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Two people are dead and another four injured outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester, England after a man drove his car into a crowd of people before getting out and stabbing worshippers.  The attack came on Yom Kippur, the holiest of days in the Jewish Calendar. Greater Manchester Police confirmed on Thursday afternoon that the suspect was neutralized by responding police officers. Two people have been arrested in the hours after the attack. Counterterrorism police did not provide further details. Police were alerted to the attack by a witness who described seeing “a car being driven towards members of the public and one man had been stabbed.” Police credited the quick thinking of a congregation member who stopped the suspect from entering the building.  Speaking from the European Summit in Copenhagen, Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed that English police officers will work to secure Jewish sites throughout the country.  “I’m already able to say that additional police assets are being deployed to synagogues across the country, and we will do everything to keep our Jewish community safe,” Starmer said.  Starmer returned to 10 Downing Street to chair an emergency meeting following the attack.  The post Synagogue Stabbing Leaves Two Dead, Four Injured in England appeared first on The American Conservative.

Dizzying Déjà vu—Democrats Again Prioritize Illegal Immigrants Over Selfless American Veterans

President Donald Trump has formally declared that the United States is in a state of “armed conflict” with drug cartels his administration has labeled terrorist organizations, according to a confidential notice sent to Congress and obtained by The New York Times. The designation marks a significant escalation in the administration’s legal justification for U.S. military strikes against suspected traffickers. Last month, American forces sank three boats in the Caribbean Sea, killing 17 people. The White House contends the actions were lawful under the laws of war, rather than criminal killings. The notice asserts that cartels constitute “nonstate armed groups” engaged in a “noninternational armed conflict” with the United States, language normally applied to wars against terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda. It also describes cartel smugglers as “unlawful combatants” subject to lethal force. “The president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Times. The post U.S. at War with Cartels, Trump Declares appeared first on The American Conservative.

Back in the 1980s, maestro P. J. O’Rourke wrote a riotous piece in Harper’s called Ship of Fools. Our favorite satirist signed up for a Peace Cruise on the Volga River. He traveled aboard the Alexander Pushkin with a boatload of Nation subscribers. It must have been about as exciting as a lobotomy. He described the landscape as “a stunted, overgrown field, unplanted, without grass, without anything. I was surrounded by equally barren heads.” The plan was for everyone to lecture on peace, and the Soviets even sent along a few “peace experts” to help. The report was hilarious — mocking the geriatric far-left activists of the day, who sincerely believed they were visiting the world of the future. Nearly 50 years later, the far left is still chartering ships. I didn’t need to sign up for the Global Sumud Flotilla to write this column; now the ships come equipped with webcams that stream nonstop, while each girl on board spends her days broadcasting live on TikTok — either spewing anti-Semitic rants, begging for money, or twerking to Caribbean beats. Among the “eminent figures in international diplomacy” on the Global Sumud Flotilla, most of which has since been intercepted by Israel, was the great scientist Greta Thunberg — renowned expert on hot tempers. Greta had been furious at her hippie shipmates for joking around during what she insisted was a mission destined to change the course of humanity. I suppose Columbus’ voyage, compared to the Global Sumud Flotilla, was just a tiny, irrelevant footnote in history. Incidentally, Ada Colau — another activist and former mayor of Barcelona — looks exactly like Christopher Columbus, which may explain why they brought her along. The flotilla’s “mission,” crewed by millionaire communists with a fondness for weed, was to break the Israeli naval blockade. To achieve this, they armed themselves with a handful of slogans that barely rhyme, giant poster boards scrawled with “Free Gaza,” and the military poise of Captain Greta Thunberg. Earlier this month, the pagan procession set sail from Barcelona, proudly billing itself as “the largest humanitarian flotilla in history.” They lasted about 40 minutes before turning back, terrified of the waves. Half the hippies were seasick and then realized they had forgotten to pack enough Dramamine — earning the flotilla its new nickname: the Dramamine Flotilla. In reality, most of the boats just swapped places around the harbor, sailing long enough to film a decent TikTok story. The flotilla’s activist-influencers have been spotted dancing, singing, and streaming live in a strange state of euphoria. Leading the charge is Spain’s Ana Alcalde — renamed “Barbie Gaza” — who faithfully chronicled every daily mishap online. Barbie Gaza, 46, converted to Islam after marrying a police officer in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, with whom she has six children. She dances, shrieks, and sometimes streams herself sobbing when, say, the waves are too high — or when the crushed ice runs out for the mojitos. The Spanish government — never one to pass up an opportunity to humiliate itself — suddenly announced it would send a Navy ship to “protect” the Marijuana Flotilla from possible Israeli attacks. The activists howled with joy, instantly declaring the war won as they imagined the Navy firing broadsides at Israel. Then the ship’s actual orders leaked to the press: Do not engage in combat, not even if Israel machine-guns the flotilla. Ha! Even as a ghost, Sánchez manages to be a coward. Israel, meanwhile, has said it uncovered evidence in Gaza that Hamas helped finance the flotilla. There have also been defections among the activists — thanks to Islamists on board who were horrified by the festive customs of their comrades. Their indignation only deepened when they discovered many of the activists were LGBT. The Islamists drew a line: It’s them or us. To their credit, they didn’t toss anyone overboard — restraint they wouldn’t bother with in Iran. Barbie Gaza even appeared live from the ship on Spanish television. Asked about the Oct. 7 atrocities, she dismissed the rapes as “Israeli hoaxes,” then topped herself in psychedelic disgrace by claiming one kidnapped woman actually felt ugly because she hadn’t been raped: “One even said she felt unattractive because they hadn’t done anything to her — they hadn’t touched her.” You might think Barbie Gaza is a lone lunatic. Wrong. She’s the template. This is the kind of person who opposes Israel. Meanwhile, the last hours of the flotilla dragged on in deep melancholy. Trump has reached a historic peace deal with Israel. Dozens of countries — including Arab ones — support it. Hamas and the Palestinian leadership are considering it. And yet the flotilla, the Spanish government, and a few other fools stand firmly against it. I hate to admit it, because I’ve grown oddly fond of these hippies, but without war the last remaining boat in the flotilla would have to return home. No more nights of drinking and debauchery along the Mediterranean coast. We can’t let that happen. No more last-minute hookups, no more Titanic poses at the bow — Palestinian scarf and dreadlocks blowing in the breeze. Worst of all, they’d have to get real jobs. We must abolish the slavery of iPhone hippies! My solidarity is with them. I sincerely hope Hamas comes to its senses and rejects Trump’s plan, if only to save the vacation plans of those aboard the last boat of the Global Sumud Flotilla. And I hope it for our sake too: Because if that entire crowd comes home, they’ll go back to being a nuisance on dry land. And then I’ll be the one forced to escape to the ocean.

