Review by Shawn Perry Live Photos by Shawn Perry & Bill Harrity We came, we saw, we conquered. Again. For the second year in a row, Dead & Company brought their musical elixir to Sphere Las Vegas for an extended residency. And lucky me, I was given the opportunity to come back for a second time to cover a three-night run. How could I refuse? So I signed up for the second weekend of May, with the only Sunday show (also Mother’s Day) of the whole three-month stay, and off to Vegas I went. It promised to be a whole new experience, with several changes to the setlist and visuals. Was it going to be as mind blowing as last year? I was about to find out. Before getting into the actual shows, it’s important to note what changed from last year concerning ancillary Dead-related events outside Sphere. For one, the Venetian’s dancing bears and Steal Your Face medallions of 2024 were missing in action. There was no Dead Forever or Mickey Hart Art exhibit to speak of either. Instead, an official merchandise storefront located within the hotel’s Grand Canal Shoppes area offering common wares (most of it at the Sphere) and a couple of specialty items was about it. If you really wanted a shirt, a hat, a poster, a Jerry Garica doll, a stuffed dancing bear, or even an old cassette of an early Dead show, the Tuscany Suites and Casino’s expanded outdoor Shakedown Street was the place to be. Last year, they sponsored a smaller, indoor marketplace that was ill-suited due to its small size, flimsy and high-priced product selection, and general vibe. Even in the sweltering heat, one of the resort’s parking lots was more than adequate with plenty of room for vendors. They even had live music. The days of scrawny Deadheads skating through the aisles selling cheap beer, veggie burritos, and doses of Owsley acid are long-gone; but if you needed a tie-dye romper for your grandchild, there were more than enough options. You could also choose from a wide selection of customized t-shirts and hats. Elsewhere, there was jewelry, wood carvings, bags, pins, buttons, stickers, incense, just about anything you could think of with a dancing bear, a banjo-playing turtle, skeletons, Jerry Garcia’s missing finger, and the famous Steal Your Face logo was to be had. The love and devotion of all things Grateful Dead was on full display on Shakedown Street. Showtime Having been to Sphere in 2024 for Dead & Company, I was familiar with the general layout of the venue. Friday placed me in the 100 section, the first level of seats up from the floor. Inside, as before, you could see the skeleton of the building. Though I noticed later that the series of scaffolds, stairways, and work vehicle was a total deception. That was something I totally missed last year. At precisely 7:30, The band was on stage and stepped right into a slow-paced “Bertha.”  Clearly in warm-up mode, they stretched and scratched at the melody like the break of a new dawn. Once the lights came down, the faux behind-the-scenes workplace cracked like a bolt of lightning and suddenly we were presented with a bird’s eye view of the famous 710 Haight Street row house in San Francisco. This was where the Grateful Dead lived together and built their legacy. This sequence was held over from last year, yet seeing it once again hardly diminished its significance as the band fell into “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo.” A wide-eyed-and-mouth audience fell under an immersive spell as the camera slowing elevated up in the Bay Area skyline, further into space. John Meyer flexed his bluesy side and provided, as he would at every opportunity, a fiery and passionate guitar solo. The next three covers — “Good Lovin’,” “Don’t Ease Me In,” and “Me And My Uncle” — plodded forth, each accompanied with newer visuals of neon dancing bears, skeletons, Steal Your Faces, glowing TV sets, and old-time Western motifs. If you were listening closely, the band was still pulling itself into form. The stunning, high-definition images have a way of minimizing the impact and no one seemed any less the wiser. It would definitely get better. The set ended with “Ramble On Rose” and “Deal,” the latter forgoing Las Vegas cards and chips graphics for a digital dancing bear matrix that resembled primitive computer technology of the early 1980s. That was one deal they let go down. At least Meyer dazzled us with a very un-Garcia-like lead at the break. After the 40-minute break, the familiar scene of what I’d call a Tennessee valley (it perfectly accompanied “Tennessee Jed” in 2024) appeared and the band rolled into “Liberty,” a song first played by the Grateful Dead in 1993 and never included on any of their studio albums. Things clearly began to gel as virtual roses fell from the ceiling, meaning it was “Scarlet Begonias” time. Bob Weir and Meyer came alive, intuitively playing off each other as keyboardist   Jeff Chimenti wiggled the ivories between the cracks. It would become ever more apparent with each part and solo he blew through that Chimenti is Dead & Company’s ace in the hole. Between Meyer’s guitar face and Chimenti’s keyboard face, it’s hard to say who’s pushing the solos further. The extended jam was largely improvisational, less restricted by the visuals, resulting in an eye-catching meteor shower during the song’s climax. As is tradition, except in rare cases like the previous year I saw them, they followed with “Fire On The Mountain,” featuring bassist Oteil Burbridge singing the first verse and drummer and the song’s co-writer Mickey Hart adding in a rap. They