Writing on the wall?

Latin American leaders are scrambling to react to President Donald Trump’s aggressive foreign policy after he successfully forced Colombian President Gustavo Petro to back down on resisting the deportation of Colombian illegal immigrants back to their home country. After Petro’s short-lived feud with Trump, Latin American leaders are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss how they will deal with Trump’s aggressive foreign policy. On Sunday, Trump put Petro on blast on Truth Social for denying repatriation flights landing spots in the South American nation. Trump quickly threatened Petro with “emergency 25% tariffs” (to go up to 50% the next week) and “retaliatory measures” for not complying with American deportation efforts. By Sunday evening, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reported that Colombia had “agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States.” But Leavitt added that the threatened tariffs and sanctions would be “held in reserve … unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement.” ?The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms pic.twitter.com/mQocusSGOC— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) January 27, 2025 The Colombian president even offered his presidential aircraft to help with deportation efforts. The clash between Trump and Petro sent shock waves through Latin America. Honduran President Xiomara Castro, at Petro’s request, on Sunday evening called for an emergency meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a bloc of 33 countries, to be held on Thursday morning.  The emergency meeting, which Petro and other regional leaders will participate in, will deal with migration, the environment, and Latin American and Caribbean unity, per Castro’s announcement. Prominent Honduran politician Salvador Nasralla, a former first vice president, sounded the alarm after the announcement of the emergency meeting, warning his countrymen that Trump, unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden, would harshly retaliate against any resistance. Las sanciones aplicadas hoy por U.S.A. a Colombia se pueden extender a Honduras, si en la reunión de la CELAC, convocada por Xiomara, para este próximo jueves 30 de enero, deciden torpe y bravuconamente condenar la acción soberana de Estados Unidos.Que no se equivoquen @manuelzr… pic.twitter.com/ZcT0L2AUNR— Salvador Nasralla (@SalvaPresidente) January 27, 2025 “Make no mistake … Trump is not Biden, the Honduran people may pay dearly for a visceral reaction from the leftists of CELAC,” wrote Nasralla on X. Mexico, too, is trying to adjust to the new sheriff in town.  On Friday, Leavitt told The New York Post, “Yesterday, Mexico accepted a record four deportation flights in one day! This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans and reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico. Mexico has also mobilized 30,000 National Guard.” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has launched “Mexico te abraza” (“Mexico embraces you”) as a response to Donald Trump’s border-related executive orders. (Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images) In fact, Mexico’s repatriation plan for deported migrants will be almost as ambitious of an undertaking as the United States’ deportation plan, as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has signed a slew of her own executive orders in response to Trump’s. Sheinbaum has instituted a new program, “México te abraza” (“Mexico embraces you”) to deal with the logistics of thousands of immigrants being repatriated to Mexico. Her policies include creating 35,000 jobs for deported migrants and giving a 2,000-peso check (about $97) to each repatriated Mexican. The Mexican president’s position remains unclear on whether she will cooperate with the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and she has criticized Trump’s recent designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups. Just a week into Trump’s second term, the effects of his policies are being felt well beyond the United States’ borders. At Thursday’s CELAC meeting, the leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean will try to adjust to the new administration’s border and trade policies. The post Trump Rocks Latin America as Leaders Adjust to Deportations, Tariff Threats appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Grift Continues: Second Gentleman to Lobbyist in Chief

