Tex's Place

By Bob Hoge As we’ve seen, Donald Trump likes to think big, so it’s hardly surprising that when it was time for a new White House helicopter landing spot, he pushed for a massive 100-foot granite helipad capable of landing the biggest choppers out there. On Wednesday, he gave reporters an impromptu look-see: Builder-in-Chief. ⛏️ “This is a helipad at the highest level. It can land any helicopter in the world, no matter how big, no matter how powerful, no matter how strong.” - President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/u4XqY6fegc — The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 19, 2026 Trump: This is going to look incredible from the air and from every place else. And again, this is going to be used for a lot of different celebrations, a lot of different big meetings where, as an example, [Chinese] President X is coming in a little while, a couple of weeks… President Xi’s coming, other heads of state will come, and we can do this all outside. Nice weather like today. And this was not a...

By Victoria Taft I haven't seen such a recklessly steered case since the McMartin family was sent to prison based on emotion and politics instead of logic, reason, and evidence. And now, finally, a Minnesota judge will mete out a little justice in the case of Derek Chauvin, the cop who is alleged to have purposely killed George Floyd. Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin says that the charges against him were "illegal" and that his trial was a "fraud." The now-imprisoned cop and his lawyer are calling for the verdict to be thrown out because of civil rights violations so severe that the trial became a "one-year-long due process violation." Minnesota, though a basket case, may have one judge left who knows what justice is supposed to look like.  Chauvin, who used a knee hold to keep a resisting George Floyd on the ground while awaiting backup and an ambulance, was found guilty of murdering the drugged-out fentanyl user who had just taken ...

By Teri Christoph Indiana Fever megastar Sophie Cunningham had a pretty good game Tuesday night against the Toronto Tempo at Scotiabank Arena. The Fever beat the Tempo 101–95, and Cunningham finished the night with a solid 13 points and went a perfect 3-for-3 from the three-point range. Much of the hottest action, however, was outside the arena as the Sophie Cunningham appreciation tour moved north into Canada. Supporters of her unapologetic stance that girls and women's sports should be protected from biological males gathered outside Scotiabank Arena in a show of solidarity. The group was led by Canadian powerlifter April Hutchinson, and many of them were sporting XX-XY Athletics T-shirts – the same kind of shirt that recently ran afoul of the WNBA in Atlanta, Georgia. Hutchinson said everything was fine until a small group of "pro-trans" dissents tried to stir up a little trouble. She said it wasn't really a big deal as "Only about five were wearing pro...

By Ben Smith Iran's regime fired two ballistic missiles toward shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. The United Arab Emirates has had enough. Abu Dhabi responded by severing every trade, commercial, and financial transaction with the terror state, effective immediately. Roughly $28 billion in annual commerce is now gone. The UAE was Iran's single largest source of imports, a lifeline the mullahs just torched with their own missiles. UAE Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Afra Al Hameli made it official Wednesday. No end date. No conditions. Just a hard stop tied to Iran's escalating aggression. “All trade, commercial exchanges, and financial transactions with Iran have been halted until further notice.” No exemptions. No timeline for resumption. Al Hameli also cited international law and the integrity of the global financial system, the kind of language that signals Abu Dhabi is done playing nice. Neither missile hit land. The UAE said one went down inside its te...

By Teri Christoph If Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) thought it would be easy taking Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to court over an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, he badly misread the room. Ellison is trying to force Abbott to extradite ICE agent Christian Castro, who is facing charges in Minnesota stemming from a January shooting that took place during ICE's immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. Ellison had set an extradition deadline of 5:00 PM last Monday – a deadline Abbott happily ignored. And he had his reasons. Abbott, to Ellison's likely chagrin, isn't exactly known for caving to Democrats, particularly when the people trying to do the strong-arming are those who have spent years putting out the welcome mat for illegal aliens and fighting to keep them in the country. You could say that the governor of Texas is an expert on this topic. Abbott's response to Minnesota got right to the heart of the matter: "I don't ...

