The Morning Briefing: It's Awesome to Have the Feds Focusing on Real Criminals Again

Top O' the Briefing

Happy Monday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. The commissary will be closed until next week while we repurpose the salad bar as a pizza volcano.

Wow, I'm worn out from watching that Rousey-Carano fight.

As we are all too well aware, present-day Democrats are firmly aligned with some of the worst people in the world. I'm speaking of the party's power brokers and elected officials, of course. I haven't become so jaded that I think that Ma and Pa Legacy Democrat in Salt of the Earth Iowa are pro-criminal.

In the Democrats' morality-free, topsy-turvy world, you and I are the bad guys. When the drooling moron Joe Biden was doing his puppet thing in the Oval Office, his handlers tasked various federal law enforcement agencies with going after almost anyone except the actual bad guys. As I wrote on more than one occasion duing that dark time, I didn't feel like a domestic terrorist, but the government kept insisting that I was one.

As of January 20, 2025, you and I are miraculously no longer existential threats to the Republic. President Trump immediately refocused the attention of federal law enforcement on violent law breakers and the results have been spectacular. That's one of the biggest reasons that the Democrats are so angry all the time — their precious criminals are being incarcerated and/or deported.

Recent news of successes have been staggering and impressive. Here is something Catherine wrote about yesterday:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized enough illegal fentanyl this fiscal year to kill 100 million Americans, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed May 15.
DHS confirmed the report in The Epoch Times Friday, sharing both the outlet's article and a boast about the Trump administration's success in an X post. Federal immigration officials just announced 12 straight months without any releases of illegal aliens at U.S. borders, a massive contrast to the hundreds of thousands that crossed monthly under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Fentanyl has repeatedly been proven to be far more dangerous than those Catholics who pray outside of abortion clinics and were frequent targets of Biden's goon squad version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Democrats frequently pay lip service to tackling modern societal ills like fentanyl, President Trump actually tackles them.

The news about the border is stunning. Throughout the four years that Biden and his commie cabal polluted the presidency, it seemed as if they were deliberately trying to make the border situation as untenable as possible. They spent a few years insisting that the border was secure. Once it became impossible to maintain that charade, they engaged in some insanely dramatic hand-wringing, swearing that there was nothing that they could do about it.

President Trump did something about it, and in a relatively short period of time. Gosh, could the Democrats have been lying all of that time?

There's more good news. Sarah has a rundown of some heavy-hitters who have recently been taken off the board. This is from her post:

🚨 Today the FBI and our partners extradited the highest ranking member of Tren de Aragua (TdA) ever brought to justice - Jose Enrique Martinez Flores, aka "Chuqui.

Flores just arrived in Houston from Colombia this evening.

This is the first time ever that a TdA member has…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) May 14, 2026

It's important to remember that all of this serious — and often dangerous — work is being done under relentless, unhinged pressure and resistance from the Democrats and their violent street urchins. The president, his administration, and federal law enforcement personnel remain laser-focused on the life-or-death task at hand.

We're all better off, but half the country refuses to admit it. It's a lot more fun being on the side that can enjoy it.

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The Mailbag of Magnificence

Roger R. will get us going this week:

I have whiplash from a comment apparently made by that total TOAD Jamie Raskin this week. Seems to me it was treated like a shooting star by the media because I only saw it one time. I'm old now at 3/4 of a century but WTF (doesn't mean Winning the Future) when this Congressional critter with a D behind his name asks why ICE can't just pick the illegals up at the jails? Is that for real?

Yeah, that was a real winner. My HotAir colleague David Strom covered that last week. Raskin is one of those Democrats who is so stupid that I wonder how he buttons his shirt without poking out his eye. I don't say that about all of them, by the way, just the super paste-eaters.

Allen L. weighs in on the "vegan Spam" SQNS reference:

Kruiser - The SQNS is in rare form today. I know for a fact that I've seen two cans of vegan Spam in a Dollar General store just off the coast of Maui (the store was under only a foot of water, btw). The locals swear by it. Of course, they swear by anything named Spam, but that's not the point.

Thank you very much, Allen. Rare form is the best form, especially for the Sine Qua Non Sequitur. Although I haven't spent much time there, I do know that they love their Spam in Hawaii. I started developing a taste for it myself when I was in my forties. I don't eat it often, but I have picked up a few interesting recipes from Instagram.

We'll finish with this from Friend of the Briefing Gail:

Yes, the Golden State is a disaster. But even you, Stephen, have related fond memories of better times here. My California consists of central coast beaches and forests from Santa Cruz to Monterey. Grandma was born near Watsonville in 1872, and my father and his brothers grew up outside Santa Cruz. I lived many years in a forest cabin and there wrote my only haiku: “That dusty-sweet scent — wafting through a redwood grove — on a warm Summer’s day.”

The California that I love is a spectacular place. If that weren't the case there wouldn't be so many people upset by what the Democrats are doing to it. One thing I rarely mention is that I lived in San Diego for a few years when I was a kid. All in all, I spent almost 30 years of my life as a California resident. I won't let the left kill my memories. I only went to the Central Coast a couple of times — the last time for a gig in Monterey — and wish I'd made it up there more. It's absolutely charming.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in. Please keep it up, even if I don't respond the first one or two times!

Everything Isn't Awful

Crab suspisciously takes a piece of bread and then gracefully departs.. 😅 pic.twitter.com/xyNiROCYaq
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 17, 2026

The Kruiser Kabana

Kabana Gallery

Still Life with Two Large Candles #artbots #beckmann pic.twitter.com/rPKu7LJ8Wi
— Max Beckmann (@artistbeckmann) May 17, 2026

Kabana Comedy/Tunes

'80s Mood Monday.

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