In the same week in which President Donald Trump announced that he was federalizing 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers and dispatching them to the streets of Portland, he quietly signed a Presidential National Security Memorandum that purports to federalize policing. The Memorandum, just like the federalization of troops in Oregon, completely disregards constitutional safeguards against such practices. Here is the backstory. When James Madison and his colleagues crafted the Constitution and shortly thereafter the Bill of Rights, they intentionally created a limited federal government. They confined the federal government to the 16 discrete powers granted to Congress. Those powers identify areas of governance uniquely federal. Conspicuously and intentionally absent is public safety. To clarify this, the 10th Amendment articulates the reservation by the states of powers not granted to the feds. This relationship is called federalism. Constitutional scholars often refer to the powers retained by the states as the police power. The use of the word “police” here doesn’t mean police officers on the streets. It means the inherent and never-delegated-away powers of the states to govern for the health, safety, welfare, and morality of all persons in those states. In his famous Bank Speech, in which Madison argued brilliantly but unsuccessfully for a textualist understanding of the Constitution — he was opposing the creation of the First National Bank of the United States essentially because it was not authorized by the Constitution — he laid out the principles of limited government. He reminded those in Congress who had just sent the proposed Bill of Rights to the states for ratification that they did not constitute a general legislature that can right any wrong or regulate any behavior or intrude upon any relationship. Rather, their powers were limited to federal matters. Merely because an area of governance is reflected nationally does not make the area federal. Chief among these is the police power. The wall between state and federal law enforcement was generally recognized until 9/11. Prior to that, the FBI and other federal police agencies, none of which is authorized by the Constitution, generally devoted their efforts to enforcing federal law. After 9/11, the Bush administration — perhaps to divert public attention from its having slept on that fateful day — began a federal/state collaboration to fight “terrorism.” Just as the war on drugs in the 1970s and ’80s weakened the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment, the war on terror in the 2000s weakened the constitutional fabric of federalism. With a public still shell-shocked over the attacks, and a Congress pliant to the presidency and the intelligence community, Congress enacted the Patriot Act, which permits federal agents to write their own search warrants, and the states fell subject to federal domination over their policing. Slowly, the feds began to intrude and dominate into areas of law enforcement with the false claim that nearly all crimes affected national security. To garner public support for this, the feds engaged in ostentatious sting operations in which they lured disaffected young Muslim men into traps that were ostensibly criminal but were totally controlled. They then took credit for solving “crimes” that they had created. None of this was constitutional, yet few but the victims of the stings complained. Even the courts went along. As Benjamin Franklin warned, when people fear for their safety, they will allow the government to curtail their liberty. Of course, this is all illusory, as history teaches that sacrificing liberty for safety enhances neither. Now back to the Trump Memorandum of last week. It is chilling in its disregard for constitutional norms. It proclaims that public safety is now a federal priority and will be treated as such. The feds are told to begin investigating and disrupting any group of two or more persons who appear to be anti-capitalism, anti-American, or anti-Christian. At the same time, the president reserves the right to put armed troops into the streets of America’s cities. In the case of Portland, the president claimed that troops were needed because he saw riots on television. The governor of Oregon, the mayor of Portland, the chief of Portland police, and the head of the Portland police union all challenged him, arguing in affidavits that what Trump claims to have seen did not occur in Portland. What’s going on here? Public safety is a unique governmental function intentionally left to those governments closest to the people affected by it. This is the Thomistic principle of subsidiarity: The employment of the fewest assets and least force by the government closest to the problem at hand is the most respectful of human freedom and often the most effective means of solving a problem. Madison understood this and wove it into the fabric of the Constitution. But over the years, Congress — lusting for power nowhere granted to it in the Constitution — has used its spending power to create regulatory power. In 1987, when it offered hundreds of millions of borrowed dollars to the states to repave federal highways, it demanded that the states raise drinking ages in return. When South Dakota told the feds it will take their money and decide for itself what its drinking age should be, the Supreme Court told the state if you want the cash, you must accept the strings. When South Dakota caved, the result was a congressional regulation of state drinking ages! This was just a small step on the way to where we are today. Today, the feds want to control all local law enforcement, and they want to do so by commandeering local police, examining the content of speech and deciding who is dangerous to the public good before a crime is committed. The president told the military to practice their skills on Americans and he claims he can execute uncharged foreigners who he believes intend harm to Americans before they reach our shores. Can executing uncharged Americans because of the feds’ perceptions of their criminal predilections be very far behind? To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

In Every Government Shutdown, the Media Are Eager Democrat Helpers