Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a new take on the American Revolution, and it sounds a lot like her old take on everything else. Speaking Friday at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics alongside Democratic strategist David Axelrod, Ocasio-Cortez declared that the colonists who broke from Britain were really waging a class war. The Founders, in her telling, were not fighting a distant, unaccountable government. They were fighting rich people. “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time,” she said. “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time” – AOC pic.twitter.com/PGmDnLa9DU — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 8, 2026 There is a lot wrong with that sentence, and critics were happy to walk through it. The American colonists revolted against the British Crown and Parliament, not against wealthy individuals. Their chief grievance was taxation without representation, imposed by a government an ocean away that offered them no voice. Many of the Founders themselves were among the wealthiest men in the colonies. George Washington was one of the richest people in America when he led the Continental Army. Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson were men of considerable means. The idea that they launched a revolution against people like themselves requires ignoring most of what actually happened. The New York Post reported on the remarks and the swift backlash: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made the comments during a Friday appearance at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics with Democratic strategist David Axelrod. Ocasio-Cortez said the American Revolution was “against the billionaires of their time” and added that her side was declaring independence from “an extreme marriage of wealth and the state.” Critics responded that the Revolution was about British government power, taxation without representation, and monarchical control, not a war against wealthy people. The report pointed to founding-era wealth as part of the rebuttal, including George Washington and other Founders who were among the richest figures in the colonies. Senator Mike Lee said the Revolution was not against billionaires but against a distant, overly intrusive government with no limits on its power to tax, regulate, and consume the substance of citizens it claimed to serve. Senator Ted Cruz also responded that a ninth grader writing that answer on a history test would get an F, and that the Revolution was financed in significant part by American free enterprise. Senator Mike Lee’s response was direct and worth reading in full: No, AOC, the American Revolution was NOT “against the billionaires of their time.” It was against a large, distant, overly intrusive government that recognized no limits over its own authority to tax, regulate, and eat out the substance of the citizens it claimed to serve. https://t.co/OzQegCugsZ pic.twitter.com/F96FSwNHJ4 — Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 8, 2026 Lee’s framing is the one that actually matches the historical record. The Declaration of Independence lists grievance after grievance against King George III and his government. It says nothing about wealthy colonists being the problem. The entire document is an indictment of state power exercised without consent. Senator Ted Cruz put a finer point on it, saying that any student who wrote Ocasio-Cortez’s answer on a history exam would receive a failing grade. He noted that the Revolution was a revolt against oppressive government and that American free enterprise helped finance the war effort itself. But the billionaire remark was not the only thing Ocasio-Cortez said at the University of Chicago. She also laid out a broader economic vision that sounded like a warm-up speech for something bigger. The Daily Caller reported on the fuller scope of her comments: Ocasio-Cortez recast the American Revolution as an uprising against the ultra-wealthy rather than against an overreaching crown. During the University of Chicago conversation she argued the country needs to revisit older tax structures because taxation involves “the construction and organization of oligarchy in the economy.” She added the caveat that she was targeting the system rather than individual wealthy people, a familiar rhetorical move that lets the speaker attack wealth while maintaining plausible goodwill toward the wealthy. The congresswoman has made similar arguments elsewhere. On a recent podcast she declared, “You can’t earn a billion dollars,” claiming that fortunes of that size necessarily come from rule-breaking and labor abuse. Ben Shapiro pushed back, arguing that billionaires become wealthy by innovating, taking risk, and offering better goods and services at prices people choose to pay. Ocasio-Cortez also sidestepped questions about a 2028 presidential run during her sit-down with David Axelrod, saying her ambition was “bigger than that” and that she wanted to change the country through policies such as single-payer health care, living wages, workers’ rights, and women’s rights. That last detail is the quiet part. “Her ambition was bigger than that” is the language of someone already looking past a House seat from New York. She may dodge the 2028 question for now, but the policy wish list she rattled off reads like a platform, and the revolutionary framing she keeps reaching for tells you exactly how she sees herself in the story. A longer clip of the remarks confirmed the full context of what she told the Chicago audience: AOC: “America was founded in revolt of British aristocracy. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. It’s actually the most American thing in the world for us to be fighting for the working class. It’s actually patently un-American to transform our… pic.twitter.com/FBpOMcVp7g — Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 10, 2026 What Ocasio-Cortez is doing here is not complicated. She is retrofitting the founding of the country to justify a modern progressive economic agenda. If you can convince people that America was born out of a revolt against the rich, then every policy aimed at redistributing wealth becomes patriotic by definition. It is a neat trick, but it requires rewriting the actual history. The American Revolution was fought against a government that taxed without consent, quartered soldiers in private homes, dissolved colonial legislatures, and denied basic rights to its own subjects. It was a revolt against concentrated state power, not concentrated private wealth. The men who signed the Declaration risked their fortunes, their reputations, and their lives to limit the reach of government. That story does not help Ocasio-Cortez’s argument, so she told a different one.

