Hunting Ridge Sale

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65 Hunting Ridge Road, $7,075,000. Good looking house, 6 acres, and on the west (higher) side of Hunting Ridge, which has better views. Owners paid $5.695 million in October, 2021, but did put some money into improvements/updating between then and now.

the mandatory animal pelt, naturally

laundry’s a bit undersized for a six bedroom home, but buyers in this range usually send their wash out anyway.

Border games

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That’s what we meant to say all along!

Southern border apprehensions plunge more than 90% from year ago in April, CBP says

Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have plummeted 93% under President Donald Trump's administration, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection released Monday.

The CBP says it averaged 279 apprehensions per day at the southern border in April, compared to 4,297 apprehensions in April 2024. The total apprehensions for April this year landed at 8,383, compared to last year's 129,000.

CBP officials also noted that just five illegal aliens were temporarily released into the U.S. during April, compared to 68,000 during the same month last year.

"For the first time in years, more agents are back in the field – patrolling territories that CBP didn’t have the bandwidth or manpower to oversee just six months ago," said Pete Flores, acting commissioner of CBP. "But thanks to this administration’s dramatic shift in security posture at our border, we are now seeing operational control becoming a reality – and it’s only just beginning."

The report shows the Trump administration's continued progress on controlling the border since March. The CBP recorded the lowest southwest border crossings in history in March, with fewer apprehensions in the entire month than there were in the first two days of the month in 2024 under the Biden administration.

Border Patrol apprehended a total of 7,181 illegal aliens attempting to cross the southern border between ports of entry in March. This constitutes a 14% decrease from February, when Border Patrol apprehended 8,346 aliens, and more dramatically, a 95% decrease from the 137,473 aliens apprehended under the Biden administration in the same period in 2024.

And the same story up north:

'Main hotspot' at northern border records 95% drop in illegal migrant apprehensions in March:

The number of illegal immigrants caught along one northern border sector that was once "overrun by illegal migrants" has dramatically declined under the Trump administration after it saw thousands of unlawful crossings last year, the White House said Tuesday.

Only 54 illegal immigrants were apprehended last month in the Swanton Sector, which stretches more than 300 miles, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"This is a drastic 95% drop from the more than a thousand border crossings that were caught in March 2024," she said. "This is a main hotspot area that recorded more than 80% of all apprehensions along the northern border during the 2024 fiscal year."

In fiscal year 2024, 19,222 illegal immigrants were apprehended along the sector. The migrants hailed from 97 countries, sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia said at the time.

The apprehensions amounted to more than the past 17 years combined, authorities said. In FY 2020, the agents assigned to the sector apprehended 574 illegal immigrants, followed by 365 the next year.

Seems like an appropriate time to revisit CT’s reigning moron, Chris Murphy, and his fellow-stooges:

What's he gonna do, wave his hankie at us?

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Royal defense: King Charles coming to Canada to send Trump message about 51st state

Britain has one aircraft carrier — unfortunately, the funds aren’t available to equip it with planes, but it looks pretty impressive even without them. Their submarine fleet, such as it is, is obsolete and sinking, and their army has shrunk to nothing. In fact, Britain has nothing to offer Canada should the US invade, as the hysterics up there seem to believe we will. In fact, fellas, we don’t want either of you, or your pathetic, failing countries.

Britain's shrinking military

The weaknesses in Britain's contribution to Nato became starkly apparent in February this year, when a group of British MPs visited a Nato military site in Tapa, Estonia, where British soldiers are deployed (alongside Danish and French troops). The point of the base is to deter or slow down an invasion from Russia - which is just 80 miles away over a land border.

Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat MP and former British Army Officer, said the Estonia visit was like going back in time, seeing the same equipment as when he first joined the Army as a reservist in 2004: ageing Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles. What one former General described to me as "legacy kit from the 1980's" - old and dwindling in numbers.

About 1,000 British troops are stationed at the site. At the time of the MPs' visit they were armed with some drones - though not many. Nor did they have much in the way of systems to block or jam enemy drones, either. They also have a handful of long-range artillery guns - important for land warfare. The British Army currently has a total of just 14. Even tiny Estonia has double that number.

Did we know there was still an Episcopalian Church? I thought they’d closed their social gathering halls when they decided that Christ was optional

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Apparently the old dears are still going, at least a few of them, and now they’ve proclaimed that the Jesus in which they once believed calls them to be racists (“well, we always were, but now we’re on the right side — isn’t that cool?”

Meeting of the klavern, Christ Episcopal Church: “We’re symbolic blacks, now, and let that be sufficient unto tHe day”

In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday (May 12) that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a letter sent to members of the church, the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe — the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church — said that two weeks ago the government “informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.”

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe wrote. “Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.”

While I was away ...

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Another sale in the Mimosa Drive area was reported: 9 Serenity Lane, listed at $3.150 million, sold for $3.760. The original 1965-69 spec houses in this neck of Cos Cob are all being replaced or greatly expanded and renovated, and prices reflect that. As I pointed out to a commenter wondering at the huge price just achieved on Benenson, the houses mostly sit on an acre apiece, the streets enjoy low-traffic and are quiet, and the houses are filled with young families, all of which makes for a very nice neighborhood. All that said, this was a huge number over ask, and I’m surprised by what it reveals about the market demand right now.

Electrolux is gone, and so is the blue collar neighborhood that was next to it

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9 Fairfield Avenue, Old Greenwich, was listed for $1.699 million 8 days ago and is pending today, so probably going for more. The previous owners listed it for $1.395 in 2020 and only got $1.170 (from these owners); COVID market vs. present one.

The current iteration of this 1909 house shows a very nice renovation, mostly done by those 2020 sellers, but it wasn’t very long ago that Fairfield Avenue/Rockland Place homes were awfully cheap compared to those on other nearby streets; the tiny tenth-of-an-acre lots remain, but the houses are becoming unrecognizable.