moved through a colorful “Cumberland Blues” onto “They Love Each other” with a running river and waterfall in the background. All it took was a few more dancing bears to get things cooking on “Playing In The Band.” A swarm of cassette tape spines with dates and concert venues lined Sphere’s walls and ceiling, before morphing into posters, tickets, photos of the Dead on stage, with live video of Dead & Company wailing away. The “Drums” and “Space” portion of each show was relatively the same yet nonetheless tantalizing. Hart, Burbridge, and second drummer Jay Lane lined up behind an arsenal of percussion, pounding out a beat hard enough to send vibrations into the stands. Hart was then left alone with his Beam and gadgets, emanating low-end vibrations, squiggly tones, and computerized bleeps. It’s not as spontaneous and varied as in the old days when Hart and original Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann were driving the rhythm, though the visuals and panning effects are riveting. A subdued delivery of Reverend Gary Davis’ “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” with a soulful Hammond solo from Chimenti, was followed by a compulsory “Brown-Eyed Women.” The graphics of famous concert venues flipped by as the song’s jazzy gallop held the filled floor in rapture. It took Weir’s “Throwing Stones” to bring the first night back down to earth and in front of 710 Ashbury, thereby neatly book-ending the main event. It’s an effective device for keeping everything in balance and on time. An old news broadcast from the 60s with the adage that you can never see too many Grateful Dead shows lead to a rollicking “Casey Jones” to end the night. It was a slow and safe beginning of the three-day run. Fortunately, Saturday night would more than make up for any shortcomings. You think about certain songs in the setlist, maybe share a few predictions with friends or folks at the show. Predictions and personal favorites made Saturday’s list, so I can say without hesitation that it had all the potential of becoming my own personal favorite Dead & Company show. That it was played with refined precision and much more energy than the previous night only helps solidify that position. Maybe watching it all unfold from the 200 section added to its appeal as well. They began with a tight “Man Smart, Woman Smarter.” Weir was sporting a dark poncho over his resident puffy pantaloons and sandals. He was ready for a fight, growling the vocals and locking in the edges. His voice has become gruffier, aging like a fine vintage. They rolled into the always lovable “Help On The Way / Slipknot! / Franklin’s Tower” suite as the we once again rose into space from the streets of San Francisco (sounds like an old 70s TV show). Spaceships zoomed by as animated characters from the Grateful Dead Movie danced and the crowd chanted “Roll away the dew…” Then Meyer and Chimenti took off on subsequent solos. “Let It Grow” from Weir’s “Weather Report Suite” kept the momentum going as the planets aligned. Suddenly, an error message appeared on the upper section of the dome. It was followed by a series of pop-ups to fill Sphere’s walls. Everyone was perplexed. After a few more errors, it became apparent it was all part of a goofy ruse, much to the surprise and amusement of the 20,000 or so beings. This led to a cover of The Band’s “The Weight” with Weir, Meyer,  Burbridge, and Chimenti each taking a verse as a colorful Tennessee valley sequence lit up the venue. If you looked closely, you could spy an animated Jerry Garcia relaxing on the front porch of a small cabin along the river. Even Weir’s alarming falsetto on the last verse didn’t spoil the mood. The first half of “Sugar Magnolia” ended the first set. Another new set of flamboyant images filled every inch above and around the stage. It was a circus of flying eyeballs, turtles, skeletons on motorcycles, and — you guessed it — more dancing bears. The “Sunshine Daydream” portion of “Sugar Magnolia” began the second set as a flood of television sets took over the sightlines. One of the night’s harrowing jams lead the audience through a tunnel to the Egyptian Pyramids and Great Sphinx of Giza. Making a repeat appearance from 2024, this segment remains a tribute to the Dead’s famous 1978 concerts in front of the real Pyramids. Even the Bedouins, their silhouettes gathered before the virtual pyramids, would approve. After a quick and easy “Greatest Story Ever Told,” an effervescent “China Cat Sunflower,” basking in falling sunflowers, brought everyone to their tippy toes. Pixelated dancing bears gave way to a dancing Uncle Sam who jumped on his hog for a wild ride through a wonderland of Grateful Dead imagery and into Las Vegas with the outside dome of Sphere included — all while the band swung through a joyful “I Know You Rider.” Could it get any better? “Terrapin Station” never fails in that regard, and Saturday night’s version took no prisoners. We flew over snow-cowered mountains as Meyer attached his smooth, modern vocals to Robert Hunter’s English folklore-inspired tale that introduced the turtle into the Grateful Dead gallery of characters and figurines. The song’s progressive rhythms slowed the movement down on the main floor yet functioned as  a natural segue into the “Drums” and “Space” segment, which was virtually identical to the night before. I stuck around and marveled at Hart and Lane’s athleticism and dedication to all things rhymical. Out of that, another pleasant surprise arose from a slow, lazy jam — the epic “Days Between.” Another