A Mexican national living illegally in Kansas City, Missouri has pleaded guilty to six alien-smuggling offenses tied to a conspiracy that used Canada as a pipeline to move migrants from Central America, South America, and Mexico across the northern border into New York. Edgar Sanchez-Solis was no distant coordinator. Prosecutors say he personally drove a van full of illegal border crossers in May 2023, then led Border Patrol agents on a high-speed pursuit before a sheriff’s office finally stopped the vehicle. The guilty plea, announced this week by the Justice Department, is the latest case exposing a pattern that most Americans still associate only with the southern border: organized smuggling networks running foreign nationals into the United States through Canada’s comparatively relaxed visa system. International human smuggling ring exploiting Canadian visa system thwarted by US https://t.co/Y7EKOegmKD — John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) May 10, 2026 The Justice Department laid out the scope of the conspiracy and the Canada-route details: Edgar Sanchez-Solis, a Mexican national unlawfully residing in Kansas City, Missouri, pleaded guilty to six alien-smuggling offenses for his role in coordinating and personally participating in smuggling events. The operation moved foreign nationals from Mexico, Central America, and South America into Canada, then across the U.S. northern border into New York. Prosecutors described a network that used drivers to pick up migrants in designated areas and transport them into the interior of the United States. In one May 2023 event, Sanchez-Solis drove a van carrying illegal border crossers and fled Border Patrol agents at high speed before being stopped by a local sheriff’s office. First Assistant U.S. Attorney John Sarcone III said Sanchez-Solis “exploited Canada’s lax visitor visa policy and used Canada as a waypoint for unvetted aliens from Mexico looking for a route into the United States.” Sentencing is scheduled for September, and the plea exposes Sanchez-Solis to five to 15 years in federal prison. Pay attention to Sarcone’s language. He did not describe this as a gap in American enforcement. He called it a Canadian vulnerability that smugglers deliberately targeted, treating Ottawa’s visitor-visa rules as a front door to the United States. The Sanchez-Solis case is not an isolated incident. A separate prosecution in the same corridor shows just how brazen these northern-border networks have become. International human smuggling ring exploiting Canadian visa system thwarted by US https://t.co/V5bV3Dc72r — Just the News (@JustTheNews) May 10, 2026 The Center Square connected the Sanchez-Solis prosecution to a broader pattern and reported on a second case that underscores the human cost of the smuggling trade: The report ties the Sanchez-Solis operation to the Swanton Sector, where record-high illegal crossings occurred during the Biden administration. In a separate Vermont case, Tyshan Murray of Elizabeth, New Jersey was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to transporting aliens who crossed from Canada into the United States. Murray was apprehended in September 2024 after picking up nine Irish citizens near Richford, Vermont, following their illegal northern-border crossing. When Border Patrol stopped his vehicle, agents found the nine illegal border crossers crammed into the rear seats while young children sat in the rear cargo compartment on top of luggage, completely unrestrained. A prosecutor requested a 33-month sentence, citing the reckless endangerment of the children and Murray’s extensive criminal history. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ophard said alien smuggling across the northern border creates national-security risks and endangers the lives of those unlawfully entering the country. As of May 8, Joint Task Force Alpha operations have produced more than 455 domestic and international arrests, more than 400 convictions, and more than 345 significant jail sentences, according to Justice Department figures. Children unrestrained in a cargo area, sitting on luggage, while a convicted smuggler drives them deeper into the country. That is the reality of what “lax visitor-visa policy” produces at the operational level. For years, the northern border was treated as an afterthought in Washington. The southern border consumed all the political oxygen while the 3,987-mile Canadian frontier operated on a kind of honor system. Smuggling networks noticed. They routed migrants through Canadian airports and then funneled them south into New York and Vermont through rural crossing points that did not have the infrastructure or manpower to stop them. The Justice Department’s Joint Task Force Alpha numbers tell a story of belated but aggressive enforcement: 455 arrests, 400-plus convictions, 345-plus significant prison terms. Those numbers reflect a real shift in priority, but they also confirm the scale of the problem that was allowed to metastasize. Sanchez-Solis faces up to 15 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in September. Murray is already serving his 18 months. The smuggling pipelines they served are bigger than any two defendants, and until Canada tightens its visa system, the northern border will remain an open invitation for the next network willing to pack children into a cargo hold.

