GREGG JARRETT: Don Lemon left his press pass at the door when he joined church-storming mob

It is a popular fallacy that freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment is absolute. It is not and never has been.

The recent arrest of podcaster Don Lemon on federal criminal charges that he willingly joined a mob of anti-ICE protesters who stormed a St. Paul, Minnesota church during Sunday services will inevitably test well-established limits on press freedoms. 

Journalists, however defined, cannot, without legal consequences engage in incitement, defamation, obscenity, threatened violence, national security breaches, and the commission of crimes.  

Calling yourself a “journalist” or claiming that you are simply “committing journalism,” as Lemon has done, is not a defense. It is your  that the law examines. Both words and actions can reveal your intent.

MINNESOTA AG KEITH ELLISON DENIES DON LEMON, ANTI-ICE PROTESTERS VIOLATED FACE ACT AS DOJ MULLS CHARGES

This is why Lemon has found himself in criminal jeopardy. His own digital videos seem to incriminate him.  

In footage that Lemon posted online, it appears that he was not merely an observer recording the illegal protest inside the church, which would be a typical role of a reporter. Instead, he seemed to be an active participant who embedded himself with the mob and joined their cause in harassing and tormenting the parishioners.

Lemon confronted the pastor with contentious questions, the same way that the agitators accosted stunned —and perhaps fearful — congregates. You can see and hear him arguing on their behalf that they were allowed to invade the church, disrupt the service, and shutdown worshipers under the guise of the First Amendment’s free speech clause.

DON LEMON COULD BE PROSECUTED FOR EMBEDDING WITH PROTESTERS AT MINNESOTA CHURCH, LEGAL ANALYST SAYS

Not surprisingly, Lemon’s arrogant lecture shows a stunning ignorance of the law. Free speech is no more absolute than freedom of the press. 

In America, the right to protest does not extend to private property and certainly not to houses of worship. By law, they are protected places — secured spaces where people of all faiths can exercise their other First Amendment right to practice their religion without punishment or persecution.  

There are several federal statutes that afford protection. The Klan Act of 1871 makes it a crime for anyone to conspire to intimidate and interfere with the civil rights of congregants. A different act codified in 18 USC 247 prohibits the intentional obstruction, by force or threat of force, of any person’s free exercise of religious beliefs.

DON LEMON TAPS HUNTER BIDEN’S ATTORNEY TO FIGHT TRUMP DOJ CHARGES

However, the indictment charges Lemon with conspiring to deprive others of their civil rights and violating the FACE Act (18 USC 248). Section 2 of that law strictly protects places of worship from threats, intimidation and interference.

Predictable outrage over the charges was voiced immediately by Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, who declared that it was an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.” It was an ironic statement, given that worshipers were attacked for exercising  First Amendment religious rights.

Lowell, who represented Hunter Biden in two criminal cases resulting in convictions and guilty pleas, invoked Lemon’s right as a journalist to cover events of newsworthy interest.

JONATHAN TURLEY: WHEN MINNESOTA AG ELLISON EXCUSES MOB RULE, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS TRAMPLED

But is that what he was really doing? It is the core question that will be central in any forthcoming trial. Was Lemon acting as a journalist? Or did he shed that role and, by his behavior, join the mob as a willing participant? This is where his actions and words become pivotal.  

Based on video footage, Lemon knew of the protesters’ plan to barge into the church and take over morning prayers. He admitted that he had done “reconnaissance” with them, some of whom were members of Minnesota Black Lives Matter. He handed out donuts and coffee to the demonstrators and vowed to accompany them on their “Operation Pull-Up.” 

As activists rushed into the Cities Church, so did Lemon who shoved his microphone in the face of the obviously shocked Pastor Jonathan Parnell who called the noisy intrusion “unacceptable and shameful.” What followed wasn’t an interview, but a condescending and belligerent dressing-down.

THE CHURCH IS HOLY GROUND, NOT A STAGE FOR THE LEFT’S POLITICAL RAGE

“There’s such a thing as a Constitution and a First Amendment,” lectured Lemon, unaware that churches are protected venues and that such an antagonistic invasion constituted the crimes of trespass, disorderly conduct, disturbing a religious meeting, and violations of the FACE Act.

Whether Lemon behaved as a journalist or not is arguably irrelevant. Churches are private property, not public spaces.  Access is restricted. An invitation to the general public to worship does not give rise to a right to disrupt services.  Even assuming that Lemon acted as a journalist, he still committed a criminal trespass.

Indeed, when a parishioner objected that Lemon and the mob were trespassing, he glibly replied, “Nobody’s fighting.” That, of course, is not the litmus test for trespass. In another video, he boasted that the whole point of ruining the church service was “to make people uncomfortable.” He clearly shared that goal with the mob.

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Later, Lemon appeared on a leftist podcast and described the members of the church as “entitled white supremacists,” as if that somehow justified an attack on them. It is not just a despicable remark, but it suggests that the congregants were taunted because of their race, which could qualify as a hate crime.   

After Lemon learned that he was the subject of a criminal investigation, he suddenly embraced the mantle of victimhood by stating, “I’m the biggest name there.” As he has done before, he claimed that he was being targeted because he’s a “gay black man.”

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In our system of justice, Lemon enjoys the presumption of innocence. The case against him will not be an easy one to prosecute. Lowell is an able lawyer who will mount a formidable defense in casting reasonable doubt. He will also file a myriad of pre-trial motions challenging the indictment itself.

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If the case does go to trial, the outcome may further define the limits of what journalists can and cannot do in the pursuit of stories. Good reporters know that their job is to cover events, not to participate in or influence them.  

Lemon, who was fired from CNN, never seemed to understand this basic tenet of journalism.

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DAVID MARCUS: Why Melania and her fans deserve her silver screen star turn

Something that pretty much any honest observer should be able to admit is that if Melania Trump were the first lady of a Democrat president, she would be the greatest fashion and style icon since Jackie Kennedy.

On Friday, “Melania,” a documentary about the first lady and the 20 days leading to the 2025 inauguration of President Trump opens in theaters nationwide, putting her squarely in the spotlight for once.

It is frankly remarkable, given that Melania is literally a fashion model, that while former presidents’ wives such as Jill Biden and Michelle Obama regularly graced glamorous magazine covers, Mrs. Trump is treated as the icy foreigner when she isn’t just ignored completely.

This cold shoulder from the legacy fashion and social pages, while obvious, does not mean that the first lady doesn’t have a lot of loyal fans. Quite the opposite: Among Trump supporters, especially women, she is wildly popular.

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At Turning Point USA’s AmFest in Phoenix last month, many of the women I spoke with, mothers in particular, could not hold Melania in higher esteem, both as fashion icon and as someone with sway over the president.

One woman, in a sparkly custom MAGA jacket told me, “I think Melania is the only one Trump really listens to.”

The fans of the first lady are clearly the potential moviegoers that Amazon studios is after with the ambitious project, even though no matter how many see the movie, we all know it will be treated as a flop, a failure and a joke.

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In fact, the debasement of ‘Melania” has already begun. Take, for example, a USA Today headline that blares, “Mocking Melania Trump’s documentary is an act of patriotism.”

The author of this strange and unhinged column asks, “For starters, there’s the question of why. Why do we need this documentary? Who asked for it, aside from the film’s namesake? And who cares?”

This elitist attitude on the left, while not surprising from writers such as this, who have likely never met a Trump supporter, answers the question. People need or want this Melania documentary because these leftists blacklist her from everything else.

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The cultural institutions of our country and the Western world are still controlled by the left, and though their power over the populace is waning, they retain goodies and prizes to hand out that are for true believers only.

This is how President Trump can settle wars across the globe, and yet we know he won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s how the New York Post can break the Hunter Biden laptop story without a whisper of a Pulitzer, and it’s how the most stunning first lady in a generation can’t get on any magazine covers.

The film is already being knocked as a “vanity project,” but when entire cultural industries are blacklisting a person, as they are with Melania, how else can you reach your fans and tell your story?

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I have no idea how many people will see “Melania.” I do know whatever the number is will be mocked, but for the millions of Americans who admire the first lady, who want to know more about her and role in the White House, the movie is a very rare treat.

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The larger problem of anti-conservative bigotry and censorship in our cultural institutions will take a long time to fix, but there are positive signs. Recent shakeups in the venerated halls of such places as CBS News, the Trump Kennedy Center and Florida’s university system, for example, seem to annoy all the right, or should I say, lefty, people.

Other institutions, like fashion magazines, Hollywood and late-night TV, well, they still have quite a ways to go to achieve fairness and balance.

MELANIA TRUMP NAMED FOX NATION’S ‘PATRIOT OF THE YEAR’ FOR GLOBAL CHILDREN’S ADVOCACY WORK

President Trump is fond of noting that the attacks he suffers are really meant for his supporters, that he is just the one standing in the way. On some level, the same can be said of his wife.

Melania Trump is the stand-in for women who prioritize their husbands and families, who are accomplished but do not insist on honorifics, who go to church but can also rock stilettos and seductive gowns when the situation calls for it.

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These are women who are mainly mocked in our society, and yet behind the scenes, they make much of our society function, a role many think Melania Trump plays in the White House, as well.

So, good for Melania and good for her fans. They deserve this star turn, and if it makes a bunch of whiny liberals upset, then that’s just the tiara on top.

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Democrats can run, but they can’t hide: An immigration reckoning is next in 2028

How Democrats’ fear of enforcing the law led us to this point.

At 5:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, pounding on the front door jolted Johana Gutierrez and Salvador Alfaro awake as flashlights cut through their windows and voices shouted from outside. Inside, their children and relatives were asleep. Minutes later, armed men were standing in their living room.

The children, still in their pajamas, were crying and shaking as agents searched the home room by room — the bedrooms, the kitchen, the laundry room, even the garage. When Gutierrez reached for her phone, she was told not to move. When she offered to get identification, an agent rested his hand on his gun. She was threatened with arrest.

There was no judicial warrant. No emergency. The agents had entered by deception.

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By the time they left, a mother and her 10-year-old son were gone — taken away in unmarked cars to a detention center.

This was not Donald Trump’s America. It was Barack Obama’s.

The raid was part of a 2016 ICE operation that apprehended 121 people — mostly mothers and children — with final deportation orders. The ACLU called it “a mockery of due process.” Inside the Democratic Party, scenes like this left a lasting scar.

They also left behind a political myth: that Obama-era immigration enforcement was gentle, restrained or fundamentally different from what came before or after.

THE SUPREME COURT IS GOING TO GIVE PRESIDENT TRUMP A MAJOR OPENING ON IMMIGRATION

It wasn’t.

Obama never pretended enforcement was painless. “As long as the current laws are on the books,” he said in a 2011 speech in El Paso, “it’s not just hardened felons who are subject to removal, but sometimes families… or decent people with the best of intentions. We don’t relish the pain that it causes.”

He didn’t capitulate to interest groups or activists in the face of their criticism. He doubled down and enforced the law anyway.

Tom Homan — now Trump’s border czar — ran deportation operations under Obama. He was awarded one of the highest civil service honors by Obama’s DHS for removals that were described as “impressive and wide-reaching in scope.” Obama didn’t just inherit ICE’s machinery. He modernized it, expanded it and made it more effective.

Trump didn’t invent aggressive interior enforcement. Trump 1.0 exploited it — and weaponized it — adding cruelty, chaos and family separation to a system that already existed.

Inside the Democratic Party, however, Obama’s record became radioactive. “Deporter-in-Chief” wasn’t just a nickname. It was a warning label for anyone running for president in 2020.

JONATHAN TURLEY: DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS ARE RISKING LIVES WITH RECKLESS ANTI-ICE RHETORIC

And Joe Biden paid the price for it.

I saw it up close. Our campaign was hyper-sensitive — sometimes paralyzed — around immigration. Whenever the issue came up, Biden and Dr. Jill Biden emphasized humanity, restraint and decency. The message was clear: Biden would not be Trump. And he would not be Obama either.

In 1988, when George H.W. Bush promised a “kinder and gentler America,” Nancy Reagan famously turned to the person next to her and asked, “Kinder than who?” In 2020, our campaign answered that question preemptively.

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But in the White House, the rhetoric became policy. And policy became a catastrophe.

Biden’s hyper-correction away from both Trump’s and Obama’s enforcement models produced one of the gravest political and governing failures of his presidency. By dismantling deterrence, narrowing enforcement, and signaling retreat, our administration helped create the conditions for system-wide collapse, and ultimately, Trump’s return to power.

Biden didn’t cause global instability, regional violence, or economic desperation. But he did choose to govern in a way that prioritized intraparty accommodation and reassurance over systemic credibility. And once credibility is gone, it is brutally hard to recover.

For nearly two decades now, Democrats have been stuck in a civil war over enforcement. We pretend the argument is about compassion versus cruelty. It isn’t. It’s about whether a governing party can say, out loud, that enforcement is not a moral failure — it is a prerequisite for a functioning system.

Both Obama and Biden knew the truth: there is no executive solution to America’s immigration challenge. We are still operating under a 1986 law for a reason. Fixing it requires legislation. Legislation requires cooperation and compromise. And compromise is hard.

Instead, Democrats have turned ICE into a moral proxy war.

Not “How should it be reformed?” Not “What should its mission be?” But a loyalty test: Are you for abolishing it? Or are you willing to fund it?

Every appropriations cycle now becomes a ritual of self-flagellation. Funding ICE is treated as moral surrender. Defunding it is treated as virtue. The result is a party that often cannot say, clearly and honestly, whether it believes its own laws should be enforced at all.

So every Democratic president ends up trapped in the same vise.

Enforce the law, and you risk revolt inside your own coalition. Fail to enforce it, and the system collapses — and voters punish you.

Obama chose enforcement and paid a reputational price inside the party.

Biden chose accommodation and paid a governing and political price.

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Bad policy is bad politics.

The truth — uncomfortable but unavoidable — is that a country cannot function without credible enforcement. Not theatrical enforcement. Not indiscriminate enforcement. But visible, consistent, legitimate enforcement.

