The 30-year-old man accused of planting pipe bombs outside of the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters in Washington, D.C., on the night of January 5, 2021, told investigators that he wanted someone to “speak up” about the 2020 election being stolen, according to the Department of Justice. Prosecutors said on Sunday that Brian Cole Jr. gave a “detailed confession” about planting the pipe bombs and revealed that he didn’t “like either party at this point,” according to a DOJ memo, The Hill reported. Cole allegedly said that he was not a political person, but after Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump in 2020, he began following the news more closely, especially on YouTube and Reddit. Cole said that he believed “something was wrong” with the 2020 election and people felt “that their votes are like just being thrown away,” and someone needed to “speak up,” prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors argued that Cole should remain detained as the case proceeds. Cole allegedly told investigators that he had no intention of killing or injuring anyone with the pipe bombs, which is why he said he placed them at night. Cole said that he was “pretty relieved” when he learned that the bombs never went off after he set them to detonate one hour after he placed them, according to the DOJ. Prosecutors, however, argued that Cole’s alleged actions put people at risk regardless of whether he intended to harm anyone. “Indeed, the defendant admitted that he set both devices to detonate 60 minutes after he placed them,” the DOJ memo stated. “His failure to accomplish his objectives does not mitigate the profoundly dangerous nature of his crimes.” Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships He allegedly confessed to investigators shortly after his arrest and expressed support for Trump, as was previously reported. However, questions remain about whether Cole allegedly planted the bombs in response to Trump’s 2020 election loss, as the charging documents state that he purchased the materials for the bombs as early as May 2019, long before the controversy surrounding the 2020 election erupted. Cole has also expressed anarchist views, according to some reports. The Daily Wire reported earlier this month that Cole was employed by a bail bonds company run by his father, which worked to free illegal immigrants from ICE facilities and sued the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security. Cole, of Woodbridge, Virginia, was arrested earlier this month after investigators reviewed thousands of purchases, cell phone data, and license plates.

President Donald Trump will become the first non-Israeli to receive Israel’s top civilian honor, the “Israel Prize,” announced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference with the two leaders at Mar-a-Lago. “In almost our 80 years, we’ve never awarded it to a non-Israeli, and we’re going to award it this year to President Trump,” Netanyahu said. “It’s going to be awarded to President Donald J. Trump for his tremendous contributions to Israel and the Jewish people.” NEW: Benjamin Netanyahu announces that President Donald Trump is being awarded with the “Israel Prize.” It has never been awarded to a non-Israeli, according to Netanyahu. pic.twitter.com/VK7OfJsRju — Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) December 29, 2025 The award will be for the newly established peace category.  Netanyahu said that he hopes Trump will visit Israel on its Independence Day in May to accept the prize.  “I have to say that this reflects the overwhelming sentiment of Israelis across the spectrum,” Netanyahu said of Israeli citizens who are often split on a variety of issues but are grateful to Trump for securing the release of all living hostages from Hamas captivity.  Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships Trump learned that he was being awarded the prize by Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch, who called into the Trump-Netanyahu meeting. “That really is a great honor,” Trump responded, adding that it was “really surprising and very much appreciated.” Following his sixth meeting with Netanyahu this year, Trump said he is focused on the future of Gaza, including the objective of getting Hamas to finally disarm, adding that it would be “horrible for them” if the terror group does not. “It’ll be horrible for them — horrible, really, really bad for them,” Trump said. “I don’t want that to happen, but they made an agreement that they were going to disarm.” The president said that if Hamas continues to resist, the 59 countries that backed the ceasefire will get involved, adding, “This is a real peace in the Middle East.” “Based on the fact that Hamas pledged, they swore that they were going to disarm. Now, if they’re not going to disarm, those same countries will wipe out Hamas,” Trump said.  “Based on the fact that Hamas pledged, they swore that they were going to disarm. Now, if they’re not going to disarm, those same countries will wipe out Hamas.” – President Donald J. Trump ?? pic.twitter.com/mYIBfZzCV0 — The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 29, 2025 Upon welcoming Netanyahu to his Palm Beach estate, Trump said he would support an Israeli military strike on Iran if its regime continues advancing its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. “The missiles, yes. The nuclear, fast,” Trump said. “One would be yes, absolutely, the other was, we’ll do it immediately.”  The president also noted that the Iranian people were expressing discontent as their country suffers from inflation, a “bust” economy, and the threat of violence or death when protesting. “Every time they have a rioter, or someone forms a group, little or big, they start shooting people. You know, they kill people,” Trump said. “They’re vicious, vicious people.” On Sunday and Monday, protests and strikes erupted across Tehran following a historic collapse of Iran’s currency, which reportedly plunged to 1.42 million rials to the dollar on Sunday.

Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted alleged sexualization of women at Mar-a-Lago.

'Massive power grab'

'Johnson is not our speaker'

'I see your ass, so you just get ready'

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Utah Fourth District Court Judge Tony Graf ordered on Monday that audio and transcripts of a closed hearing surrounding Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, can be released with redactions. In a virtual hearing, Graf ruled that the transcript of a hearing that took place in October can be issued with some redactions in the coming weeks, according to WRAL News. He detailed which lines of the transcript can be redacted, which included security measures. The judge said that transparency to the public and media was “foundational” to the judicial system, according to WRAL News. Lawyers for media outlets wrote in a recent filing that allowing full press access “safeguards the integrity of the fact-finding process” while properly conducting judicial proceedings, according to WRAL. Graf previously ordered that the media could not publish photographs of Robinson in shackles and stopped a livestream of a hearing earlier in December. Robinson is charged with one count of aggravated murder, one count of felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, two counts of obstruction of justice for hiding the rifle and discarding his clothing, two counts of witness tampering for instructing a roommate to delete texts, and one count of committing a violent offense in front of children.  Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray confirmed in September that prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. During his first in-person hearing on Dec. 11, Robinson could be seen smirking while he talked with his attorneys. The hearing focused on transparency and how much information should be shared to the public in order to ensure a fair trial, which prompted Graf to close part of the hearing to the public. Kirk’s widow, Erika, has pushed for the trial to be open to the public to ensure transparency. “We deserve to have cameras in there,” Kirk told Fox News in November. “Why not be transparent?” Two days after killing Kirk, the alleged assassin turned himself in to authorities on Sept. 12 after his parents recognized him in security footage released to the public. Robinson then confessed to the murder and threatened to commit suicide rather than turn himself in, prompting his father to contact a youth pastor who had previously been a law enforcement official. That former law enforcement official then contacted Washington County Sheriff Nate Brooksby. Brooksby said during a Sept. 18 press conference that law enforcement promised a “peaceful” surrender as a condition for Robinson turning himself in. Robinson then agreed and arrived at his office with his parents and the youth pastor. Originally published by Daily Caller News Foundation. The post Judge Hands Media Major Win in Charlie Kirk Murder Trial appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Minnesota Somali fraud scandal somehow manages to get worse and worse as the legacy media mostly ignore the issue and Democrats shrug. At the heart of this scandal lies the larger crisis facing the West. On Friday, independent journalist Nick Shirley released a 42-minute YouTube documentary detailing his efforts to undercover what exactly is going on in Minnesota and how a ring of mostly Somali scammers squelched billions of dollars from taxpayers under the noses of Gov. Tim Walz and state authorities. ? Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountableWe ALL… pic.twitter.com/E3Penx2o7a— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) December 26, 2025 Vice President JD Vance praised the video on X and wrote that Shirley did more important journalism than all the recent Pulitzer Prize winners. This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes. https://t.co/Ip6f9IedjL— JD Vance (@JDVance) December 27, 2025 The video is certainly worth watching. Among the big findings uncovered is a series of so-called day care centers and other facilities being funded in the state that have no children in them at all. In one of the most remarkable scenes, Shirley arrived at a location called the “Quality Learing Center.” Yes, “Learing,” which was obviously misspelled. The center had been licensed for 99 children, but none were there. In front of the building a woman kept shouting “don’t open up, ICE.” Shirley informed her that he was merely a journalist, but she ignored him and kept shouting. Amazing. This is just the latest in what is without a doubt one of the biggest scandals in American history. Somalians in Minnesota have stolen more taxpayer dollars than what the Lehman Brothers lost in 2008 which triggered the Great Financial Crisis pic.twitter.com/7m7PAy7wrO— OkinawaMoongazer (@joeybeastmarket) December 29, 2025 According to some estimates, Somali scammers have taken more money from taxpayers in the last few years than the entire GDP of Somalia. Also, according to the New York Post, the stolen money “accounts for roughly half of the $18 billion in total federal funds provided to the Minnesota-run services since 2018.” It wasn’t long ago that Walz was bragging about how he was sending more money to these childcare programs in the