To read this post please scroll down.

 

THANK YOU!!

 

My November fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. As I noted below, up until this month 2025 had been a poor year for donations. This campaign changed that, drastically. November 2025 turned out to be the most successful fund-raising campaign in the fifteen-plus years I have been running this webpage. And it more than doubled the previous best campaign!

 

Words escape me! I thank everyone who donated or subscribed. Your support convinces me I should go on with this work, even if it sometimes seems to me that no one in power ever reads what I write, or even considers my analysis worth considering. Maybe someday this will change.

 

Either way, I will continue because I know I have readers who really want to read what I have to say. Thank you again!

 

This announcement will remain at the top of each post for the next few days, to make sure everyone who donated will see it.

 

The original fund-raising announcement:

  ----------------------------------

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


House committee imposes major cuts to Justice, FBI, Commerce

As had been suggested by its decision to not impose any cuts (or increases) to the NASA budget, the House appropriation subcommittee in charge of Commerce, Justice, Science-related agencies imposed all of the 28.8% cuts required by the House leadership on the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Commerce department.

Overall, the bill appropriates $58.4 billion for programs under the jurisdiction of the committee, a $23.8 billion cut compared to the current fiscal year. It eliminates 14 “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the covered agencies, cuts spending on “wasteful” climate change programs, and saves more than $50 million by ending the Biden administration’s plan to replace auto fleets at the Department of Commerce and Department of Justice with electric vehicles.

According to the GOP summary, the Commerce Department would see a $1.4 billion cut in discretionary funding, and the Department of Justice would see a $2 billion cut. Federal science agencies together would face a $1.1 billion cut under the bill.

The FBI’s budget is to be cut $1 billion, or 9% (an actual cut, not a reduction in the increase in spending), with $400 million of that coming from salaries and expenses. It also forbids the agency from spending a dime on its planned dream of a new posh and palatial headquarters in the DC suburbs, twice the size of the Pentagon and costing more than $3 billion.

This is exactly what Republicans should have been doing for decades, and were too cowardly to attempt. If an agency of unelected employees in the executive branch abuses its power and causes harm to innocent citizens, something the FBI and the Justice Department have been eagerly doing since Trump became president, then it is the responsibilty and obligation of Congress to use its power of the purse to cut those agencies’ funding.

Even now, however, no one should be confident these cuts will end up in the final bill. This is only the recommendations of one subcommittee. There are still many Republican cowards in the full House, and even more in the full Senate, who will gladly team up with the Democrats (who are all in favor of the abuse of power and the harm to innocent citizens) to reinstate the cuts.

Nonetheless, this is a start. It indicates that we might finally have turned a real political corner towards reform.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • Cotour

    Related: Ron Desantis on CBDC

    https://www.tiktok.com/@ambrushfire/video/7255833644051287338?_r=1&_t=8e11sEzEOwV

    No ambiguity there.

    America must NEVER do such a thing.

  • Max

    TickTock? Really?
    It won’t play on my phone unless I voluntarily give them access to all my data, messages, bank accounts, location, and a live microphone so it can listen to everything I say to others. It will also screen what I look at, just like Google, and delete the thing’s that it doesn’t want me to see.
    Dangerous…

    Under the emergency authorization, the constitution and it’s protections no longer exist. Haven’t you noticed that all the government agencies are doing exactly what they want, when they want to? regardless of what the Supreme Court says? The evil the permeates our government and DARPA is so far removed from the will the people that they are acting in the open without any regard for any constitutional rights. At the recent FBI hearing proves they’re getting away with it!
    Here’s a program with a former pharmaceutical executive and a constitutional lawyer.
    Although the discussion is about the fake covid vaccinations, which are now admittedly “bio weapons” from the department of defense pushed upon pharmaceuticals by operation warp speed. Other ramifications are much more insidious in the long run.
    https://home.solari.com/sasha-latypova-interviews-katherine-watt-on-us-military-domestic-bioterrorism/

    Keeping in mind who holds all the cards right now, if there’s a cut back in funding… I can guarantee it’ll be a House cleaning of the whistle blowers and the Republicans and holding back all those that can be trusted to do what needs to be done. Think of it as “the night of the long knives” when the SS kill the rivals the brown shirts, their former friends that put them in office. The government will use this opportunity to secure there hold on power and yet at the same time create a private army working for the federal reserve that are currently being given military weapons for clerical work in the IRS.

    Never let an opportunity go to waste…

  • Jeff Wright

    This is beautiful.

    End the alphabet police..esp BATF..

  • Allan

    Thank you, Max. As only a casual follower of news (including alternative and free media) this is the first I’ve heard, specifically, why Tick Tock is bad. I think their subscribers are either unaware, or have no problem with and even enjoy their lives being an open book. Not caring about principles. Hence, the alternative name Thick Tock.

    The rest of your commentary is almost too depressing to bear. Thankfully, we have the information and the voting booth… Oh, wait.

    The best we can do for now, I’ve decided, is to just live our lives the best we know how, doing the right thing, being honest and productive citizens, supporting that which is good and shunning what is not. Do not succumb to hate or excessive anger. Set an example. Be ready to forgive when the time is appropriate but insist on justice and not forget, as you have not forgotten with your reference to the nazi era.

  • Cotour

    Related: JANET YELLEN DOES NOT INSTILL CONFIDENCE (sigma3ioc.com)

    Not if you are an American that is.

  • John

    We see this political theater periodically. It’s to give the illusion the opposition party is representing its constituents. The leash is a lot shorter when they control three branches of government.

  • I’ve decided, is to just live our lives the best we know how, doing the right thing, being honest and productive citizens, supporting that which is good and shunning what is not.

    IMO Allan, part of that is recovering and retaining our decision-making authority over our lives and families – looking to “experts” and “leaders” and “helpers” as advisers while we insist on thinking independently and having the ultimate say.

    Even when that means more effort – and risk – on our part.

    Even when that offends these notables and their book learning and elite status. For they lack your proximity- and consequence-informed insights … and they pay no real price for getting the answers wrong when it comes to YOU.

  • Max

    Alan, you’re welcome. But it is no secret that most apps collect data, TickTock collects more than most bypassing having to buy it from the other venues… It is linked to ransom ware used against government and state agencies because of employees passwords or official email being compromised. leading to it being banned for that reason.

    As for voting… mail in ballots, in a recent examination, were being sent to registered voters using an invalid address causing the ballots to be sent back to the post office. The mistake was to be corrected but the ballots were never resent, they were filled out and given to mules to dump in voting boxes. Just before the election, the addresses of registered voters was corrected to make it look like the fraud did not occur.

    Computer voting is another matter, here is a thorough investigation showing how what people was watching on TV was a simulation and not the actual voting. (there’s an interview with the authors of the article doing a detailed explanation at the bottom of the article)
    https://joehoft.com/breaking-exclusive-a-shocking-analysis-of-election-night-reporting-and-the-companies-that-manufacture-election-results/

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