song that never made it to an album, and possibly one of the last songs Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter ever wrote together, “Days Between” made its debut in the 90s at a handful of Grateful Dead shows. I managed to catch a couple of those. After Garcia passed, Weir adopted it as his own, including it in shows with RatDog, The Dead, Furthur, and, of course, Dead & Company. To hear it tonight, with Weir crooning a raw, emotional vocal, easily his best of the weekend, sealed the night for me. High above on the backdrop was an enlarged black and white video capturing the band as they played through the song. Chimenti provided one of his purest performances on the piano while Meyer rattled off a few choice scrubs of his own during the interlude. A whirlwind through “Althea” as plumes of colors spread across the walls and then another unexpected favorite called “Morning Dew” came a-calling with images of Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh flying overhead. Out in space and the earth in view, the song’s climatic refrain of “it doesn’t matter anymore” echoed out and we were suddenly back on the ground, the second of the three shows coming to an end. The always boisterous “Not Fade Away” with closeups of the band, brought the house down in fine and deliberate style. Even the song’s famous chorus carried over to the Venetian bridge as a portion of the crowd exited the venue. So, you may ask, how could Sunday — again, the only Sunday of the entire residency — top Saturday? Well, it didn’t, though it wasn’t without highlights. Kicking off with “Samson and Delilah” and “Truckin’” was certainly a good way of putting things right. Tonight, back in the 100 section, I spotted a blimp floating in the sky over San Francisco with “60 years” flashing on its side. Indeed, here was a subtle homage to the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary (not to mention Dead & Company’s 10th). In all actuality, Sundays used to be peak days for Grateful Dead concerts. I had been a witness to many, and those Sunday shows never failed to bring a multi-night run to a climatical finale. With Saturday so off the charts, it was difficult to say how this Sunday would rate. Even if they didn’t hand out roses to all the ladies — a tradition from those few times a Grateful Dead concert fell on Mother’s Day — I was willing to give this Sunday a fighting chance. After Weir began the first verse too early and the band did a restart (a source of amusement to seasoned Deadheads), they rolled through a mild rendition of Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” leading into a heartfelt reading of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” A light and easy solofest between Meyer and Chimenti against a wall of bleeding water coolers set the scene for Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” as the highly suitable Western motif reappeared. Weir’s “Cassidy” stirred up Sphere to no end. Close ups of Meyer highlighted the ivory bird inlays on the neck of his guitar. Both he and Weir weaved the song’s textural structure into an aural fabric on the paean to a folk hero and old friend of the Dead. Just as things intensified, the pace came to a halt and the haunting chords of “St. Stephen,” not to be confused with “Dark Star,” coupled with a tease of “The Eleven,” came along to make the medicine go down. Homemade Dead tape spines made their triumphant return across the ceiling. The second set of the final night got to a jumping start with “Shakedown Street,” featuring the old-school digital dancing bears and a Steal Your Face disco ball. Seemed like a lost opportunity to utilize Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers characters from the Shakedown Street album cover art. If the creators are reading this, they should consider it for next year. “West L.A. Fadeaway” moved in for a smooth ride as large VU meters jumped up and down on the backdrop. “Sugaree” and “Estimated Prophet” delivered their expected blows before “Eyes Of The World” sent the audience into total ecstasy. Inside a big, simulated tent, the flap opened and the audience was drawn into a painted desert that could double as Mars. Weir bumbled through another verse, bringing smiles on every level. It’s certainly not for lack of love. Just before “Drums” and “Space,” the ensemble tripped through a sweet samba-inspired jam with a few crazy characters like Ice Cream Boy from Europe ’72 bouncing off the walls. Even Burbridge took a solo. It played off like a spontaneous moment, though it was likely built in. A casual roll through “Dear Prudence,” another Beatles song performed by the Dead and Jerry Garcia Band in the 80s and 90s, found the group in excellent vocal harmony. Uncle Sam returned to his motorcycle for “Cold, Rain And Snow” before “Fare Thee Well” brought everyone back down to earth for one final landing. Once the Haight Ashbury sequence concluded, Dead & Company closed out the night and weekend with an upbeat swing through Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” Being a second timer provided a different perspective on the production. When you know what to expect with the visuals, the spectacle of it all isn’t quite as impactful. Fortunately, a good half of the eye candy was new for 2025. Sonically, the band has never sounded tighter and more in sync. That could be due to the show’s structure. Weir’s voice seems to be enjoying a gritty rebirth, while Chimenti and Lane have grown more into their roles as solid contributors to the overall mix. As the first leg for 2025 finishes up with one more weekend, the question looms as to whether or not we can expect more Dead & Company concerts at Sphere. They’ve already committed to three dates in August at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park to celebrate the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary, so the rest of the summer is out. Does that mean they could return to Vegas later in the year, after the Eagles complete their residency? Or perhaps next year with more surprises? When you throw out a tagline like Dead Forever, it seems inevitable they’ll be back at Sphere Las Vegas in some form. And if the opportunity comes around again, I’ll do my best to be there.

