On Wednesday, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) chaired a joint hearing focused on failures in screening Afghan refugees across federal agencies, including the State Department and Department of Defense, during Operation Allies Welcome. Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) was a resettlement program started under the Biden administration following the collapse of the Afghan central government in August 2021. Following the shoddy retreat from Kabul in August 2021, President Biden designated the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the lead agency in charge of resettling Afghan evacuees. (RELATED: Importing Chaos: The Paradox of Nation-building) During the initial evacuation, about 97,000 Afghan evacuees were brought to the U.S. to “resettle in American communities,” according to a report from the DHS inspector general. The majority of evacuees, about 77,000, were granted two-year humanitarian parole. The Biden administration chose speed over safety, at times disregarding the security concerns of its own officials to prioritize the swift absorption of Afghan refugees into American society. One through line from the hearing: The Biden administration chose speed over safety, at times disregarding the security concerns of its own officials to prioritize the swift absorption of Afghan refugees into American society. Humanitarian parole grants Afghans a temporary legal presence in the U.S., but it doesn’t provide immigration status or a path to permanent residency. However, OAW parolees are eligible for refugee-like benefits and assistance. To qualify for humanitarian parole, applicants must submit to extensive screenings and remain in contact with respective agencies. As part of its responsibilities within the larger resettlement of evacuees, the State Department established the Afghan Placement and Assistance (APA) Program to resettle Afghan nationals granted parole, working with “nine resettlement agencies and their 385 local partners.” Resettlement agencies provided “initial relocation support, material needs, and services for 30 to 90 days after the Afghans arrived at their final resettlement location.” However, once parole was issued, DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were “chiefly responsible for their final resettlement,” according to a report by the State Department’s inspector general. Three witnesses representing the respective inspectors general of DHS, the Department of Defense (DoD), and the State Department spoke at length about the concurrent deficiencies within the vetting process that raised concerns with lawmakers. Michael J. Roark, the deputy inspector general for evaluations at the Department of Defense, testified that there were “significant challenges in the interagency effort to enroll, screen, and vet displaced Afghans for possible security threats before they were granted access to the U.S.” Roark also testified that DoD had failed to implement all of the IG’s recommendations, leaving open the possibility of recurring security issues in the case of another influx of refugees.  Failure to communicate across agencies was a recurring theme of the hearings, as detailed by Craig Adelman, the deputy inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security, and Arne B. Baker, a senior official from the State Department currently performing the duties of an inspector general. DHS was clueless about who was in the country, where they were, and what they were doing. In one instance, Baker said that the State Department “was unable to confirm the reliability of the number of individuals reported by the State Department as having been evacuated from Afghanistan during the evacuation.” As for DHS, Adelman testified that “In several cases, DHS could not demonstrate that it accurately knew who individuals were, where they were located, whether parole conditions were being met, or whether individuals had unresolved risk indicators.”  These deficiencies are not simply bureaucratic shortcomings or about degrees of efficiency; they represent serious gaps that have direct bearing on public safety, national security, and the public trust in our immigration system,” he added. In other words, DHS was clueless about who was in the country, where they were, and what they were doing. Notably, the CIA was absent from the witness list, despite its role in creating the “Zero Units” — Afghan intelligence and paramilitary forces — that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the suspect in the November shooting of two National Guardsmen, belonged to.  There were also no witnesses from several federal agencies under DHS’s umbrella — such as Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — that are responsible for screening, vetting, and inspecting each evacuee before issuing humanitarian parole. While most of the Afghan evacuees brought into the country received humanitarian parole, some entered through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program. To be eligible for the SIV program, evacuees had to have taken “significant risks to support our military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan,” be “employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan, or our coalition forces,” or be a family member of someone who served. Since 2009, the U.S. government has issued 156,000 SIVs to Afghans. State Department officials issued half of those SIVs in the 45 months after suspending Embassy Kabul’s operations. In 2024, the department issued 33,119 Afghan SIVs (7,208 to principal applicants and 25,911 to family), nearly double that of 2023’s total.  