Venezuela hit by two major earthquakes, dealing severe damage to Caracas.

 

Rescue workers save a person in Caracas. The Guardian/AFP/Getty. 

Venezuela has been hit by two major earthquakes that dealt severe damage to the country, including the capitol, Caracas. The Guardian.  The US Geological society said the country was hit by a 7.2 magnitude foreshock and a 7.5 "mainshock" seconds later. The epicenter hit the town of Moron, roughly 100 miles to the west of Caracas. Massive damage was reported, with many buildings collapsing and people being trapped. Venezuela is a tectonically active country, but earthquakes are comparatively rare compared to places like California and Japan.   

Reuters has live updates for this disaster.

My Comment:

This is a fairly extreme natural disaster which will likely result in casualties in the five to six digit range. A 7.5 magnitude earthquake is a fairly large one and having the epicenter be in a populated area near a major city is a major reason why casualties are expected to be very bad. 

Par of this is due to the relative rarity of earthquakes in the area. Earthquakes, even severe ones, are not unheard of in the country, but they are also not unknown. Indeed, they have had several large earthquakes, most notably in 1812 and 1967. 

Venezuela does indeed have regulations to protect from earthquakes but enforcement is a joke due to corruption. And many buildings are older than the regulations to. This means that many buildings collapsed. Given my X feed is full of collapsed buildings it's pretty clear that was extremely common in Caracas, and other cities. Indeed, in one clip I saw, it seemed like almost every building was damaged or collapsed.

🔴 #URGENTE | El terremoto de Venezuela destruyó la ciudad de La Guaira. pic.twitter.com/IeqBCHmKuo

— Mundo en Conflicto 🌎 (@MundoEConflicto) June 25, 2026

The disaster comes at a transitional time for Venezuela. Keep in mind, we removed and arrested Nicolas Maduro earlier this year. The country is essentially now a vassal state of the United States after that raid. The country seems to be fairly stable but this is going to be a huge blow to the country. 

I fully expect that the United States will be helping Venezuela out. America usually does provide disaster aid for countries regardless of the situation, but it's extremely likely to happen in this situation. Though the United States is under no obligation to help, given that they are a de facto, though not de jure, vassal, help will almost certainly be giving. Doing so would strengthen our relationship with Venezuela while not doing anything would probably completely destroy the relationship. 

The good news for Venezuela is that the United States still has major forces in the region. Right now we have a large fleet blockading Cuba and some of those forces could easily be rerouted to Venezuela. Most notably, our Amphibious Assault Ships are well suited for this role. We also are close enough to Venezuela that we should be able to send direct aid flights to them as well. Other countries are likely to send aid as well, with Columbia already committing to doing so. 

Eight Antifa members convicted of terrorism and receive long sentences.

 

The eight people convicted. Fox News/police release. 

Eight members of Antifa were convicted on multiple charges and received long sentences for their role in a 2025 attack on an immigration center in Texas. Fox News. The attackers had several firearms, fireworks, and body armor and conducted sabotage of ICE vehicles (slashing tires). Benjamin Song got the longest sentence at 100 years because he opened fire against a police officer, injuring him, leading to successful attempted murder charges. The rest were convicted on charges ranging from giving support to a terrorist organization, possession of explosives, and rioting. Supporters of the North Texas Antifa cell say the incident was a protest, not an attack and that Song was only using "suppressive fire", even though that would not be a defense for attempted homicide. 

My Comment:

This was as close to an open and shut case as you can get, so it's shocking to me that the media is still defending these people. To review, this was not a protest. It was an effort to try and break out detainees that were being held for deportation at this immigration center. Antifa showed up with weapons, armor, explosives and even med kits and they had a specific plan to break people out. The plan failed and it was only Song's poor marksmanship that prevented any deaths in this case.  