Denver air traffic controllers were without communications for six-minutes earlier this week after several radio transmitters suddenly lost power, according to a new report.

Ashley Pardo allegedly knew her middle school son was planning “mass targeted violence” when she bought ammunition and tactical gear for him. In exchange, he babysat his siblings. The boy’s grandmother contacted police on May 12 after finding fully loaded magazines and an improvised explosive device in the boy’s room. She found the boy hammering […] The post Allegedly, Mom Buys Child Ammo, Gear to Help Him Shoot Up His School appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced over $200 billion in commercial deals agreed upon by the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The announcement comes on the last leg of Trump’s Gulf tour, which has led to massive investments and trade deals from both Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well. “President Trump continues to advance the interests of the American people, enhancing market access for American exporters to strengthen our economic and national security,” the White House said in a statement. “These deals will significantly expand investment in the United States and U.S. market access in the United Arab Emirates.” The “transformative deals” include Boeing and GE Aerospace securing a $14.5 billion commitment from Etihad Airways for 28 Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft and a $4 billion investment by Emirates Global Aluminum in Oklahoma to build one of the first new American aluminum smelters in 45 years. Other deals announced relate to the energy, technology, and mineral sectors. HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST TRIP “President Trump’s historic visit to the United Arab Emirates is another opportunity to welcome new partnerships in frontier technologies, health and life sciences, mobility, entertainment, and many other fields,” the White House said. The deals are in addition to the UAE’s March commitment to investing $1.4 trillion in American energy, manufacturing, and technology over the next decade. In 2023, the UAE held $35 billion in foreign direct investment in the United States, supporting more than 33,000 American jobs, according to the White House. In 2024, total American goods trade with the UAE reached an estimated $34.4 billion, including a $19.5 billion U.S. trade surplus — the third largest globally. TRUMP CALLS ON SAUDI ARABIA TO JOIN ABRAHAM ACCORDS: ‘MY FERVENT HOPE’ Trump was greeted by a fighter jet escort, music, honor guard, and Emirati women doing a traditional dance with their hair, upon arrival in the UAE. He met with UAE leader Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, toured the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, and was hosted at a state dinner. Trump was also bestowed with the UAE’s highest civilian honor, the Order of Zayed. "I am honored to announce that His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan bestows the Order of Zayed upon President Trump" ???? pic.twitter.com/Ymb9r5dB5y — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 15, 2025 “In recognition of President Donald Trump’s exceptional efforts to strengthen the longstanding ties of friendship and strategic partnership between the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America, I am honored to announce that His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan bestows the Order of Zayed upon President Trump,” a speaker announced before the award was presented. The Burj Khalifa, the skyscraper in Dubai that holds the status as the world’s tallest structure, was also lit up with the American flag. Trump had a strong relationship with the UAE in his first term, most evident in the success of the Abraham Accords, which normalized the Gulf country’s relations with Israel. So far in his trip, Trump secured massive trade and defense sales deals, including a $142 billion defense sales deal with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia also committed to a larger $600 billion investment for the United States during the visit. HOW TRUMP LIFTING SYRIA SANCTIONS COULD TRANSFORM THE MIDDLE EAST On Wednesday, Trump made a defense agreement with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, despite his previous 2017 statements in which he accused Qatar of backing terrorism. “The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” Trump said at the time. Qatar signed a letter of intent to purchase $2 billion worth of MQ-9B Reaper drones and $1 billion in counter-drone technology, becoming the first international customer for Raytheon’s Fixed Site–Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aerial System Integrated Defeat System (FS-LIDS), designed to neutralize small unmanned aircraft, according to the White House.