By June of 2025, the department had used over 80 percent of the available 50,500 SIV slots for principal Afghan applicants. In December 2025, following the November shooting by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, President Donald Trump issued an executive order suspending the SIV program. Despite the number of agencies involved, the reports issued by the Inspectors General of DoD, the State Department, and DHS paint a sordid picture of a federal apparatus ill-equipped to handle the number of refugees accepted into the country. To wit, in 2023, the State Department’s OIG noted that the resettlement agencies working with the APA found the “large number of eligible Afghans and their simultaneous arrival raised substantial implementing challenges for the APA Program.” Additionally, resettlement agency officials “told OIG that the APA Program involved some of the most significant challenges that they had ever faced.” The issues faced by resettlement agencies ran the gamut from “housing and documentation” to “cultural orientation, staffing, program guidance, tracking systems, and medical care.” Baker confirmed this in his testimony, stating, “[R]esettlement agencies reported difficulty meeting the mental health care needs of Afghan evacuees and recommended that evacuees receive mental health screenings earlier in the process.” Before his attack in the nation’s capital in November, Lakanwal had reportedly been “struggling with his mental health — often isolating himself in a dark room — in the years after he left Afghanistan and entered the U.S,” according to CBS News. Organizations receiving resettlement funds were also a topic of conversation for the hearing. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was a specific target of Sen. Hawley’s. Julie Marzouk, founder of Marzouk Evolve Advocacy Consulting, testified that as one of the organizations contracted to resettle Afghan refugees, CAIR received tens of millions of federal dollars with little oversight on how it spent the money.  Marzouk claims that “CAIR, an organization with a thirty-year association with Hamas, was entrusted to vet Afghan applicants for terrorism.” In response, CAIR released a statement, a part of which reads, “Calling in an anti-Muslim bigot and acolyte of the Israeli government to serve as a witness is bad enough. Letting such an individual spew hate without any pushback is unacceptable. “We stand in solidarity with the Afghan American community and the Afghan refugee committee, and we applaud CAIR California for the work it has done to serve the people of California, including new Californians establishing a better life for their families.” Since 2021, “over 190,000 Afghans have settled in the United States through the EW program and its predecessor, Operation Allies Welcome,” according to the State Department. READ MORE from Tosin Akintola: California Union Behind State Billionaire Tax Has $68 Million in Assets

The tenure of General Motors’ CEO Mary Barra may soon be ending, but not before billions of additional losses are booked for her disastrous commitment to an all-electric future for the mass market automobile manufacturer. As the great American automobile manufacturer tries to assess the damage and clean up the wreckage from its EV detour, it might be expected that GM would now refocus on selling the vehicles that consumers want to buy, and which dealers excel at selling. Unfortunately, that expectation would be incorrect.  General Motors is once again distracted by the next shiny thing — self-driving vehicles. The likely successor to Mary Barra as CEO, Sterling Anderson, is a recent hire from the tech industry, and his resume is narrowly specialized in autonomous vehicles. GM cannot afford any more costly gimmicks or distractions. Unfortunately, its leadership seems congenitally attracted to boutique segments of the auto industry which excite coastal trend-chasers, but which have little appeal to the people buying pickup trucks and sport utilities, the bread-and-butter vehicles of retail auto sales. (RELATED: What’s an ‘EREV’?) Only Tesla has been successful in establishing a U.S. customer base for EVs, developing a profitable niche as a boutique commuter product for an affluent customer base. Upon Joe Biden’s election in 2020, Ms. Barra famously pledged to eliminate gasoline-powered, internal combustion vehicles by 2035, producing only EVs by that date. While the Biden administration was heavy-handed in trying to compel an all-EV future, other mass-market auto companies such as Ford and Toyota did not make similar commitments. The Trump administration subsequently reversed its predecessor’s coercive regulations, and Congress defunded EV subsidies with the One Big Beautiful Bill in 2025. But even when subsidies were in place, consumers emphatically rejected electric vehicles manufactured by legacy auto makers. Only Tesla has been successful in establishing a U.S. customer base for EVs, developing a profitable niche as a boutique commuter product for an affluent customer base. (RELATED: Celebrating the End of EVs) The EV distraction has been financially devastating for GM, with announcements of major losses and multi-billion-dollar charge-offs coming rapidly. In the 4th quarter of 2025 alone, GM booked two separate EV-related charge-offs totaling $7.6 billion. To put that loss into context, GM’s full-year 2024 profit was about $6 billion. Despite all this, General Motors has still not officially backed away from its all-EV commitment. To this day, its website reads “We are pursuing our vision of a zero-emissions future and driving value for our business, our customers, and our communities.” As reported by a GM Authority piece from September titled “GM Still Focused On EV-Only Future,” Ms. Barra “reaffirmed that the goal is to make GM an all-EV automaker.” Fortunately for General Motors, and despite the EV distraction, GM’s legacy customers are still loyal to the company’s gasoline-powered pickups and SUVs.  