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Those of you taking a holiday from the depressing grind of current events over the three-day weekend may not have seen this latest escalation in the Hard Left’s hypokinetic war against Normal America — namely, that the professional “activists” got word a pastor at a Minneapolis church was employed by ICE and as a result it was within the bounds of decent behavior to rush into Sunday services and stage a takeover. This wasn’t a “violent” attack, per se, though it’s pretty clear what the implications were. It’s a more disorganized, and certainly more pathetic, version of the mafia sending Vito and Rocco to a recalcitrant merchant not paying his protection money. No legs were broken, but the day’s peace certainly was, and the message was unmistakable. We know where you worship, we can find you, and we won’t let you rest. And we hold nothing of yours sacred; we will ruin it in hopes that you will overreact and show yourselves to be hypocrites. And the implication — if this doesn’t intimidate you, perhaps your church burns down, or there’s an “incident” involving a gun and somebody even crazier than we are making his/her/their way inside your doors — is just as clear. The leader of the troglodytes disrupting the church services was so utterly arrogant that she actually named the participants in that “demonstration” on social media. You’d look at this, and you’d conclude Nekima Levy Armstrong is mentally retarded or near to it, because in naming those individuals and organizations, she made a clear case for a RICO prosecution. Bonchie at RedState noted that this is a prima facie violation of the FACES Act, which Democrats use all the time to prosecute people who gather to sing Christian hymns outside abortion clinics… The scene was part of an ever-escalating war against ICE, which has increased operations in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas due to a complete lack of cooperation by state and local authorities. Despite largely targeting illegal immigrants who have allegedly committed heinous crimes, including sex crimes against children, left-wing activists have taken to the streets to obstruct, impede, and assault federal agents. A church isn’t the streets, though. It’s a privately-owned house of worship, and activists do not have a right to invade and occupy one, no matter how deranged their motivation is. But while Minnesota authorities are unlikely to take any serious action, the federal government is a different story. DOJ civil rights division head Harmeet Dhillon has already stated that they will use the FACE Act to go after these agitators. Don’t get me wrong, the FACE Act is garbage, and has previously been used to go after pro-life activists for simply standing outside abortion clinics, but it is currently the law. Unless the Supreme Court one day changes that, the Trump administration should use all tools at its disposal. That’s what makes protest leader Nekima Levy Armstrong’s move after the assault on the church so incredible, and not in a good way for her. Instead of maintaining some deniability, she actually posted all the participants of the attack on Facebook and admitted why they invaded it. He also noted the shout-out Armstrong gave to fired CNN anchor Don Lemon, now a podcaster desperate for clicks, who “covered” the protest and triumphantly lectured the church’s pastor on the particulars of the First Amendment without having the first blessed notion of what the hell he was talking about… If I had to judge this, I’d say there’s a better case for Lemon’s mental retardation than Armstrong’s. This assumes Armstrong is even the responsible party, and we can be fairly safe in assuming she is not. Someone directs and funds every breath she takes, just like all the rest of these “activists” being deployed onto the streets of Minnesota. And it’s fair to say whoever is pulling Armstrong’s strings is no genius, either. Intelligence — obviously, to anyone who pays attention to leftist activism — is not what gets you ahead within the ranks of the organizations mobilizing in Minnesota at the moment. What is? It’s what always gets people ahead on the Left. The willingness to do what others will not. Invading a church and disrupting worship because you don’t like the pastor’s day job is something you have to be abnormally antisocial to do. It indicates a level of narcissism and disrespect for others that the vast majority of Americans can’t even fathom. Or couldn’t fathom until a little less than a decade ago, because when Donald Trump won the presidency in the 2016 election, we saw these kinds of temper tantrums at restaurants, parties, and other functions where unsuspecting ordinary Americans were gathered. And it didn’t really stop for four years, culminating in the George Floyd explosion. Minnesota is certainly turning into chaos thanks to the efforts of the Nekima Levy Armstrongs of the world (and more specifically, the people who control her). The rest of the country seems pretty quiet. While most Americans are uncomfortable with the death of weaponized Useful Idiot Renee Good in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago, the basic mission of deporting illegal aliens — and specifically criminal illegal aliens, who are the people ICE is still targeting in their operations — is very much something the majority supports. (RELATED: White Girl George Floyd Isn’t Working) Which is why there are only a few places where an insurrection, and there is an insurrection going on in Minnesota, can be found. (RELATED: The Death of Renee Nicole Good: Why the Democrats Will Fail Step Three in the George Floyd Script) What’s interesting is the effect these events are having on Trump’s presidency. Namely, Trump’s loudest critics are starting to appear from the Right, not the Left. For example, the Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood absolutely unloaded on the President on Monday… Members of the Trump administration quickly took to social media to pledge accountability for the incident. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that the Justice Department will “prosecute federal crimes and ensure that the rule of law prevails,” while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship.” Except, the president has already tolerated this type of leftist-led “intimidation and harassment” throughout Minnesota for weeks. The primary reason those left-wing anarchists felt comfortable enough storming that church is because Trump and his administration have given them zero reason to fear any real accountability for their actions. Left-wing violence and harassment against ICE agents and everyday residents have been occurring in Minneapolis and across the state for weeks. And thus far, Trump and his team have done virtually nothing but fire off a bunch of empty threats that have done nothing to shut down interference with immigration operations and other leftist-led harassment of civilians. Minnesota’s political leaders like Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey have made it abundantly clear since these attacks began that they will not enforce the law and protect immigration authorities operating in the city. Which means it’s way past time for Trump to stand up and do it. The president’s pathetic and weak response is already an embarrassment. But should he continue this impotent strategy, the anarchy currently unfolding is bound to get much, much worse. Fleetwood isn’t out of line. Have a gander at X, and you’ll see a lot more where his commentary came from. All of which is part of the Left’s design, of course. Invading that church is a stupid thing to do if you’re trying to win over public sentiment. It isn’t that stupid if you’re trying to demoralize your enemy. By desecrating that church during Sunday services, the idiot mafia sent a message to normal Americans that things will get a whole lot nastier if Trump doesn’t back down and let them have their illegal alien underclass, who can and will be mobilized to serve on the Democrat vote-plantation and census farm, whether this year or sometime in the future. Because they know that normal Americans can’t stand this kind of unrest, that one key purpose of living in America is that you don’t have to put up with this sort of thing. And they know it’s demoralizing to realize there are no sanctuaries from leftist agitation. But at some point, there is blowback. In fact, the Left — whose chief social doctrine is the glory of victimization — is counting on it. The most obvious blowback is a series of visits by Uncle RICO to the officers of all the organizations Nekima Levy Armstrong named on social media. And all of the donors to those organizations. Treat them as members of a criminal conspiracy to violate the FACES Act and send those jackbooted masked Gestapo agents they hate so much (they certainly didn’t hate them when they were sent to raid the homes of pro-life activists like Mark Houck) to their doors at 4 a.m. Let’s see these people dragged out of their houses in their underwear, cameras rolling. If it was good enough for Paul Manafort and Roger Stone and Mark Houck, it has to be good enough for them. After Sunday, it’s time. Enough rope has been given. Do they want exactly that? Of course they do. Victimization culture requires a diet of martyrs. The way to overcome it is to make so many martyrs they can’t remember them all, and to actively disparage the fake victims as idiots and stooges for an illegitimate cause. Which this is. The attack on that church ought to be a tipping point. It’s time to take out the trash in Minnesota. And Trump needs to stop talking about invoking the Insurrection Act and actually doing it. Fleetwood noted that his weak response to the Floyd riots, which were not examples of organic outrage but rather funded and organized mobilizations of lunatics and would-be communist tyrants to destroy civil society in advance of an election, invited more destruction. That’s true. What else is true is that Trump can create a consensus by getting in front of the Minnesota insurrection and delivering shock and awe — and fear, because these are people who have an unhealthy lack of it — to the insurrectionists. Before the next batch of them invades a church with torches burning. READ MORE from Scott McKay: How Great Is the Great Healthcare Plan? There Is No Virtue Left to Signal White Girl George Floyd Isn’t Working Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