Borders without it are not compassionate. They are fictitious.

“Abolish ICE,” like “Defund the Police,” was never a serious governing proposal. It was a signal — a marker of moral identity. And like “Defund the Police,” it produced exactly what moral posturing so often does: confusion, backlash, and political self-harm.

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Obama understood something our party still struggles to say plainly: America is a nation of immigrants, and it is also a nation of laws. Those two ideas are not in tension. They depend on each other.

Until Democrats stop treating enforcement as a moral sin and start treating it as a governing responsibility, we will keep oscillating between virtue signaling and damage control. And future candidates — the 2028 Democrats — will keep paying the price for a debate the party is still too afraid to finish.

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The most unique thing Trump could do with stolen money recovered from blue states

Several recent news stories inspired me to think of a way to help the neediest in our nation. Most especially those being ripped off in our “blue” states. 

The first story deals with the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars stolen by organized fraud rings in Minnesota, California, New York and in a number of other “blue” states. Some estimates range well over $100 billion. Literally, the equivalent of the Gross National Product of many nations of earth being stolen from the American people.

The next story deals with the ever-growing controversy involving far-left Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s personal wealth. For years, many have wondered if Omar legally entered the United States and what her legal status is at the moment. But in addition to that mystery comes one news story after the other, seeming to document the fact that the personal wealth of her and her husband has skyrocketed of late. Inquiring minds want to know “how?”

Just one year ago, the congresswoman’s required federal financial disclosure form listed two assets at a combined maximum of approximately $51,000. Now, those two assets are listed at a combined maximum of approximately $30 million. Other than stock tips from former Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, what is Omar’s secret? Or, what is she hiding?

CONGRESS OPENS ‘INDUSTRIAL-SCALE FRAUD’ PROBE IN MINNESOTA, WARNS WALZ DEMANDS ARE ‘JUST THE BEGINNING’

Last, was a recent very telling report from Fareed Zakaria on CNN stating in part: “If America has an affordability crisis, it tends to be in places Democrats govern, like New York, Illinois and California, which all feature high taxes, soaring housing costs and stagnant outcomes in basic areas like education and infrastructure…” Always a bit shocking when CNN and the greater left admit to destructive policies pushed by the left, but truly welcome and much needed in this case.

CNN via Zakaria said the quiet part out loud. That being that in reality, it is the poorest and most disadvantaged in these Democrat-controlled “blue” states who pay the highest price – quite literally – for the ideological incompetence offered up by the far left in those states. Men, women and children who have long been taken for granted by the left.   

But, from such Democrat-manufactured chaos and misery, could come a great deal of clarity and … increased “affordability” for the poorest in those beleaguered states. As the Trump administration continues to successfully claw back billions in stolen taxpayer money from those “blue” states, I suggest it establish a “lottery” for the poorest and most disadvantaged legal citizens in those states.

I’VE WORKED THOUSANDS OF MONEY LAUNDERING CASES — FRAUD IS A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT

Once established, every single day, pick a name from the barrel and award that person $10,000. As one who grew up homeless as a child, I can assure you that such an amount is life-changing for those without.

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Such a lottery would have four immediate benefits. First, it would capture the news cycle and spread like wildfire. Next, it would awaken millions in these “blue” states – and tens of millions more across the country — to the fraud perpetrated upon them while cementing in their minds who just created the lottery to help them.

Next, it would demonstrate desperately needed and wanted accountability for such theft taking place. And last, it would create hope in those who have felt neglected and abandoned for decades.

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For those decades, far-left criminal gangs — often aided and abetted by far-left politicians — have successfully stolen billions of dollars from the American people. Now that the Trump administration has exposed this theft, flip the script against those who created and abetted these schemes by helping those most hurt by the crimes. The “Hunger Games” created by the left become the “Feeding Games” for those without.

I can assure you millions of Americans will sign up for such a needed — and eye-opening — lottery.

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Big Tech’s tobacco moment is here — and the truth about harming kids is out

For over a decade, child victims and their parents have been denied the chance to get justice for the harms they have suffered from social media’s products–ranging from anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, suicide, sextortion, and, in the starkest cases, death. Starting this week, they will finally have their day in court. 

On Tuesday, the first bellwether trial against social media companies began in Los Angeles, serving as the initial test case for many more pending lawsuits. Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube face more than 3,000 lawsuits in California alone, along with more than 2,000 additional cases in federal court. 

Startling evidence is already coming to light. One internal Meta employee message exchange compares Instagram to drugs and slot machines. “Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” “Lol, I mean, all social media. We’re basically pushers.” 

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This is a landmark case. Never before have we been able to see this evidence, to reach this stage of litigation with social media where courts, and the public, can finally see for themselves the choices these companies have made when it comes to minors.

For years, any lawsuits brought against social media companies were dismissed outright because of a law from 1996 called Section 230 that gives internet platforms immunity for harm caused by third-party content they host. But this new wave of cases takes a novel approach: Rather than alleging that harm to the victims was caused by the content victims were exposed to, they argue that harm was caused by the product design features of the companies themselves. 

These lawsuits do not blame bad content or “too much screen time,” dismantling the idea that parents are to blame for allowing kids to be online too much. Instead, they claim the defendants engineered their platforms to be addictive and failed to warn users about their addictive potential. 

TEXAS FAMILY SUES CHARACTER.AI AFTER CHATBOT ALLEGEDLY ENCOURAGED AUTISTIC SON TO HARM PARENTS AND HIMSELF

The features designed to foster addiction that are at issue include infinite scroll, autoplay, recommendation algorithms that send minors down rabbit holes, push notifications and “likes,” all of which create addictive dopamine-driven feedback loops to keep a user engaged for as long as possible. 

Parents are fighting back because Washington didn’t. Congress hasn’t passed a child online safety law since 1998, nearly a decade before social media even existed.

As with the massive litigation against tobacco companies in the late 1990s and opioid manufacturers more recently, the key question for the jury to decide in this social media trial is straighforward: Did these companies negligently design and market a highly addictive product to children and did they know — and fail to warn users—-that their products cause harms to minors? 

Critics of the social media lawsuits argue that these cases don’t belong in court – claiming that it is too difficult for victims to prove causation of their harms from social media, given the complex interplay of personal experience, personality and online exposure.

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Similar arguments, however, were also made in the past against bringing lawsuits against Big Tobacco or opioid producers. Critics argued that people fall into addiction for all kinds of reasons, and therefore companies weren’t to blame. But we know how those massive litigations turned out: multibillion-dollar settlements from Big Tobacco and the pharma companies to hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs who were harmed by their products. These social media suits appear to be on that same path. 

The evidence speaks for itself. Newly unsealed documents provide smoking-gun evidence that Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok all purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens and that youth addiction was an intentional part of their business models. 

The documents include internal discussions among company employees, presentations from internal meetings, and their own research studies. One exhibit of an internal report from Meta states that “the lifetime value of a 13 y/o teen is roughly $270 per teen.” Another Meta report says, “the young ones are the best ones” in explaining how young users have greater long-term retention for the company in using their products. 

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These companies quantified our children and their attention to maximize their profit value, all while knowing their products were harming minor users. Results of a Meta internal study on teen mental health found that “Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to” and that “Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addict’s narrative’ spending too much time indulging in a compulsive behavior that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.” 

Meta and these other platforms allowed our children to be harmed and said nothing. Now the public will finally know.

Unsurprisingly, two of the four companies in this first trial, Snap and TikTok, both settled before the proceedings began. These companies don’t want damning internal evidence that they knew their products were harming children, and they did nothing to change the design or warn users, to come to light. Nevertheless, parents and teens will finally have their day in court. 

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Parents are fighting back because Washington didn’t. Congress hasn’t passed a child online safety law since 1998, nearly a decade before social media even existed. Whereas Australia has recently passed a social media ban for minors under 16, with France and the UK proposing the same. In the United States, parents and states are the ones stepping in to the void to hold the social media companies accountable through the courts. If Congress won’t do it, parents will. 

This trial is the tobacco moment for Big Tech. 

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Why Trump sending Tom Homan to Minnesota is a stroke of absolute genius

This week, President Trump’s decision to deploy former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director and current border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota signals a deliberate and strategic approach to public safety — one grounded in accountability and a deep understanding of how law enforcement operates.

Minnesota has become a flash point in the national immigration debate. Already in focus for widespread fraud, Minneapolis is ground zero for violent protests, ICE operations and two fatal officer-involved shootings. State and local officials have responded by demanding limits on federal enforcement activity, with some openly calling for ICE to withdraw from the state altogether. At the same time, progressives in Congress are outright calling for the abolishment of ICE.

That reaction may satisfy political activists and agitators, but it ignores a far more dangerous question: what would actually happen if ICE were removed from Minnesota?

FREY, KLOBUCHAR CALL FOR ICE TO LEAVE MINNEAPOLIS FOLLOWING DEADLY CBP SHOOTING IN CITY

One of ICE’s primary missions is to identify, detain and remove anyone who has violated immigration law, particularly those with violent criminal histories. In Minnesota, where state and local authorities are prohibited from working with federal law enforcement due to sanctuary policies, ICE is the only agency capable of preventing repeat illegal alien offenders from returning to the community after arrest or incarceration.

Eliminate that role, and the consequences are predictable. Illegal aliens with records of violent assault, sexual offenses, gang activity or homicide are more likely to be released — not because they pose no threat, but because there is no lawful mechanism to remove them. That is not compassion. It is negligence.

In Minnesota, over 1,300 criminal illegal aliens currently sit in taxpayer-funded jails that ICE has been unable to access. Just last year, nearly 500 criminal illegal aliens were released back into communities. These are the results of dangerous sanctuary city policies under Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz.

This is where Tom Homan matters — and why his new role is a stroke of genius by President Donald Trump.

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Homan is not a political firebrand looking for headlines. He is a career law enforcement professional, with over 30 years of experience at ICE and U.S. Border Patrol, who understands the operational realities of immigration enforcement. Sending him to Minnesota is not about provocation; it is about restoring coherence to a situation that has grown dangerously fragmented.

Law and order is not a slogan. It is the foundation of our national sovereignty and public safety. When enforcement disappears, laws become suggestions, and communities bear the cost of repeated crimes and preventable tragedies.

That reality comes into sharp focus this week with the one-year anniversary of President Trump signing the Laken Riley Act into law. Riley was killed by an illegal alien who should never have had the opportunity to harm again. Her death is a painful reminder that policy failures are not abstract. They fall hardest on victims and families who had no voice in the decisions that failed them.

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Victim advocacy groups and law enforcement leaders have long warned that limiting ICE cooperation increases the likelihood that violent offenders will reoffend. When federal immigration enforcement is curtailed, local police are left holding the bag — expected to protect the public without the authority to fully do so.

This reckoning is unfolding as Washington barrels toward a partial government shutdown. With Department of Homeland Security funding set to expire on January 30, Senate Democrats have pledged to block funding unless sweeping restrictions are placed on ICE.

Supporters frame this standoff as a moral fight. But morality without responsibility is hollow.

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Even if DHS funding lapses, ICE and Border Patrol agents will continue working. They are mission-critical and will remain on the job, many without pay, supported in part by funding from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But there will be consequences: eroding morale, delayed operations and increasing pressure on officers. This budget fight may fit the political leanings of some, but the consequences will be measured in innocent victims.

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Americans want immigration enforcement and violent agitators prosecuted. But they also want accountability from law enforcement once all the facts are analyzed. Trust must be rebuilt.

But accountability does not mean abandonment.

Weakening ICE does not make communities safer. It leaves violent offenders in place and guarantees future victims will pay the price for political symbolism. It also increases the burden on local police, some of whom have been instructed not to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

President Trump’s decision to send Tom Homan to Minnesota reflects a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths rather than evade them. This represents genuine presidential leadership. Public safety cannot be governed by protest slogans or political optics. A humane system still requires enforcement. A lawful society still requires consequences. A government shutdown may be a useful political tool, but using it to undermine public safety is not principled. It is reckless and breeds more of the chaos we have witnessed recently.

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This is a test of whether lawmakers will prioritize ideology or responsibility, messaging or outcomes. In the end, governance is not about winning arguments. It is about whether people can live safely in their own communities.

That is a responsibility no government can afford to abandon.

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SEC CHAIR ATKINS, CFTC CHAIR SELIG : Team Trump readies crypto plan so Americans can count on their future

America’s financial markets are the strongest and most trusted in the world because they were built upon the premises of clear rules and fair enforcement.

Rather than adhere to these principles, the Biden administration chased headlines with flashy enforcement actions and instituted opaque rules that stifled progress. But thanks to the leadership of President Donald Trump, America’s financial regulators are returning to the basic tenets that made our markets the envy of the world.

As new technologies reshape the financial services landscape, we must ensure that innovation thrives on American soil and under American law – in service of everyday Americans.

To that end, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are re-launching Project Crypto as a joint policy initiative to better prepare U.S. markets for the digital era.

DIGITAL MARKUP: DEMOCRATS PUSH FOR GUARDRAILS IN CRYPTO REGULATIONS

As markets move on-chain, regulators must keep pace. Congress is advancing bipartisan legislation to establish a federal framework for digital asset markets. But legislation alone cannot deliver the clarity that investors and market participants need. We must pair it with disciplined regulatory execution, grounded in merit neutrality and free market principles. These are outcomes that the SEC and CFTC are ready to meet to usher in a new era of coordinated and durable financial regulation.

We have designed Project Crypto to ensure that when Congress acts, the United States is ready to reinforce our global financial leadership. That includes sequencing – not stacking – new requirements through sensible implementation roadmaps; creating clear regulatory on-ramps for compliant participants; modernizing surveillance tools to reflect on-chain and hybrid market activity; and engaging transparently with new entrants, incumbents, investors and consumers alike.

We must act quickly to upgrade our rules and regulations to accommodate blockchain technology, digital assets and the legislation to come, or risk ceding these emerging markets to foreign regimes.

