New York City’s newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, partnered with YouTube star “Ms. Rachel” (Rachel Accurso) to sing “The Wheels on the Bus” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It” to a classroom of preschoolers. The duo highlighted the city’s plan to enact “2 Care,” a free, universal childcare program for 2-year-olds. (RELATED: The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York)  Ms. Rachel, a YouTuber who creates educational content for toddlers and infants, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani sang to a classroom of children at a pre-K center in Lower Manhattan on Friday morning. This comes after Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a program that would give… pic.twitter.com/IwieMuoWDE — Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) January 9, 2026 Listen to The Spectator P.M. Podcast hosts Ellie Gardey Holmes and Lyrah Margo as they discuss the pair, including their sentiments toward Hamas and the Free Palestine movement, citing Ms. Rachel’s recent controversies that connect her to the Left’s ideology. Ellie and Lyrah also discuss the consequences of universal childcare and why the 2 Care program is not good for parents or their children. Tune in to hear their discussion! Read Ellie and Lyrah’s writing here and here. Listen to the Spectator P.M. Podcast on Spotify. Watch the Spectator P.M. Podcast on Rumble.

Beginning in July, eligibility for federal student loans will hinge on how much a given program’s graduates make. That means that many theater, fine arts, design, and music programs will be at risk. Also facing difficulty will be some anthropology, religious studies, dance, and communications programs. The changes are coming as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last July. The rule has been deemed the “Do No Harm” provision because it will prevent taxpayer money from being used to fund programs that are leaving students worse off than if they had never enrolled. (RELATED: Buyer Beware: The College Edition) For associate’s and bachelor’s degrees, colleges will be judged on whether their graduates from a given program made more than someone with a high school diploma for two out of the past three years. For master’s degrees, colleges will be judged on whether their graduates from a given program made more than someone with a college degree within that same field for two out of the past three years. If colleges can’t get their programs’ graduates up to par, they may have to shut down these programs, knowing many students won’t be able to afford them without federal student loans. (RELATED: A Bag of Rocks for $400,000?) According to the Chronicle on Higher Education, 6.6 percent of associate’s degrees, 1.2 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 1 percent of doctoral degrees, and 4 percent of master’s degrees will fail the test. Additionally, 44.8 percent of undergraduate certificates will no longer be eligible for federal loans under the new provision. Fine arts degrees at Berea College, the California Institute of the Arts, George Washington University, San Diego State University, Seattle Pacific University, the University of New Orleans, and the Cooper Union are all at risk. Dance degrees at Loyola Marymount University, Ball State University, the University of Arizona, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee would also fail to make the cut, according to their current data. Theater programs at CUNY City College, New York Film Academy, Seton Hill University, and the University of Rhode Island likewise don’t have graduates who make sufficient income. There are 377 master’s programs in the United States that will likewise find their access to the easy money doled out by federal student loans cut off. There are some more out-there programs that will no longer be eligible for the taxpayer assistance provided by federal student loans. Centura College-Virginia Beach’s associate’s degree in the discipline of Somatic Bodywork will be at risk, as will CUNY Kingsborough Community College’s associate’s degree in Parks, Recreation and Leisure Studies, Peninsula College’s associate’s degree in Precision Metal Working, and Spelman College’s bachelor’s program in the discipline of “Ethnic Cultural Minority Gender and Group Studies.” That bachelor’s program at Spelman College leaves graduates earning $25,137 annually after graduation, according to the Chronicle on Higher Education. That is equivalent to earning $12.08 an hour when working a full-time job, which is well below what is offered at many entry-level positions for people with no higher education whatsoever. Spelman is considered to be the most elite college for women that primarily serves black women. There are 377 master’s programs in the United States that will likewise find their access to the easy money doled out by federal student loans cut off. No doubt many of these are online programs that are cash cows for universities. When a university puts its students through four years of education only to leave them earning less than someone working at McDonald’s, they have done serious harm. The new rule enacted under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act ensures that colleges are held accountable for such outcomes. Programs that leave students worse off should be ended, and colleges shouldn’t get to pretend that they’re doing good by wasting taxpayer dollars and young people’s time. READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: Gavin Newsom, ‘King of Fraud’ ‘Experts’ Warn US Is on Brink of ‘Trans Genocide’ Canadians Fear US Invasion After Maduro Seizure