But the media? Even the wire services were framing this as a "protest" and not a riot or terror attack, which is was. They also go with the old standby lie that Antifa does not exist as an organization. This case directly disproves this because group was organized as a terror cell. The entire point of cells is to protect wider organizations and that's what happened in this case. 

I also think the sentences were appropriate. If this was a right wing attack, or even an Islamic terrorism attack, I don't think there would be anyone complaining about a 100 year sentence for the attempted murder of a police officer. But because these attackers were left wing, the left wing media is defending them. It shouldn't be controversial to say that a government should not tolerate people trying to break people out of prison via violence. 

With that being said, I do think this is a major victory against Antifa. These sentences are long and are sending a clear message that if you participate in an attack like this you will go to prison for many years, perhaps even the rest of your life. It is a huge difference to the 2020 peak of Antifa where rioters were given slaps on the wrists at best and got away Scott free at worst. 

There is evidence that the crackdown on Antifa under Trump is working. The last major action the organization was involved in was Minneapolis and even now they are still facing the justice system for that. Indeed, 12 members of Direct Action Minnesota, which has ties to Antifa, were arrested just last week for their actions in Minnesota. 

But we haven't seen the kind of widespread activity we saw back in 2020. Indeed, it seems a lot of these folks have gone underground or even abandoned the movement entirely. The absolutely can tell the tides have shifted and that they no longer have the level of political support they once had and very few of them are willing to risk long prison sentences for their actions.  That doesn't mean that the threat isn't still there, it absolutely is, but it's clear that they are on the defensive. 

British Prime Minster Kier Starmer resigns.

 

Prime Minster Kier Starmer announcing his resignation. AP. 

Embattled British Prime Minster Kier Starmer has announced his resignation. AP. Starmer announced his resignation, but will still serve until a replacement is found. Starmer made his announcement after his rival, former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, won an election, giving Labor a path to remove him if he didn't stand down. Brunham is considered the frontrunner to replace him. Starmer lead Labor to a landslide victory over the Tories but quickly lost faith with both his party and the British people. Starmer was rocked by scandals, including the Peter Mandelson/Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and was unable to turn the economy around. President Donald Trump scooped Starmer on his own resignation this weekend. 

My Comment:

What is shocking to me is the fact that Starmer isn't resigning because of any of the massive problems the UK has right now, like the military being a joke. He's not resigning because immigration is causing the country to be unstable. And he's not resigning because of the Pakistani grooming gang scandals. He's resigning because his party lost faith in him. And not because of any of those issues! 

So why did Starmer quit? His party lost the local elections last month. There doesn't seem to be any introspection from Labor as to why they did, they are just making Starmer the scapegoat. I think they blame him for their own issues but I do have to say that Starmer has zero in the way of charisma. 

Hilariously, President Trump announced the resignation over the weekend. I think that shows that their relationship has been greatly damaged and I don't think Trump is sad to see him go. Starmer famously did not help with the Iran conflict. Though his supporters say it was a moral stand, the fact was that the UK simply wasn't able to help because their military is just in that sorry of a state. They could have deployed a carrier but they had no destroyers available to escort the ship! The relationship never recovered. 

The problem with this resignation is that I don't think it will change anything. Andy Burnham is even further to the left than Starmer and I doubt that he is going to deal with any of the severe problems that the UK is facing. Indeed, I think he will double down on horrible things like forcing internet ID's, not deporting immigrants and not spending money on their military. 

Given that there isn't a mandatory election until 2029, it's no likely that there is going to be any change until then. Nigel Farage is set to win that election with his Reform Party, but everyone on the right expects him to betray the people that may put him into power and refuse to stop immigration and start deportations. That's the mood of the country from what I can understand, the country has very little in the way of hope. 

As for Starmer, how bad was he compared to other Prime Minsters? I'd say only the fact that he was a leftist made him worse than the ones that proceeded him. None of the Tory Prime Minsters were worth anything at all. I am glad to see him go, but I have zero faith that Andy Burnham is going to be any better? 