A surge of dark progressive money is powering Minnesota’s activist infrastructure, and several media sources indicate that the trail leads straight to the Hopewell Fund. As a central hub in the Arabella network — a for‑profit Washington, D.C. LLC consulting firm that manages and provides services to a network of large progressive nonprofits — Hopewell channels millions from major foundations into activist projects while keeping donor identities safely out of sight. One of those projects — States at the Core (SATC) — has been using Hopewell funding to provide on-the-ground training in subversive mobilization tactics to Minnesota protestors under the anonymity afforded by fiscal sponsorship. According to Minnesota Public Radio:      Now, an organization in the Twin Cities is offering “ICE Watch training.” The training provided by States at the Core, or SATC, prepares neighbors to monitor, document, and fight against ICE activity. The organization says it has trained more than 1,000 Minnesotans so far. The result is a funding system built for progressive influence while keeping the real decision‑makers anonymous and unaccountable. One of the participants in this pipeline was activist Renee Good, the young woman who was shot by an ICE agent after she drove her car into him. She and her partner, Rebecca, had spent the previous hours on the day she was killed attempting to prevent ICE officers from doing their job.  At the time she was shot, she had been blocking traffic with her car in an effort to trap ICE agents’ vehicles and prevent them from leaving the area. Trained in these tactics, Renee Good was a participant in Minnesota’s ICE Watch community. According to news reports, Renee’s partner, Rebecca Good, was “part of the Powderhorn/Phillips ICE Watch neighborhood chat.” And, as Minnesota Public Radio points out, SATC is providing the ICE Watch training. (RELATED: The Media Are Agents of Propaganda) Renee Good’s dangerous and unlawful behavior on the day she was shot illustrates how Hopewell-funded projects don’t just bankroll organizations — they cultivate individual organizers who then carry these sometimes deadly tactics into Minnesota’s political landscape. By the time Good emerged as an active participant in harassing federal agents and attempting to prevent their activities, the groundwork had already been laid by funded entities like SATC, further underscoring how deeply this hidden funding network is shaping on‑the‑ground activism in the state. (RELATED: The Death of Renee Nicole Good: Why the Democrats Will Fail Step Three in the George Floyd Script) The result is a well‑financed activist pipeline whose true architects remain comfortably hidden. SATC is not a standalone nonprofit at all, but a program housed inside the Hopewell Fund through its fiscal‑sponsorship structure. Operating as a Hopewell‑managed initiative, SATC has used that funding stream to provide the kind of on‑the‑ground training in subversive mobilization tactics that appears to have led directly to Renee Good’s death. The result is a well‑financed activist pipeline whose true architects remain comfortably hidden. Still, since Hopewell is a 501(c)(3) organization, with IRS reporting requirements and guidelines, we can determine the funding sources of the Hopewell Fund. Recognized by the IRS on its 990 forms as a tax-exempt “public charity,” the Hopewell Fund functions as a fiscal sponsor that can receive tax-deductible donations from foundations, donor-advised funds, and individual donors. It houses projects like SATC inside its own legal and financial structure. That arrangement allows Hopewell to receive large, tax‑deductible donations from some of the country’s most influential progressive funders and corporate‑backed philanthropies, including the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Foundation, which donated $2.4 million to Hopewell, as well as $2 million from the Ford Foundation. In addition to these major donors, the most recent Capital Research Center’s analysis of Arabella‑managed nonprofits identifies the following as donors providing more than $400,000 to Hopewell, including the Wyss Foundation, Omidyar Network, Heising‑Simons Foundation, Rockefeller‑affiliated philanthropies, Reid Hoffman (via donor‑advised funds), and the perennial progressive donor, George Soros (via Open Society network). Because SATC is not an independent nonprofit but a Hopewell‑run program, these same donors ultimately bankroll its operations — channeling national foundation wealth into Minnesota’s activist training. (RELATED: Arabella Advisors: the Dark Money Incubator for Leftist Billionaires) While the donors who finance the Hopewell Fund are not legally responsible for the illicit actions taken by activists trained through its sponsored projects, their support does help sustain the organizational infrastructure that makes those activities possible. The combination of fiscal sponsorship, donor anonymity, and large‑scale philanthropic funding creates a system in which national foundations can underwrite programs that later intersect with contentious or disruptive protest activity, without being directly connected to the outcomes on the ground. This dynamic has prompted critics to raise broader questions about transparency and accountability in the philanthropic sector — particularly when tax‑exempt dollars flow into projects that operate in highly charged political environments. (RELATED: Minnesota and the New Nullification Crisis) Many — including President Trump — have questioned whether the complex funding networks behind projects like SATC resemble the kind of coordinated systems that enable organized illegal acts. The questions emerge over whether the federal government would be able to apply federal RICO statutes against those like