Over the weekend and into Monday afternoon, there was an interesting flurry of news reports indicating that Tim Walz’s political career might be ending even sooner than we thought…   ? BOMBSHELL: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is set to resign within the next week, according to multiple reports from within the Walz campaign. pic.twitter.com/plbqZsg73P — TalkRadio 77 WABC (@77WABCradio) January 11, 2026 Tim Walz to RESIGN from Office After Somali Scandal, Newsom in PANIC Over Our Fraud Investigation… https://t.co/cpoUy6oWrE — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 12, 2026 It seems that Walz is being thrown under the bus by his own party, something which carries not just great entertainment value but also the prospect of an interesting lesson… Jacob Frey after months of Democrats claiming there’s no fraud: “Everybody could have done more to prevent fraud. The fraud is real. The fraud is very real.” Ohpic.twitter.com/iLiblzJMEP — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 12, 2026 This would all put us back to where we were a week ago, before a deranged woman decided to block a street to prevent ICE from transporting an arrested illegal alien to a detention center, and, when ICE officers moved in to arrest her, drove at one of them. His reaction was to neutralize the threat to his person that the moving vehicle presented, and the result was a bullet to the head of Renee Good. (RELATED: When Law Enforcement Becomes Political) Who the American Left instantly committed to creating as White Girl George Floyd. (RELATED: Who Gets Canonized — And Who Gets Condemned?) Look, it’s a bad thing that this woman died last Wednesday. Nobody is or should be happy about it. But just like in the case of St. George of Fentanyl, Renee Good is dead because of Renee Good. And effectively, thanks to the Democratic Farm/Labor Party of Minnesota’s exploits, she sacrificed herself so that Tim Walz and the rest of that party’s political class could buy a distraction from the multi-billion dollar Somali welfare fraud scandals that were eating them alive both inside and outside that state. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Minnesota Goes to Hell (Again)) Did it work? Not really. ICE has now flooded officers into Minneapolis in response to Walz’s threats to call out the Minnesota National Guard in order to “protect” his state’s “citizenry” from federal law enforcement officials. It doesn’t look like Walz is offering much in the way of a muscular response. What he’s offering is a… lawsuit. BREAKING: In a DESPERATE attempt to stop ICE and DHS from deporting their new voter base, Minnesota has just announced a lawsuit against the feds. He is following in Tampon Tim’s footsteps and called DHS activity a “FEDERAL INVASION OF MINNEAPOLIS.” He let the INVADERS INVADE… pic.twitter.com/4eguRsZ4Yn — Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) January 12, 2026 There are protesters in the streets in Minneapolis, and it has certainly gotten weird there, but it’s nothing like the Floyd riots. It turns out that the Left can’t bring itself to true hard-core violence unless there’s a racial angle, which is a terrible commentary on who they are, but also a hopeful sign, in that some of their most long-time loyal supporters seem to be getting tired of the old tactics. (RELATED: The Moral Blackmailing of the American People) That the people willing to riot for Floyd, a career criminal who once held a knife to a pregnant woman’s belly in a fit of rage and threatened a double murder, won’t riot for Renee Good gives you an indication of where middle-class white women, even if they’re lesbians of recent vintage, truly sit on the intersectional totem pole — the answer being “not quite so high.” And no amount of apology for white privilege will buy the loyalty of the woke communists — or at least it doesn’t quite get you arson at federal courthouses or bloody mayhem outside tire stores. Everyone else is watching and scowling. And the Somali fraud scandal just grows and grows… U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was told over the weekend that a new Nick Shirley video being released soon — maybe even as early as Monday — is “ten times worse” than the “Quality Learing Center” daycare scam. In Shirley’s previous video, he and his source, David Hoch, who has been investigating this billion-dollar-plus scam for years, discovered multiple daycare centers in one building without children in them for years. And this is where Hoch says is the heart of the ongoing continuing criminal enterprise. Hoch says the new video will show that most of these companies are Somali-owned, and his and Shirley’s visit to these companies found zero companies. “What I believe is the core of all this is this non-emergency medical transportation. A search showed that Minnesota recognizes 1,020 NEMT [Non-Emergency Medical Transport] companies. Almost 900 of them are Somali-owned,” he told Bessent. Hoch went on, “In the second video, Nick Shirley and I went to 16 of them — I’ve actually been to about 70 of them.” At this point, he held up his papers and leaned forward to Bessent to emphasize, “THEY DON’T EXIST.” They visited the NEMT companies to find the addresses went to places with “no vehicles.” Fronts included, “an apartment building. One of them is a liquor store. Another one is a wire transfer. Another one is  totally unrelated — it’s a grocery store. There are no vehicles.” He said, “The vast majority of these companies exist on paper only. They are not real.” He said that the average NEMT company in the United States has about “20 vehicles and each vehicle generates about $70,000 a year.” He said that if you run those numbers, “800 companies, 20 vehicles, $70,000 a year? It’s an enormous sum of money that’s going out.” Americans have been through too much in the past six years to be raised to hysteria over Good’s death. She doesn’t turn out to be a very sympathetic plaintiff, even