So, GM is finally going to re-focus on those loyal customers and the products they prefer, right? Of course not. GM is once again pursuing the Tesla niche, this time with a focus on self-driving cars. Sterling Anderson, GM’s heir apparent to the CEO office, was hired just eight months ago from Aurora Innovation, a tech start-up he cofounded to develop autonomous vehicles. Prior to that, he was involved with Tesla’s autonomous vehicle unit. Since Mr. Anderson’s hiring, several prominent executives have departed the company, presumably because they don’t share his vision for prioritizing self-driving cars. As reported by CNBC a few weeks ago, Mr. Anderson “has consolidated power to oversee ‘the end-to-end product lifecycle’ of GM vehicles, including manufacturing, engineering, battery, software and services product management, and engineering teams, according to GM.” Despite the massive EV losses that GM has incurred, the company is apparently casting its lot with a tech executive whose profit-and-loss experience is with cash burn rather than cash flow. Mr. Anderson’s startup lost about $4 billion over the past four years on nominal revenue. Aurora has about half a dozen driverless trucks running routes on Texas interstates. GM sells millions of vehicles per year. What is perhaps most peculiar about General Motors’ pivot toward autonomous vehicles is that it has already had one very expensive failure in that market segment. GM first invested in Cruise, LLC in 2016, ultimately investing $12 billion as it obtained total control of the robotaxi company.  Back in 2017, Mary Barra stated that GM would be testing fully autonomous vehicles “in quarters, not years.” While Cruise initially retrofitted other manufacturers’ electric cars to be self-driving, GM ultimately did build its own Cruise vehicle, called the “Origin.” However, only a few hundred self-driving Cruise Origin robotaxis were built before GM stopped production and surrendered that market space to Waymo. From an AP article dated Dec. 10, 2024, “Since GM bought a controlling stake in Cruise for $581 million in 2016, the robotaxi service piled up more than $10 billion in operating losses while bringing in less than $500 million in revenue…”  Some futuristic products just don’t have market traction, or can’t reconcile their cost and functionality with what the market will bear. The Concorde supersonic jetliner received its certificate of airworthiness in 1975 and started carrying passengers in 1976, but ultimately only 14 planes were ever flown commercially. Five decades later, none are in service. Supersonic planes served a niche, but had little mass-market utility.   Human-driven, gasoline-powered vehicles have been the choice of consumers and commercial vehicle buyers for over a century. There is little reason to see that changing any time soon, if ever. Auto manufacturers who focus on that mass market can prosper. Those that don’t will either fail or be relegated to being a niche manufacturer. General Motors is too big to be niche; therefore, it cannot afford to keep booking multi-billion dollar losses in pursuit of flashy trends such as EVs and autonomous vehicles. READ MORE from Buck Throckmorton: The War on Labor Expense is Renormalizing Slavery, Just in a 21st Century Form Banks Are Racially Profiling Mortgage Applicants — The Government Requires It Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Greenland has been much in the news with President Trump’s attempt to acquire the island from former colonial power Denmark. Trump’s bid has helped to expose a long-suppressed Danish campaign that could now incline Greenlanders to opt for a deal. From 1966 to 1970, in an attempt to reduce the population of Greenland, Danish doctors forced intrauterine devices (IUDs) on 4,500 women and girls as young as 12. The forced procedure left many women sterile, and the practice continued on a reduced scale until 1992, when Greenland gained control of its healthcare system. The Spiralkampagnen — “coil campaign” — continued well into the 2000s. In 2022, Greenland and Denmark launched an investigation, but no apology emerged until August of 2025. (RELATED: The Smart Way to Get Greenland) “We cannot change what has happened. But we can take responsibility,” said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. “On behalf of Denmark, I would like to say sorry.” For University of Connecticut professor Barry Scott Zellen, senior fellow in Arctic Security at the Institute of the North, “‘sorry’ seems to grossly understate the gravity of the offense,” similar to what a misbehaving child would say to a parent. “Offenses of this magnitude need much more than a ‘sorry,’” Zellen contends. “They need generational healing. They deserve generous compensation. They need repeated acts of contrition, resignations, imprisonments. They need justice.” (RELATED: Trump Sends a Cajun to Press the Message to Greenland) Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen apologized “for the harm and abuse that may have been inflicted on several women after we took over responsibility for our healthcare system.” (emphasis added) Zeller found that response “woefully insufficient.” Naaja H. Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for justice and gender equality, said she was “very pleased by the apology” but “couldn’t see any way around it.” Zellen pronounced her “the minister of platitudes and contradiction.” For those who believe that harm and abuse “may have” been inflicted, consider the experience of Henrietta Berthelsen, only 13 years old when Danish doctors forcibly implanted an IUD designed for mature women. She remembers the “terrible pain” and that “none of the grown-ups paid any attention to me.” Berthelsen and many others received “no psychological support of any kind from the state. If we seek help, we have to pay part of it ourselves.” As the Spiralkampagnen confirms, government medical care can force procedures the people don’t want to have, and which the government wants to keep secret. According to Copenhagen attorney Mads Pramming,  the Spiralkampagnen was part of government policy to limit population, and in some places, there were “zero births.” Four years later, the government considered the coil campaign a “big success,” so no need for any apology. French photographer Juliette Pavy found that discussion of the subject was taboo in Denmark. Pavy interviewed Naja Lyberth and Bula Larsen, whose IUD produced a serious infection. Doctors removed then replaced it, and Larsen remained infertile, a common legacy of the campaign. Pavy shows a photo of a coil in the womb and pictures of the victims at the time of the forced insertion. By all indications, Danish doctors seldom, if ever, objected to the procedure, which also bypassed the victims’ parents. In government-monopoly health care, the people get only the medical care the government wants them to have. As the Spiralkampagnen confirms, government medical care can force procedures the people don’t want to have, and which the government wants to keep secret. Aaja Chemnitz, who has represented Greenland in the Danish parliament for 10 years, told reporters the Danish apology was a direct result of “the external pressure, especially from the United States.” As the people should know, President Trump’s campaign to acquire Greenland is not the first. American attempts to acquire Greenland go back to the mid-1800s. During WWII, more than 10,000 Allied aircraft refueled in Greenland for bombing runs on Nazi Germany. In 1946, the USA sought to purchase Greenland for $100 million, but the Danes didn’t go for it. In 1951, the USA signed a treaty with Denmark giving the American military access to Greenland.  During the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration sought to acquire the territory, but failed to put forth an offer. While Trump makes his bid, there’s a back story here that the people should know. (RELATED: What if Greenland Isn’t Denmark’s to Sell?) At the end of WWII, Canada’s First Parachute Battalion blocked Stalin’s forces from occupying Denmark. That would have trapped Denmark in the Eastern Bloc and handed Stalin control of Greenland.  Potential suitors for that territory now include Russia, an autocracy led by former KGB man Vladimir Putin, and Communist China. The PRC’s dictatorship is now forcing women to be sterilized or fitted with contraceptive devices in an effort to reduce the population of Muslim Uighurs. That may recall Denmark’s Spiralkampagnen to limit Greenland’s “inuit” population, which Denmark considered a “big success.” Their former colony of Greenland is hardly the only strategic territory in the region. During WWII, the Allies also flew out of Newfoundland, a former British colony woefully neglected by the homeland. In 1949, Newfoundlanders voted to join Canada, in a contest some believe was rigged. See Greg Malone’s  Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Newfoundland’s Confederation with Canada, based on documents kept secret for many years. President Trump’s offer for Greenland should include justice for the Spiralkampagnen victims. Denmark could outline a counter-offer and both sides could let the people of Greenland decide. As Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Gridlocked by Ideology Is Minnesota or California the Fraud Capital of America? Christmas for California Parents Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