UK Grooming gang report ignored by media, estimated 250,000 girls and women were victims.

 

Big Ben at Parliament. Reuters/National Review, 

A new report detailing the grooming gangs in the United Kingdom estimates 250,000 women and girls were victims. National Review. A new, privately funded, report has been released by Reform Party leader Rupert Lowe which contains victim testimony from dozens of victims of the mostly Pakistani gangs. The reports detailed how women were groomed, raped, threatened, assaulted, and even forced to convert to Islam. More damningly, the report details how authorities, at best, ignored the crimes or, at worst, actively facilitated the rapes. In one case a police officer allegedly said "have fun with her" to gangsters after dropping off a victim to her group home. Critics say the UK government was indifferent to the attacks because they were too afraid of being called racist. 

The report can be found here. Be warned, it's a harrowing read. 

My Comment:

I'm obviously late on this story as it broke last week, but I have to say I was frustrated how little impact this report had. There has been very little media reporting covering this story, and what little there is was attempting to debunk the 250,000 number, as if that's the most important thing. Though the number is an estimate, it makes little difference if the number is 250,000, 200,000 or 50,000, the main problem is that there were huge gangs of pedophiles grooming girls. 

I generally think the number is plausible though. Pakistani grooming gangs have been a thing since the 1950's, and they have been active since then. They always had a large group of vulnerable and already abused children they could target and, since nobody was stopping them, they were free to act this way for decades. Indeed, it's very possible the number of victims is higher than the quoted numbers. 

The report is mostly witness and victim testimonials. I know that's not the most reliable thing in the world, but I do think that many of these cases are absolutely real. Certainly, there's enough documented cases of girls and women being abused in the UK by these gangs that all of these cases are plausible at worst. 

All of the stories seem to fall into a similar pattern, a young and vulnerable girl between the ages of 10 and 16 comes from a broken home. A Pakistani or other Muslim man initially takes an interest in the girl and poses as a boyfriend, but it's very quickly found out that he's interested in pimping her out to his friends and family. The girl might try to leave the life but the men threaten and even kidnap her until she eventually "ages out". Some of them were even forced into pregnancies or marriages. 

Another common theme is how utterly useless the UK government was in trying to stop these attacks. Many girls, or their parents or caregivers, reported what was going on only for the UK government to do nothing. In some cases they were even facilitating the attacks, placing young girls into group homes that regularly had men coming to pick up underage girls with nobody doing a thing about it. 

Was this all due to wokeness? I think it had a very big effect. Nobody wanted to be called racist and indeed, some folks literally went to jail for pointing out that these gangs were Muslims, mostly from Pakistan. There certainly were people that wanted to act but didn't want to get called racist or get punished by the government. And people were indeed punished for objecting to this, some of them serving long prison sentences. 

But I think a lot of people are missing a major aspect of this story, and that's the impact of classism in the United Kingdom. The one thing that the Muslim men and the rest of the United Kingdom seemed to agree on is that these lower class white girls were just trash. The Muslims thought they were infidels but the rest of the UK? They thought they were "chavs", useless and trashy white people that were worse than the Muslims that were abusing them. Not only was this classism, it was sexism as well, actual sexism, not complaints about video game tropes. Both the Muslims and the rest of the UK viewed these girls as "easy", even though they were children. 

Of course, the reasons why these girls were so vulnerable is because they were from chaotic and abusive households. It was pretty common for the girls to not have a stable family life and many of them were victims of sexual abuse from their family even before they grooming gangs got a hold of them.  

These girls would have been vulnerable regardless, but they would not have been subjected to an industrial level of grooming had the UK had a sane immigration system. Not only did they have little reason to bring in millions of Muslim migrants, mostly from Pakistan, they did very little vetting of the people they let in. Indeed, though America has their own various problems with immigration, we do a lot better job at making sure the legal ones are vetted and actually attempt to turn them into Americans. The UK doesn't do any of that and I think that's a major reason why this happened. 

