As 24-year-old Air Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, a member of the West Virginia National Guard, remains critically injured in the hospital after Wednesday's ambush-style shooting near the White House, his mother has shared post-surgery updates on Facebook.

WASHINGTON — The State Department is ordering posts to refuse visas to Afghan nationals using Afghan passports in the wake of a brutal attack on two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., guidance reviewed by The Daily Wire shows. Effective immediately, according to the Friday guidance, all diplomatic and consular officers are “instructed to refuse under 221(g), or any other applicable ineligibility of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), all otherwise eligible Afghan nationals using an Afghan passport to apply for a nonimmigrant (NIV) or immigrant (IV) visa.” That action includes any applications for Special Immigrant Visas (including Afghan SIVs, SQ, SW, SI, SE, SS, according to the State Department) and SB-1 visas for residents returning to the U.S. It is intended to “ensure that such applications have undergone necessary security vetting and to validate screening protocols ensuring the applicant’s identity and eligibility for a visa under U.S. law,” the State Department memo said. “Additional guidance will follow SEPTEL on updated enhanced vetting or screening measures that may be required for this purpose.”  If they have already print-authorized nonimmigrant or immigrant cases for Afghan nationals who are applying with Afghan passports, but those visas have not yet been printed, they are instructed to refuse the cases and not print the visa. And in cases where the visas were already printed but not handed back, they must “spoil the foil, open the case in the system, and refuse the case.” Police keep a presence following the shooting of two U.S. National Guard members near the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States, on Nov. 26, 2025. (Photo by Hu Yousong/Xinhua via Getty Images) The guidance doesn’t apply to dual nationals who are applying with a passport of a different, non-Afghan nationality, the State Department said. More guidance on enhanced vetting or screening will follow for processing the non-immigrant and immigrant visa applicants who are applying with Afghan passports. The move comes after President Donald Trump promised to halt migration from third world countries, writing in a late night Thanksgiving post: “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country.” The president’s move followed the shocking attack on National Guardsmen the day before Thanksgiving. An Afghan man killed a National Guardswoman and wounded another National Guardsman, both of whom had been deployed from West Virginia to Washington, D.C. to protect the nation’s capital. Twenty-year-old Sarah Beckstrom died from the attack on Friday, her family said. Twenty-four-year-old Andrew Wolfe is still in critical condition. Both Beckstrom and Wolfe “were sworn in less than 24 hours before they were shot on the street in Washington,” United States Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said in a Thursday morning press conference. “They were uniformed members of the West Virginia National Guard, and they were in DC to keep DC safe pursuant to President Trump’s executive order to make DC safe and beautiful,” Pirro shared. “They answered the call, they took the charge, they volunteered, they put their lives on the line for people they don’t even know, and that unfortunately is becoming a reality more and more for the members of law enforcement.” The gunman accused of shooting the two young guardsmen is 29-year-old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, The Daily Wire previously reported, who was let into the country during President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021, as part of the former president’s “Operation Allies Welcome,” the Afghan refugee program in the wake of Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Trump, in his late-night Thanksgiving post, argued that the “refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.” “As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota,” the president said. “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.” He continued: “The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst ‘Congressman/woman’ in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how ‘badly’ she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc…” “Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many,” Trump said. The president promised to pause migration from third-world countries, and to end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens and to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.” “These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process,” Trump said. “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”