As has been headlined in the news, Michael Reagan, the son of the late president and the late actress Jane Wyman, passed away recently. Mike was 80, and a lovely service was held for him at St. Mel Catholic Church in Los Angeles. (RELATED: Mike Reagan, Twice Adopted, Rest in Peace) The service was carried by Newsmax (Mike was a Newsmax TV host). There were eulogies at the service from Newsmax’s own John Gizzi, Sirius XM radio host David Urban, and Andrew Coffin, representing the Reagan ranch. While I didn’t know Mike well, I can say that he had more than successfully made considerable contributions as both a conservative commentator and an American. Many do not realize that to be a son or daughter of a president of the United States is no easy task. Everyone is constantly comparing the son or daughter to their globally known presidential parent. In Mike’s case, he overcame this constant situation to more than successfully create his own career as a conservative commentator and author, more than capable of being judged not as the son of a great, decidedly legendary president but as a man on his own. He hosted a live radio show for over 26 years that was nationally syndicated by the Premiere Radio Networks. Among his many accomplishments was the founding of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. The Foundation was created, said Mike, “to memorialize my father’s accomplishments, and to educate and inspire people worldwide to value freedom and liberty.” Mike Reagan did that in spades. A visit to the Foundation’s website has this note from Mike: As I reflect on the life and accomplishments of my father Ronald Reagan, I embrace with gratitude his bold dreams, basic beliefs, and unwavering faith in the greatness of America and Americans. Ronald Reagan was an incredible father. And while I cherish his legacy as any child of such a father would, what I am most proud of is his steadfast dedication to individual liberty and global democracy and the positive impact these values had upon our nation and our world. When Ronald Reagan won the presidential election in 1980, there were 56 democracies in the world. When he left office in 1989 there were 76. By 1994, there were 114. This explosion in freedom and democracy was a dream of Ronald Reagan’s and a historic achievement of his presidency. Featured on the Foundation site are projects that include a Normandy Museum, which honors those who paid the ultimate price in the historic D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France. Notably, the Foundation established a major exhibit that “marks the first major tribute in Berlin to Ronald Reagan’s historic contributions to the fall of communism and the reunification of Germany.” The Foundation also created the USS Ronald Reagan Scholarship that honors “those who serve aboard aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan through scholarships for sailors and airmen and their family members.” In addition to all his work heading the Foundation and doing hundreds of live radio shows, Mike was a prolific author. Notably, he penned Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan, written with co-author Jim Denney. In this terrific read, Mike looks back over his considerable time with his Dad, whom he calls “The greatest man he has ever known — and one of the greatest men the world has known.” He recalls his father’s advice on subjects ranging from loving your family, working both hard and smart, making your marriage work, and not worrying about who gets the credit. In the latter case, the President had a brass plaque on his desk in the Oval Office that read: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”(I have a duplicate of that plaque on my own desk, along with a copy of another plaque from the president’s desk that simply reads: “It CAN be done.” The book is a candid telling of the father-son relationship, with the son noting he had resented “the distance between my father and me and started bridging that distance.” This last problem was resolved with Mike finally giving his Dad a hug in full view of Secret Service agents, reporters, and personnel from the radio station where Mike had his show. Mike writes: Three years after that first hug, Dad told the world he had been stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. Time passed, the disease progressed, and it gradually stole my father’s memories from him. The day came when he no longer remembered my name. Mike ends his memorable, personal telling by saying this of his decision to bridge the distance between father and son with hugs — and advising readers: “Take the initiative. Put your arms around someone you love. Say ‘I love you,’ before it’s too late. That’s the greatest lesson of all.” Now it is Michael Reagan’s turn to cross the bridge to eternity. One can suspect that his first experience there was a father-son reunion — and a hug. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Trump’s ‘50 Wins in 50 Days’ Hakeem Jeffries Urged on Protests: Getting One Protestor Killed Trump Rescues Venezuela Image licensed under Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal.

by Jose Alberto Nino, The Unz Review: Paul Singer is the embodiment of Jewish plutocracy. Paul Elliott Singer stands as one of the most influential figures in global finance. The Jewish billionaire hedge fund manager has amassed a fortune estimated at $6.2 billion to $6.7 billion by purchasing distressed sovereign debt and corporate bonds at […]

from The National Pulse: WHAT HAPPENED: President Trump’s administration achieved significant reductions in crime, improved housing affordability, and boosted wages for American workers through strict immigration enforcement and mass deportations. ?WHO WAS INVOLVED: President Donald J. Trump, American workers, law enforcement, and local jurisdictions impacted by immigration policies. ?WHEN & WHERE: Throughout 2025, with notable impacts in cities […]

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Gavin Newsom Debate Highlights