The Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Senator Ron Johnson, says one of the main goals of the committee will be to bring transparency about the government’s poor response to COVID-19. 

Actress and singer Selena Gomez uploaded a video of herself crying over President Donald Trump and U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan's deportation campaign on Monday before quickly deleting the post.

On his first day at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth expressed a message in regards to the mission of the Department of Defense (DOD).

Irish President Michael D. Higgins went to a small Jewish community on International Holocaust Remembrance Day to bemoan the plight of Gaza. Hamas, a terrorist group, runs Gaza. He praised the “long-overdue ceasefire.” Jewish leaders had asked that he not attend the Holocaust Memorial, but he defied them. It was a Holocaust Memorial, and he […] The post Irish President Uses Holocaust Memorial Day to Compare It to Gaza appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

At a recent meeting of the House Committee on Homeland Security, evidence was presented of how China is posing a grave cybersecurity threat to the United States. “Over the last year, the U.S. government has discovered a number of PRC [People’s Republic of China] state-sponsored threat actors deeply embedded in and across the nation’s critical networks: Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, and most recently Silk Typhoon, have compromised our critical infrastructure, hacked sensitive communications, breached federal workstations …” Chairman Mark E. Green (R-TN) stated. “The U.S. authoring agencies have confirmed that Volt Typhoon has compromised the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure organizations—primarily in Communications, Energy, Transportation Systems, and Water and Wastewater Systems Sectors—in the continental and non-continental United States and its territories, including Guam,” the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reported in February 2024. “Microsoft has identified a nation-state activity group tracked as Flax Typhoon, based in China, that is targeting dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the likely intention of performing espionage,” Microsoft noted in August 2023. “Salt Typhoon refers to a sophisticated cyber espionage operation orchestrated by a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group, commonly known as Earth Estries, Ghost Emperor, or UNC2286,” Armis reported. “This state-sponsored actor has been linked to high-profile breaches targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, including major telecommunications providers such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Lumen Technologies.” “China has engaged in … maturation in how they conduct these operations,” Adam Meyers, senior vice president of Counter Adversary Operations at CrowdStrike, testified at the House committee hearing. “Today, they’re using exploits that target external facing devices that are connected directly to the internet that effectively bridge enterprises to the internet. These devices are often unmanaged. In many cases, they may be legacy or have proprietary capabilities – that means that they don’t run modern security tools … like a router or a VPN concentrator. Things that are meant to connect the enterprise to the network or allow remote users to authenticate in.” “The nodes, so to speak, between silos,” Green suggested. “Yes, sir, and these are highly prioritized and highly valuable targets with these threat actors,” Meyers replied. “They’ve nationalized their vulnerability research program in 2018. For example, they changed the national security law in China, and all vulnerability research has to be submitted through the Chinese government. Whereas, here in the United States, we follow something we call responsible disclosure, where if I find a vulnerability in a product, I notify that product vendor in order to try to get it fixed. They’re effectively nationalizing that resource so they can use that for exploits against American technology and American companies. Once they gain that access, they attempt to remain stealthy and either conduct espionage in order to inform political and military decision-making, or in the case of ‘Vanguard Panda,’ also known as ‘Volt Typhoon,’ the prepositioning that we’ve discussed here, which would be potentially useful to bring down some of these networks that Mr. Montgomery mentioned in time of conflict.” Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, pointed out, “This operational preparation of the battlefield, it is a war-making action, and we have to take it much more seriously. I think the idea that they’ve pre-positioned malware or that they have capabilities that lie in wait that can come out at the right time, as we’re making a decision to respond to a crisis in Taiwan or crisis in the Baltic States. TRANSCOM operates on these unclassified networks with civilian systems. This is why I think former Representative [Now National Security Advisor] Waltz is right, in the sense that we have to go on the offensive. We now have to actually publicly execute operations against Chinese cyber infrastructure to say: ‘We know you did this; we know you use this infrastructure to do this, and we’re going to remove that infrastructure from your capability.’ … Otherwise, the Chinese are going to keep doing what they’re doing.” “These incidents are not over,” Meyers continued. “‘Salt Typhoon’ is an ongoing activity by an adversary, as is ‘Volt Typhoon,’ or what we call ‘Vanguard Panda.’ So this is something we need to continuously engage; we need to continuously identify, root them out, and put a stop to them––cut off their access.”

