSA lists ten additional prestige scientists.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences explicitly identifies 朱棣文 as “Steven Chu,” the Stanford physicist and 1997 Nobel laureate. WRSA itself later used the same Chinese name for the “former U.S. Energy Secretary and physicist” Steven Chu. The surrounding names—some of the most famous overseas Chinese scientists of the era—make the match effectively certain.

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Undersecretary of War Says Whoever Wins AI Race Will Dominate Economically, Militarily

Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael said Tuesday at Breitbart News’s latest policy event that whoever wins the AI Race, the United States or China, will dominate economically and militarily.

During Breitbart News’s “AI is Here: What to Fear, What to Embrace,” Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked Michael what would happen if the United States loses the AI race to China, and what the stakes would be for Western civilization as a whole. Michael said that whoever emerges as the victor in the AI race will lead economically.

“If you think about the 20th century, the way I’ve described this is we had military power leading up through World War II, and that created sort of… peace besides the Cold War, and then that led to our technological dominance. The internet started here. The internet economy started here. The iPhone, the app economy started here, and… that led to our sort of economic dominance… military technology economy,” he said. “Now, in the 21st century, I think technological dominance will determine whether we are economically dominant and militarily dominant. It stems from the tech dominance.” 

“If AI is the central, newest, and most important new technology, if we’re not dominant in that, it threatens our military and economic dominance, and it’s just a different flow in the 21st century,” he added. “And whoever wins that technological race, I think, is going to be [sic] economically, and that means the dollar is the reserve currency. That means priceable are priced in dollars. That means American bonds are the kind of thing that people invest in for safety. That means we have much more control of the financial system and… can ensure that it’s used for good.”

“So I think,” Michael asked, “do you want the Chinese model or the American model in the 21st century? And that starts for who’s going to be dominant in technology.”

Taylor Budowich, the founder of Innovation Council Action Inc. and former White House deputy chief of staff, told Boyle in an earlier conversation at the event that allowing China to win the AI race is “not an option.”

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Georgia’s Election Problems Are Documented Failures, Not Theories

The recent op-ed praising Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the new Election Integrity Task Force claims that concerns about Georgia’s elections are little more than “conspiracy theories” that have unfairly damaged public confidence. This framing is not only inaccurate — it is contradicted by multiple documented cases, court findings, and official records that reveal serious, recurring problems with Georgia’s voting system. If Georgia’s elections are truly the most secure, fair, and accurate in the nation, why did the Secretary of State feel the need to create an Election Integrity Task Force? Let’s examine the record.

These issues are not abstract theories. They involve missing ballot images, double-counted ballots, unverifiable QR codes, compromised security credentials, and repeated failures to follow basic chain-of-custody requirements. These problems have been raised in federal court, adjudicated by the State Election Board, and confirmed through open records requests.

In the 2022 DeKalb County Commission primary, candidate Michelle Long Spears initially appeared to finish third. After precinct-level analysis showed zero votes for her in the precinct where she votes, she requested a hand recount. The Secretary of State’s office opposed the request. When DeKalb County conducted the hand count anyway, Spears moved from third place to first. This single race demonstrated that the electronic results could not be trusted without a human-verified paper trail.

In the Rossi/Moncla case (SEB2023-025), the State Election Board confirmed that Fulton County produced 17,852 ballots with no corresponding ballot images, 20,713 votes that could not be traced to any source tabulator, and 3,125 double-counted ballots in the 2020 General Election. The case also documented more than 140 election code violations by Fulton County. These findings were not made by activists — they were accepted by the Governor’s office and adjudicated by the State Election Board itself.

In the federal case Curling v. Raffensperger, cybersecurity expert Dr. Alex Halderman demonstrated in open court before Judge Amy Totenberg that he could hack a Georgia ballot-marking device using only a ballpoint pen and change votes. Judge Totenberg had already ruled that the QR codes generated by these machines violate Georgia law (O.C.G.A. § 21-2-300) because voters cannot verify that the QR code accurately reflects their choices. The system also conflicts with the federal Help America Vote Act’s requirement that ballots be humanly verifiable. Other expert testimony in this case revealed that risk-limiting audits based on ballotmarking devices are meaningless, as the voter’s intent can never be known — what was shown to the voter on the touchscreen is not verifiable.

In the DeKalb GOP v. Raffensperger case, open records requests revealed that Dominion’s X.509 encryption certificates were stored in plain text on the Election Management System servers. Using these certificates, the system administrator password was decrypted and has since appeared on publicly available merchandise. Both of these issues violate basic cybersecurity protocols for securing election computer equipment and role-based access controls.