Trump Admin Blocks Entry Of Afghans After Deadly National Guard Shooting

Stephanie Dilyard is lucky to be alive. Yet last week, 7-Eleven fired the 25-year-old after she used her gun to save her own life. Private companies have every right to set rules for employee behavior, but many corporate policies that require workers to remain passive and comply with criminals’ demands rest on a deeply mistaken view of crime data. “He threatened me,” Dilyard told Fox 25 in Oklahoma City. “[A]nd said he was gonna slice my head off, and that’s when I tried to call the police. He started throwing things at me, came behind the counter. I tried to run off, but he grabbed his hands around my neck, and pushed me out of the counter space, and that’s when I pulled out my gun and I shot him.” “I had to choose between my job and my life,” she said. “And I will always choose my life because people depend on me. My kids need me here.” She survived with wounds to her neck and hands–injuries that could have been far worse. Her attacker, 59-year-old Kenneth Thompson, already had an outstanding felony warrant for a parole violation. For his latest crimes, prosecutors have charged him with assault and battery, threatening acts of violence, and attempting to pass a fake bill. For more than two years, Dilyard worked the dangerous 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift alone. Despite those conditions, 7-Eleven insisted she use only “store items” to defend herself. Unfortunately, while some in the media and many businesses may concede that passive behavior by store clerks might encourage more crime, they believe that passive behavior is still the safest course of action. In Dilyard’s case, however, passive behavior likely would have gotten her killed. And while there is a kernel of truth behind the advice to remain passive when confronted by a criminal, the claim is highly misleading. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey shows that passive behavior appears slightly safer than all forms of active resistance combined–but that comparison lumps together very different actions. For women, the most dangerous form of resistance is to fight with their fists, because doing so often triggers a violent physical reaction from the attacker. The next most dangerous choice is to run. Escaping is ideal when possible, but women generally run more slowly than men, and being tackled can produce serious injury. Other options such as using a baseball bat or a knife turn out not to be a lot better because women are at a disadvantage whenever they come into physical contact with a male attacker. By contrast, the safest option for a woman confronted by a criminal is to have a gun. Women who rely on passive behavior are 2.5 times more likely to suffer serious injury than women who defend themselves with a firearm. Criminals are almost always men, and when a man is attacking a woman there is on average a much larger strength difference than when a man is attacking another man. The presence of a gun represents a much bigger relative change in a woman’s ability to protect herself than it does for a man. Firearms act as a powerful equalizer between the sexes. Murder rates fall when either men or women carry concealed handguns, but the reduction is especially large for women. Each additional woman with a concealed-carry permit lowers the female murder rate by roughly three to four times more than each additional male permit holder lowers the male murder rate. States that allowed women to carry concealed handguns on a nondiscretionary basis also experience about 25% fewer rapes than states that restrict or forbid concealed carry. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but the police can’t be there all the time. The police themselves understand that they virtually always arrive on the crime scene after the crime has occurred. And that raises a real question: What should people do when they’re having to confront a criminal by themselves? As Dilyard learned the hard way, people ultimately must take responsibility for their own safety–and for women, carrying a gun is the safest option. Fortunately, Dilyard’s children still have their mother. Originally published by RealClearPolitics. The post She Saved Her Life. 7-Eleven Fired Her appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Friday's Final Word