George Soros who have funded what they see as criminal enterprises. But most legal scholars have concluded that RICO cannot be applied to donors or nonprofits supporting protest‑related activity. While progressive prosecutors have attempted to apply RICO statutes to pro-life networks, these attempts have been unsuccessful. The legal bar for applying the federal RICO statute is extraordinarily high, requiring proof of an organized criminal enterprise and a pattern of specific predicate offenses. Nothing publicly known about Hopewell or its donors meets that threshold, though the structure does raise broader questions about transparency and accountability in politically active nonprofits. Even though the sheer volume of dark money behind violent protestors in Minneapolis and beyond can make resistance seem impossible, the most effective path forward is to begin to use existing institutions — including the IRS — to demand transparency and structural reform. That means tightening state disclosure rules for fiscal‑sponsorship arrangements, pressing Congress to modernize nonprofit reporting requirements, and urging state attorneys general to ensure that tax‑exempt entities are doing what they say they are doing in their grant applications for funding. Just like the fraudulent Somali-run daycare facilities and fake home health aide facilities throughout Minneapolis, charitable entities need to be forthcoming about their real activities. The IRS guidelines do not allow the kinds of political activism that Hopewell is funding — they should be responding to this. A 501(c)(3) recipient is not allowed to participate in political advocacy. Teaching potential protestors to illegally block streets and block ICE officers from doing their job, and providing protestors with strategies that endanger the lives of federal agents and other citizens are already illegal and should be documented and prosecuted. At the same time, building parallel research, legal‑advocacy, and community‑mobilization networks allows those who support the lawful work that federal agents are doing to compete with — rather than merely critique — the philanthropic networks shaping Minnesota’s activist landscape. The long‑term answer for those who support humane policies of law enforcement and deportation of criminal aliens is not retaliation but transparency, accountability, and the creation of durable civic institutions that cannot be quietly outspent and outmaneuvered. READ MORE from Anne Hendershott: A Feminized Police Culture Revealed by a Chief in Tears From Solidarity to Statism: Mayor Mamdani’s Vision for New York City Spite Repaid with Spite: The Metaphysical Roots of the Academic Massacre at Brown and MIT Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

The immigration-related drama in Minnesota took a foreboding turn over the weekend when it was reported that the Pentagon had alerted two battalions of the 11th Airborne Division, based in Alaska, to be prepared for possible deployment. That move followed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s mobilization of the state’s National Guard — “on standby” — to deal with the escalating violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Walz certainly has not been innocent in the outbreak of anti-ICE violence, having denounced the federal agents as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” That remark was made last May, months before Donald Trump’s recent “surge” of ICE to Minnesota, which followed in the wake of a viral video by independent journalist Nick Shirley that exposed apparent fraud in the state’s Somali immigrant community. Many commentators immediately saw the connection: Walz and his fellow Democrats in Minnesota are up to their eyeballs in the fraud scandal — estimated to involve billions of dollars stolen from taxpayer-funded benefit programs — and the deportation of illegal immigrants threatens to break the Democratic Party’s control of the state’s government. (RELATED: Blame Tim Walz for the Federal Presence in Minnesota) The implications of the current situation in Minnesota, however, go far beyond the Gopher State. As Ben Weingarten has pointed out in the Federalist, the fraud scandal exposes “a feature of what we might call The Blue Model of government”: Fueled by the welfare state and increasingly open borders, it is at core about political patronage, profiteering, and plunder. Democrats’ survival depends upon a political-business model of vote-buying via legal and illicit wealth redistribution. It’s not only Minnesota where this system of corrupt patronage is the basis of Democratic Party power. When we examine political implications for the near future — the 2030 Census is now just four years away — it becomes apparent why Democrats nationwide are panicking over Trump’s determination to crack down on fraud and enforce immigration law. Batya Ungar-Sargon has noted the extreme tone of the anti-ICE rhetoric. “The Democrats want you to believe the next civil rights struggle is here: ICE is the Gestapo and all good Americans must defend illegal immigrants from deportation,” Ungar-Sargon remarked Sunday. “Let’s be clear: When they call ICE the Gestapo, they’re calling Americans Nazis.” What’s causing the crisis in Minnesota is the Democratic Party’s increasingly desperate effort to maintain its viability in the face of Trump’s populist challenge. The Third Reich is not the only historical analogy