Former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra wants to be the next governor of California. And during a May 5, 2026 gubernatorial debate, he got confronted with one of the ugliest chapters of his time running HHS: the fate of hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children released from federal custody. His response? Blame President Donald Trump. Deny the problem exists. Tell voters there were “no lost kids.” That might have worked if the paper trail didn’t already exist, written by his own government’s watchdog and by members of his own party. Becerra: "The Trump campaign in 2024 talked about 'lost kids' when there were no lost kids." The Biden DHS' own Inspector General found that over 300,000 migrant children went missing under their watch. pic.twitter.com/jyrNSzQs2n — Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 6, 2026 The confrontation came from an unlikely source. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a fellow Democrat running for governor, pressed Becerra directly on whether he was proud of how migrant children were handled under his watch at HHS. Becerra’s defense was simple: Donald Trump lied about it. He told the debate audience that “the Trump campaign in 2024 talked about ‘lost kids’ when there were no lost kids.” Villaraigosa wasn’t buying it. He fired back by invoking New York Times reporting that won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the child migrant crisis and a 2023 letter from 26 House Democrats to Becerra himself warning of child exploitation on a massive scale. It’s not my talking point or MAGA’s — the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the child migrant crisis that happened under Xavier Becerra’s watch. 26 Democrats in Congress called it a national shame. pic.twitter.com/OyQjtPNAyx — Antonio Villaraigosa (@AVillaraigosa) May 7, 2026 The Daily Caller reported on the full debate exchange and how it turned into a Democrat-on-Democrat fight over a Biden-era HHS scandal: During the May 2026 California gubernatorial debate, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pressed former Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on the handling of migrant children under his watch. Villaraigosa referenced approximately 85,000 migrant children and alleged that some had been harmed, exploited, or killed after being released from federal care. Becerra pushed back by blaming President Trump, insisting that Trump had lied about the migrant children situation and that the 2024 Trump campaign used fabricated claims about “lost kids.” Villaraigosa challenged that framing by pointing to the New York Times investigation that won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the crisis, as well as a 2023 letter from 26 House Democrats sent directly to Becerra voicing alarm about child labor exploitation. The exchange turned the issue into an intra-party confrontation rather than a Republican-versus-Democrat argument, with a fellow Democrat forcing Becerra to answer for the Biden administration’s record on the safety of migrant children released from federal custody. Becerra had no answer for the documentation from his own party. Let’s be clear about why Becerra’s debate denial was so brazen. His own administration’s inspector general had already documented the scope of the problem in black and white. On August 20, 2024, the DHS Office of Inspector General issued Management Alert OIG-24-46, titled “ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Custody.” Read that title again. That came from the Biden administration’s own watchdog. The DHS OIG laid out the situation in stark terms: The inspector general found that ICE could not monitor the location and status of all unaccompanied migrant children or initiate removal proceedings as needed after they were released from federal custody. From fiscal years 2019 through 2023, ICE transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied children to HHS. The watchdog said ICE was unable to account for the location of all unaccompanied children who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court. ICE reported that more than 32,000 unaccompanied children failed to appear for their immigration court hearings during that period. Additionally, more than 291,000 unaccompanied children had not been issued Notices to Appear in immigration court as of May 2024, meaning the legal process to even track them through the system had never begun. The OIG recommended that ICE develop automated systems and a formal process to identify and report children who fail to appear, and to share that information with HHS. The fact that these basic tracking systems did not already exist under the Biden administration tells you everything about the priority this received. To be precise about those numbers: the OIG did not present them as a single confirmed list of physically missing children. What it documented was a system that could not track where these kids were, could not get tens of thousands of them to show up in court, and had not even begun the legal process for hundreds of thousands more. That is a system with no ability to claim “no lost kids.” And the inspector general wasn’t the only warning Becerra received. A year before that report, members of his own party sounded the alarm in writing. A May 25, 2023 congressional letter from 26 House Democrats to Secretary Becerra laid out the crisis in terms no one could misunderstand: The Democrats wrote to express deep concern about labor exploitation of migrant children documented in an investigative news series. The letter described firsthand accounts of children suffering forced labor, trafficking, and abuse after being released from HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement custody. It cited HHS data showing that reports of labor trafficking involving migrant children had increased by approximately 1,300 percent over five years, and Department of Labor data showing that illegal child employment by U.S. companies had risen 70 percent. The lawmakers warned that ORR might not be adequately screening sponsors or ensuring the safety of children after discharge. They cited testimony that ORR had lost contact with about one-fifth of the children released from its care in fiscal year 2022 and asked what actions HHS was taking to locate those children and verify their condition. The letter called the prevalence of child labor exploitation a “national shame” requiring immediate action. That letter was addressed directly to Xavier Becerra. Twenty-six House Democrats. A 1,300 percent increase in trafficking reports. One-fifth of released children gone from contact. A “national shame.” Becerra received that letter, and now he stands on a debate stage three years later and tells California voters there were no lost kids. President Trump told the country this was happening. He was called a liar for it. The Biden administration’s own inspector general confirmed the tracking failures. Twenty-six congressional Democrats confirmed the exploitation and the lost contact. And now Xavier Becerra, the man who ran the agency responsible for these children, wants voters in California to believe none of it was real. The records are public. The letter has his name on it. The OIG report was published under the administration he served. Becerra can call it a talking point all he wants, but the receipts came from his own government and his own party — and they document a catastrophic failure to protect the most vulnerable children in federal custody.

