The United Kingdom has a new Prime Minster after Kier Starmer's resignation. Andy Burnham takes over, but will anything change?

 

British Prime Minster Andy Burnham. Reuters. 

The United Kingdom has a new Prime Minster after the resignation of Keir Starmer. Reuters. Andy Burnham will take the post and will meet with King Charles. Burnham faces extreme problems including poor economic growth and underperforming utilities. Burnham will also have to deal with forming a cabinet and staving off criticism from Nigel Farage's Reform UK party. However, Burnham has already scrapped one of the more unpopular Starmer policies to force digital ID for employment. 

My Comment:

The Reuters article seemed to ignore the elephant in the room and the biggest problem in the UK today, immigration and the two tier treatment for immigrants versus natives. Though the economy is a huge problem too, immigration is the thing that has neutered the Tories and made Nigel Farage's Reform party a real force, and a party that is likely to win during the UK's next elections in 2029.

To be fair, the UK has clamped down on immigration to some degree. There are less immigrants showing up and it sounds like Burnham will be more open to deportation than Starmer is. But the real problem is how Labour can get rid of the immigrants without losing their far left supporters, and I don't think there's a path for that. Without widescale deportations, Burnham is going to be extremely vulnerable to Reform. 

And I also don't see how he fixes the two tier policing problem the UK has. That's not something you can simply switch off, you have to fight a couple generations worth of indoctrination that puts Muslims above Christians, immigrants above citizens and Brown before White. And I don't know if Burnham even wants to do anything about it either. Burnham is saying the right things about this, but I get the feeling he isn't actually going to do anything. 

As for the Economy, I don't know how he can fix that either. I think if he wanted to, he could open up the North Sea for drilling, which would massively reduce energy costs over the long term, but Labour is unable to act on that issue. Same with ending energy sanctions on Russia, that's not happening either, even though it would greatly help. I also don't think any of their left wing economic theories are ever going to help their economy. 

But the news isn't all bad. They are getting rid of the absolutely draconian digital ID for work. Ostensibly, the digital ID was going to be used to ensure illegal immigrants couldn't get work, but folks thought, correctly, it would be abused by the government to keep their political opponents from work. The proposal was mostly dead under Starmer but it's completely scrapped now and it's good to see some successful pushback against digital tyranny. 

Regardless, I don't think Burnham is going to be successful. There are signs that Labour is starting to get some idea of what is wrong with the UK, but I just don't see them doing enough to reverse course. I do wish him well and I think he can hardly do worse than Kier Starmer... 

DHS finds 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in four states.

 

A demonstration in favor of the SAVE act. New York Post/Getty.

The Department of Homeland Security has found 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in four states. New York Post. The majority of these registrations were in California, with 191,000, but New Jersey (35,000), Nevada (16,000) and Pennsylvania (14,500) had many as well. It is unclear how many of those non-citizens actually voted and if they had any impact on any major races. It's a felony for a non-citizen to register to vote, though it's up to the states to confirm if the voter has a right to vote. The revelation was one of many revealed during President Trump's speech tonight on election security. 

My Comment:

I missed President Trump's speech tonight by accident, so I didn't see what he had to say about this, so this post will mostly be about the non-citizen voter issue. Trump also talked about China stealing US election data, major vulnerabilities in voting machines and inaccurate voter rolls. The non-citizen voter issue is the one that had numbers attached to it, as of this writing, so it's a little easier to analyze. 

To be clear, it's not proven that all of these people voted in elections. Some of these numbers may be mistakes, things like naturalized citizens data not getting updated, so I would expect that the numbers are a little bit better than they are. 

That doesn't mean that this is acceptable in any way. Even one illegal vote taints an entire election, and even if you managed to eliminate 90% of these voters as not actually being illegal, you have enough illegal votes to change outcomes of close races. 

Even more concerning is the fact that two of these states, Pennsylvania and Nevada, are swing states that could have entire presidential elections swing based on 10,000 to 15,000 illegal votes. And while New Jersey and California aren't swing states, they still have House districts, senate races and local elections too. And even New Jersey could potentially be a swing state in future elections, given how close Republicans have gotten in the past few elections. 

It's pretty clear that some of these votes could have changed election results in a few races. The margins might not be enough to overturn who won which states in 2020 or 2024, but they absolutely could have flipped congressional districts or even Senate races. 

And we don't know how bad the problem is. It's very possible that more voters are registered illegally in these states, and maybe more will be found. Worse still, this is only 4 states out of 50, who knows how bad this problem is in other states, most notably swing states? Even if the problem isn't much worse in other states, it could mean we have a million illegal voters. That's totally unacceptable. 