Try to imagine you run South Africa. You’re in charge of the African National Congress. It’s not exactly an enviable position. Your country has the highest unemployment rate in the entire world. Since the end of apartheid, which was supposedly the greatest evil to ever befall mankind, a lot of bad things have been happening. The power grid has collapsed, along with the export markets and any semblance of public safety. Headlines like this one are common: As you can see, it reads, “Grandmother, 71, dies of shock after she was forced to watch her three granddaughters being raped at gunpoint at her home in South Africa.” And there’s plenty more where that came from, because you have turned your country into a living embodiment of DEI, to disastrous results. And then, to your horror, the president of the United States decides to shine an international spotlight on your incompetence. He makes it impossible to hide what’s going on in South Africa. Specifically, the president allows white citizens of South Africa to flee to the United States so that they can escape all of the anti-white violence and race-based land seizures that you’ve implemented in your failing country. And unsurprisingly, a lot of white people take the United States up on its offer. They decide that it’s better to uproot their entire families and fly halfway across the world than to spend another second under your rule in South Africa. If you have an ounce of shame, that would have to be extremely, monumentally embarrassing. There are politicians in Japan who would quite literally commit harakiri under those circumstances. The job of any government is to look after the well-being of its own people. Once the most productive members of society start leaving, at great personal cost to themselves, then you have failed as a government. You are illegitimate. You have no one else to blame. And you should resign in shame, at the absolute minimum. But the African National Congress has decided on the opposite course of action. Rather than engage in any amount of introspection, they’ve decided to attack the white refugees who have just fled to America. They’re not showing any interest in keeping any of the remaining Afrikaners from fleeing, even though they’re responsible for maintaining the vast majority of usable farmland in the country. They’re also not interested in contesting the notion that white people are going to be persecuted in their country. Instead, the African National Congress released this statement the other day: As you can see, the statement reads, “They flee not from persecution, but from justice, equality and accountability for historic privilege.” The statement goes on to describe the refugees as “cowardly,” and says they are “offended by a democratic society working to redress past injustice.” And then there’s this concluding line, which really sells the message: “Ours is not a broken or failing state, it is a people’s democracy advancing against the tides of distortion and destructive, divisive narratives.” This is one of those things that’s “less true for having been said,” as the saying goes. If you’re running a highly functioning, stable country, then you’re not going to end your press release, out of nowhere, by declaring that you’re “not a broken or failing state.” No state that isn’t failing has ever had to clarify in a statement that they aren’t failing. That’s like walking up to your wife unprompted and announcing that you aren’t having an affair. But none of these people are especially bright, so they’re not aware of the implications of what they’re saying, no matter how obvious those implications might be. That also explains why, in effect, their message is essentially an explicit threat to every white person in South Africa. They’re also attempting to coax the refugees back with the promise of giving them the opportunity to be held accountable for historical injustices. They’re basically saying, “Hey guys, can you come back so we can persecute you? This isn’t fair! We were going to persecute you, but then you left!” WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show With this statement, they are validating everything that the Trump administration says about the country. No person, of any race, should be subjected to land seizures or violence as part of “accountability for historic privilege,” whatever that means. But that’s what the government of South Africa is now demanding, by their own admission. And it’s what the political Left is demanding in this country, too. In the days since the first 59 white refugees arrived from South Africa, political commentators on the Left have been melting down to a degree that’s truly hard to comprehend, even given everything we already know about these people. What we’re seeing is primal rage and hysteria. It is a level of anti-white race hatred that needs to be exposed, or else very soon, we’ll look a lot like South Africa. We’ll start with Don Lemon, who no longer has the need to temper his passion for white genocide now that he’s not on cable news. Not that cable news personalities are tempering it very much. Watch: Don Lemon is mad