ESPN host Stephen A. Smith admitted he voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat nominee for president in 2024, and said he now feels foolish for doing so. During Smith’s appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” he compared former President Barack Obama’s popularity to that of Harris and said, “Obama resonated more because the people chose him to be the Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States of America as opposed to somebody backdooring their way into the position.” Smith then called out the other guest on the show, California Democrat Representative Ro Khanna, for being one of the many Democrats who had touted former President Joe Biden’s mental sharpness, the Daily Caller noted. “I know that you supported Biden, obviously you spoke about his mental acuity and all of that other stuff. But we all saw what we saw,” Smith told Khanna, referencing the disastrous debate over the summer between President Trump and then-President Biden. Stephen A Smith stuns the Bill Maher crowd into silence as he articulates how Democrats have no one left fighting for the American people: SAS: “The man was impeached twice, he was convicted on 34 felony counts. The American people still said ‘He’s closer to normal than what… pic.twitter.com/BTHt6ZKIqa — Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) January 25, 2025 “Kamala Harris, who didn’t resonate during the primaries in 2020 — couldn’t even get to Iowa — suddenly is the Democratic nominee,” he added. “And then you all go, and then you roll up at the [Democratic National] Convention in Chicago, and everybody’s like, ‘She’s a rockstar!’ So, it was like, wait a minute, how’d that happen? How’d that happen? I don’t know how that happened.” “So, you are looking at all those things and you are saying, Yes, I voted for her. A lot of people voted for her. But in the end, we end up feeling like damn fools,” Smith continued, per the New York Post. “Because we supported it. We fell for the okiedokie as they say. You know she did. If you had a primary, the likelihood is that she would have not been the Democrat nominee and you can’t say that about Trump. You can’t.” The ESPN host then pointed out that, in the end, the “American people still said ‘He’s [Trump] closer to normal than what we’re seeing on the Left,” despite the fact that he’s been impeached by Congress and convicted in the court system.  “Why? Because something pertains, when you talk about the transgender community for example, and you talk about issues that pertain to less than one percent of the population, the Democratic party came across as if that was more important than the other issues,” Smith said. “Then you turn around and look at the Left and you say ‘What promises did you keep?’ What resonated with the voter out there?” he added. “What voter can look at the Democrat party and say ‘there’s a voice for us, somebody who speaks for us, that goes up on Capitol Hill and fights the fights that we want them fighting on our behalf.” “They [Democrats] didn’t do that. That’s why their behinds are home, and that man is back in the White House,” Smith continued, noting that in week one Trump’s already fulfilling campaign promises. “He’s doing what he said he was going to do.”

Actress Selena Gomez is getting a lot of reactions for posting a video of herself openly weeping over President Trump beginning mass deportations of illegal alien criminals, keeping a promise he made on the campaign trail. The 32-year-old star, a native of Texas, shared the now-deleted video to her Instagram Stories on the morning of January 27. “All my people are getting attacked,” she said as tears streamed down her face. “The children,” she cried. “I don’t understand.” The story included the caption, “I’m sorry,” along with a Mexican flag. “I’m so sorry,” Gomez continued in the clip. “I wish I could do something, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”  The celebrity later deleted the post and added another which said, “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people.” My lord these people are insufferable. ? — Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 27, 2025 “My lord these people are insufferable,” filmmaker Robby Starbuck wrote in response to a repost of the original Story which was circulating on X. “And they do this on camera. Intentionally! I do not [understand],” another reply said. “And dangerously uninformed,” a third person agreed. “The Trump administration is prioritizing criminals and dangerous threats to our country. She is crying over s*xual predators and potential ter*orists being deported.” Border Czar Tom Homan announced on Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and law enforcement officers had already made some 1300 arrests through deportation operations since President Trump’s inauguration, noting how the vast majority of those arrests focused on individuals who had committed additional crimes, such as pedophiles, gang members, and at least one terrorist, as The Daily Wire previously reported. Dr. Phil McGraw accompanied Homan on one Chicago raid and documented the arrest of a convicted child sex offender from Thailand who was flagged for deportation.  This isn’t the first time Gomez discussed immigration topics. In 2019, she produced a Netflix documentary series called “Living Undocumented” which explored the lives of illegal alien families living in the United States. She has also talked about her grandparents being Mexican immigrants. “I feel afraid for my country,” Gomez wrote in an op-ed published in TIME the same year her docuseries was released. “I don’t claim to be an expert. I’m not a politician, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t work in the system at all. I understand it’s flawed and that we need rules and regulations, but we also have to remember that our country was formed by people who came here from other countries.”

The Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have conducted a series of operations in Colony Ridge, the sprawling Texas development that The Daily Wire exposed as a magnet for illegal aliens. ICE officials have conducted an unknown number of raids in Colony Ridge, which is located just north of Houston and spans approximately 60 square miles. Among those arrested is believed to be an El Salvadorean illegal alien wanted for murder, Liberty Sheriff Bobby Rader said. “It is my understanding that ICE has a list of people in the area that have active felony warrants,” Rader explained. “I was told that one of those arrested was wanted for murder in El Salvador.” ICE did not immediately respond to a media inquiry asking how many individuals had been apprehended in the enforcement operation. One individual took to Facebook to document ICE’s presence in Colony Ridge and warn the “raza” — a slang term for all people of the Hispanic race “race” — that law enforcement was active in the area. The image appears to show an ICE agent and a Texas State Trooper working together to detain a suspect. Screenshot President Donald Trump signed a slate of immigration related executive orders and directed ICE to begin mass deportation operations around the country. Stephen McCanless, the Superintendent of the Cleveland Independent School District, confirmed that ICE had been active in the Colony Ridge development. “Staff and parents in CISD have captured footage of ICE in Colony Ridge,” he stated. “While I do not know who ICE is picking up, we did have one cafeteria worker today receive a call notifying her that her husband had been picked up.” McCanless noted that the school district, which has grown rapidly as the population of Colony Ridge has surged, experienced a dip in enrollment after Trump’s election. “Up until now, our enrollment number projections have been spot on. Based on the projections, we should be at 13,500 students currently, but we are only at 12,500 students,” he explained. Colony Ridge entered the national spotlight after The Daily Wire visited the development and documented how it used lending and advertising tactics to systematically attract illegal aliens. The development has attracted several violent criminal illegal aliens, including one man who pleaded guilty to killing a woman inside Colony Ridge. The man acted with two accomplices whose immigration statuses are unknown. The area has become a hotbed for crime. A joint operation by the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Liberty County Constable last month resulted in the arrest of an illegal alien smuggler from Guatemala who authorities say was behind a “mass casualty event” when a trailer full of migrants crashed, killing more than 50 people. The illegal alien smuggler had four properties at Colony Ridge, with his purchases taking place between 2019 and late 2024. BREAKING: A Guatemalan illegal alien smuggler bought property and hid out in Colony Ridge as the feds hunted him down for his involvement in a ‘mass casualty event.’ The smuggler was arrested yesterday at his Colony Ridge home in a joint operation with the DHS, DOJ and ICE. ? — Spencer Lindquist ?? (@SpencerLndqst) December 10, 2024 Two illegal alien murder suspects who lived in Colony Ridge were arrested earlier this year. One of the men, described by authorities as a “fugitive murder suspect wanted by Interpol,” had already been deported from the United States twice before establishing a residence in Colony Ridge. Those two arrests came after a teen was allegedly abducted at gunpoint inside the development and was shot at as he fled his captors.

Governor Tate Reeves (R-MS) slammed CBS News host Margaret Brennan after she suggested during an interview with Vice President J.D. Vance that states like Mississippi wouldn’t be able to coordinate a response to natural disasters without the federal government’s help.  Reeves ripped into Brennan on X after she pushed back on President Donald Trump’s proposals to transform the role of FEMA during her Sunday interview with Vance. Brennan said that states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky would suffer if FEMA took a reduced role in natural disaster response.  “HILARIOUS elitism by [Brennan] claiming that Mississippians know less about emergency management than DC bureaucrats — all because her favorite Democrats in CA and NC have failed their constituents,” Reeves posted on X. “[Vance] did a great job handling her condescending questions. The disdain these people have for any Americans outside of their little bubble is so pathetic and revealing.” HILARIOUS elitism by @margbrennan @CBSNews claiming that Mississippians know less about emergency management than DC bureaucrats – all because her favorite Democrats in CA and NC have failed their constituents.@JDVance did a great job handling her condescending questions. The… pic.twitter.com/YHWqWJhp6h — Governor Tate Reeves (@tatereeves) January 26, 2025 Trump promised on Friday that he would sign an executive order that would “fundamentally” overhaul and transform FEMA. He also suggested that he may get rid of the agency altogether and hand over responsibility to the states.  “You know FEMA has specialized expertise that some of these states just don’t have,” Brennan told Vance. “How will lower income states, the Mississippis, the Kentuckys, the Alabamas, be able to do this for themselves without federal help?” Vance replied by saying that the reason behind Trump’s proposal to revamp FEMA was to ensure that disaster victims were able to receive support and aid as efficiently as possible.  “The president, to be clear, is not saying we’re going to leave anybody behind,” Vance said. “He’s saying that the way that we administer these resources, some of which is coming from the federal level, some of which is coming from the state level, we’ve got to get the bureaucrats out of the way and get the aid to the people who need it most.”  Trump has said it would be better if states were in total control of recovery efforts and the federal government would fund a certain percentage of the response. His proposals to change FEMA come after he has criticized the agency’s response to both Hurricanes Helene and Milton, saying that the agency slowed its response because many of those impacted were in conservative rural areas.  During a Friday stop in Asheville, North Carolina, Trump spoke out about a FEMA scandal first reported on by The Daily Wire where relief workers skipped homes because of Trump signs or flags. “A whistleblower testified that some FEMA employees refused to help people who display Trump signs on their property. I think that’s true, isn’t it? I read that. That’s not nice, that’s not too nice, is it? But whoever those property people were, thank you very much,” Trump said. In November, The Daily Wire broke a story that FEMA supervisor Marn’i Washington had ordered relief workers in Lake Placid to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” These instructions were given in person and verbally, whistleblowers told The Daily Wire. At least 20 homes were skipped due to the orders.