I do think that the SAVE act, currently stalled out in the legislative branch, could solve much of these issues. If you have to prove citizenship while registering to vote, which the SAVE act would mandate, it's almost impossible, without a huge effort to get fraudulent documents, to register illegally. It might not entirely eliminate the problem, but it would get rid of most of it. 

Either way, I do think it's pretty clear that folks don't trust our elections. Indeed, the people complaining about Trump pointing out that our election security is garbage, foreign citizens are registered to vote, and that China may have been attempting to influence or interfere with the election, are hugely hypocritical. Indeed, Trump's entire first term was about how he supposedly colluded with Russia to beat Clinton (which was false, but the accusation was made). 

The problem now is that both sides in America are only really going to trust elections when they win (and even then, I still don't trust them). Reform is absolutely necessary to bring back faith in our elections. The things we want are common throughout the rest of the civilized world, and even countries as dysfunctional as India (!!!) are able to get their election results in a day. It's absolutely time for America to step up and fix our elections. 

President Trump endorses Mike Lindell for Minnesota Governor...

 

Mike Lindell (background) behind President Trump. Minnesota Reformer/Getty.

President Trump has endorsed Mike Lindell for Minnesota Governor. Minnesota Reformer. Lindell, the founder of My Pillow, and a personal friend of Trump got the coveted endorsement over legislator Lisa Demuth and Army veteran Kendall Qualls. If Lindell wins he would likely face Senator Amy Klobucher, who has a large polling lead in the state. The move is controversial given the split in endorsements as both Demuth and Qualls has support at the local level. Lindell was leading in primary polling even before the Trump endorsement. 

My Comment:

I feel that this is a "white flag" on Minnesota. I had thought that the GOP had an opportunity to flip the governorship given how colossally bad Tim Walz has been as Governor but the Lindell endorsement seems like the exactly wrong move if that was the goal. Instead, this seems like Trump is just doing a solid for a friend because he knows the state isn't going to flip. 

If Minnesota was in play, I could have seen the Republicans use the same strategy that worked in 2021 in Virginia with Glenn Youngkin. Youngkin was a moderate Republican, so he didn't scare off the left-leaning moderates in Virginia. Youngkin was also able to use a huge political issue that the Democrats had no defense for. In Virginia it was transgender issues, in Minnesota it absolutely could have been corruption. 

Can Lindell do that? Possibly, but he's absolutely not the best choice for it. Lindell absolutely scares the "normies" and is pretty far to the right for Minnesota. Do I think he's right about election security and the 2020 election being crooked? Of course! But are moderates in Minnesota going to agree with him? I doubt it. 

I don't know much about Demuth and Qualls, but you would have to think that they would have been better choices to push the fraud angle and damage the DFL in Minnesota. Indeed, Lisa Demuth looks like the perfect candidate for a left-leaning state like Minnesota and I think she would be a much better candidate than Lindell. Lindell would be the better candidate in a true red state, but this is Minnesota we are talking about. 

To be fair to the DFL/Democrats, Amy Klobucher is a strong candidate. I don't like her, obviously, but she has a national profile and she is just distant enough from Tim Walz that she is probably untouched by his absolutely awful corruption scandals. Beating her would be tough, so it makes sense that Trump is raising the white flag here. 

Still, it's incredibly disappointing to me. I don't think Lindell has a real path to victory in Minnesota. To be fair, both Demuth and Qualls would have a longshot as well, but they would have a better chance than Lindell. It makes me sad as that means that both the Somali fraudsters that fleeced the state and the DFL party that enabled and profited from it, especially Governor Walz, will almost certainly go unpunished at the state level. The only hope now is that the Feds take a very long and close look at Minnesota. 

The only thing I can think of that might justify this is the idea that election security is about to be the main issue in 2026. Supposedly, Trump's nationwide address is going to prove foreign interference in the 2020 election. I'm skeptical that there is any level of fraud that would get the Democrats to admit that the 2020 election was a joke at best and outright fraudulent at worst, but if convincing evidence is presented, Lindell would be poised to take advantage of it. Even then, I don't think he's the right fit for this race and that Demuth or Qualls would be the better choice. 

The House passes a bill that would make Daylight Savings Time permanent. But will it become law?