After the 2024 election, analysis of Dominion tabulator tapes from multiple counties found that poll workers were certifying results under the “Local Election Authority Act” — a Canadian statute that does not exist in Georgia. This error had gone unnoticed since the Dominion system was installed in 2020. When it was brought to the attention of the Secretary of State’s office in January 2025, a chief of staff reportedly responded that “it doesn’t matter.” The language was only corrected for the next election cycle after legislative pressure.

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Dem Candidate, Music Superstar With Sick Sexual History Defended Fellow Musician’s Video In Which He Gropes and Kills Woman

Do Democrats even bother to vet their candidates for sexual depravity in their past, or do they just wing it?

This has been an open question since the Graham Platner disaster, but at least the man who won the Maine Democratic senatorial nomination and then was forced to give it up after a rape allegation topped off a long, sordid, and documented history of perversion gave it up. Bobby Pulido is still running, and while he’s never been accused of rape, the Texas U.S. House candidate’s past is so deeply troubling that he should have bowed out long ago.

In the latest resurfaced problem for the congressional hopeful and Tejano music star, Pulido defended the artist behind a controversial 2016 music video in which the musician tortures, gropes, and then kills an unfaithful girlfriend.

Pulido called it “the decision of the artist and their team” — which, considering the decisions Pulido has made in the past, is probably not the statement he wanted resurfacing.

According to Fox News, the controversy involved Mexican folk singer Gerardo Ortíz and the video for his song “Fuiste Mía,” or “You Were Mine.”

The video initially shows pictures of a happy couple — the singer and another woman. Then, Ortíz discovers her being romantic with another man.

Ortíz pulls a gun out of a cabinet and shoots the man dead. He then corners the cheating girlfriend, handcuffs her, gropes her, and shoves her into a car trunk while choking her.

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Letitia James: Postal Service and POTUS Don’t Have Jurisdiction Over Elections

Wednesday on MS NOW’s “On the Line,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said the U.S. Postal Service and the president do not “have jurisdiction over the elections.”

James said, “I and my Democratic attorneys general will continue to challenge this rule, because this rule will create nothing but chaos and confusion in the state of North Carolina. In less than 11 days, they will mail out ballots to individuals who are in the armed forces, as well as to citizens in these United States. And it’s critically important that individuals understand that the only reason why this rule was created is because individuals, particularly those in the White House, believe that they cannot run on their record and therefore they have to steal this election. This is nothing more than an attempt to suppress the right to vote. And I and my Democratic colleagues will fight this all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”

She added, “Let’s be clear, the United States Postal Service and the president of these United States does not have jurisdiction over the elections, it is states and it’s in the Constitution. And that’s why it’s critically important that individuals understand that states have the power and the duty and the responsibility to administer elections, not the president and definitely not the postal system.”

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Iran Says Persian-Language Media Outlets ‘Funded By CIA’ Are Military Targets

One key tool Washington has long utilized for influence operations and covert regime change plotting abroad has long been the establishment of foreign media for political messaging.

The idea is that a foreign language satellite news channel gets presented as ‘independent’ while in reality it beams propaganda onto a unsuspecting population within a so-called ‘rogue’ state being targeted by the US.

For example, WikiLeaks previously revealed that US intelligence invested heavily in such projects to bolster anti-Assad forces and sentiment in the context of last decade’s proxy war in Syria.

Currently, Iran says it is fully aware of several Persian-language media outlets which are subversive, given they have the backing of the US, UK, or Israeli governments, or others like Saudi Arabia.

The AFP in a Wednesday report has said Iranian state media has newly called out the following as hostile propaganda media fronts:

  • BBC Persian
  • Iran International
  • Radio Farda

An Iranian military spokesman has said these have been added to the armed forces’ “military target bank” – putting the outlets on notice that their offices and infrastructure could come under attack.

“These hostile media outlets are the soldiers of Zionism and America and are included in our military target bank,” military spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi announced.

He charged that they are “directly connected to Mossad, CIA and enemy intelligence organizations.” He emphasized: “The Iranian Armed Forces do not view these news outlets as media.”

And interestingly, per AFP: “Iran has designated Iran International as a terrorist organization since 2022 and has warned that cooperation with the channel is punishable under Iranian law.”

Earlier in the Iran war, we featured analysis which pointed out that Iran International calls itself the “most popular Persian speaking foreign based news channel in Iran”.It employs 700 people and broadcasts into Iran from London via satellite, radio and social media outlets.

Iran International has been accused by critics of promoting “regime change” in Iran and advancing the position of the former shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, for a return to power. The outlet has long denied links to Israel or Saudi Arabia. The outlet reported heavily on protests that struck Iran at the beginning of this year, sparked by a cost-of-living crisis brought on, in part, by US sanctions.