being misappropriated in this rhetorical battle. After the shooting that killed anti-ICE protester Renee Good, Walz invoked the Civil War, comparing the riotous mob in Minneapolis to the First Minnesota Infantry Regiment helping to repel Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Meanwhile, the defiance of federal authority expressed by Walz led many conservatives to liken him to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (a comparison which I, as a Southerner, felt compelled to protest). (RELATED: Minnesota and the New Nullification Crisis) Behind these misguided invocations of history, however, there is at least a small nugget of truth — what’s causing the crisis in Minnesota is the Democratic Party’s increasingly desperate effort to maintain its viability in the face of Trump’s populist challenge. A year ago, David Catron explained that the reapportionment of House seats (and the related impact on the Electoral College) after the 2030 Census could exile Democrats into permanent minority status: The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, for example, estimates that California will lose four [House] seats and New York will lose two. Likewise, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin will probably lose one seat each. Which states will gain House seats and Electoral College votes? Florida and Texas are likely to pick up four seats, while Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina and Utah will gain one each. It’s no coincidence that Democrat governors in blue states which stand to lose clout in Congress and the Electoral College oppose President Trump’s immigration policies, particularly deportation. Why? The Census Bureau counts people rather than citizens. That includes “unauthorized migrants.” … Consequently, any state with a large population of illegal immigrants has a substantial political incentive to resist attempts by the Trump administration to deport them. The potential swing of a net 12 Electoral College votes from Democrat-leaning states to GOP-friendly states, simply as a result of shifting population, could have a dramatic impact on national politics, with devastating consequences for the ability of Democrats to wield power nationally. Here is where history can be a useful guide. Our current two-party system arose during those “four score and seven years” that Abraham Lincoln referenced in the Gettysburg Address. George Washington had been the unanimous choice as America’s first president, but the 1796 election was bitterly contested between John Adams, who had served as Washington’s vice president, and Thomas Jefferson, who had been Secretary of State. From this division arose the nation’s first two parties, the Federalists backing Adams and Jefferson’s faction calling itself Republicans (who were the predecessors of the modern Democratic Party). During the four years of Adams’s presidency, Jefferson was able to strengthen his party and claim the White House in the 1800 election. Subsequently, Jefferson’s party held the presidency for 24 years — two terms for Jefferson, then two terms each for James Madison and James Monroe — the so-called “Virginia Dynasty.” Jefferson and his successors destroyed the Federalist Party and, in the process, diminished the influence of New England in national politics. Virginia monopolizing the presidency for so long irritated New England sensibilities. The Yankees considered themselves to have led the way in the revolution that made America independent, and, even if there had been no policy disagreements involved, the injury to the pride of New Englanders was a wound that festered. This expressed itself most clearly in the Hartford Convention, a secret gathering of New England Federalists toward the end of the War of 1812. The delegates considered the possibility of New England seceding from the Union. But such ended in January 1815 when news came of the Treaty of Ghent, which concluded the war, and Andrew Jackson’s stunning victory at New Orleans. Afterwards, when the proceedings of the Hartford Convention became public, it permanently ruined the Federalist Party’s fortunes. In the 1824 election, however, the Jeffersonian party fractured in such a way that, even though Jackson got more Electoral College votes for president, the race was decided by the House of Representatives, which narrowly chose John Quincy Adams. Yet his lone term in office was a failure, and Jackson won a decisive victory in 1828 and was reelected by a landslide in 1832. The ascendancy of Jackson’s Democratic Party was uncontested, in large part, because the addition of new states in the West had tipped the balance in the Electoral College against New England. In 1792, there were 132 Electoral College votes; 38 of those votes (28.8 percent of the total) belonged to the New England states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Massachusetts alone wielded 16 electoral votes (12.1 percent of the total) in 1792. Forty years later, however, when Jackson was reelected to a second term in the White House in 1832, the Electoral College had increased to 288 voters, and the New England states (now including Maine) possessed just 50 — a mere 17.4 percent of the total. That total was exactly matched by six new states in the South and West — Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri — each of which permitted slavery. Kentucky and Tennessee, each with 15 Electoral