 

The House has passed a bill that would make Daylight Savings Time permanent. NBC News. The Sunshine Protection Act passed overwhelmingly, 308-117, and now heads to the Senate. The bill would end the largely despised time change twice a year. The bill, which is supported by President Trump, faces long odds in the Senate as Senate leadership has expressed concerns over dark mornings in winter if the act were to pass. The yearly time change is fairly universally reviled by Americans, but many disagree if we should stick to standard time or daylight savings time. 

My Comment:

I don't think there has been any issue that has radicalized me more than Daylight Savings Time. The time change always ruins my Novembers and Marches as it usually take the entire month to get back to a normal sleep schedule, and maybe not even then. It's been scientifically proven that the time change leads to a lot of deaths, due to sleep depravation and heart attacks, but nothing ever gets done. 

Indeed, it seems like Congress is constantly teasing us on this issue. Either the House or the Senate passes a bill and then the other house just kills it dead for no reason. It's just absurd that an issue that has widespread support won't get passed and without any good reason. I know deadlock is the common fate of the legislative branch, it was designed that way, but it's absurd 

I don't think that anything will change this time around. Indeed, it doesn't even sound like the Senate version of the bill will make it out of committee. It's the same old annoying arguments, it's too dark in winter, kids will have to deal with the darkness, morning commutes will be dark. My answer to that is then make Standard time constant! And, besides, every criticism is just as true on Standard time because we strangely decided we should all go to work at 7:00 am and open our schools even earlier than that. Maybe that's what should change instead of the time!

There's also the idea that would we could change the clocks half an hour and keep it like that. A nice compromise between the Daylight Savings people and the Standard Time people. Why this idea never seems to get floated or voted on is beyond me too. Instead we are stuck with the status quo. 

Does this bill have any chance at all? Perhaps. President Trump is in support of the bill and he's got a lot of influence on the Senate. And, it's only been 4 years since a similar bill passed in the Senate, it's very possible that folks will see the light, so to speak, and actually fix this issue. 

But my gut says this won't actually happen. I honestly can't picture the legislative branch doing something that would actually help people. They are more focused on mandating digital ID, passing housing bills that don't make housing more affordable but will make it easier for illegal immigrants to get housing in nice neighborhoods an generally making things more miserable. 

The EU Is moving towards digital ID, obstensibly to ban children from social media.

 

Ursula von der Leyen. AP.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, said that the EU would work to ban children from social media. AP. The change would ban anyone under the age of 13 from social media and would require users to prove their age. Children between the ages of 13 and 18 would also have their access gated. Social media companies would also be forced to phase out "addictive" features, like infinite scrolling. 

My Comment:

This is the EU being tyrannical again. Though I do agree that social media can be harmful for kids and adults, the governments of the world aren't making these bans to prevent that harm. It's an excuse to do what they really want, which is digital ID. 

There is, of course, legitimate concerns about the dangers of social media for kids. I generally think that kids shouldn't be on most social networks. Some of this is due to the dangers of child predators, but that really depends on the website. Some sites, like Reddit, Discord and Kik, are notorious for this but most other social media clamps down on that hard. 

I do think there is also something to be said about short form video and infinite scrolling. I don't think watching brain-rot video for six hours is good for anyone and if I could ban short-form video I would. It really is sad to see folks wasting their lives doing nothing but watching TikTok or Reels. At least with other social media, like X, you are actively participating by making your own posts, but short-form video is entirely passive. It's bad for adults, but I do think that kids should absolutely not be watching it. 

But how do you do this without being tyrannical? I don't think there is a good solution tot his that wouldn't result in worse results than the damages that these websites cause. The best thing I have heard is an opt-out system that would lock the more damaging features behind some kinds of warnings. It would be bypassable for some kids, but it's way better than a digital ID. 

I don't think the EU cares about that, because like I said, they want digital ID. They don't like the idea that folks can have anonymous accounts on places like X because it allows people to speak out against them without fear of retaliation. Indeed, that's a major reason why I have been opposed to any kind of hard age verification for even adult websites because it's obviously not going to stay there and it will eventually be used to ensure that the government knows exactly who is posting what at anytime. Given that President Trump would absolutely not have been elected twice (well three times) without anonymous accounts, it's a clear threat to Americans.

And don't think that this kind of thing is a EU only thing. Many other countries have made these kinds of restrictions and quite a few US states have done similar things. And even the House passed the KIDS act, which is likely to fail because the Senate doesn't think it's strict enough! It's insane to me that any Republican supports this nonsense, given how badly it would be to shoot themselves in the foot, but more Republicans support it than Democrats. It really is a bipartisan issue to cancel anonymity on the internet.