At its core, Project Crypto and our broader harmonization efforts reflect a shared philosophy: financial regulation must be precise, not punitive. Rules must be narrowly tailored to address material risks, nimble enough to adapt to technological change and remain anchored in our agencies’ statutory authorities. This principle guides our approach to registration, disclosure, market oversight, custody, clearing and surveillance in digital asset markets – while avoiding the reflex to impose ill-suited legacy structures on new technological realities. 

COINBASE CEO: BIG BANKS ARE TRYING TO ‘KILL THE COMPETITION’ THROUGH CRYPTO REGULATION

For too long, bureaucratic regulators have forced market participants to navigate boundaries that are unclear in application and misaligned in design, particularly where economically similar activities are treated differently based solely on legacy jurisdictional silos. This fragmentation is not merely inconvenient; it limits innovation and hampers investor opportunities.

In on-chain markets, where trading, clearing, settlement and custody are integrated, regulatory seams create friction that impairs risk management, margin efficiency and surveillance effectiveness. As markets move, on-chain and participation deepens, these distortions only compound.

Maintaining duplicative or conflicting requirements for the same economic activity undermines market resilience and regulatory clarity. The status quo cannot sustain U.S. dominance in 21st-century finance. Project Crypto aims to address — and, where possible, eliminate — these conflicts.

The SEC-CFTC harmonization agenda begins with fundamentals: aligned definitions, coordinated oversight, and seamless, secure data sharing between agencies. Market participants should not be saddled with duplicative agency registrations and sets of regulations in order to offer economically similar products that can be effectively regulated under a unified approach. Harmonization strengthens standards through coherence, predictability and economic rationality.

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We must act quickly to upgrade our rules and regulations to accommodate blockchain technology, digital assets and the legislation to come, or risk ceding these emerging markets to foreign regimes.

Project Crypto represents a modern model of inter-agency coordination, recognizing that today’s markets do not conform to 20th-century silos. The SEC and CFTC bring complementary statutory mandates, supervisory capabilities and market expertise. Acting in concert, these capabilities become symbiotic rather than duplicative, delivering clarity and principled oversight as market structures evolve.

The stakes are high. Global jurisdictions compete aggressively to attract digital asset activity – some prioritizing speed over safeguards, others imposing rigidity that stifles growth. America’s advantage has always been its ability to balance both.

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If we fail to provide clarity, innovation migrates elsewhere. If we regulate with a heavy hand, we do not reduce risk, we encourage it. Project Crypto reflects our shared belief that the United States can lead by doing what it has always done best: pairing strong rule of law with an openness to progress.

The future of finance will be built somewhere. Through Project Crypto, and disciplined, harmonized, minimum-effective-dose regulation, we ensure that it is built here, under rules that protect investors, promote innovation and cement America’s leadership in the global financial system.

Virginia bait and switch: Spanberger unleashes Dems’ real, radical agenda

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was sworn in just a few weeks ago, but the tornado of bad policy is already swirling around her state.

Spanberger’s very first order of business was reversing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 47, which had allowed for coordination between the Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That coordination was important because it allowed the federal and state governments to cooperate to remove people in the country illegally who had committed additional crimes. That it was necessary for Spanberger to make it harder to deport criminals is a tell that her moderate campaign commercials will instead translate into a much further left administration.

Spanberger isn’t alone in moving Virginia sharply leftward. Both branches of the state legislature are now also controlled by Democrats, and they’re introducing policies that no one campaigned on. House Bill 863 would reduce minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter and child pornography. If Spanberger ran on “let’s let rapists off easy,” the Virginia electorate somehow missed it. In fact, Spanberger’s campaign ads highlighted her law enforcement experience and that she’s a moderate who works with both sides of the political aisle.

I’M THE NEW VIRGINIA GOVERNOR AND AFFORDABILITY IS WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS

Several other bills would raise various taxes and fly in the face of the “affordability” message on which Spanberger campaigned. One would raise sales tax on services like dry cleaning, another would add a tax on deliveries from Amazon and Uber Eats. Spanberger also noted she would rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which would likely make energy bills higher.

Then there’s House Bill 1442, which would prevent any enforcement of immigration law near polling locations. We’re told it’s very rare for illegal immigrants to vote in our elections and yet the Virginia legislature thinks a law like this is a high priority for the state. Why would immigration operations interfere with polling locations unless there are illegal immigrants voting at those polling locations?

Then there’s the chaos Democrats are wreaking at the Virginia Military Institute. VMI is a highly regarded military college with some notable alums, like Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. The House of Delegates introduced a resolution to form a task force to decide whether the VMI should continue to get funding from the state. They’re also politicizing the board of the school. 

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Spanberger appointed former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, well-known for taking a photo in blackface while in medical school, to VMI’s Board of Visitors. Northam will be taking the place of Garrett Exner, who was appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin. Exner was not given a hearing nor asked any questions before being replaced. On his X page, Exner quoted Senator Scott Surovell saying, there are “genuine concerns about the qualifications, backgrounds, and intentions,” of Youngkin appointees. Exner pointed out: “Mr. Surovell is not a veteran. He has never deployed. He has never prepared young men and women for service to the nation. I’ve dedicated my life to serving this country and helping the next generation of leaders succeed. I would like to know what part of my background Mr. Surovell finds, ‘concerning.’”

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There is no actual concern, of course. Exner told me VMI is just “the latest target of Democrats’ assault on America’s institutions. The school, with its strict honor code and devotion to merit, stands in direct opposition to the new ideals of the Democrat party — socialism and equity.”

Democrats are going to spend the next four years moving Virginia as far left as they can get away with — unless Virginians stop them. Virginians who want to save their state have to keep pointing out that Spanberger the candidate is not Spanberger the governor, and that the state government being fully controlled by the Democratic Party is turning lawlessness and social engineering into policy. Virginia can be saved from this, before it becomes another failed blue state with residents running for the door, but they need to act quickly.

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Not coming to America: The 60-year immigration bubble finally bursts

The U.S. has experienced various industry bubbles and bursts over the past six decades, including the 1990s dot.com bubble, and the housing bubble of the 2000s. A third bubble finally just burst in 2025, after growing for 60 years – immigration to America.

Multiple reports show that the U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for the first time since the 1970s. This course correction is long overdue and needs to continue.

The factors that led to these bubbles and bursts in three different industries are surprisingly similar.

The tech bubble grew following the commercialization of the World Wide Web, during a period of rapid internet adoption and technology startups. It was a time of low interest rates and economic optimism. A speculative market frenzy in tech stocks caused the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index to rise from under 1,000 in 1995 to its peak of over 5,000 in March 2000.

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By October 2002, the Nasdaq had fallen to just over 1,000 again, wiping out trillions in market value. The reasons for the bubble bursting were speculation of overhyped emerging technologies and unsustainable business models. This should have been a cautionary tale for the housing bubble.

In the late 1990s, housing prices started rising rapidly and accelerated in the early 2000s. Annual appreciation rates reached 15–17% in 2004 and 2005. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates from 6.5% in 2000 to 1% by 2003, which encouraged borrowing and home purchases. Banks and lenders lowered standards, offered subprime mortgages to borrowers with poor credit and often required little or no down payment.

Government policies required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to support affordable housing loans and financial institutions bundled risky mortgages and sold them to investors. Like the dot.com bubble, lenders and buyers speculated house prices would continue rising indefinitely. When interest rates rose in the mid-2000s and home prices stalled, borrowers defaulted en masse, the subprime mortgage market collapsed, and the bubble burst as part of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession.

I DID MY FIRST H-1B VISA INTERVIEW 25 YEARS AGO. IT’S FAILING TO PUT AMERICANS FIRST

Immigration to the U.S. – both legal and illegal – has become an industry since the mid-60s when Congress passed the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. That created the family-preference system, resulting in chain migration. Spouses, parents and children (both minor and adult) of U.S. citizens, and lawful permanent residents can permanently migrate to the U.S., along with adult siblings of U.S. citizens, all who, in turn, can sponsor their family members, creating a chain. The U.S. government has annually granted lawful permanent resident status to over 1 million aliens annually (approximately 75% family-based, 20% employment-based, and humanitarian) most years since 2001.

Illegal immigration began increasing since the early 1970s. In 1970, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended over 201,000 illegal aliens along the southwest border. That number consistently rose each year, first reaching over 1 million in 1983 and consistently exceeded 1 million annually through 2006.

The annual number of encounters ranged from over 300,000 to over 800,000, until the Biden administration opened the border to record levels of illegal immigration – over 7 million Border Parol encounters in four years.

UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANT POPULATION SOARED TO AN ALL-TIME HIGH UNDER BIDEN, NEW REPORT SHOWS

Since the 1970s, the U.S. government generally failed to apply consequences to the many common types of illegal immigration – sneaking across the border, overstaying visas, working without authorization, and committing identity and document fraud to remain in the U.S.

Meanwhile, employers were growing addicted to the cheaper foreign labor. Unions, which used to oppose illegal immigration, changed their position to support such immigration as a source of membership and power.

Politicians on the left who used to oppose illegal immigration likewise did a 180 for political power. They increased pathways for illegal aliens to enter and remain in the U.S., including creating visas for trafficking, domestic violence, and other crime victims, special immigration benefits for unaccompanied children, and default extensions and expansions of temporary protected status.

EXCLUSIVE: MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS LEAVE US IN RECORD-BREAKING YEAR UNDER TRUMP POLICIES, DHS SAYS

On the “legal” side of the ledger, the left turned temporary visas into permanent ones, increased caps and uncapped categories, watered down asylum standards, and ignored fraud.

During the Biden years, the left further inflated the bubble by weaponizing mass illegal migration for political power, votes, ballot harvesting, and Census headcount. The Biden administration annually paid tens of billions in federal grants to NGOs to facilitate mass migration to, and throughout, the U.S.

The left speculated that unlimited immigration could continue indefinitely. But the record numbers of migrants, the billions of dollars in costs for states and localities, the record crime and fentanyl deaths led to the bubble bursting. Americans voted in 2024 to secure the border and conduct mass deportations, which the Trump administration quickly did in 2025.

5 BIG IMMIGRATION CHANGES TAKING EFFECT ACROSS THE US

The clear result is the first net negative immigration rate to the U.S. since the 1960s, per multiple reports.

The U.S. Census Bureau just released its new population estimates, which show a historic decline in net international migration (NIM) to the U.S. It reports that NIM peaked at 2.7 million in 2024, declined to 1.3 million in mid-2025, and is projected to further decline to approximately 321,000 in 2026, if current trends continue. Brookings estimates net migration in 2025 ranged from negative 10,000 to negative 295,000, the first time it has been negative in at least half a century. Brookings expects this trend to continue in 2026.

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Pew Research reported that 53.3 million aliens lived in the U.S. in January 2025, the highest number ever recorded. By June, that number decreased to 51.9 million, the first decline since the 1960s. The Congressional Budget Office has made multiple updates to its Demographic Outlook since January 2025 due to lower immigration.

This negative trend needs to continue. America still has millions of deportable aliens here. Resources are still going to them instead of American taxpayers.

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Housing shortages and costs are still too high. American college students, graduates and employees are still struggling to be admitted into universities, interviewed, hired and retained for jobs as they compete with foreign students, graduates and employees, and now also face AI competition in the labor market.

As long as these factors continue, the immigration bubble should not be reinflated.

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Trump successfully turns off crazy Biden era regulations on your home appliances

President Donald Trump has sharply diverged from his predecessor on nearly every issue, perhaps most of all concerning federal home appliance regulations. The Biden administration loved regulating appliances, imposing new requirements for stoves, dishwashers, furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, light bulbs, refrigerators, washing machines and more. Trump wasted no time targeting such meddling with an Inauguration Day executive order reconsidering these regulations, and his administration is making progress on this priority. Here is an overview of what the administration achieved in year one on home appliance regulations — and what remains undone.

1. Dishwashers and washing machines — These are arguably the two most overregulated home appliances. Washing machines have faced six rounds of successively tighter energy and water use limits over the decades while dishwashers have had four, and the results have been downright painful for consumers. There is evidence that washing machines now require additional maintenance and don’t clean as well or last as long. And dishwashers take two hours or more to complete a load of dishes, twice the amount of time that it took before the feds started tinkering with them. Nonetheless, the Biden Department of Energy (DOE) tacked on yet another round of restrictions for both appliances that will take effect over the next few years.

Thankfully, the current DOE has proposed repealing the most troublesome parts of these regulations, so washing machines and dishwashers might actually start getting better rather than worse.

SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION UNVEILS NEW INITIATIVE TO ROLL BACK FEDERAL REGULATIONS

2. Central air conditioners — All of these appliance regulations raise prices, but the biggest increase by far was for residential air conditioning systems.  A homeowner replacing a 15-year-old system that probably cost around $5,000 when new is likely to face more than twice that amount today. While several factors play a role in this unfortunate trend, the single largest reason is a Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule mandating that all cooling systems manufactured after January 1, 2025, meet new climate change requirements. Industry sources report price hikes of up to $3,000 last summer — the first one under the Biden regulatory regime — and that comes on top of other EPA and DOE measures that had already increased prices in the preceding years.

The Trump EPA is attempting to turn the tide with a proposed rule providing more compliance flexibility for these systems. If successful, it could help moderate any further air conditioning cost increases.

3. Water heaters — It’s the appliance homeowners rarely ever think about until the moment it stops working, but Biden’s regulators gave water heaters plenty of attention. One December 2024 DOE regulation would have effectively banned tankless gas water heaters — the kind that heat the water as needed and don’t require a storage tank — by imposing prohibitively expensive new requirements. Fortunately, last April, Congress and President Trump enacted a law repealing this regulation and thus preserving the tankless option for homeowners who prefer it. However, the deregulatory news on conventional tank storage water heaters is not so good, with a separate Biden-era regulation still on the books that is estimated to raise costs by as much as $953 when it takes effect in 2029.