College votes in 1832, now had more representation than Massachusetts, with just 14 votes. Over the next three decades, controversies over slavery increased, especially concerning whether the practice would be permitted in new Western states added to the Union. The political alliance of the South and the West, which had secured Jackson’s triumph, was eventually divided by the rise of the Republican Party, which gained popularity for its promise of “free soil” (i.e., the exclusion of slave labor) in the new territories. While it is certainly fair to say that slavery caused the Civil War, it is wrong to ignore the roots of the crisis in the resentment of New Englanders over their declining political influence, which long predated the election of Lincoln. Something similar seems to be afoot in the ongoing crises of the Trump Age, of which the current conflict in Minnesota is but the latest eruption. Like the New Englanders of the early 1800s, the liberal elites of the 21st century fear being frozen out of power. “The Blue Model of government,” as Ben Weingarten calls it, is fiscally unsustainable, especially because it inspires so many productive citizens to “vote with their feet” by moving to taxpayer-friendly states like Florida and Texas. Consider this: In 1984, when Ronald Reagan won a 49-state landslide, Minnesota was the only state that went for Democrat Walter Mondale, a native son of Minnesota. That deprived Reagan of 10 Electoral College votes. Minnesota still has 10 Electoral College votes, but that’s likely to be reduced to nine after the 2030 Census. Meanwhile, the states of Texas and Florida, which had a total of 50 Electoral College votes between them in 1984, now have 70 Electoral College votes combined, and will have even more after 2030. The Red states are booming; Blue states like Minnesota are fading, and the fight over deporting illegal immigrants is part of a frantic attempt by Democrats to hold onto power. Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against Tim Walz’s effort to obstruct ICE operations in Minnesota, and the suggestion of deploying Army paratroopers may be more than just a suggestion. Walz holds a losing hand, defending a failed political model, up to his neck in scandal, and dependent upon Somalis and other immigrants to boost his state’s census count enough to keep from losing influence in Congress and the Electoral College. (RELATED: No Census Reform, No Election Integrity) Amid all these tensions, however, Trump has the decisive advantage of popular support. By a 24-point margin of 62 percent to 38 percent, voters favor mass deportation of illegals, a CBS News poll found last summer, and other national polls have consistently shown similar results. Negative media coverage and Democrats’ rhetoric about ICE raids may make a dent in Trump’s popularity, but his basic policy regarding immigration still represents the will of “We the People.” (RELATED: The Media Are Agents of Propaganda) For all their talk about “defending democracy,” the Democrats are actually against the democratic process when it produces outcomes they don’t like. Ultimately, Walz’s insurrection in Minnesota is doomed to fail, and Trump’s victory will be another example of keeping his promise to “Make America Great Again.” READ MORE from Robert Stacy McCain: History Still Teaches Us to Hope Gooder and Harder, New York The Dangerous Delusion of ‘Equality’ Image licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Mark

Delta Force captured Maduro, and SEAL Team Six shot Bin Laden, but it was the “Night Stalkers” of the U.S. Air Force 106th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) who maneuvered through hostile radar, missiles, and gunfire to get the ground teams on target with new technology and tactics that are expanding the scope and reach of U.S. special forces. “No other military in the world has anything like it,” says SEAL officer Robert O’Neill, who SOAR infiltrated into Pakistan to terminate Bin Laden. America’s growing capability for limited military operations in denied territory now allows policymakers to flip hostile regimes and gain key geopolitical objectives without large troop deployments that are invariably costly, messy, and often counterproductive. Instead of exposing thousands of American soldiers to guerrilla warfare and terrorism in hostile environments that get the U.S. caught up in “endless wars,” it’s America that can now wield the initiative with hit-and-run assaults to change history, using small teams that have to be reliably inserted by air. A U.S. air armada of 150 jet fighters, bombers, and electronic warfare planes had blinded or taken out Russian S-300 and BukM2 air defense batteries to clear the way for Maduro’s snatch on the night of January 3. But Iglas-S shoulder-launched SAMs in the hands of Cuban special forces and Colectivo militias, remained a dangerous threat to U.S. special forces flying low into Caracas. Any repetition of the “Black Hawk Down” episode in Somalia, where the downing of three special forces helicopters led to savage urban fighting, could have turned into a political disaster for Trump, with far-ranging international consequences for the U.S. But SOAR’s recently installed Directional Infrared Countermeasures embedded in the sensor cones of modified MH-60 Blackhawks and MH-47 Chinooks averted catastrophe when one or two Iglas-S were fired at them, according to Venezuelan