By Bob Hoge As we reported Tuesday, California energy regulators have adopted more punitive measures on Golden State drivers and are demanding that replacement tires in the future meet strict new guidelines regarding “rolling resistance,” or how much energy it takes to keep a tire moving down the road. What does that mean? Replacement tires will become more expensive for consumers, because that’s always how these things work. But CA officials at the California Energy Commission — appointed by the OG energy extremist himself, Gov. Gavin Newsom ­— apparently didn’t much like the colverage by KCRA’s Ashley Zavala, a reporter we’ve written about many times because she's one of the few journalists in Sacramento willing to regularly hold Gov. Hair Gel to account. Commission spokesperson Niki Woodard thought she’d drop Ashley a friendly little note: Feel like her next email will say, "Hey, great to see your work. Listen, I've got a deal you can't refuse." "And ...

By Ben Smith Gustavo Gordillo has opinions about what landlords should be allowed to earn. The New York City DSA co-chair also has a $1,457,000 Bed-Stuy rowhouse to live in, courtesy of his millionaire parents and the LLC they used to buy it. During a July 17 interview with Martha MacCallum, Gordillo claimed New York landlords average a 12 percent return on their investments. RedState covered the exchange at the time. Asked what landlords should be allowed to make, Gordillo answered, “We don’t think that anybody should have a constitutional right to double-digit returns on their investment.” MacCallum asked what he was talking about. Gordillo answered that such returns were “not in the Constitution” before accusing landlords of crying that the city’s rent freeze would put them out of business. The 38-year-old socialist has less experience worrying about rent than that Fox interview suggested. Gordillo lives with his brother in a two-story, nearly 2,000-square-foot rowhouse tha...

By Ben Smith A homeless man broke into a Portland granite shop before dawn, grabbed tools he planned to steal, and got shot by the owner sleeping in the back. Now he's suing that owner for $10 million, and a Multnomah County jury is being asked to take his side. The civil trial against James Grant and Touchstone Granite & Marble began Aug. 10. Kenneth Voyles wants $5 million in compensatory damages and another $5 million in punitive damages. His complaint accuses Grant of battery, assault, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It also claims the company is liable because Grant was securing the business when he fired. Around 5:30 AM on March 6, 2023, Voyles pushed through the shop's outer gate, pried plywood off a garage door, cut through metal bars and squeezed inside. He told jurors he was homeless, cold and hungry. He also admitted he was there to steal. Grant, who was 70 at the time, was asleep in a back room. He woke up and walked into the ...

Cosmetics, detergents and health and beauty aids are among products most commonly locked up by retailers battling organized theft rings. (New York Post) By Nicole Gelinas Outside Manhattan Criminal Court last week, Brooklyn Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher called the scourge of shoplifting that’s set in over the past decade the result of “crimes of poverty, people who are stealing things like toothpaste . . . And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them.” It’s hard to know which would be worse: that Gallagher isn’t aware that shoplifting is a gang-led, bulk-fencing scheme that costs jobs and that can escalate to deadly violence — or that she doesn’t care. The criminals responsible for a disproportionate percentage of New York City retail theft aren’t driven by hunger (or by a desire for clean teeth). They are repeat actors — people who steal and sell stolen goods for a living, or people who steal to support drug habits. As that well-known right-wing pundit Al ...

By David Churchville Barrow Daniel Morgan was a hard case from the start. He ran away from home at 17 after a fight with his father, finally settling in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He cleared land, ran a sawmill, and eventually built up a successful business as a teamster. As such, he was hired by the British army during the French and Indian War, accompanying Gen. Edward Bradock on his ill-fated campaign against Fort Duquesne. Apparently, a British officer’s arrogant criticism reminded Morgan of his father, and so he told the redcoat what he could do with his smart talk. The officer hit Morgan with the flat of his sword, and the rough-hewn frontiersman laid him out flat; boom-boom. For that he was sentenced to 500 lashes, which was often fatal. He joked the rest of his life that they miscounted, giving him only 499, and that they owed him one more. Going back to wagoneering, Morgan spent much of his earnings drinking, gambling, and seeking the company of women engaged in t...