4. Furnaces — Biden’s 2023 furnace regulation may be the worst one that has not yet been revisited by the Trump administration. It effectively outlaws gas-fired non-condensing furnaces, which is the best option for millions of older homes. Even the DOE estimates its rule will result in cost increases of up to $853 when it takes effect in 2028. Industry sources fear a larger price boost, which will fall disproportionately on lower-income homeowners.

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5. Showers — Trump complains a lot about federal water use restrictions for showers, but he alone can’t repeal them since they come straight out of a 1992 law that can only be undone with the help of Congress. But modest improvements are possible, and the president did issue an executive order and a DOE rule adding a bit more wiggle room to the way the agency interprets the law. Hence, the water use limits now apply to each nozzle rather than the overall unit, so showers with two or more nozzles are legal.  A recently-passed House bill would codify this modification, but there is yet no Senate version.

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Overall, the Trump administration has initiated a good deal of appliance-related deregulation in its first year, but equally important is what Washington has stopped doing – it is no longer piling on new regulatory restrictions, as Biden did at a furious pace for four years and a President Kamala Harris would have very likely continued doing. Quite the contrary, the feds have done a U-turn and are now focused on revisiting measures already on the books and making changes to them. 

It’s a solid start, but only a start. Some of the above-mentioned reforms can and should go further, and there are still several appliance regulations, such as those impacting furnaces and water heaters, that have yet to be addressed. We can only hope that the fight for homeowners continues to be a Trump administration priority for the next three years.

MORNING GLORY: Minnesota tragedies aren’t instant replay calls you make from the couch

An officer-involved shooting is not a disputed call in an NFL game, where the announcers offer opinions on the call made on the field as various angles are played for the audience at home and the network’s in-house referee expert weighs in on what he thinks might happen while filling airtime. The officials on the field know instant replay angles have to be studied on a very constrained timeline and that the play in question is being discussed and debated by millions as they talk among themselves. The stakes aren’t life and death, but they do involve vast sums of money and the careers of the officials, players and coaches. Sports officials are grateful for multiple angles and for input from league headquarters.

NFL camera shots are numerous and precise. That makes them very different from the collection of iPhone videos, Ring camera recordings and limited body-camera footage that circulated online after two officer-involved shootings in the Twin Cities.

Those videos were most definitely not taken by professionals. They may in fact distort the actual events that occurred. In any event, in this era of AI manipulation and selective editing, they cannot be trusted simply because you saw them in slow motion on your X feed.

CBP/BORDER PATROL AGENTS PLACED ON ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE AFTER DEADLY CONFRONTATION WITH ALEX PRETTI

The two shootings in Minnesota occurred within seconds. Neither was planned. Unlike professional sports, the cameras were not pre-positioned. And the public has not seen everything law enforcement investigators have.

All of it is a tragedy, two tragedies in fact, neither of which is close to being definitely adjudicated under the legal standard of “reasonable force.” The available video is simply not dispositive because it does not include the sworn testimony from the officers involved or the near-by pedestrians. The justice system will evaluate those actions, as it always does. It will be some time before a determination is reached and we know the decision.

No matter how many angles of either or both shootings you have studied, and no matter how many times you have watched each of them, you do not know what happened in full.

JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP ADMIN FROM ‘DESTROYING OR ALTERING’ EVIDENCE IN DEADLY MINNEAPOLIS SHOOTING

The point of this column is in a country addicted to instant replay and decisions made within minutes, the patience required for serious deliberation and adjudication has eroded. It’s been worn away. We almost all watch sports. We almost all “call” pass interference when it benefits our team. Most fans think “targeting,” to name just one particularly difficult to define infraction, occurred or didn’t occur based on their allegiances. And we are passionate about it. Sometimes for decades.

That is not this. That is a habit of judgment to which we have become accustomed and indeed expect, but it is a habit that does not belong here.

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No matter how many angles of either or both shootings you have studied, and no matter how many times you have watched each of them, you do not know what happened in full. If you have an opinion on either shooting that presumes to declare one or both unlawful or unjustified, you are not telling your audience of family and friends anything other than the reality that your judgment is not to be trusted. Because you are uttering conclusions based on incomplete evidence.

There’s a reason — actually dozens of them — why our criminal justice system functions methodically. It exists to protect the rights of the accused. Shootings involving suspected criminals are naturally upsetting for all of us. Snap judgments about the reasonableness of force — including officer-involved shootings — are always irresponsible.

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These are not games to be watched, cheered or mourned like sporting events. Two officer-involved shootings that leave grief and sadness in their wake cannot be made better by online inquisitions or mob judgments by mobs from the left or the right.

Just wait. We will know in due course.

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Charlamagne and co-hosts say modern kids lack work ethic, aren’t shoveling snow for cash like migrants

“The Breakfast Club” host Charlamagne tha God and his co-hosts argued Tuesday that many of today’s young people are not taking odd jobs to make money — like shoveling snow — that many past generations would have done, pointing to a decline in work ethic. 

“Now, this came from, of course, we got a little blizzard. And I ain’t see too many kids out there shoveling snow,” co-host DJ Envy explained for context on the show.

“I really was thinking about that yesterday because I’m like, ‘Man, this is a day to come up,’” Charlamagne said. “It looked like 16-17 inches of snow where we live at in New Jersey, New York City area.

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“It’s like ‘Yo, go out there, get a shovel’ and these kids, you can get the electric shovel that when you hit the snow it just damn near disappears. You can go get, you know, snowblowers for the cheap. There’s all type of ways that you can go out here and make some money. I don’t know why these kids ain’t out here getting it. And, by the way, y’all want to complain about, you know, people from other countries taking jobs? Them Mexicans was on it yesterday.”

Charlamagne said some migrant workers pulled up to the area where he lives and “made some bread” by clearing away the snow.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD REVEALS WHAT SURPRISED HIM MOST ABOUT POLITICS IN 2025

He offered a suggestion for why modern young people are different.

“Y’all kids just don’t know how to hustle no more, cuz all y’all hustlers on social media. Y’all too busy trying to get likes and engagement,” Charlamagne said.

“And then social media makes it seem like anything like that is corny,” co-host Jess Hilarious added. “Like, they don’t want you to do that now, that’s not ‘cool’ to do now.”

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However, Charlamagne gave some credit to the younger generation. 

“I do want to say something to these kids though,” he said. “These kids do have new hustles. So, like, you might have a kid that, like, that’ll make candles. You know what I’m saying? Like, these kids do different things that may not necessarily be the blue-collar work we used to do, but some of them is out here, you know, being creative with their hustles.”

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Molly Ringwald warns that people who support ICE will be seen as ‘collaborationists’

Actress Molly Ringwald issued a stark warning Tuesday to those who refuse to protest what she described as monstrous actions carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In a four-minute video shared to her 1.4 million Instagram followers, the 1980s movie star explained that people who collaborated with the Nazis were later held criminally accountable.

She predicted the same fate awaits those who support ICE in the United States.

“A lot of people collaborated. And then there were people that did not collaborate and were part of the resistance,” she said. “Eventually, they got their country back. Those people who collaborated were found to be criminal. And that is what’s going to happen.”

Comparing it to present day, Ringwald drew a moral division line between Americans protesting ICE operations and those who are not.

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“If you don’t care about that, if you only care about yourself, then realize that you are going to be seen as a collaborationist,” the actress warned. “I don’t think that anyone wants to be on the wrong side of history. So, please, please use your voice and protest.”

Ringwald said she felt compelled to speak out after the killing of Alex Pretti, 37, who was fatally shot by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis Saturday.

“I feel like I can’t stay silent, and neither should you,” she said. “There’s something horrible, horrible going on in our country right now.”

Ringwald likened the Trump administration to a fascist regime.

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“This is a fascist government,” the actress said. “It’s not becoming a fascist government; it is a fascist government. And ICE is brutalizing people.”

Condemning the administration’s immigration enforcement operations, the actress argued that ICE agents have lost their humanity.

“They are monsters,” Ringwald said. “They are human beings as well, but they have forgotten that they’re human beings, and they have become monsters.

“Please don’t let yourself become like that. Please remember your humanity.”

Ringwald also lamented the “good people” who have been brutalized by immigration officers.

CBP/BORDER PATROL AGENTS PLACED ON ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE AFTER DEADLY CONFRONTATION WITH ALEX PRETTI

“These are children who are being taken away from their parents. These are mothers who are being killed. These are fathers. These are ICU nurses,” she continued.

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The actress concluded the video with a call for moral responsibility, pointing out the loss of basic humanity of some under the “fascist” Trump administration.

“Please do the right thing and stand up and use your voice,” she concluded.

DAVID MARCUS: Spurning Trump means Mayor Jacob Frey owns Minneapolis mess

After protest, agitation and chaos rocked Minneapolis over the weekend, President Donald Trump has offered leaders there an olive branch, and placed the political ball squarely in their court.

Trump’s offer to Mayor Jacob Frey and Gov. Tim Walz began with a very real concession, by replacing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and gung-ho Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino with the arguably more moderate Border Czar Tom Homan on the ground. The move angered many border hawks in his own party.

There are some who legitimately fear that if the hardcore agitators, who have been harassing and impeding federal agents, see this as a win, it could spread like wildfire across blue cities.

But Trump didn’t only offer carrots to the hapless leadership in the Gopher State, he also included some sticks. They came in the form of very basic demands to hand over illegal immigrants in Minnesota’s criminal justice system.

FREY, KLOBUCHAR CALL FOR ICE TO LEAVE MINNEAPOLIS FOLLOWING DEADLY CBP SHOOTING IN CITY

Here are Trump’s four demands:

• Turn over illegals in local jails or subject to arrest warrants to the feds.
• Have state and local law enforcement commit to turning illegal immigrants over to the feds.
• Make local police help the feds track down and detain illegal immigrants wanted for crimes.
• Partner with the feds to “protect American Citizens in the rapid removal of all Criminal Illegal Aliens in our Country.”

For Trump’s part, if these demands are met, he promises to reduce the federal footprint in Minnesota, because, frankly, many agents wouldn’t be needed anymore with cooperation from local police.

BONDI BLAMES MINNEAPOLIS LEADERS AFTER ARMED SUSPECT KILLED, UNREST ERUPTS DURING ICE OPERATION

Before we get to Frey’s deeply irresponsible reply to this offer, we should be clear that all four of these points should already be in practice, given the Constitution’s supremacy clause, as they are in most American locales.

So, the offer is basically, turn over your criminals like the law says you must, and suddenly no one is getting raided in the wild, and no “law-abiding” illegals are getting swept up in the process.

Within hours of discussing Trump’s offer with Homan, Frey took to X saying he made clear to the administration that “Minneapolis does not and will not enforce immigration law, and that we will remain focused on keeping our neighbors and streets safe.”

AGITATORS SWARM TIM WALZ’S OFFICE IN MINNESOTA CAPITOL TO DEMAND IMMIGRATION JUSTICE

In other words, “Shove it, Mr. President.”

On Wednesday, Trump fired back.

“Surprisingly, Mayor Jacob Frey just stated that Minneapolis does not, and will not, enforce Federal Immigration Laws. Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the Law, and that he is PLAYING WITH FIRE!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

BORDER PATROL COMMANDER GREGORY BOVINO TO LEAVE MINNESOTA, AS TOM HOMAN TAKES OVER

My only quibble is that Trump claims he was surprised.

For his part, Walz has thus far taken a different approach. After a meeting on Tuesday with Homan, his office offered rather pleasantly, “The Governor and Homan agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue and will continue working toward those goals, which the President also agreed to yesterday.”

The key difference here may well be that while Walz represents the entire state, while Frey represents only loony Minneapolis where many if not most of his constituents do not want any cooperation with Trump.

TRUMP DEPLOYS BORDER CZAR TOM HOMAN TO MINNESOTA AS ICE OPERATIONS FACE VIOLENT CHAOS

In fact, on Tuesday the capitol in neighboring and equally lefty St Paul was stormed by protesters chanting ‘ICE out now,” and “Do your job,” presumably a message to their own governor.

Walz is starting to sound like he wants an offramp from the chaos, but Frey, of George Floyd era kneeling and weeping fame, isn’t ready to let go of his role as leader of the Trump resistance, yet.

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What Frey’s obstinance in the face of a common sense solution tells Minnesota and the nation is that, for inexplicable reasons, he values protecting criminal illegal aliens over peace on his own streets.

Leadership is more than just riding waves of popular sentiment, as Trump showed by disappointing immigration hardliners with his dressing down of Noem and Bovino. Sometimes, a leader must tell his own people of the need for compromise.

Hopefully, Frey understands that Trump’s offer is the best chance he has to quell the chaos and violence that has rocked his city, assuming that is what he wants, and assuming he doesn’t want even more clashes with the feds.

If Frey refuses, then Trump’s only options will be to continue operations or allow a two-bit Minneapolis mayor to single-handedly nullify federal law, something that must not happen.

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Nobody knows what Trump is actually threatening when he says Frey is “playing with fire,” but if the mayor decides to stand not only in defiance of, but arguably in rebellion to, the federal government, then Trump will no doubt have every option to end that defiance on the table.

Mayor Frey, the choice is yours.

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Moulton says ICE comparisons to Nazi Germany are not extreme in CNN interview

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said Tuesday that it is not extreme to compare U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with Nazi Germany. 

“I don’t think that the comparisons with Nazi Germany are extreme,” Moulton said in an interview with CNN.

“Because that’s what happened too. That’s why ordinary German citizens began to accept the idea that certain members of their community would be singled out — I mean, they have ICE tip lines — would be directly targeted in violation of the laws of the land, and it would be done by agents of the state. But, that’s what’s happening today in Minneapolis.”

RON DESANTIS VOWS FLORIDA WILL FIRE ELECTED OFFICIALS FOR JACOB FREY-LIKE ACTIONS

He added Massachusetts residents that he represents feel they could be next. Neither Moulton nor ICE immediately responded to requests for comment.

The representative is not the first to compare ICE with Nazis.

Most notably, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz compared ICE to the Gestapo, the notorious secret police of Nazi Germany.