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The Department of Justice announced the results of Operation Iron Pursuit, a one-month nationwide enforcement effort that located more than 200 child victims and led to the arrest of over 350 alleged child sex abuse offenders between April 1 and April 30, 2026. Every single one of the FBI’s 56 field offices and U.S. Attorneys’ offices across the country participated. This is what happens when a Justice Department actually prioritizes going after the people who prey on children. In one month, the FBI identified and located 200+ child victims and arrested 350+ child sex abuse offenders across all 56 field offices 192 of those arrests on federal charges Highest takedown number in any Violent Crimes Against Children operation in the last year.… pic.twitter.com/wBtUbTDacm — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 9, 2026 FBI Director Kash Patel made clear that the Bureau is working around the clock to dismantle networks of child abusers, calling the operation the latest success after what DOJ described as a record year in which the FBI identified and rescued more than 6,300 missing children. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had a blunt message for child predators: the government is coming for them. According to the Justice Department: Operation Iron Pursuit was a one-month nationwide enforcement effort that ran from April 1 through April 30, during National Child Abuse Prevention Month. The operation mobilized all 56 FBI field offices and their partnering U.S. Attorneys’ offices to identify and locate child victims of sex abuse and arrest child sex predators across the country. More than 200 child victims were located and over 350 alleged child sexual abuse offenders were arrested. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche warned that sexual exploitation of minors has no place in society and that the full weight of the Justice Department would be brought against offenders. FBI Director Kash Patel said the FBI works every day to break networks of child abusers and that agents across the country are working 24/7 to protect innocent children. The alleged crimes ranged from sexual exploitation and sex trafficking to abuse, kidnapping, and the possession, distribution, or receipt of child sexual abuse materials. Among the cases DOJ highlighted, one stands out as particularly disturbing. A 10-year-old child from Utah was recovered and flown home from Cuba to the child’s biological mother. According to the Justice Department, the child was supposed to be on a camping trip with a transgender parent, a partner, and another child. Instead, the group flew from Canada to Mexico and then to Cuba. DOJ said concerns existed that the child had been taken to Cuba for gender reassignment surgery. A 10-year-old. The FBI’s Victim Services Division assisted with the recovery and provided crisis support and stabilization for the child. FBI Announces Major Nationwide Child Exploitation Crackdown Under Operation Iron Pursuit The Federal Bureau of Investigation says “Operation Iron Pursuit” led to the identification and recovery of more than 200 child victims and the arrest of over 350 alleged child sex… pic.twitter.com/GlglPIbyai — Washington Eye (@washington_EY) May 9, 2026 According to the Justice Department: DOJ detailed several examples of alleged offenders swept up in the operation. In Columbus, Ohio, a man pleaded guilty to creating AI-generated obscene material depicting adults and children and cyberstalking former partners. In the District of Columbia, a man was charged with producing child pornography. In New York, a man was charged with sexually exploiting a child, and in Pennsylvania, a man and former felon was charged with sexually exploiting a child and illegally possessing a firearm. All charged defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The Justice Department noted that Operation Iron Pursuit followed three major enforcement operations conducted in 2025: Operation Relentless Justice, Operation Enduring Justice, and Operation Restore Justice, each of which resulted in hundreds of children rescued and offenders arrested. DOJ encouraged the public to report suspected child exploitation through 1-800-CALL-FBI, tips.fbi.gov, local FBI field offices, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The scope of this operation is hard to overstate. More than 350 arrests in 30 days, coast to coast, targeting every category of child predator from hands-on abusers to traffickers to people generating AI child abuse material. It was a coordinated, nationwide law enforcement campaign with real results. Under President Donald Trump, the DOJ and FBI have made protecting children a centerpiece of their enforcement agenda. Four major operations in roughly a year, thousands of children identified and rescued, and a clear message to predators that there is no safe harbor. The adults in charge are finally acting like it.