military sources with access to after-action reports. High-intensity laser beams activated against heat-seeking warheads threw the missiles off course. One was seen falling harmlessly to the ground, according to the source. Simultaneously, an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone, catching the launch signature, instantly fired a Hellfire missile, incinerating an operator and his Manpad. “He’s now just a pile of burning bones,” an alarmed Colectivo member was overheard warning his mates in an intercepted call that was enough to make anyone else preparing to take a shot at the U.S. helicopters, ditch their Iglas instead. A Chinook was damaged by machine gun fire, wounding the pilot and others on board. Despite his three bleeding wounds, the pilot, aided by the crew’s paramedic, completed the insertion of a Delta team and flew the limping chopper back to the USS Iwo Jima in a remarkable display of endurance and airmanship. SOAR grew out of painful lessons learned from the disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue 50 American diplomats held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Iran… SOAR grew out of painful lessons learned from the disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue 50 American diplomats held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Iran, which resulted in embarrassing failure due largely to inadequately prepared Navy helicopters and aircrews whose main previous experience was minesweeping. “We need an organization that would include air force pilots, its own aircraft, and helicopters, otherwise we are not serious about combating terrorism,” Delta Force Commander Charles Beckwith told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee following the fiasco in which a helicopter refueling at a desert staging point accidentally exploded. Hundreds of millions of dollars were soon allocated for an Air Force Special Operations Squadron with its tailored fleet of modified Blackhawks, Chinooks, and MH-53 Pave Lows fitted with the high-tech gear of fighter jets. GPS-guided inertial navigation, thermal imaging, terrain following radar, and “all kinds of neat stuff,” according to a Pentagon analyst, enable them to fly low through rugged terrain in darkness under any conditions. The Squadron grew into a regiment with its own midair refueling tankers consisting of modified C-130 “Talons” to pump gas into special forces helicopters newly equipped with fixed fuel probes. “It was a revolutionary new concept for the air force,” said Gen. Sam Wilson, a onetime Pentagon spy chief and SOAR backer. Night Stalkers are carefully selected. “They need to have the daredevil instincts of a top gunfighter jockey but must also like flying slow and low, which is a rare combination in a pilot,” Wilson said. “They also have to be tougher than most pilots and feel comfortable flying in darkness with night vision goggles.” During the 1991 Gulf War, SOAR infiltrated Delta Force teams deep into Iraq to hunt for Saddam Hussein’s mobile Scud missile launchers, together with the British SAS, whose RAF 7th Air Squadron Chinooks lacked SOAR’s capabilities. Night Stalker Tom Trask flew his Pave Low three times into Iraq in one day, evading Iraqi helicopter gunships but getting locked by the quick acquisition radar of a French Roland SAM battery, which fired. “We could feel the missile shoot right over us while I dropped down to ten feet above the ground to stay beneath it,” he recalls. “SOAR pilots are the best in the world,” according to O’Neill. When the Blackhawk inserting him crashed into an interior wall of Bin Laden’s compound, another quickly hovered in for his exfiltration. “They can fix problems in fifteen-second time windows,” he says. “They are the most professional silent warriors we have.” AC-130 gunships armed with 30 mm Gatling guns and 105 Howitzers that direct sustained fire with surgical precision on ground targets also form part of the 106 regiment. They recently annihilated an entire convoy of Russian Wagner mercenaries threatening a U.S. base in Syria, took out snipers in high-rise buildings during the 1989 Panama invasion, and now have Caribbean drug boats in their crosshairs. SOAR may soon be in Iran, where the Special Forces catastrophe 45 years ago led to its creation. Whether it’s maneuvering around rugged mountains along Kurdistan’s border to secretly assist insurgents fighting the Ayatollahs or direct action strikes on their bunkers in Tehran, the 106 may play a central role in operations contemplated by Trump. “With SOAR, we can do it in Iran this time,” says O’Neill. READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: The Man Behind the Dictator The Delusional Policies of the EU Nomenklatura The Venezuela Endgame Image licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Mark