SOROS-BACKED PHILADELPHIA DA VOWS TO ‘HUNT’ DOWN ICE AGENTS: ‘WE WILL FIND YOU’

“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Walz said at the University of Minnesota Law School’s graduation ceremony.

In light of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, several celebrities spoke out against ICE. 

FORMER DHS OFFICIAL CALLS WALZ’S COMPARISON OF IMMIGRANT CHILDREN TO ANNE FRANK ‘DISGUSTING,’ INFLAMMATORY

Good was shot and killed during an encounter with the ICE officer earlier this month, after she allegedly swerved her car toward him. Since then, protests have erupted in Minneapolis and across the U.S., and Democrats are demanding reforms and even the abolition of ICE in response.

Protests have continued to grow since a Border Patrol shooting of Alex Pretti on Saturday. Pretti was armed at the beginning of the encounter but had his weapon taken away from him before he was fatally shot, according to video of the incident. 

Author Stephen King compared ICE to the Gestapo as well. While performing a show in New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen expressed a similar sentiment, calling for ICE to “get the f— out” of Minneapolis. 

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MIKE DAVIS: Why surrender is not an option for ICE’s Minnesota mission

Under the United States Constitution, We The People have the most crucial sovereign power: to control our border and populace. Through our elected members of Congress, we decide who gets to come to America – and who must go. We set our national immigration policy decades ago through our elections and our subsequent federal immigration laws. In this last election, we gave President Donald Trump a broad electoral mandate – including a congressional majority – reaffirming his constitutional and statutory duties to mass-expel illegals from America – starting with the most dangerous criminals among them.

For many months after Trump’s inauguration day, Democratic politicians, plaintiffs, attorneys, judges and other activists have conspired to thwart the will of American voters through Democratic judicial sabotage. After a series of legal losses at the Supreme Court, these desperate Democratic operatives are now turning to violence. Indeed, Democrats are openly encouraging their agitators to obstruct – and even attack – federal agents in the line of duty. This is particularly true in Minnesota, after brave independent journalist Nick Shirley uncovered billions in alleged fraud by the Minneapolis Somali community, a key political constituency of Minnesota Democratic politicians. What’s a great way to distract from the biggest scandal in Minnesota history? Riots, of course, driven by the same Minnesota Democratic politicians who benefit from the billions in the Somali fraud schemes.

After days of Democratic-spurred riots, President Trump and Minnesota Gov Tim W.alz had a phone call on Monday. Trump described it as “very good,” and Walz expressed a desire to “work together.” This detente may be short-lived, as leftist agitators have now turned on Walz and directed their protests to his office. Regardless, ICE’s withdrawal from Minneapolis would be a disaster and cannot occur.

Empowered by seditious rhetoric from insurrectionists like Walz, who has described his state as “at war” with the federal government, leftists have decided that they have the freedom to confront and assault ICE officers with no repercussions – including, this past weekend, biting the finger off a federal agent. Some leftists have died in the resulting fray, the latest being Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old anti-ICE agitator who was shot while resisting officers’ attempts to take his pistol.

JONATHAN TURLEY: DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS ARE RISKING LIVES WITH RECKLESS ANTI-ICE RHETORIC

Leftists have impotently tried and failed to legally stop President Trump from fulfilling his campaign promises of a secure border and mass deportations. Now, out of options, they’ve resorted to violence. The last time Democratic-run states took up arms en masse to resist the supremacy clause of the Constitution, nearly 400,000 red-blooded Americans were killed restoring order. But even after the Civil War, America has faced state insubordination many times.

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower had to commandeer the Arkansas National Guard after segregationist Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus mobilized state forces to prevent the integration of Little Rock Central High School. In the 1960s, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 to quell violent anti-civil rights rioting.

Immigration is squarely under the federal domain. Indeed, over a decade ago, the Obama Justice Department successfully sued Arizona for attempting to independently enforce federal immigration law. Now, ICE is in Minneapolis pursuant to this core power. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson did not cave to threats and violence from segregationist states angry about the federal government enforcing federal law. They stood strong, even deploying the military and federalizing the National Guard when necessary to restore order and preserve the rule of law.

TRUMP WARNS MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR HE’S ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE’ AFTER IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT CONVERSATION

President Trump faces similar insurrectionist challenges. Just this past weekend, Walz referenced Anne Frank when denigrating ICE. He and other leftists have made the disgusting claim that ICE “kidnapped” a 5-year-old child, after officers took the child to safety when his father abandoned him while fleeing arrest. (Curiously, Walz was silent when the inept Biden administration lost 300,000 children, many to sex slavery, who were brought illegally to the United States.)

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ICE is not the problem in Minneapolis. Leftist violence is. Florida and Texas each have far more people and illegals than does Minnesota. We do not hear about tumult in those states for one reason: stellar state leadership. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis respect the Constitution, including ICE’s law enforcement authority. These governors do not use Holocaust references, and they do not tell the good men and women of federal law enforcement to get out of their cities – in sharp contrast to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Abbott and DeSantis do not defend the storming of churches by anti-ICE maniacs – in sharp contrast to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. These governors are cooperating with the federal government to fix the existential crisis that dementia-addled Joe Biden caused when he allowed millions of illegals to pour into our country.

Our nation has an immigration crisis thanks to leftist open-borders policies. Minneapolis has a violence crisis thanks to demented and insurrectionist rhetoric from pathetic state and local leaders. Caving to the demands of these seditious conspiracists will not abate the crisis; it will exacerbate it. Spoiled children often think they can get whatever they want if they throw a loud enough tantrum. President Trump, in keeping with one of his favorite 2016 campaign songs, must remind these rioters that “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

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President Trump must follow the courageous lead of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. We will soon find out whether Walz’s sudden cooperativeness is a sincere attempt to de-escalate – or if Walz resumes his role as a modern-day Confederate governor. If Republicans cave to this insurrectionist and seditionist behavior, they will send an unequivocal message to every purple-haired SSRI addict in the country: domestic terrorism works. Caving will incentivize more radical leftist violence across the country. If leftists learn that they can use violence to make ICE withdraw in Minneapolis, they will employ the same strategy across America.

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I’ve worked thousands of money laundering cases — fraud is a national security threat

Nearly three-quarters of a million fraud-related suspicious activity indicators were reported by financial institutions in Minnesota in 2024. Concentrated largely in Hennepin, Ramsey and surrounding counties, these reports frequently cited transactions with no apparent lawful purpose, coordinated activity involving multiple individuals, misuse of checks and government payments, and patterns consistent with organized fraud rather than isolated misconduct.

Those numbers matter. Not because they are abstract statistics, but because they reveal how deeply fraud has embedded itself into our financial system and why it should be viewed not merely as a regulatory or financial issue, but as a national security concern.

The recent fraud headlines out of Minnesota involving daycare centers, medical providers and other sham businesses are not just local scandals. They are warnings.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS CALL MINNESOTA FRAUD PROBE ‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’ AS MORE BLUE STATES FACE SCRUTINY

Fraud is often treated as a cost of doing business or a compliance failure. In reality, it is one of the most efficient entry points for illicit money to move through the U.S. financial system. And when illicit money moves freely, it does not remain benign. It fuels organized crime, corruption and networks that undermine public trust and stability.

That is why America’s financial institutions sit at the tip of the spear.

Fraud is the intentional use of deception to obtain money, goods or services unlawfully. Money laundering is the process of disguising the proceeds of that fraud, so the funds appear legitimate. It typically occurs in three stages: placement of illicit funds into the financial system, layering transactions to obscure their origin, and integration, where the money re-enters the economy appearing clean, such as being paid out as payroll, rent or vendor expenses from what looks like a legitimate business.

Fraud creates dirty money. Money laundering keeps it alive.

PAM BONDI DISPATCHES FEDERAL PROSECUTORS TO MINNESOTA FOLLOWING SOMALI FRAUD ALLEGATIONS

In the Minnesota cases, the opportunity to detect this activity existed long before indictments or headlines. It existed the moment these businesses opened bank accounts.

Every U.S. financial institution is required to conduct Know Your Customer (KYC) due diligence. This process is designed to understand who a customer is, what they do, where they operate and whether their activity makes sense. For businesses, that includes verifying ownership, stated purpose, expected transaction activity and physical address.

A daycare should look like a daycare. A medical provider should look like a medical provider. When the story does not match the facts, that discrepancy matters.

MINNESOTA FRAUD WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS ‘LACK OF GUARDRAILS WAS PRETTY SHOCKING’

I have worked thousands of suspected money laundering and fraud cases for some of the largest financial institutions in the country. I have seen firsthand how illicit money flows through ordinary accounts, how it hides in routine transactions, and how it is detected through inconsistencies, patterns and human judgment long before a case becomes public.

KYC is not a one-time event. Financial institutions are required to reassess customers over time, especially when transaction behavior changes. This is where transaction monitoring plays a critical role.

Banks use Transaction Monitoring Systems to flag unusual or suspicious activity. These systems are often misunderstood as purely technological. They are not. Humans design them. Compliance professionals determine which behaviors are risky, what thresholds trigger alerts and why certain patterns warrant review.

MINNESOTA FRAUD CASE IS ‘CANARY IN THE COAL MINE’ FOR GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS — INCLUDING ELECTIONS, LAWYER WARS

Equally important is OSINT, also known as open-source intelligence. Basic internet searches are performed by compliance officers in financial institutions and help verify whether a business address exists, whether it aligns with the claimed operation and whether public records raise concerns. If a business claims to be a childcare center, but operates out of a residential apartment or empty storefront, that is a red flag.

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When financial institutions identify potentially suspicious activity, they are required to file a Suspicious Activity Report with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, under the U.S. Treasury. These reports feed the nation’s Financial Intelligence Unit and support law enforcement and national security efforts.

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Once a financial institution files a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR), visibility largely ends. Institutions are not told whether a SAR is flagged or shared, and the sheer volume filed every day nationwide makes it extraordinarily difficult for government agencies to identify, prioritize, and act on every report in real time. The result is an inherent gap between what financial institutions report and what the public ever sees in terms of outcomes.

The Minnesota SAR data is not just a snapshot of fraud. It is a reminder that recognizing fraud as a national security issue is not optional; it is the price of protecting public funds, public trust, and the financial system that underpins them both.

I’m an American farmer — empty USDA offices means fewer family farms

Believe it or not, it’s possible for federal agricultural policy to not just fail in Washington. It can also fail when there’s no one left in a local U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) office to help farmers put programs into practice. I’ve seen that reality up close, after spending more than three decades serving producers as a district conservationist with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

My job wasn’t to sit behind a desk. It was to sit across the table from farmers, visit their fields, help design conservation plans that fit their operations and make sure funding approved by Congress actually reached farmland. Those local offices and the people who staff them are the backbone of USDA’s conservation work.

I saw this firsthand early in my career. When I moved to a local NRCS office in the early 1990s, one of the first producers I worked with was an older rancher who was deeply skeptical of the federal government. We sat down together, walked his land and put together a grazing plan that included a deep well, miles of pipeline and cross-fencing. The results spoke for themselves. His stocking rate increased, his operation improved, and his skepticism disappeared — a pattern I would see repeat itself over the years.

SEN TOM COTTON: AMERICA’S FARMERS ARE GOING BANKRUPT AND WE NEED TO HELP THEM BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

Before long, he was telling other producers about his experience. Demand grew so quickly that our office went from being a quiet outpost to one that needed additional staff for the first time in years.

Today, that backbone is under real strain. A recent report by USDA’s Office of the Inspector General examining staffing levels at the Department from January to June 2025 revealed that NRCS lost 22% of its staff — 2,673 employees — in just the first half of 2025, one of the largest staffing reductions across the Department. Farmers across the heartland are already fearing the worst.

I share those concerns, not only as a former district conservationist, but as a farmer myself. Alongside my son, I run a 200-head cow-calf operation in South Dakota, paired with corn and soybean crops. Like other farmers across the country, I’m juggling high input costs, volatile markets and increasingly destructive weather. These challenges are only the tip of the iceberg of what family farms like ours are up against.

Even the best run farms can’t go it alone under these conditions. That’s why voluntary, locally led conservation programs operated by USDA are so important. Thanks to these programs, farmers have access to practical tools that help manage risk, improve productivity and build long-term resilience.

AGRICULTURE IS THE ANSWER TO AMERICA’S JUNK FOOD CRISIS

On my own operation, Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) contracts have helped me install a deep well with miles of pipeline, water tanks and cross-fencing. Our planned grazing system increased our stocking rate by 15 to 20% on the same acreage, producing more beef from the same land base.

With outcomes like these, it’s easy to see why these conservation programs are so popular with farmers. Polling consistently shows broad farmer support for conservation funding, yet demand continues to far outpace available resources. Even with additional funding Congress provided in 2022, USDA was unable to fund nearly 64% of applications for EQIP, CSP and the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program in fiscal year 2024.

Republican leaders in Congress recognize the importance of these programs. As a result of the efforts of House and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairmen G.T. Thompson and John Boozman, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act strengthened long-term conservation funding. More recently, under the leadership of President Donald Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, USDA recently announced a $700 million Regenerative Pilot Program — a clear recognition that conservation strengthens producers’ productivity and profitability, Americans’ health, and our food and fiber supply.

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These are important victories. But conservation funding doesn’t help if there’s no one left to deliver it.

As a proud conservative, I applaud President Donald Trump and Secretary Rollins for their efforts to make USDA a Farmers First agency. But reform must not come at the expense of the department’s most important priority: serving farmers.

Such significant staffing losses have real consequences for farmers. Each lost staffer means longer waits for applications to be reviewed, contracts to be finalized and payments to be processed. Farmers are forced to carry more costs upfront, take on additional debt, or miss narrow windows to make improvements that protect their land and their livelihoods. When margins are already tight, those delays can be the difference between staying in business and closing the doors of the barn once and for all.

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Efficiency means delivering results, not hollowing out the very workforce that is crucial to the work of our producers. Simply put: without sufficient staff, even the strongest, most pro-farmer agenda cannot succeed.