vice-presidential debate against Vance. Walz and most Democrats seem to be, at most, slightly bothered that they have to talk about this story at all and have tried to make this out to be a “bipartisan” issue that must simply be managed. But it wasn’t Republicans who run the state of Minnesota, it wasn’t Republicans creating these massive entitlement programs. And while there are Republicans who embrace the kind of open-ended immigration that enabled the Somali fraud scandal, they are at least much less prominent in the age of President Donald Trump. No, this is a problem created by the Left, one that Democrats are apparently unwilling to confront with any level of urgency. Let’s take a step back here and get back to the rub of this Somali scammer problem at its source. It’s not just about a broken immigration system with perverse incentives, though we’ve certainly had that. What the Somali fraudsters did was a matter of greed and crookedness, a replication of the kind of schemes that allow one to get ahead in their homeland. It’s immoral, but easy to understand in a basic sense. It’s the kind of corruption that ruins countries the world over, but it isn’t remarkable. Now let’s say you really are an old school New Deal Democrat, who believes strongly in the power of government and a robust welfare state. You should be the most enraged by what’s happened, right? After all, these apparently well-meaning programs have become the means by which our modern-day Visigoths have essentially sacked the capital city and turned their programs into a complete mockery of the whole system. But outrage hasn’t materialized on the Left. If anything, they’re miffed they have to talk about the Somali fraud story at all. A few legacy media outlets have covered it, including CBS News under new management, but they hardly seem to want to make this story part of the “national conversation.” Why is that? When Fox News columnist David Marcus went to Minnesota to find out what the feeling was in the state about the whole mess, I think he got to the heart of the matter. He found mostly apathy and indifference from the local liberal voters.  “It’s hard to care much about it when ICE is disappearing Somalis on the streets,” said “Anne,” who David described as a white woman in her mid-30s working in tech. Other people he spoke to had similar feelings. “Just as neat, necktied Portlanders are happy to step over dead junkies en route to brunch, Minnesotans don’t feel the impact of the fraud connected to the community,” Marcus wrote. I imagine this apathetic attitude is common among the Democratic Party’s most engaged base voters. New Deal liberalism is dead. In its place is a warped ideology, a new religion. Many blue state programs have been converted into quasi-religious enterprises, fueling what appears to be virtually unmitigated graft the depth of which we are only beginning to understand. The government is no longer there to give all Americans a leg up. It’s there to enact an identitarian form of social justice, to sort out the winners and losers of its largesse based on a mystical hierarchy of oppression only fully understood in the inner sanctums of the federally funded ivory tower. That money was siphoned away by illegal means wasn’t really so terrible according to this thinking. It was just the product of a mandated secular tithe to soothe the modern liberal conscience made no less noble by its seedy application. What the oppressed groups do with the money justly given isn’t the biggest problem, after all. This whole scheme will eventually come crashing down at some point. But for now, it can be safely ignored. The real problem right now, so this thinking goes, is that bigoted Americans noticed the scandal and might not be so keen about bringing in waves of more Somalis, who are the real victims here. At worst, this is a temporary embarrassment, a story that needs to just go away so they can keep up the narrative that all people brought to America are really much better than the current, unworthy occupants of our stolen land. These unfortunate, oppressed people need to be protected from the meanies on the Right by any means necessary even if it means the big government programs they created go bust. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu says all of Boston’s accomplishments are thanks to Somalians pic.twitter.com/m8TKofpMfp— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 23, 2025 It’s that pervasive mentality, the one exhibited by the woman standing in front of the “Learing” center shouting about ICE that is the real, existential problem we now face. This toxic, civilizationally suicidal impulse of misguided, self-destructive “empathy” mixed with self-loathing is costing us far more than the billions of dollars already pillaged from state coffers. In the end, it may cost us everything. The post Latest in Minnesota Somali Fraud Scandal Reveals Heart of the Problem appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. This content was recorded by Victor Davis Hanson prior to his Dec. 30 medical operation. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’d like to talk about a different topic, if I could. It’s this new phenomenon of artificial intelligence using a person’s face or body, using a person’s voice, using a person’s background setting, and then putting in their mouths a different message that they never said, and they not necessarily would agree, and in fact, often would disagree. And it’s kind of an intellectual, not kind of, but is an intellectual theft. It’s like plagiarism or copyright violations. And I speak from personal anguish because there’s about six VDH channels out there where it looks—it is me and my face. It is this setting that I’m in right now, the same bookcases, same clothes, somewhat same voices, but the lips don’t quite sync, and every single thing that comes outta my mouth is something I’ve never said. I’ve never attacked Vice President JD Vance. I’ve never used the F-word in public. I don’t criticize people in the way that these videos suggest. So, what’s wrong with what’s going on? The first of it is, of course, it’s theft. It’s dishonest. And the people who generate this—and we don’t know really who they are. Are they people on the left? Are they foreigners? Are they just entrepreneurial people who wanna make a quick buck without any investment? But the problem is it is theft. And you know it’s theft because if they have these ideas that they wanna promulgate, it’s a free country, why don’t they just go out and sit here like I’m talking to you and give their ideas? But instead, they’re parasitical. They want to use somebody who may have a higher profile than themselves and use their investment and steal it. That is their exposure. The second thing they’re doing is they’re greedy. If you look at these, in my case, these VDH fake channels and fake videos—and I should ask that every single video, with one exception, the Ultra on my own website, comes from The Daily Signal. From four to five weekly, five- to six-minute videos, and four hour to an hour-and-a-half podcasts, all of them have to originate with The Daily Signal. That’s one way you know the difference. But what they’re doing is they have huge audiences, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000, 100,000 people, and they have subscribers, and they have a big budget. So, our audience really has been fragmented to genuine people, like you who are listening, and people who think that it’s me, but they are helping profit a pirate, a thief. The other thing about—not only are these people greedy and not only are they unlawful and amoral, but they also put ideas into my head that I would never say myself. So, they’re using—it would be one thing to say that they’re trying to amplify, like, what Victor says with maybe a cleaner presentation that’s computer-simulated or aided or adjusted, but they’re not. They’re putting their ideas. And I can tell you a lot of them I don’t agree with. The other thing is, and this is really dishonest, for one microsecond, they flash on this little legal disclaimer that says under no circumstances are you to believe that this is the real Victor Hanson or Victor Hanson’s face or his views. We are using a technology that puts our idea—and then they make it disappear. If they really believe that, they really believe they wanted to distinguish their videos that are fake from ours that are genuine, then they would leave that up in the corner. But they don’t. They’re just doing that because they think it gives them some legal pretension and that they can fall back and say, well, we warn people legally, and then you can’t sue them. The other thing is they try to exploit our video. So, they will put headlines with the F-U-word, the F-bomb, and they’ll put it as the headline. Or they’ll say Hanson attacks JD Vance or Hanson does this when we don’t do that. We don’t try to get clicks by being controversial. We try to get audiences by trying to inform them and bring history, politics, sociology, literature, all within a unique package for the erudition and entertainment of our audience. The final thing is there’s no laws against us that I can tell. I’ve had legal counsel and they’re doing their best, but X won’t take them down. And YouTube argues and Google argues. So, apparently, the Silicon Valley brotherhood feels that these people who must have learned their skills out of that nexus, they’re not doing anything wrong. They’re just taking a product. And it’s very, it’s very ironic because, you know, all of these people have copyrights on their technologies how to do this, if Victor all of a sudden takes their technology and steals it and uses it to simulate something and doesn’t pay a fee for using it, I would be sued in a second. So, it’s very hypocritical. All of their things that they use are copyrighted or patent, but not the ideas that they steal, they apparently think. And so, until we get some legal action to stop these people who are very greedy and making a lot of money, I don’t know what else to tell you, other than caveat emptor, buyer beware, and always look for a Daily Signal imprint. And a final, I don’t know who they are. I do not know who they are. I do not know if they’re leftists that are trying to confuse the conservative movement. I don’t know if they’re Chinese or Russian hackers who may be angry at things we’ve said. I don’t know if they’re apolitical and they just wanna make a buck. But whoever they are, they’re doing things that are bad and wrong, and they should be stopped. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Beware: AI Is Putting Words Into My Mouth appeared first on The Daily Signal.