that Afrikaners are being allowed to enter the US as refugees because they’re White and Whites cannot be oppressed. pic.twitter.com/RIQv4Gj1px — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) May 14, 2025 First of all, notice he says that white people own most of the “fertile” land in South Africa. That word “fertile” is doing a lot of work there. If you know anything about farmland, it’s possible to ruin it. It’s possible to do a very bad job of maintaining it, too. It’s not as though you can just give a farm to a random person off the street, and rest assured that it’s going to be fertile in ten years. And we know that for a few reasons. First of all, it’s common sense. And secondly, Zimbabwe already tried this. Several decades ago, they made the decision to seize farms from whites and give them to black people. After all, what could go wrong? Zimbabwe was the “bread basket of Africa,” supposedly. Well, as it turns out, a lot went wrong. Before long, Zimbabwe needed to import food because they couldn’t make their own. And eventually, the government gave up on the idea. They gave the farmland back to the white people. This is a Bloomberg news article from just a few years ago: “Zimbabwe Gives Land Back to White Farmers After Wrecking Economy. … Two decades after President Robert Mugabe wrecked Zimbabwe’s economy by urging black subsistence farmers to violently force white commercial farmers and their workers off their land, his successor has thrown in the towel. … The seizures that began in 2000 were ratified by the government, which said they were needed to redress colonial imbalances. A vibrant agricultural industry that exported tobacco and roses and grew most of the food the nation needed collapsed. Periodic food shortages ensued, inflation became the world’s highest and the manufacturing industry was decimated. What was one of Africa’s richest countries became one of its poorest.” In other words, it turns out that, when you use the government to redistribute fertile farmland to correct some alleged “injustice,” you get famine. That is what “equity” means in practice. It’s what always happens when you take land from people who are managing it properly, and then redistribute it on the basis of race. Competence matters, especially when you’re talking about a country’s food supply. And make no mistake: The reason those white people control that farmland in South Africa is because they’re competent. They bought it, and then they maintained it for generations. No one handed it to them, or maintained it for them. In many cases, they were there long before black South Africans arrived and demanded their property. In this debate, we are well past the point where the Left can scream “apartheid” and get whatever they want. Post-apartheid South Africa is simply too great of a disaster, by every available metric. And by the way, apartheid was nothing like what’s currently being enacted in South Africa. As we discussed the other day, there were far fewer race-based laws under apartheid than there are right now in South Africa. And the race-based laws under apartheid, by and large, were directed at enforcing racial separation, not large-scale farm seizures by the government without any limiting principle whatsoever. Activists on the Left know they have the losing argument in this debate, which is why they’re now resorting to some of the most pathetic tactics imaginable. The New Republic, for instance, just ran a story in which they dug up the old tweets of one of these white refugees. Here’s that bombshell: The headline is: “One of Trump’s Afrikaner ‘Refugees’ Is Quite the Antisemite.” Yes, they went rooting through his tweets to smear him, all because he’s white and he’s fleeing persecution in South Africa. He’s allegedly an anti-semite, so he needs to go back. Of course, if this is the new standard, then I have very bad news about 90% of the refugees that were admitted under the Biden administration. Muslims from the Middle East and Africa are not exactly big fans of the Jews, generally speaking. The New Republic probably doesn’t seem to realize how this would go, but it’s pretty obvious. Meanwhile, other luminaries on the Left are reduced to making explicit threats against these white refugees. Here’s one viral example: This isn’t some random person, by the way. She has more than 100,000 followers on TikTok, and she’s openly threatening these white refugees with murder, solely on the basis of their skin color. There’s not even any attempt to sugar-coat it. She thinks white people should die. And there are a lot of videos like this on TikTok at the moment; most of them adopt the same gleeful tone. We saw this with Karmelo Anthony, then we saw it with Rodney Hinton, and now we’re seeing it here. And if you listen really carefully — the most telling part of the video, by far, happens around the 31-second mark. That’s the moment where you can hear a very faint smoke-alarm chirp in the background, while this woman is threatening to murder white people. This whole thing is just too on the nose. Actually, there is one exception to that rule. Over at CNN, they’ve managed to