Like countless farmers, I hope to pass our family operation on to the next generation. Access to conservation programs — and the people who deliver them — is essential to making that possible. As policymakers continue Farm Bill and appropriations negotiations, and as the Trump administration works to improve USDA’s effectiveness, they must listen to farmers. Protect these programs. Ensure USDA is staffed, equipped and funded to serve those who feed us all.

A therapist’s warning: Trump didn’t break America — permanent outrage did

After my Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “Is ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Real?” was published, the response was immediate and intense. Some readers thanked me. Many were furious. I was accused of excusing Donald Trump, minimizing harm and betraying my profession. Some messages were hostile. A few crossed into threats.

What struck me wasn’t the disagreement itself, but how quickly disagreement turned into fury. Simply questioning the idea was enough to set people off. That reaction stayed with me, because it reflected something I had already been seeing in my clinical work.

Over the past decade, one psychological pattern has quietly become dominant in American life. It cuts across education, geography and socioeconomic status. I would even go so far as to call it the defining pathology of our political era: a state of chronic political anxiety in which outrage becomes habitual and threat becomes the default lens.

LEE CARTER: 45% OF AMERICANS CALLING THEMSELVES ‘INDEPENDENT’ AREN’T INDEPENDENT AT ALL – THEY’RE JUST ANGRY

In my therapy practices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., the emotional response surrounding Donald Trump has not cooled with time. It has only hardened. Politics no longer feels like something people debate. It has become part of peoples’ identity, something carried internally long after the news cycle ends.

When I wrote in the Journal that “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” or TDS, is not a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis, some assumed I was taking sides. I wasn’t. I was making a clinical distinction. The anxiety, obsessive thinking, disrupted sleep, strained relationships and constant mental preoccupation that many people experience are real, concerning to me and deserving of care. People aren’t pretending. They’re suffering. What I was pushing back on was the idea that attaching a political label explains those symptoms or helps people recover from them.

Our culture now rewards emotional intensity over restraint. Outrage is amplified, while reflection is suspect.

In practice, the pattern is familiar. People describe thoughts they can’t shut off. They check the news compulsively. They lie awake scrolling late into the night even when they know it only makes them more anxious. Some talk about feeling physically agitated, unable to relax. Many admit they can’t stop thinking about Donald Trump, even when they want to.

JONATHAN TURLEY: WITH ‘RAGE BAIT’ CROWNED WORD OF THE YEAR, FREE SPEECH BECOMES THE TARGET

Over time, this preoccupation begins to shape daily life. People describe organizing their routines around politics: who they feel comfortable dating, where they socialize, which family gatherings they avoid, even where they choose to vacation. Friendships narrow. Conversations shrink. Politics moves from belief into behavior.

This is not a political position so much as a psychological pattern. I’ve come to think of it as obsessive political preoccupation — not a formal diagnosis, but a description of what happens when a political figure becomes the constant focal point for intrusive thoughts and emotional arousal. The mind stays on alert, scanning for danger even when the threat is abstract or distant.

Part of what sustains this pattern is the need for a villain. A villain offers clarity in a confusing world. It assigns blame. It simplifies complexity. It provides moral certainty without requiring much introspection. When personal life feels uncertain or unsatisfying, political outrage can step in to supply meaning and direction.

Trump did not create this dynamic, but he became its most effective vessel. Long after individual controversies pass, the emotional structure remains intact. The identity holds. The outrage becomes self-sustaining.

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Our culture now rewards emotional intensity over restraint. Outrage is amplified, while reflection is suspect. Calm can look like complacency, and stepping back is often treated as moral failure. In that climate, anxiety doesn’t just persist. It’s encouraged.

The result is a society that struggles to disengage. Politics no longer simply informs opinions. It governs relationships, workplaces and everyday decisions. Many describe exhaustion from feeling permanently braced for the next outrage.

This is not healthy civic engagement. It is emotional overdrive. A functioning democracy cannot function in a constant state of alarm. When everything feels existential, perspective collapses. People lose the ability to distinguish between genuine danger and emotional habit.

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None of this requires abandoning convictions or disengaging from politics altogether. It requires remembering that emotional regulation is not political surrender. Donald Trump will continue to dominate headlines. That much is certain.

The more important question is whether Americans will continue allowing politics to dominate their inner lives. At some point, a society has to decide whether permanent outrage is a way to live.

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I worked for Justice Alito. What I saw up close shatters the media smear

Critics of Supreme Court justices frequently resort to unfair caricatures of those justices that, the critics hope, will generate clicks and likes. If you happened to see a recent hit piece on Justice Samuel Alito, for example, you would read that he is “unhappy,” “aggrieved” and “wronged.” And he, like the others, is expected to endure these attacks in silence. For, if the justices speak up, their critics then castigate them as thin-skinned and — conveniently — unhappy, aggrieved and wronged.

This vicious game is nothing new — but, when it comes to Justice Alito, it is personal for me.

I was born in Louisiana and grew up in the South, where I attended Baylor University for undergrad and Louisiana State University for law school. Today, I serve as the solicitor general of Louisiana, which requires me to argue before the Supreme Court. That is the experience of a lifetime — an experience sometimes described as a Super Bowl for lawyers, or, as one Yelp review of the Supreme Court building put it, Washington’s version of a gladiator match.

ALITO RIPS SUPREME COURT MAJORITY AS ‘UNWISE’ FOR BLOCKING TRUMP’S NATIONAL GUARD PLAN

History and statistics would say that my story is unlikely. I did not grow up among East Coast and West Coast elites. I do not hold an Ivy League degree. And my unpronounceable last name is not famous. Yet here I am — by God’s grace and because of an army of people (including my current boss, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill) who have believed in me.

Some jurists are reputed to be harsh taskmasters. Not Justice Alito. Not only did he lighten our loads at all costs, but he also never raised his voice or directed displeasure toward us.

Justice Alito is one of those people. When I mailed a clerkship application around a decade ago, I was under no illusions about winning the race against hundreds of other applications from top attorneys for one of four positions with the justice. And when I interviewed, I was sure I had torpedoed my chances: When I arrived, I declined coffee when the justice’s assistant offered it (I could not risk spilling it on my white shirt) — but when I went into the justice’s office and he offered coffee, I panicked and accepted (it would be rude to say no), only for him to ask the same assistant to bring me coffee. My face was bright red as she handed me a cup. Yet they both apparently forgave me, and they became dear friends after I began my clerkship.

The clerkship with Justice Alito was surreal in many expected ways. For example, the justice is incredibly smart. That is readily apparent from any opinion he writes or oral argument in which he grills counsel. So, too, behind the scenes: On more than one occasion, email chatter from him would go quiet, and then a flood of perfectly cited draft opinions would come streaming in. He did not need us.

But unexpected were the myriad examples of Justice Alito’s decent character that we witnessed. Take this example: A law clerk works long hours performing legal research, drafting memos and completing other necessary tasks. The “Alitos” during my year were no exception. But the justice is notoriously sensitive to imposing on his law clerks. He refused to email us on weekends if he could help it. And any time he wanted us to complete some research, he would ask in a sheepish, almost apologetic, tone. My co-clerks and I would laugh: Why was he worried about asking clerks to do the very things that clerks do? That is his decency.

Obsessive depictions of Justice Alito as “aggrieved” and “unhappy” in the media are personal to me.

Some jurists are reputed to be harsh taskmasters. Not Justice Alito. Not only did he lighten our loads at all costs, but he also never raised his voice or directed displeasure toward us. That is not because we were perfect — one time I had to apologize for turning in a memo a day late, but he did not bat an eye. To the contrary, the justice took every opportunity he could to encourage us. I remember one particularly long memo battle that we fought and won. He could have walked off with the victory. But instead, he took time to give me a thoughtful thank you note for my assistance.

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One of the memorable parts of any clerkship is the chance to eat lunch with your judge or justice and discuss anything but work. Some jurists prefer a fancy lunch out on the town. Not Justice Alito. My fondest memories are those lunches we had around a chambers table — the clerks with box lunches or maybe a to-go plate from the cafeteria, and the justice with a bowl of Campbell’s soup that he had just warmed in a microwave. The justice is famously introverted, and so, it was not uncommon for the clerks to run away with the conversation as the justice’s spoon clinked against his bowl of soup. The justice was not disengaged; he was waiting for the right moment to strike with the driest humor known to Washington. He did not need to spend precious time with us at lunch — he had more important things to do. And yet he sacrificed anyway.

Before argument one day, my family had a chance to stop by chambers and meet the justice. I was excited to introduce him. But, when they came in, he was beaming like a new father showing off a newborn: He told my family all about my work and how grateful he was to have me in chambers. Of course, as noted earlier, he could do his job just as well (probably better) without clerks. But he made me — and them — feel like a million bucks by expressing his sincere appreciation. In that moment, I remembered how improbable my story was. And nearly a decade later, I often reflect on that moment and the immense gratitude that I will always express to the justice who dramatically impacted my life.

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All this is why obsessive depictions of Justice Alito as “aggrieved” and “unhappy” in the media are personal to me. He is nothing like the caricature erected by those pining for clicks and likes at his expense. And it is a disservice to the justice and to the Supreme Court as an institution to perpetuate a false “aggrievement” narrative that, at this point, is exhausted from being copied and pasted too many times.

The Justice Alito I know is kind, humble, thoughtful and selfless. I know because he believed in me — and I am a better man because of his example.

Hollywood’s selective silence on Iran exposes the lie of celebrity activism

In the glittering ballroom of the Golden Globes, the air is usually thick with self-congratulatory speeches about the power of art to change the world.

But this year, as the Iranian regime escalated its brutal crackdown on a generation of freedom fighters, that same room was defined by a haunting, comfortable silence. Many of the night’s most visible moral arbiters, including Mark Ruffalo, Wanda Sykes, Ariana Grande, Jean Smart, Natasha Lyonne and Bella Ramsey, proudly wore pins against ICE after Renee Good was shot. They signaled their concern for one cause while saying and doing nothing for Iran, where people are being beaten, imprisoned and killed for demanding basic freedom.

We are told that “silence is violence” when it suits a domestic political narrative, yet when a tyrannical theocracy hangs young men from cranes and blinds women for the crime of showing their hair, the cameras stop rolling.

A ‘TEAR DOWN THE WALL’ MOMENT IN IRAN WILL DAMAGE BOTH THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC — AND CHINA

The truth is as simple as it is ugly: Hollywood’s celebrated culture of activism has been hollowed out by a selective outrage that stops exactly where the Iranian regime’s interests begin.

Just days after reports surfaced of a total internet blackout in Iran, a digital shroud used to hide a bloody surge in state-sanctioned executions, the world’s most influential cultural voices chose to look away. When the West’s loudest moralizers go quiet, it sends a clear message to the Iranian people: you are on your own.

This silence is not accidental. It is a bizarre, unholy marriage of convenience between the Western far left and Islamic fundamentalists. Despite standing for everything the progressive left claims to loathe, the oppression of women, the execution of LGBT individuals and the total erasure of religious freedom, the Iranian regime is given a pass because it positions itself as an anti-Western force.

We must stop treating the threat of the Islamic Republic as a distant regional dispute. Its reach hits the West in ways we can no longer ignore. Whether it is through the funding of terrorist groups, supporting proxies that destabilize our trade routes, or the ideological subversion of our university campuses, the regime is not interested in coexistence.

TRUMP ENVOY REPORTEDLY MEETS WITH EXILED IRANIAN PRINCE AS REGIME FACES PROTESTS

These efforts have reached a decade-high peak, yet our cultural gatekeepers remain paralyzed by a fear of being labeled Islamophobic for criticizing a murderous state.

Inside Iran, the people are not waiting for our permission to be free. From the streets of Tehran to the corners of Mashhad, the chants are no longer about reform; they are about the total rejection of a system that has hijacked their culture and stolen their future. When Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi speaks of a secular democratic transition, he is echoing a population that has outgrown its captors. They have found their courage; it is we in the West who have lost ours.

The era of talks and deals is over because you cannot negotiate with a regime whose fundamental identity is built on your disappearance. It is time for Hollywood and our political leaders to stop waiting for a safe moment to speak. We do not need more performative hashtags or empty gestures that disappear with the next news cycle. We need a sustained, unapologetic commitment to the total dismantling of the Iranian regime’s influence.

If we continue to choose silence over solidarity, our society is not just failing the people of Iran; it proves that the majority is actually choosing a side. It is time to stop being the regime’s silent partners and start being freedom’s loudest advocates.

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The most recent incident at a Beverly Hills theater, which banned Israeli comedian Guy Hochman, was political intimidation and anti-Jewish discrimination. An Israeli comedian was pressured to renounce his identity to perform. That is not activism. It is authoritarianism. Radical left and pro-Palestinian activists are using coercion and moral blackmail to silence Jews, Israelis and Zionists. Free speech dies when mobs enforce ideological conformity. In a free society, no artist should have to denounce Israel to speak. Targeting Jews while claiming human rights is hypocrisy, and America should reject it outright.

The American government must immediately move beyond targeted sanctions and implement a policy of maximum support for the Iranian people’s internal resistance. Simultaneously, the American public must demand that cultural and corporate institutions that claim to value human rights stop allowing intimidation and ideological pressure to silence moral clarity.

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Iranians around the world need to be heard in their plight fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Stop waiting for a convenient headline to support a secular, democratic Iran; the time to choose the side of freedom is now.

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The church is holy ground, not a stage for the left’s political rage

What happened several days ago at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, shook me to the core. Regular folks were worshipping Jesus at that godly hour, as Americans all over the country were doing, when anti-ICE protesters burst in and took over the worship — all because one of the pastors, David Easterwood, also serves as the local ICE field office director. These agitators demanded “justice for Renee Good,” and absurdly chanted “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” a long-disproven lie from Ferguson, Missouri. In doing so, they turned the house of God into a battlefield. Is anything holy anymore? Or is everything political? Are there no limits to these protesters who value their feelings above all — even above Jesus?