Following in the New York Times’ footsteps, National Public Radio rallied around the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the discredited, Hamas-linked Islamic pressure group gilded as a Muslim “civil rights organization” by its allies in the elitist press. Andrew Schneider, senior reporter for politics and government at Houston Public Media, penned a blandished defense for Houston public media on Monday, a version of which aired on NPR itself Tuesday. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has launched a campaign against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), declaring the Muslim civil rights organization a foreign terrorist organization. What's unclear is whether that will hold up under a legal challenge from CAIR, either with respect to federal law or even Texas' own statutes. Schneider's handpicked sources naturally disagreed. Syed al-Ferdous immigrated to the Houston area from Bangladesh more than 20 years ago. He now attends services at the Maryam Islamic Center in Sugar Land, southwest of Houston, every evening. He said Abbott's calling CAIR a terrorist organization shows a lack of education about Islam. "I think it’s very juvenile to say the least," al-Ferdous said. "It’s very immature, and it just doesn’t hold any water whatsoever." The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also designated CAIR a terrorist group, and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has also linked it to terrorism. Are they also immature? In addition, its executive director leader Nihad Awad in 2023 declared himself happy about the October 7 massacre. None of those facts, of course, penetrated the NPR bubble. "What does a civil rights organization in the United States, incorporated in the United States, run by American citizens, got to do with a foreign entity?" al-Ferdous asked. Neither Schneider nor his exclusively pro-CAIR talking heads ever broached the many reasons why Abbott made his decisions, although Gov. Abbott’s official proclamation provided details of CAIR’s extremism and that of a related group, Muslim Brotherhood. Instead he searched for reasons why Abbott’s claim was invalid: There's also the question of whether the statute violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which holds that when state and federal laws conflict, federal law is paramount. Declaring an entity a foreign terrorist organization is exclusively the purview of the U.S. State Department, which does not include CAIR on its list. He spoke with CAIR's national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, who supplied the paranoia against the hypothetical threat of Christian violence. CAIR’s silence in the face of previous Islamic attacks, or even support for them (see Awad above) for terrorism renders that argument ridiculous. Mitchell says Abbott's actions are increasing the risk of violence against CAIR's employees and Texas Muslims in general. "Greg Abbott’s anti-Muslim bigotry now turned into government policy is endangering the safety of Texas Muslims," Mitchell said. "Just yesterday, our staff in Texas had to receive security protection from Texas law enforcement because an anti-Muslim extremist showed up at a public hearing and demanded to know where the CAIR officials were. He was hunting down CAIR officials." Even the justification for Gov. Abbott’s move reeked of condescension, portraying conservative Christians as defending religious intolerance. Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University's Baker Institute, says Abbott is responding to pressure from some Texas Republicans concerned about the growth of Islam in the state. "They look to places like Minneapolis, where a growing Muslim population has resulted in prayers, calls to prayer being broadcast on loud speakers, and where what they view as a Christian way of life is being eroded," Jones said. .... "I suspect that it’s part of a broader concern that some Republicans have regarding Islam, in general, gaining popularity in Texas and encroaching and affecting what they believe should be a Judeo-Christian state, rather than an ecumenically pluralist state," Jones said. A version of the story broadcast on NPR the next day made similar slanted points.

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence platform has seemingly been left out of a government program to launch the technology forward.On Monday, the White House announced a new project aimed at accelerating innovation and discovery to "solve the most challenging problems of this century."'The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources.'The new Genesis Mission is described by the Department of Energy as "a national initiative to build the world's most powerful scientific platform."An executive order from the president titled "Launching the Genesis Mission" explained plans to integrate federal scientific datasets to train AI to test new hypotheses, automate research, and speed up the occurrence of scientific breakthroughs."The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization."With Elon Musk making strides in 2025 with both the advancement of his Grok chatbot and its video generation model, Imagine, tech enthusiasts were shocked to find out that Musk's xAI was not on a list of partners for the project.RELATED: Big Tech’s AI boom hits voters hard — and Democrats pounce — (@) The Department of Energy includes 55 companies on its lists of collaborators for Genesis, with xAI and Grok nowhere to be found.Aside from the fact that Musk was a special government employee under the Trump administration, his exclusion is even more surprising given both the length and generic nature of the companies that are involved. Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft were announced as partners, as were AI companies like OpenAI and Scale AI.It should be noted that company xLight, which is listed by the DOE, is not affiliated with Musk.RELATED: Log into this Gmail clone to read all the Jeffrey Epstein emails as if you were Epstein himself — (@) "For [xAI] to not be a part of the Genesis Mission, it is not just an oversight, it would have to be an intentional omission," AI engineer Brian Roemmele wrote on X. "I spoke to someone on this project who asked for my input today, and it is the first thing I brought up. I am certain they will see the error made."Blaze News contacted xAI for comment but did not receive an immediate reply. This article will be updated with any applicable response.Whether a rift exists between Musk and the Trump administration is unclear, but the government seems steadfast in believing its mission is monumental in terms of importance, likening it to the World War II nuclear arms race."The world's most powerful scientific platform to ever be built has launched," the DOE claimed on its X account. "This Manhattan-Project-level leap will fundamentally transform the future of American science and innovation."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!