Keep in mind that all of this is coming at a time of instability for the UK. Indeed, I am guessing tomorrow's blog post will be about embattled Prime Minster Kier Starmer resigning, but even in the past few months I have written four posts about how the country is falling apart. I do think that the people that are hearing about things like the grooming gangs and various murders caused by immigrants are getting pushed to the limit. If nothing else, the UK's problems make our problems here in the United States not seem so bad. The biggest story here appears to be the Iran peace deal and the nonsense with the reflecting pool... 

Supreme Court narrows Federal law preventing drug users from purchasing and possessing firearms.

 

Firearms and the Supreme Court. Fox News/Getty.

The Supreme Court has narrowed a federal law preventing drug users from purchasing and possessing firearms. Fox News. The law, which was used to prosecute Hunter Biden before he was pardoned by Joe Biden, said that anyone who uses illegal drugs was unable to posses firearms legally. The case was based on a Texas man who was arrested for admitting he smoked pot "every other day" while in possession of a firearm. The man was not intoxicated during his arrest, posed no threats to others and was not judged as an addict, it was only his statement that he was a drug user that got him in trouble. 

The Court said this was not sufficient under the standard set by NYSRPA v Bruen which said that gun laws needed a historical precedent, and that wasn't present in this case. However, the ruling was narrow, stating that old habitual drunkard laws would be a sufficient historical precedent to ban addicts, presently intoxicated people and people that have previously proven to be dangerous on drugs. It also does not seem to cover harder drugs, like cocaine and heroin. 

My Comment:

This is a strange ruling and kind of a hard one to explain. The ruling was very narrow, only saying the law was unconstitutional under very specific situations. The ruling is narrowed to marijuana and other similar drugs and probably won't help you if you are a user of hard drugs. If I understand the ruling correctly, it means that if you are a casual user of marijuana and you own a firearm, that no longer is enough for you to get charged with a violation of this law. 

A pair of examples would be useful here. The case at hand would have been good to go under this charge because he would have passed the test now set by this ruling. He was not carrying a gun while using drugs. He did not use hard drugs. He was not addicted to drugs. He simply smoked pot a couple of times a week. Under this ruling he would not be charged. 

But the Hunter Biden case? He would not have been helped due to this ruling. To review, Biden was charged with four crimes, lying on ATF form 4473, two counts of lying to a gun dealer and one count of possession a gun while being a user or addict of dangerous drugs. None of this would be changed by this ruling. Hunter Biden was in fact an addict of crack cocaine while he purchased a firearm, and crack cocaine is a dangerous drug. From what I understand, unless the ATF massively changes their rules or the law in question is massively changed as well, he would still be charged with all four crimes if he was arrested today. It fits well with the historical public drunkard laws so his charges would remain constitutional, assuming he wasn't pardoned. 

I do think that this is a win for both gun rights and marijuana supporters. It was always silly that someone could get charged with a felony for using a drug that was legal in the state they used. Indeed, it's a major reason why I have never used marijuana. I understood that doing so would potentially ruin my gun rights and I could get charged for lying on form 4473 if I ever purchased another gun. I have no plans to smoke pot now, it's still illegal in my state and I have zero interest in getting high, but it is nice that if I ever choose to if I travel or the law changes here, I won't have to sacrifice my gun rights to do so.  

Marijuana supporters will be happy as well. It's very clear that they seem to be winning the argument. I have never been a fan of pot and I think there have been real downsides for decriminalization of pot, but it's also clear that they have a ton of momentum. I would prefer if potheads all switched to alcohol given it's value as a social lubricant, despite it being a much more harmful drug, but that isn't in the cards. Either way, with pot being legal in some form in the majority of states and the drug being reclassified to a lower schedule, it's clear that marijuana supporters have been extremely effective in getting their goals accomplished.