I have been on my Walk Across America, and was in Alabama when this happened. What makes this disruption of God’s house even worse is the irony. ICE has been transparent about the kind of dangerous criminals it has been targeting in Minnesota through Operation Metro Surge. Just recently, agents arrested the worst of the worst: child rapists, murderers, pedophiles and violent assailants — including a registered sex offender convicted of fondling a child and another charged with rape of a minor.

Yet these protesters aren’t rallying against the predators. They’re calling to abolish ICE, as if protecting our communities from such evils is the real crime. How is this not the work of Satan? I do not say this out of delusion or to be sensational. I say this because it reflects reality. 

ST PAUL PASTOR DENOUNCES ANTI-ICE AGITATORS WHO DISRUPTED CHURCH SERVICE, SAYS ‘WE’RE HERE TO WORSHIP JESUS’

Do you know what it is like to live among people who have chosen the path of evil? We deal with it daily on the South Side of Chicago, where I have seen this kind of evil ruin lives. We suffered the consequences of defund the police, and we will suffer even more with this latest attack on law and order. That is a major reason why I’m walking across America — to raise funds for my community center, which will protect our children, our future, from the very evil that the Minnesota left seeks to protect.

All I know is that when activism crosses the altar, there is no good to be had. The church is not a stage for political intimidation.

That’s why I ask: Isn’t anything holy anymore? Does the safety of our children not matter? Does the safety of any law-abiding citizen not matter?

All I know is that when activism crosses the altar, there is no good to be had. The church is not a stage for political intimidation. Churches have always been places of refuge, repentance and reconciliation — not props for ideological theater. When activists storm a sanctuary, as they did at Cities Church, shouting down worshippers and frightening children, they aren’t defending the vulnerable — they’re violating sacred ground. It’s an assault on the soul of a community gathering to seek God.

WALKING ACROSS AMERICA SHOWED ME WHY FAITH AND FREE THOUGHT CAN STILL WIN

What truly scares me is that we’re witnessing the religion of progressivism in action — and it isn’t God. What we’re seeing in these anti-ICE actions isn’t compassion, but a secular creed with its own sins, saints and heretics. When they chant the lie of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” instead of “Amazing Grace,” they reveal the hollowness of their secularism.

Churches that allow or even sympathize with these kinds of disruptions are replacing the Gospel with grievance. You can’t preach salvation while practicing ideological coercion. Protesters claim they’re fighting for justice, but by invading a worship service, they’re elevating their agenda over the eternal message of Christ. As Scripture reminds us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world” (Romans 12:2).

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And who turned out to be the face of all of this? Don Lemon. He rushed into that church believing he was about to break the story of the year. He cared nothing for the pastors or their congregation. He claimed to be a Christian, but what Christian puts the pursuit of a manufactured story over worship and prayer? When he saw the reality of what he had done in the following days, he resorted to blaming White supremacy for the backlash. No, Don — the race card expired a while ago, but you keep swiping it because it’s all you’ve got, and sadly, so do others. The backlash was squarely due to you putting the chase for cheap clicks over Jesus. You know what the best cure for fears of irrelevancy is? God.

That’s the tragedy here — not just the disruption, but how quickly the pursuit of relevance through cheap political grandstanding can eclipse reverence. 

Yet in the midst of all this noise, one truth stands unshaken: Jesus is still on the throne, and His church will endure every storm. As I press on with my Walk Across America, I’m more convinced than ever that the answer isn’t more protests or more division. It’s more prayer, more responsibility and more faith in action.

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Scripture tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). That’s the call — not to tear down sacred spaces, but to build them up; not to abolish order, but to restore it with mercy and truth. Our children deserve churches that stand firm, communities that protect the vulnerable and a nation that chooses hope over havoc.

So let’s rise above the chaos. Let’s walk in the light, defend the holy and trust that God’s grace will complete what law and love demand. That’s why I keep walking, why we keep building — and why the Gospel will always outlast every fleeting creed.

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JONATHAN TURLEY: Democrat politicians are risking lives with reckless anti-ICE rhetoric

This year, there has been a race to the bottom as Democratic politicians fuel the rage in our streets against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. That continued when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz again rushed to judgment after a shooting, adding that the public should not treat Border Patrol or ICE officers as real “law enforcement” officers. However, rock bottom was finally reached by Arizona Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes, who not only said that she does not consider ICE officers to be “real law enforcement,” but raised the possibility of citizens shooting them under state law.

First, the obvious.  Mayes said, “I put [“officers”] in air quotes because I don’t think they are real law enforcement.” These are real law enforcement officers under federal law, enforcing federal law. Period. The effort by Walz, Mayes, and others to question their status or treat them as impostors is clearly designed to inflame citizens and encourage greater confrontations. It is a dangerous form of demagoguery. It is sending citizens into harm’s way, encouraging them to impede federal operations involving the arrest of criminal suspects.

Mayes later stated that she was “mischaracterized” and that “the idea that I would want the life of any member of law enforcement put in danger is wrong, offensive, and an outright lie.” Mayes’ “mischaracterizations” came at a time of growing unrest and the attorney general rushed forward to add to the reckless rhetoric.

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Again, repeating Walz’s talking points, she referred to these officers as “poorly trained.” She obviously has no idea about the training of these officers. The officer involved in the Alex Pretti shooting was an experienced officer with the Border Patrol. The officer involved in the prior Renée Good shooting was also an experienced officer.

While mischaracterizing the officers, figures like Walz are sending demonstrably “untrained” citizens into highly dangerous situations. Walz specifically called out citizens into the streets to record these operations, which is precisely what Pretti was trying to do before his fatal confrontation with officers.

Mayes, however, was not looking for a tie in that race to the bottom. She told citizens that Arizona’s “Stand Your Ground” law might be cited as grounds for the use of lethal force against officers.  She declared:

“You have these masked, federal officers with very little identification — sometimes no identification — wearing plain clothes and masks and we have a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law that says if you reasonably believe your life is in danger, and you’re in your house or in your car or on your property, that you can defend yourself with lethal force.”

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She later added, “It’s a fact that we have a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and, in other states, un-uniformed, masked people who can’t be identified as police officers.”

It was a reckless statement of the law. These laws only protect “reasonable” uses of self-defense. However, they have an express exemption for using force “to resist an arrest that the person knows or should know is being made by a peace officer or by a person acting in a peace officer’s presence and at his direction, whether the arrest is lawful or unlawful, unless the physical force used by the peace officer exceeds that allowed by law.”

It is not uncommon for law enforcement to use officers in plain clothes to make initial arrests or contact with suspects who might flee or resist.

THE FAR-LEFT NETWORK THAT HELPED PUT ALEX PRETTI IN HARM’S WAY, THEN MADE HIM A MARTYR

Mayes’ comments could encourage an already enraged and irrational segment of our population to use lethal force under the false pretense of standing their ground.

Attacks on these officers have increased exponentially with the violent rhetoric of these politicians. Just last week, a rioter bit off the finger of an officer.

Mayes also vowed to prosecute any ICE agent who violates state laws in these operations. She is also mimicking Walz in spreading legal disinformation. While federal officers do not have absolute immunity in all cases, it is extremely unlikely that state officials could successfully prosecute such cases without facing a transfer to federal court and likely dismissal.

Walz made the same misleading claim in saying that Minnesota would investigate the shooting and that the federal government would not be allowed to conduct the investigation. He has no authority to dictate who or how the shooting will be investigated.

While the state can conduct its own investigation, the federal government will investigate a shooting by a federal officer. Walz further pandered to the mob by raising the debunked “bait boy” story and telling citizens that ICE was “shooting them in the face when they come out of donut shops.”

Rage is hard to maintain for months, and the Pretti shooting, as described by one Democratic operative according to Fox’s Chad Pergram, is a “new wild card” in the politics on the Hill over funding.

There remain legitimate questions about this shooting. The videotapes do not appear to show, as suggested in early accounts from the federal government, that Pretti approached the officers brandishing a weapon.

Pretti does not obey the commands of the officers in returning to the middle of the road during their operation. However, he did not appear threatening until after the officer pushed him to the side of the road. At one point, he appears to shove the officer as he tries to assist a woman who was pushed to the ground.

What happens next is hard to determine. There is a video that suggests that an officer may have removed his weapon from its holster just before another officer yells “gun.” It is hard to see Pretti’s hands, and we do not know what happened in that split second. We may get a better idea as new videotapes emerge.

Law enforcement officers do not expect blind deference on shootings. However, they have a right to expect a fair chance for an investigation to hear their side of a shooting — not a governor or a mayor rushing before cameras to effectively accuse them of murder.

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At this point, it may not matter. Only the mob matters. Minneapolis Police Department Chief Brian O’Hara explained: “Even if there is an investigation that ultimately proves that at the time of the shooting it was legally justified, I don’t think that even matters at this point, because there just, there is so much outrage and concern around what is happening in the city.”

Walz has demonstrated politics of the lowest kind, stoking anger as citizens and officers alike are injured. Walz is pledging to go to court to stop further operations — a lawsuit that would be another frivolous filing. Previously, the state, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, filed to prevent the federal government from increasing forces to investigate fraud and immigration violations.

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Walz, Maye and others are following a long line of demagogues who sought to use social unrest to advance their political careers. For Walz, sending people into the streets has the benefit of not having them at home watching and reading about the growing fraud scandal in his state.

It is not a defense of democracy, but “mobocracy” in Minnesota.

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MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The left is getting people killed

A Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minnesota shot a second person dead on Saturday. Most of the debate since then has focused, understandably, on whether the ICE agent acted in what he perceived to be self-defense.

Whatever the case, it’s clear that, by encouraging people to interfere in law enforcement operations, the left is getting people killed. Videos show both victims, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, impeding law enforcement operations, which progressive nonprofits, Democrats and liberal influencers have been encouraging for months.

Good drove her vehicle perpendicular to block traffic while her partner taunted ICE officers. Pretti intervened at least twice, first by waving traffic through on the street and again as an ICE officer sought to subdue another person interfering in the operation, triggering the agent to use pepper spray against him.

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In saying this, I am not defending the decisions and behaviors of the ICE officers or anyone else. The killings are a tragedy. And there is a worthwhile debate underway over ICE tactics, separate from the specific behaviors of Good and Pretti.

We don’t know what was in the minds of Good and Pretti specifically, but Democrats, progressives, and anti-ICE activists have for years called ICE and the Trump administration fascist and compared them to the Nazis. 

On January 19, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called ICE “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” Last year, in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to block ICE from hiding its identities. The Los Angeles mayor called them a “reign of terror.” And a few days ago, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota urged citizens to “put your body on the line” to block ICE protests.

Walz and other Democrats have blocked state and local law enforcement from working with ICE, which has contributed to increasingly risky behavior by anti-ICE activists like Good and Pretti, and thus growing danger to everyone involved. There were no Minneapolis police visible in the videos of the Good and Pretti deaths.

And many of America’s largest progressive cities and states are all openly defiant of federal law, declaring themselves “sanctuaries” that protect illegal migrants from the federal government.

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California, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and others are “sanctuary states.” At the same time, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Madison, Milwaukee, Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Newark, Jersey City, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Chapel Hill, Durham, Asheville, Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Reno, are “sanctuary cities.”

The underlying problem is that for decades, schools, Hollywood, and the media have made clear that we should risk and even sacrifice our own lives to stop fascism and Nazism. And yet neither ICE raids nor Trump are fascist, and it is offensive to compare them to the Nazis.

The Nazis rounded up Jewish citizens and shipped them to death camps. ICE, by contrast, is detaining foreigners who the government believes committed criminal offenses beyond coming to the U.S. illegally. No nation in the world has allowed more people to enter illegally. Nor has any treated them with greater due process than the U.S. is doing.

THE FAR-LEFT NETWORK THAT HELPED PUT ALEX PRETTI IN HARM’S WAY, THEN MADE HIM A MARTYR

The American people elected Trump president, like it or not, and the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause in Article VI establishes that federal law prevails over conflicting state or local laws. It ensures the Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties are the “supreme Law of the Land,” binding state courts and governments. The ICE raids may be bad politics, but there is no question that they are constitutional.

While some Democrats and progressives know their language is hyperbolic, half of the individuals surveyed told pollsters last year that Trump is a fascist. Such radical beliefs appear to have partly motivated two assassination attempts against Trump and the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

While the radical left has for decades called its political opponents fascists, these views were until recently marginal views, even within the Democratic Party. Moreover, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton all spoke out against illegal migration until 2016. So what changed? Why did so many Americans come to view a democratically elected president and law enforcement operations as equivalent to fascism? What radicalized the left?

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Part of the answer is bad information. Many progressives believe ICE is simply sweeping up hard-working and law-abiding immigrants, and do not know that 64 percent of immigrants detained since Trump took office in January 2025 had criminal convictions or pending charges, in addition to having broken the law by entering and working in the country without a visa.

For some, labeling Trump as a fascist was simply a political tactic and not something they believed. But many others believe it, as the polling data shows.

Many people, both liberals and conservatives, believe progressives like Good and Pretti are acting out of empathy and sympathy for migrants. But if they are, it is purely ideologically driven, not from any real-world understanding of migrant communities. Few of the White progressives protesting ICE have ever spoken more than a few words to, much less gotten to know illegal immigrants, even those who work for them as cleaners, cooks and gardeners, much less come to understand their lives.

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Many on the left view all migrants, a priori, as political refugees, without knowing anything of their specific circumstances, since Europeans ostensibly stole Indigenous land. And where White Americans are ostensibly heirs to those European oppressors, Latino migrants are heirs to the oppressed; serving justice requires mass migration.

Trump’s often brash and aggressive language sounds racist to many people on the left, many of whom do not view entering the country illegally as a crime. In that sense, the left’s view of Trump’s criticism and rhetoric around illegal migration as racist stems from a radical left victimhood ideology, which was created not by people fundamentally concerned with improving the lives of the downtrodden, but rather by a string of left-wing intellectuals who were anti-civilization and who characterize history as a story of evil oppressors versus good victims.