Here we go again. CBS headlined the latest on Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as follows: “DOJ investigating Walz, Frey over alleged conspiracy to impede immigration agents.” CBS reports: The Justice Department is investigating Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, over an alleged conspiracy to impede federal immigration agents, an extraordinary escalation in the Trump administration’s clash with Democratic leaders there, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News. One of the sources, a U.S. official, said the investigation stems from statements that Walz and Frey have made about the thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents deployed to the Minneapolis region in recent weeks. Walz and Frey both said the stories were “accusing federal agents of creating chaos and undermining public safety through aggressive tactics.” Talk about getting the story backwards. It is Walz with Frey, who are egging on “chaos and undermining public safety through aggressive tactics.” For those who read history, there is a recall of a long-ago politician, this one a U.S. senator who was so taken with the notion of rebelling against the federal government and a Republican president that he resigned his seat as a U.S. senator from Mississippi and was selected to be president of the new Confederate States of America. And in that capacity, he marshaled the forces of anti-federal government dissidents to formally fight the Union forces led by Republican President Abraham Lincoln. In today’s America, there is Minnesota’s Democrat Governor Tim Walz following the path of Jefferson Davis, marshaling the forces of violent anti-federal government ICE protestors to fight federal government ICE employees led by another Republican president, Donald Trump. Not to mention that these forces saw fit to invade a church service, with Fox News reporting that the worship service inside was targeted because “protesters claimed a pastor inside was affiliated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” So much for freedom of religion. So far along in his bullying rage has Walz become that Newsweek headlines: Tim Walz tells Democrats to “bully the s***” out of Donald Trump. Got that? The governor of Minnesota is calling on Democrats to bully the elected president of the United States. In short? In short, what America has discovered is that this is a governor who not only believes in bullying others but also is egging on protestors who are rampaging through his state’s largest city. And note: Once upon a time, Minnesota Democrats produced serious public officials with names like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Eugene McCarthy, two of whom were so respected they were elected vice president of the United States and later nominated for the presidency. How far the Minnesota Democrats have fallen under the “leadership” of Governor Walz. Modeling himself not on Humphrey, Mondale, or McCarthy but on another long ago (and distinctly different!) Democrat who organized forces to fight the federal government: Confederate President Jefferson Davis. And Walz’s fall into the pits of disgrace is not over yet. Stay tuned. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Michael Reagan: A Salute Trump’s ‘50 Wins in 50 Days’ Hakeem Jeffries Urged on Protests: Getting One Protestor Killed Image licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Mark

January 18, 2026 — Now for a good-sized portion of wisdom from my brilliant father, Herbert Stein: In early October 1966, I was wildly misdiagnosed and mis-medicated by my student health service at Yale Law School. To address serious suicidal ideation and anxiety, I was prescribed two super-strong medications. As I recall, they were Trilafon and Mellaril. I immediately became insanely suicidal and anxious. I took a leave of absence and went back to Silver Spring, Maryland, to live with my parents and my sister. I was not working and was restless and miserable. I had a girlfriend named Alexandra Denman, then a sophomore at Vassar College. We wanted to fly to Nassau to get in some sun and warmth. I asked my father and mother if they would pay for Alex and me to go on the trip. I asked them to make it an early birthday gift. My father said he could do it, but did not want to. Instead, he said, I should get a job and pay for it myself. Pop said I would feel better about myself if I were doing something productive and remunerative instead of sponging off my parents. That made sense. In about an hour of looking in the “help wanted” section of the Washington Post, I had a job at the Bureau of National Affairs. It was a private entity that gathered data on the economy from the Departments of Commerce and Labor and reported them out in daily newsletters, written by me, age 22. The job paid about $120 per week. My office was a desk in a small room without air conditioning. My boss was a heavy smoker. I loved my job. I felt needed and proud of myself. The very first day saw me taking the taxi to 14th St. and Constitution Avenue, N.W. Then back to my smoky office in Foggy Bottom. Then to my manual Remington typewriter. And then about 700 words. And then the same thing that afternoon. I had to use the men’s room when I got back to the BNA. While I was in there, I felt euphoric. I was doing useful work. I was earning a buck. When Alex and I went to Nassau a few months later, we had a fabulous time. That was a major turning point in my life. Ever since, I have worshiped at the shrine of labor. I still do it. I am 81 and work every day, whether it pays or not. I begged my late son, Tommy, to work. He didn’t. He would still be alive if he had. Work is a sovereign cure for almost every mental ailment. Tommy was convinced that he need not labor. It was a catastrophe. Dear friends: Even if you are rich, you need to work for your own self-esteem and self-discipline. Please pay attention. READ MORE from Ben Stein: Where Everybody Knows My Name What It’s Like to Feel ‘Restricted’ Reiner and Son