fix the smoke detectors. But they definitely haven’t gotten rid of the genocidal anti-white commentators. Watch: Former Biden-Harris staffer says white South Africans should go back to their native land of Germany or Holland. CNN was fine with allowing violent gang members and terrorists into the Country but not a few dozen white South African families.pic.twitter.com/p6tf237qcH — Media Research Center (@theMRC) May 13, 2025 The obvious problem here is that, despite being given a national television platform, this woman clearly has no idea what she’s talking about. She thinks the Afrikaners came from Germany. She’s a complete imbecile, like pretty much everyone else on CNN. Her sole purpose is to demonize white people. And she’s going to do that, one way or the other, every time she gets on television. But there’s actually a bigger problem with this woman’s response. Let’s pretend for a second that the Afrikaners actually did come from Germany. She’s implying that, in that scenario, the white people could go back there, and she’d be fine with it. But of course, the Left wouldn’t be fine with that. Take a look at what the Left has done to Germany in the past couple of decades, if you don’t believe that. It’s unrecognizable. And any white person who complains is immediately labeled “far-right.” They’re condemned as white supremacists. The national security services open counter-terrorist investigations into every single one of them. The same is true in this country, of course. This is the funny thing about who is considered native or not, who is considered an invader or not. CNN commentators have no problem announcing that white people whose ancestors have been in the country for 20 generations should “go back home.” But try telling the Somalis in Minnesota to go back home. You’ll immediately be labeled a far-right bigot — even though the Somalis have only been here for a couple of decades. Some of them have been here for a couple of hours. But we’re told that the Somalis have every right to be here, while Americans — who can trace their lineage back several centuries — have to shut up and take it. No matter where they are, white people are always the colonizers, and have no legitimate claim to whatever land they’re on. In other words, under the Left’s framework, white people are the only demographic on the planet that can never be considered truly at home or native to any country. We’ll be told that a white person’s “true home” is Western Europe. And yet if any white person in the UK claimed that it was a white country, they would be condemned. They say to us in America that this isn’t our land. So where is our land? They won’t follow that to its logical conclusion and say that Europe is the white man’s land. So where is it? The message is that there is literally no place on Earth that white people can claim is a legitimate homeland. A white man is native to nowhere. He is indigenous to nowhere. That’s strange isn’t it? Have you noticed that there is no country on the planet with white “indigenous people”? So where did white people come from? Did they fall out of the sky like rain? Did they magically spawn out of thin air? If a white person can trace his roots back to the 17th century in this country, does that make him a native American? If the answer is now, then where is his native homeland? And if he goes there, can he claim the title of native or indigenous? Can he say that the non-natives are invading or stealing? The Left has no answer to any of these questions, because the terms “native” and “colonizer” and “invader” are all tools of manipulation. They don’t mean anything. And of course, white people get this treatment even though they actually bring innovation, advancement, and infrastructure everywhere they go. And then once those white people leave, what happens? None of that infrastructure is maintained. Look at what happened after Portugal gave back Mozambique or Angola. Look at South Africa or Zimbabwe. Total disrepair follows when the alleged “colonizers” are kicked out. Why might that be? That’s a question you’re not supposed to ask, of course. But recently, I saw someone who took a crack at addressing it. Watch: This is one of those conversations that, if you were leading South Africa at the moment, you’d probably take pretty seriously. Maybe you’d take a step back and wonder if 30 years of black supremacy is really an optimal substitute for maintaining the roads and the farms and the power grid. Maybe you’d recognize that a civilization that doesn’t understand the concept of maintenance, and which cannot build anything on its own, will inevitably collapse if it demonizes the handful of productive people who are sticking around. But of course, no one in South Africa is asking those questions at the moment. Instead, they’re demonizing the white people who are already out the door. And that means that, very soon, those white people will have a lot of company. South Africa is about to lose the few farmers it has left. No country in human history has ever survived something like that. And South Africa, the ultimate embodiment of DEI, will be no different.