ICE Knew Where the Criminal Aliens Were--and Mayorkas/Biden Kept Them Free

Former New York Times columnist and pseudo-economics savant Paul Krugman clearly isn’t taking retirement too well, as he’s taken to going on rants against his former employer and President Donald Trump, who lives rent-free in his brain. In a January 24 interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, Krugman expressed his “rage” at his editors, which apparently began to balk at the extremism that plagued his columns (shocker). “I’ve always been very, very lightly edited on the column,” Krugman whined. “And that stopped being the case [in 2024]. The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice, toning down of the feel, and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence.” Krugman bellyached that he approached “Mondays and Thursdays with dread,” and “often spent the afternoon in a rage.” Are you laughing yet?     The target of his ire was Times Opinion Deputy Editor Patrick Healy, who Krugman seethed “rewrote crucial passages; I would then do a rewrite of his rewrite to restore the original sense, and felt that I was putting more work—certainly more emotional energy—into repairing the damage from his editing than I put into writing the original draft.” Krugman bellowed that the editing process — which every career journalist and columnist goes through — “both made my life hell and left the columns flat and colorless.”  Healy pushed back in an email to CJR: “[Krugman] never called or emailed me saying I was changing his meaning or censoring his views, and he never lodged an objection to me that I overrode.”  If the nutty columns MRC wrote up in 2024 was supposedly just the, er, toned-down version, it begs the question of how bad it must have become for even The Times. His Substack definitely provides a clue.   “Donald Trump Wants You to Die,” Krugman shrieked in an insane January 24 Substack blog, published the same day as his CJR interview. After smearing the MAGA movement’s disdain for the “deep state” as “paranoid” — which itself is just stupid in light of the evidence of former President Joe Biden’s agencies pressuring Big Tech to censor speech — Krugman wailed the “the assault on professional government” by the Trump administration includes an effort “intimidate and politicize civil servants, too.” Krugman is so absorbed with himself that he’s charging Substack readers subscriptions to have full access to his babble: $7 for a monthly subscription, $70 for a yearly subscription, and a $210 minimum for a “Founding Member” subscription. So what evidence did Krugman have for his incendiary claim that Trump wants everyone “to die?” Trump’s nixing of woke diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies within federal agencies:  About the broad attack on the civil service: The Trump administration has ordered an immediate end to all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government. That’s pretty shocking, especially because it’s open-ended. What counts as D.E.I.? Is it forbidden even to mention anything involving race, gender or socioeconomic status? Probably. Then Krugman outrageously compared Trump’s policy to have federal employees report on colleagues who defy his anti-DEI measures as “our own private East Germany.” Yes, Krugman actually compared this to a Communist country where its notorious Stasi ran one of the most sophisticated, tyrannical and Orwellian surveillance empires ever. Krugman’s political prediction, which is about as useless as his economic forecasts, is that Trump will politicize the NIH and “other health agencies” by prohibiting the release of “information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like,” and by banning officials from “making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base.” In turned, bleated Krugman, “many Americans will die as a result.”  Did Krugman forget that the Biden administration, of which he repeatedly fawned over, was exposed for suppressing dissenting views supporting the credible lab leak theory on the COVID-19 virus origins? Oh, never mind.  But what can you expect from a notorious, egotistical has-been who’s been reduced to charging people money to read his certifiable opinions on his personal blog? As CJR humorously wrote, “When Krugman left the paper, last December, his departure attracted little notice, apart from some standard encomiums from his boss.”

A host of major social media platforms made a disturbing capitulation to European Union censors.  The day President Donald Trump took office, the European Commission announced that many tech platforms, including X, Facebook and YouTube had agreed to a “Code of conduct+” that pushes signatories to censor users. The code requires the platforms to allow busybody nonprofits and government agencies to flag content and monitor how the companies review hate speech notices. Platforms must also respond to at least two-thirds of the censorship notices raised by these monitors within 24 hours of receiving them. [Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America]

Republican senators and at least one legal analyst have dismissed complaints from liberals that Donald Trump fired a dozen or more inspectors general in accordance with his prerogative as president.On Friday, President Trump fired at least 12 such inspectors general, stating that doing so was "standard" procedure for incoming administrations."We’re cleaning house of what doesn’t work for us and going forward," a senior White House official told MSNBC.Inspectors general have the responsibility of conducting audits and other oversight measures to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in various federal agencies. According to the website for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency: "The President nominates IGs at Cabinet-level departments and major agencies with Senate confirmation. These IGs can only be removed by the President. The agency heads appoint and can remove IGs at designated Federal entities."The website further adds that "both houses of Congress must be notified if an IG is removed by the President or an agency head," though the statute notes that the notification must come no "later than 30 days before the removal." That stipulation regarding congressional notification was added to the Inspector General Act in 2022.'The Inspectors General ... are simple members of the executive branch agencies. Even if Congress attempts to place conditions on their removal, those conditions are unconstitutional.'Liberals have since bewailed the so-called "Friday night massacre" of IGs."It's a purge of independent watchdogs in the middle of the night. Inspectors general are charged with rooting out government waste, fraud, abuse, and preventing misconduct. President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption," railed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)."These firings are Donald Trump’s way of telling us he is terrified of accountability and is hostile to facts and to transparency," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) claimed on the floor of the Senate on Saturday.Sen. Schumer further alleged that the firings were "possibly in violation of federal law," likely because Trump apparently did not provide Congress with 30-days' notice.Former U.S. Department of the Interior Inspector General Mark Greenblatt, one of the IGs canned last week, called the mass firings "troubling" and hinted that Trump might take advantage of the vacancies and fill them with what MSNBC described as "loyalists.""What will President Trump do with these positions?" Greenblatt wondered to CNN. "Is he going to nominate watchdogs, or is he going to nominate lapdogs?"Greenblatt further signaled a possible anti-Trump bias when he insisted the firings "should be sending off alarm bells," even though inspectors general work at the pleasure of the president.Greenblatt notably made no mention during the CNN interview that Trump received overwhelming support at the ballot box in November and enjoys some of his highest approval ratings ever across all racial groups, strong indicators that the American people want Trump to drain the swamp and implement his agenda.Whatever Democrats and their allies in D.C. and in the media say, two key Republican senators seem to support Trump, saying that he can and should appoint his own people to these positions."These are Biden-appointed officials," Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), an attorney, tweeted Saturday. "There’s nothing novel about replacing them with Trump appointees.""It’d be crazy *not* to do this."Lee's colleague and fellow attorney Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) likewise told Fox News on Sunday the president has "a right to get in there who he wants."What's more, John Yoo, a well-respected law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a longtime supporter of Trump, believes the president is on solid legal footing with the firings, despite the caterwauling on the left."President Trump is well within his power to remove members of the executive branch at will. In Seila Law v. CFPB (2020), the Supreme Court held that Congress could not protect officers of the United States from removal by the President. ... In Seila Law, the Court said that the only officers that Congress might be able to protect are those that are members of multi-body commissions, like the FCC or the SEC," Yoo said, according to Newsweek."The Inspectors General do not have that status; they are simple members of the executive branch agencies. Even if Congress attempts to place conditions on their removal, those conditions are unconstitutional. Any Inspector General that attempts to challenge their removal in court — they would still have to leave office and just sue for back pay — will be wasting their money in lawyers fees."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