Behind this ideology is a story of European settlement of the Americas, and civilization itself, as illegitimate, because it supposedly rests upon violence and genocide.

TIM WALZ COMPARES MINNESOTA ICE ACTIONS TO HOLOCAUST AND ANNE FRANK: ‘HIDING IN THEIR HOUSES’

The moderate left, or establishment liberals, since World War II, have promoted increasingly open borders and more migration as part of a broader push for what the post-war philosopher Karl Popper called “the open society.” Elites after World War II promoted the open society vision to increase growth, open foreign markets to U.S. firms and products, and establish peace and security.

Over time, but particularly after 2016, the moderate left radicalized, joining the radical left in its view of Trump as fascist. Democrats had been moving to the left well before that, with the media showing clear increases in reference to racism and white supremacy after 2011.

Various causes can explain most, if not all, of the radicalization, making it overdetermined and thus impossible to reduce with much certainty to one or two causes. The news media became increasingly one-sided as it sought to appeal more to its core audience for economic reasons, as its overall audience shrank due to the rise of social media. And social media itself appears to have intensified certainty and intolerance by reinforcing existing views and prejudices.

FREY, KLOBUCHAR CALL FOR ICE TO LEAVE MINNEAPOLIS FOLLOWING DEADLY CBP SHOOTING IN CITY

And behind all of those factors lies man’s need for meaning and purpose, which fighting fascism, real or fake, offers. There are few ways for anyone to be a hero anymore. Both Good and Pretti were 37 years old when they died, and millennials, more than Gen X before and Gen Z after, are very progressive and are “heroes in their narratives,” researchers find.

The deaths of Good and Pretti are thus the result of a collision of forces that have been building for decades. After World War II, fighting Nazis and fascists became the number one heroic fantasy for Americans and others in the West. And Baby Boomers taught their own revolutionary heroic values to their millennial children, who see fighting Trump and ICE as an opportunity to achieve a form of transcendence.

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For a brief moment after Trump’s 2024 re-election, it appeared that Democrats were rethinking their radicalism across a range of issues. A majority of voters had rejected not just Vice President Kamala Harris but the Democrats’ handling of the economy and immigration, and rejected the Democrats’ agenda on race, trans and climate change.

One year later, that’s all changed. The Democrats have clearly decided to disavow moderation and instead focus on attacking what they view as a major vulnerability and overreach. Sixty-eight percent of voters support closing the southern border, but 63% of voters and 70% of independents disapprove of the ICE raids. Fifty-eight percent of voters say they disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration. Disapproval of Trump on immigration rose from 39% in April to 48% today.

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Trump thus finds himself in a bind. If he continues the ICE raids, his approval ratings could worsen, thereby increasing the likelihood that Democrats will take control of one or more houses of Congress. If he calls them off, he hands Democrats a major political victory and will embolden their radicalization further.

It’s clear what the left wants. “You have the Minnesota National Guard troops,” wrote Keith Olbermann on X to Gov. Walz. “Deploy them. Arrest the ICE agents. Enforce the laws and defend your people against Trump’s Terrorists.”

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What Olbermann is proposing is nothing short of civil war. Like many others on the left, Olbermann views Trump’s supporters as “Nazis” and “fascists.”

We will soon learn much more about Pretti, as we did about Good. But already we know enough to know that they are victims of the left and its radicalization.

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MORNING GLORY: Canada is a small power biting the hand that protects it

Our very nice neighbor and ally to our north, Canada, has 42 million people and a GDP of 2.4 trillion, but doesn’t even spend 2% of that GDP on defense. Its new prime minister, Mark Carney, promises that it will reach that minimum standard for NATO alliance members by 2030. The last consecutive years in which Canada contributed 2% of its GDP to the defense needs of the West occurred around 1989-1990, after which defense expenditures dropped significantly. 

Canada answered the bell after 9/11, and while it’s standing military is quite small — 68,000 – it sent troops to Afghanistan from the beginning of that long war and kept them there until 2014, sacrificing 158 of their soldiers on that faraway battlefield. 

Five hundred sixteen Canadians died during the Korean War, and while Canada did not send its troops to Vietnam, many Canadians volunteered for the U.S. military and as many as 140 died there.

AMERICA’S ALLIES ARE FINALLY PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE FOR DEFENSE. NOW THEY MUST PAY THEIR BILLS

We remember the events depicted in “Argo.” Many have cheered the musical “Come From Away.” My wonderful daughter-in-law and her parents and siblings came to the U.S. from Canada, and while now proud Americans, they are also proud Canadians. Few are the Americans who don’t genuinely consider our cousins to the north very close friends, if not so strong in the national security department, and also very baffling in their politics.

In the era of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, when the West stood up together and defeated the Soviet Union, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was a friend indeed who, while he could not bring great force to bear on the communist powers, stood side-by-side with Reagan even as later Canadian Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper stood shoulder to should with President George W. Bush and all America in the aftermath of the attack on our country. 

Canada has always been an ally of the strongest power in the West — first as part of the British Empire, then as part of the Commonwealth and as a part of NATO through the whole of the Cold War and since then as part of the “Five Eyes” of the intelligence consortium where trust and shared values were assumed. 

Those assumptions have now frayed.

NATO CHIEF PRAISES TRUMP AT DAVOS, SAYS HE FORCED EUROPE TO ‘STEP UP’ ON DEFENSE

The long and wearisome tenure of Justin Trudeau marked a turning of Canada away from the shared values of the long Anglo-American history, but as he was always a clownish figure, one that not many Americans really worried about as a true expression of the values of our friends to the north, the idea of Canada as hostile to the U.S. was unthinkable. When Mark Carney — an international banker first and for decades — took over from Trudeau, it was anyone’s guess how he would govern, but few expected the events of this January. 

Now we know. Carney went to Davos last week and delivered a 15-minute masterclass in the national security equivalent of fantasy baseball and an exercise in very real moral equivalence, one that would inevitably insult serious-minded Americans, as Canada’s head of government choose to define the world as divided into one class of two or three “hegemons,” then another of “middle powers” and then everybody else. 

Carney then presumed to speak on behalf of the “middle powers” and did so in a way calculated to insult America by explicitly placing us in the “hegemon” category that includes China (and maybe Russia?), and calling out to the “middle powers” to band together to oppose the hegemons, even as Canada desires robust trade with both China and the United States.

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Make time to search out and listen for yourself to Carney’s speech and the Q-and-A that followed at Davos. The speech is quietly, but quite definitely, anti-American. Thoroughly so, in fact, though cowardly in its avoidance of explicitly naming the U.S. or President Donald Trump except by reference to that word, “hegemons.”

The former banker got a standing ovation from the other bankers assembled at their annual pep rally. Of course he would get one. In their fantasy world, they ought to run everything. They don’t, but they quite certainly believe they should. 

As you listen to Carney, reject fantasy and keep in mind some hard facts, beginning with Canada’s failure for almost 40 years to spend even 2% of their GDP on their and the West’s defenses.

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Carney seems to envision these “middle powers” as a variant of the non-aligned nations of the Cold War. Which is odd since Canada depends almost entirely on America for its national defense and especially for the freedom of the seas that allows it to sell its oil to China. In truth, Canada is far from a “middle power.”

The genuine “middle powers” are the nuclear powers other than the U.S., China and Russia. That small group of actual “middle powers” like India, Israel and Pakistan do not possess genuine “second strike” capability upon which the actual substance of nuclear deterrence between the superpowers depends, but they do have nuclear weapons and should and indeed must be treated differently than small powers. And this group does not include Canada, which is a small power.

Not all small powers carry their relative weight. Some are almost “free riders.”

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By way of contrast with Canada with its 42 million people, $2.4 trillion economy and not yet 2%-of-GDP defense budget, Poland has 39 million people, a GDP of one trillion, but spends 38 billion — 4.7% of its GDP — on defense. 

Finland has only 5.6 million people, a GDP of $300 billion and spends $7.35 billion on defense — 3% of its GDP. Its active duty personnel number 23,000–24,000 (including conscripts and the Border Guard) and it possesses a massive wartime mobilization capacity of roughly 280,000 troops. Supported by a reserve of nearly 900,000, the Finnish Defense Forces focus on territorial defense, with plans to potentially increase reserve strength. 

Poland and Finland are in the first rank of small powers in the West as they carry their weight, and don’t rely almost exclusively on the U.S. for their defense — as Canada does.

Neither Poland nor Finland sent its head of government to curry favor with the Chinese communists this month or to Switzerland thereafter to insult the United States by comparing America to China in terms decidedly ambiguous as to which is the free country with frequent rotation of power among its parties and individual liberties zealously guarded by an independent judiciary. 

Canada is actually a relatively small power even among all small powers when it comes to military strength. It has been a friendly small power to us since the War of 1812, but it is still a very small power. When Carney felt obliged to declare at Davos that Canada stands with Greenland and Denmark, he was striking a very small chest for consumption back home among the “elites” of Canada on whose votes he depends. Again, against whom Canada was standing, Carney didn’t say out loud because, in that uniquely cowardly approach to rhetoric, he doesn’t name President Trump.

Carney, according to the New York Times, “described the end of the era underpinned by United States hegemony, calling the current phase ‘a rupture.’ He never mentioned President Trump by name, but his reference was clear.” If he really wants a rupture, Carney picked the right president to insult, even in his shadow puppet style.

Carney talked about the need for Europe and the “Trans-Pacific Partnership” to come into existence and grow strong to oppose the hegemons. The “Trans-Pacific Partnership” Carney exhorts doesn’t actually exist and never will, as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea are not into national security fantasy baseball and don’t want to “rupture” their relations with the hegemon not named China as they count on the unnamed hegemon to keep the peace and deter China’s many ambitions on their turfs. 

Yes, Carney really did equate China and the U.S. — just two hegemons. No differences at all between them. 

In fact, as Carney had just come back from kowtowing to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, perhaps Canada is actually throwing in with the other hegemon. Carney did, after all, explicitly announce an “alliance” with Xi’s regime, which Canada has apparently forgiven for its genocide against the Uyghurs (despite Carney’s double declaration at Davos about the need for the world to respect “human rights.”) Carny also did not mention that Xi’s regime had crushed Hong Kong’s liberties, that it has jailed Jimmy Lai in solitary confinement for years and threatens Taiwan on a monthly basis. That the Chinese communists flaunt any actual international norms and World Trade Organization rules did not get even an aside, much less a sentence in Carney’s soaring rhetoric.

Carney’s tight with the ChiComs. Or afraid of them. Or both. Either way, Canada will import China’s EVs and China will buy Canada’s oil — an amoral banker’s idea of the perfect world order. 

Canada is — according to Carney — an energy “superpower!” Right. The freedom of the seas upon which tankers carrying Canadian crude depends is American made. That the oceans are safe for trade is made possible by the other hegemon’s navy — ours. 

Canada’s navy has about 8,400 sailors and about 30 ships. (Each of America’s 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers has 5,000 sailors). Canada has 400 aircraft and 15,000 in its air force. The U.S. Air Force is the finest in the world, with more than 5,000 aircraft of all varieties flown and cared for by more than 310,000 men and women. Our Space Force will work to secure Canada from far away too. (The Canadian military, very small but stalwart and staffed by national security professionals not bankers, is integrated into our defense of the North American continent.)

CANADIAN COLUMNIST MUSES HOW CANADA CAN ‘EXTRICATE OURSELVES’ FROM US AMID TRUMP PRESIDENCY

Canada does not have a land frontier across which Russian troops can march as they did into Ukraine when the “middle powers” of Europe, plus the infirmity of President Joe Biden failed to deter the dictator Putin (just as President Barack Obama failed to deter Putin in the first invasion of Ukraine). But even if Russia grew as covetous of Canada’s land as China is of Taiwan’s, it is the hegemon to Canada’s immediate south that would provide the defense against such a move. 

Carney also didn’t mention the $62 billion trade surplus Canada has with the U.S. In fact, his speech is free of the reality of hard facts. He does mention that Canada has submarines. It does. It has four. The newest was commissioned in 2015. The other three were commissioned in 2003 (2) and 2000 (1). The U.S. has about 70, all of them nuclear-powered: 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), four Ohio-class guided-missile submarines (SSGNs), and over 50 fast-attack submarines (SSNs) (including the Los Angeles, Seawolf and Virginia classes). 

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Unlike Poland and Finland, which are frontline states with Russia, Canada doesn’t actually have any ability to repulse conventional incursions from Russia without the U.S. to quickly back it up. Canada exists blissfully under the umbrella of American hard power and Carney knows — as every Canadian surely does — we would defend Canada in word and deed. But Carney’s sneering tone and banker’s virtue signaling should not fool ordinary Canadians. It is possible to insult your friends to the south by lumping us in with the alliance of tyrants headquartered in Beijing.

Carney’s was a cowardly bit of theater by a banker for bankers, an anti-Trump speech by the fellow who just got back from warmly embracing Xi. Did I mention Carney got a standing ovation from all the other “middle power” wannabe bankers and blue state elites? It’s so easy to pose. 

The truth — the real, hard facts of the world — is that Canada is not a “middle power.” It’s a small power blessed to live under the security umbrella provided for the past 80 years by the U.S., and to earn its excellent standard of living because of American consumers and the freedom of the seas guaranteed by the U.S. When you hear Carney declare Canada to be an “energy superpower,” ask yourself to which countries does it sell its oil and to which countries could its oil be sold should freedom of the seas be contested?

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Justin Trudeau was a clown.  Mark Carney appears to be a vain banker from Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities — a “master of the universe” in an imaginary world.

Whatever the ultimate decision of the United States Supreme Court, President Trump ought to be understood by everyone to have the power to impose tariffs on countries selling oil to the other “hegemons.” Carney may not have consulted the average Canadian on the trade-off that could follow his endorphin rush which come from insulting Trump and America versus any real costs imposed in response to the Maple Leaf’s new love for the dragon. But they will be stuck with the consequences and there won’t be any “middle powers” to sell its goods to if Carney succeeds in angering not just the president, but serious Americans.

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