In January 2025, the news site reported that more than 36,500 people were killed in a crackdown on protests. Those numbers were significantly higher than those estimated by the US and other western-based human rights groups.

US President Donald Trump cited casualty numbers similar to those reported by Iran International days before launching a war on Iran on February 28, but did not disclose where he had gotten the death toll number.

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The Media Made the Midterms About Trump. He’s Taking Them Up on It.

President Donald Trump knows exactly what Democrats plan to run against this November: Orange Man Bad.

So President Trump made a decision that has some political professionals reaching for the smelling salts. MAGA Inc. has roughly $400 million in its political war chest, and Trump wants part of it used for national advertising that tells voters what his administration has actually accomplished.

The strategy is almost embarrassingly logical. Democrats plan to make congressional races a referendum on Trump.

He’s accepting the invitation.

From The Atlantic:

President Trump gathered his top political advisers in the Oval Office early this month to solve a problem of riches: how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections.

Republican strategists are concerned about Trump’s low approval ratings and voter anxiety about the economy. One person familiar with the Oval Office strategy meeting put it this way: “When the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters—or voters are pissed off at you about those issues—the question becomes: What do you campaign on?” Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues.

But Trump himself has rejected that approach. House and Senate Democrats, the president noted during the meeting, will make their fall campaigns a referendum on him. His advisers told him that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know about many of his accomplishments—the dozens of new stock-market highs, a decline in fentanyl deaths, the “sealed” southern border, the increase in domestic-manufacturing production.

The solution Trump settled on, according to three people familiar with the meeting, was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself. The president ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests. Trump wanted what one person described to us as “environmental lift” ads—commercials that would focus on nationalizing the midterms broadly around his victories—and he suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks. “Go look at the clips,” the president told his team, according to this person. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”

Critics scream danger! Trump’s approval numbers are weak, voters remain worried about prices, and the president isn’t personally on the November ballot.

Some Republican strategists would rather spend the money entirely on individual House and Senate candidates.

Trump sees a larger problem: voters can’t judge accomplishments they rarely hear about.

Consider the record. His tax law created deductions for qualified tips and overtime, increased the deduction for seniors, and created a deduction for interest on qualifying American-made vehicle loans.

Those are no longer campaign promises: they’re in the tax code.

Then there’s the border. Southwest Border Patrol encounters fell 93% in May 2025 compared with May 2024, while releases of illegals by Border Patrol dropped from more than 62,000 to zero for the month.

Trump also ordered the operation that captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on Jan. 3, 2026. U.S. forces apprehended Maduro and his wife, ending years in which an indicted Venezuelan strongman operated comfortably in America’s hemisphere while Washington mostly issued statements about him.

Iran’s nuclear infrastructure took another beating under Trump. U.S. strikes against Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan severely damaged key nuclear facilities, with intelligence assessments concluding that several would require years to rebuild.

Somehow, a president who delivered tax relief, shut down much of the border chaos, captured Maduro, and smashed critical Iranian nuclear infrastructure is supposed to quietly sit while Democrats define his presidency for him.

Why?

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Top Iowa Democrats Urge Kamala Harris to Stay Away From Their State Ahead of Midterms

Two of Iowa’s most prominent Democratic candidates have urged former Vice-President Kamala Harris to stay away from their state ahead of the midterms.

Iowa gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand was asked by POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin whether he wanted Harris to come and campaign for him.

“No thanks,” he responded: Let’s move on. We need some new leadership.”

Asked whether Harris should run again in 2028, his answer was similarly emphatic.

”No,” he said.

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Iowa Dem Josh Turek Advised Illegal Immigrants How to Avoid ICE Detainment in Official Newsletter

Obama-endorsed Iowa Democrat U.S. Senate nominee Josh Turek has portrayed himself as a “common-sense” moderate, even as his official legislative newsletter advised illegal immigrants on avoiding ICE detainment and as he called for an “easier pathway to citizenship.”

Turek, who has been an Iowa state representative since 2023, is running against Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA). He has described himself as a “prairie populist” and a “common-sense” lawmaker capable of appealing to “Iowans of all political stripes.”

But Turek’s immigration record complicates that moderate pitch.

Turek’s official legislative newsletter included guidance for illegal immigrants on avoiding detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A section of Turek’s newsletter titled “Know Your Rights as an Immigrant,” which includes a link to the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) “Immigrants’ Rights” page, stated:

Given the recent policy changes enacted by the Trump administration on both legal and illegal immigrants, I wanted to provide a thorough list of your rights and how they apply in different scenarios. The ACLU is a great resource that provides tips on what to do in various situations. Please click here to read more.

Turek first called for “an easier pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants in April and used the same phrase again this month in an interview with the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

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