When I was a child, I wanted to be so many things “when I grew up.” My choices ran the gamut of all the traditional options: police officer, professional football player, teacher, and doctor. News flash: I pursued none of those things.Today, I now entertain the same conversations with my 10-year-old daughter. One day she wants to be a show director. Another day she wants to be a teacher. And another she wants to be a mom. Like my journey — and the journeys of most — the odds are that she will pursue a vocation yet to be mentioned (although I am rooting for the mom option somewhere along the way!).Society provides some truly heroic women for our daughter to emulate.Regardless, as her dad, I do not expend much effort worrying about what she chooses to do. Rather, I am most concerned with how she does it and whether she will exercise the values my wife and I are raising her to practice: courage, humility, hard work, honesty, generosity, empathy, selflessness, honor, and intellectual curiosity.I often recycle the same advice my parents always gave me: Pick appropriate role models and emulate them. Unfortunately, the U.S. media is not interested in promoting women who exercise these values in the face of career consequences.While her mom is the best example for her to follow, it is important to provide our daughter with examples from outside the home. Luckily, society provides some truly heroic women for her to emulate.Michele Tafoya enjoyed as prestigious a career as anyone — male or female — in sports broadcasting. She holds a record four Emmys for sports reporting, and she was the only person nominated every year she was eligible. She worked five Super Bowls, and "Sunday Night Football" was the top-rated show during all 11 years of her tenure on it.But in 2021, Tafoya used a guest-host appearance on “The View” to represent the beliefs of so many Americans who were silenced and canceled at that time. Amid her fellow hosts asking for talking points to be fed to their earpieces from their producer, Tafoya schooled them on critical race theory and race in America with the grace of a wide receiver and the power of a linebacker. At one point the crowd booed her, to which she responded, “Bring it on!”Even before then, Tafoya knew she wanted to pursue something different. She had a lot to say, and she wanted a platform where she could share her conservative beliefs. So she told NBC the 2021 NFL season would be her last, and after 327 games from the sidelines, Super Bowl LVI would be her final big game.For Tafoya, it had become less about the military veterans standing by her side for the national anthem and more about woke causes that did not align with her values. As she said at the time, “I couldn’t ignore that little voice any more after what we have all endured over the last four years.” Since then, she has been a champion of conservative causes across multiple networks and platforms, including her own podcast.Thankfully, Tafoya has been a trailblazer for many women since. In 2022, Jennifer Sey, brand president for Levi’s and a 23-year veteran of the company, was ousted for her criticism of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. In her own admirable move, the married mother of four and sole breadwinner in her household turned down a $1 million pay package so that she could share her story with public. “I walked out the door with an uncertain future but a clear sense of purpose,” Sey said. You can’t put a price on that.Sey is now leading a movement of bravery with her clothing company, XX-XY Athletics, the first athletic brand that has stood up for women’s sports. What a novel idea! “This is who I am,” Sey said. “This is what I believe. Deal with it.” Let’s hope her efforts give young women the encouragement to live their values now, in the beginnings of their promising careers.Every day the list of women gets longer. After being sidelined for sharing her opinion on ESPN’s COVID vaccination policy, Sage Steele left the network after 16 years to “exercise her First Amendment rights more freely.” Not long after, Disney-owned ESPN fired one of its other female rock stars, Samantha Ponder, for voicing an opinion that 70% of the country supports: Biological men should not compete in women’s sports.Much is said about the glass ceiling. These courageous women not only broke through it but also laid a new foundation for the women who have followed them. There are countless other stories like theirs out there.I still listen to every career my daughter dreams of and give her the encouragement that she can be anything she wants to be if she puts in the hard work. In a society where it is popular to “do as I say, not as I do,” when it comes to these women, I will tell my daughter to do both.

And that’s what it is, by the way — a mandate.

Your Dollars at Work ... Funding Taliban's Birth Control - Because Apparently, That’s Our Foreign Policy