post-mortem, and as the country is informed — grudgingly, and not with the participation of the legacy propaganda press — that she was part of an organized cabal of left-wing termagants trained to use their vehicles as weapons against federal law enforcement officers in order to protect illegal aliens from deportation, the case gets harder to make. (RELATED: The Media Are Agents of Propaganda) The country is looking for prosperity. It’s looking for cultural renewal. It wants the illegals to go home and the radical leftists to shut up. And at the end of the day, when it looks at Minnesota, what it has to say is not “we stand with Renee” but rather “where did all of our money go?” Walz and Frey and Minnesota’s gangster attorney general, Keith Ellison, who never paid a price for organizing a kangaroo court for Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the wake of Floyd’s death, don’t have a good answer for that. All they have is a promise to eventually close the barn door now that the horses are gone. (RELATED: Chauvin Trial Judge Amplifies the Obvious Injustice) But that isn’t good enough. Republicans in Minnesota, who are generally speaking a very hapless lot but very often come a lot closer to winning elections there than they get credit for, finally see an opening to punching through and turning the state purple if not red. That would be a good result from the foolishness, horror, and rebellion we’ve seen in that state. If ever there was a party whose politicians deserved a very swift kick in the ass from the voting public, it’s the Minnesota Democrats. Renee Good doesn’t seem to be an antidote to that. Unlike with Floyd, this time the federal law enforcement officers are running into the melee the Left is ginning up. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: Minnesota Goes to Hell (Again) You’ve Never Heard of the Citgo Six, and We’re Going to Change That Right Now The Toppling of Villains Has Begun in Earnest. It Must Continue. Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

The classic film, Doctor Zhivago (1965), offers a cautionary tale about what happens when collectivism threatens and confiscates private property. In this way, it provides a revealing lens through which to view the direction of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s housing agenda — and a warning about where such policies can lead if taken to their logical conclusion. In the movie, following the Russian Revolution, Yuri Zhivago — a doctor and poet portrayed by Omar Sharif — returns home from World War I’s Eastern Front, but his family house is quite different. The once palatial estate, symbolizing the family’s warmth and generosity aside from wealth, has fallen into disrepair. Vibrancy is dulled. Boards are exposed behind the walls. Strangers are occupying the premises. And local communist authorities — members of the Residents’ Committee — greet the young doctor with skepticism and coldness. The only sympathetic, yet pained face he meets is his betrothed, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). Yuri quickly realizes the truth: the home is no longer his own. Under Soviet rule, it belongs to “the people.” Private property is no more. Confronted with this reality, he adapts to survival mode, placating to their assertions and untruths, such as the censorship of a typhus outbreak in Moscow. After his brief interrogation, Yuri and Tonya head to their tight living quarters, yet one officer shouts, “There was living space for thirteen families in this one house.” Acknowledging the accusatory slight, the doctor cautiously responds, “Yes, this is a better arrangement, comrades. More just.” The exchange captures collectivism’s inherent envy — and its proclivity to warp and destroy not only homes, but human souls. Cea Weaver … has openly supported seizing private property, and equated homeownership to a “weapon of white supremacy.” This scene bears an uncomfortable resemblance to rhetoric increasingly heard in New York City politics. Cea Weaver — Mayor Mamdani’s appointed tenant advocate — has openly supported seizing private property, and equated homeownership to a “weapon of white supremacy.” Prior to her appointment as executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, Weaver also advocated for electing more communists, rent control, and closing eviction courts, among other anti-private property policies. (RELATED: Mamdani’s Rent Control Plans Will Make the Rental Market Worse for Working People) Likewise, Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has called for a citywide rent freeze and expansive public housing construction in order to address affordability concerns. To him, these are pragmatic solutions — though there are legal obstacles that could possibly obstruct the realization of this vision. Nevertheless, his vision — and Weaver by extension — ultimately treats private ownership and wealth accumulation as morally suspect, and, at worst, racist. Moreover, as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argues, the policies could cause “the deterioration of the regulated housing stock into a full-blown crisis.” (RELATED: From Solidarity to Statism: Mayor Mamdani’s Vision for New York City) Still, Weaver’s appointment as housing czar should not be taken lightly. Despite the legal and constitutional challenges, she now wields a lever of power with the ability to mold New York City’s housing policy for years to come, as well as influence other Democrat-led cities. After all, the elimination of private property undergirds her worldview and is intrinsic in the communist, socialist ethos as expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto (1848). Yet the Mamdani administration — under the guise of the “warmth of collectivism” — has failed to learn the lessons of history. As Doctor Zhivago illustrates, these radical ideas have led to societies’ ruination and, worse, the deaths of hundreds of millions. (RELATED: The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York) The consequences of this agenda would be profound. Even conservatives such as George Will, who have suggested the need for a “conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism” to “crack it up again,” underestimate the risks. Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and others needed only a sliver of authority to unleash their destructive authoritarianism. A communist and socialist foothold in New York — one of the world’s premier metros — may be enough to embolden other like-minded movements elsewhere. Even now, California is considering a billionaire tax: a five percent fee on all wealth assets. While not directly attributable to New York City, such proposals are undoubtedly reinforced by the Mamdani administration’s insistence on taxing the affluent to finance its policy ambitions. Certainly, some New Yorkers recognize the gravity of these aims, with many leaving for other, less taxing states like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina. But a generational struggle between free-market capitalism and communism is no longer looming — but here. And it is a battle no one can necessarily escape to greener pastures. Poll after poll, the young are increasingly embracing socialism. A December survey by The Economist/YouGov found 41 percent of Americans preferred capitalism to 21 percent favoring socialism, with younger demographics favoring the latter. A May Cato Institute/YouGov poll discovered 62 percent of Americans between 18-29 hold a “favorable view” of socialism, while 34 percent hold similar opinions of Communism. Similarly, an Axios-Generational Lab poll showed socialism besting capitalism among U.S. college students, with 67 percent of survey respondents saying they hold a positive or neutral association with the word “socialism.” In short, Mamdani’s rise — and Weaver’s sentiments — are bellwethers for America’s possible future, one rife with anti-capitalistic policies. Sadly, they are resonating with the young largely due to educational policies and affordability challenges. The 250th anniversary of America’s independence could not arrive at a more existential crux. An educational push to confront communism’s destructive nature must be imperative, and promote how free market principles have been the engine behind the country’s independence, economic prosperity, innovation, defensive strength, and charitable philanthropy. Indeed, capitalism is not merely an economic system — but deeply intertwined with America’s identity. Millions upon millions of immigrants, families, and individuals have benefited from this system, escaping poverty and achieving the American Dream. Yet this Dream can rapidly devolve into a national nightmare if current favorability trends continue. While mass starvation and political purges remain unlikely in the United States for the foreseeable future, socialist and collectivist policies reliably leave societies materially poorer. At its core, communism’s attack on private property threatens a primordial (or inalienable) aspect of humanity. Private ownership, indeed, is a right, reflecting the dignity of one’s work: that a person should keep what he or she has earned. Collectivism, conversely, erodes civil society and human dignity, stoking resentment and envy. Nations that have embraced this philosophy have deteriorated much like the once-grand home of Yuri Zhivago. Weaver, and Mamdani, embody and promote this liquidation, and their housing policies — rooted in communist ideology — will lead to capital flight and a reduced tax base, ultimately worsening affordability. That outcome would not be a “better arrangement” or “more just” for anyone. READ MORE: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Utopian Future? The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York From Solidarity to Statism: Mayor Mamdani’s Vision for New York City

At the very moment Portland needed a display of steadiness and command, its police chief stepped to the podium for a press conference and delivered a tearful collapse. His unraveling came as he acknowledged that the two individuals shot by a Border Patrol agent were illegal immigrants tied to the violent Tren de Aragua gang, yet he worried aloud about seeming to blame them for being shot. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the federal agent opened fire on both Luis David Nino‑Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano‑Contreras after Nino‑Moncada allegedly used his car as a weapon in an attempt to run over the agents while fleeing a traffic stop. Both individuals had long criminal histories that made the police chief’s emotional display even more jarring. According to Homeland Security and multiple news reports, the driver, Nino‑Moncada, had entered the country illegally in 2022 and had already been arrested for DUI and unauthorized use of a vehicle, with a final order of removal pending at the time of the stop. His passenger, Zambrano‑Contreras, had also entered illegally in 2023, and was identified by federal authorities as an active participant in a Tren de Aragua prostitution ring and a suspect in a previous Portland shooting. These were not innocent bystanders caught in random violence; they were individuals with documented criminal records and suspected ties to a violent transnational gang. That context makes the chief’s tearful press conference not just puzzling but emblematic of a leadership culture that seems more emotionally invested in criminals than in the safety of his own citizens. Most Portland residents are not looking for a chief who performs vulnerability for the cameras — they’re looking for someone who can articulate facts, project authority, and reassure a battered city that someone is actually in charge. Instead, the spectacle became a symbol of Portland’s deeper problem: a leadership class so consumed by performative empathy that it can no longer distinguish between genuine victims and the violent crime that is driving the city’s decline. A city already overwhelmed by violent crime cannot afford leaders who treat policing as a stage for therapeutic expression. What made the moment even more revealing was how perfectly it captured the broader cultural shift inside modern policing — a profession once defined by competence, authority, and a commanding presence now increasingly recast around emotional performance. In city after city, the metrics of leadership have been quietly rewritten: empathy is treated as the highest virtue, vulnerability as proof of authenticity, and public displays of emotion as evidence of moral seriousness. Competence, steadiness, and the ability to project control in a crisis have been pushed to the margins, replaced by a softer, more therapeutic model of policing that prizes feelings over facts. The Portland chief’s tearful press conference wasn’t an aberration; it was the logical endpoint of a feminized policing culture that has come to value emotional expression more than operational clarity. And in a city struggling with violent crime, that inversion of priorities is not just misguided — it has become dangerous. Unlike academia, where the feminized turn in institutional culture may be annoying but largely inconsequential to daily life outside the university walls, the feminization of policing carries real-world consequences. Policing had remained one of the last bastions of a traditionally masculine ethic — a profession grounded in the ability to impose order in moments of chaos. As Helen Andrews Compact Magazine essay, “The Great Feminization,” suggested, “The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.” Portland’s police chief, however, responded in precisely the way Andrews warns against — letting emotion dictate the narrative and recasting the offenders as the “victims” of a law enforcement officer who was just doing his job. It is essential to note that this cultural shift doesn’t require women to run police departments or occupy the chief’s office — although that is currently the case in some of the largest police departments throughout the country. In any institution, once enough personnel are hired from social science fields where therapeutic language, emotional validation, and consensus‑driven norms dominate, those habits begin to reshape the workplace itself. Policing is no exception. As police departments diversify their ranks and recruit females — often from university programs steeped in those values, the profession inevitably absorbs the softer, more emotionally expressive ethos of those environments. The result is a feminized culture of policing, not because women are in charge, but because the institutional center of gravity has moved toward the norms of professions where emotional display is treated as a virtue. And in a field that depends on composure and a commanding presence, that cultural drift carries real consequences. In the end, Portland’s press‑conference spectacle was not just an embarrassing moment for one police chief — it was a warning about what happens when an institution built to uphold order begins to prize emotional display over operational competence. A city already overwhelmed by violent crime cannot afford leaders who treat policing as a stage for therapeutic expression. The feminization of policing may win applause in elite circles that mistake vulnerability for virtue, but on the streets of Portland or New Orleans, or Chicago or New York City, it leaves citizens less safe, and the rule of law dangerously eroded. A police department that elevates compassion over command loses the capacity to do the one thing it exists to do: keep the public safe. READ MORE from Anne Hendershott: 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 Unproven but Unfolding Whistleblower Claims of Somali Medicaid Fraud in Ohio Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

President Trump is considering military intervention to protect Iran’s legitimate protesters from the regime. I am not necessarily recommending intervention, but if we do, I have some thoughts on how it should be done. Unlike Venezuela, where targeting President Maduro was seen as a critical first step to modifying the government, the center of gravity of the Iranian regime is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It is the glue that holds the rotting edifice together. The frightened old men who constitute the Grand Ayatollah and his Guardian Council are nothing without them, nor are the various ministries that comprise the executive branch of the government; they are technocrats and bureaucrats who have no real power outside their narrow responsibilities. The IRGC is more powerful than the regular armed forces or the police. If it is nullified, the regime collapses under pressure from the mob. Unlike the Taliban and ISIS, the IRGC is very vulnerable to both air and cyber attack. In contrast to the Iranian nuclear program, the IRGC’s internal security forces have to operate in the open from fixed bases to intimidate the general public. We know where their key facilities are. They are not well hardened underground. Their Quds Force special operators are primarily geared toward supporting overseas terrorist groups; they may be relatively covert, but that limits their usefulness against civilian demonstrators. Since its inception during the Iran-Iraq War, the IRGC has been the premier security force in the nation. The survivors of the hordes of young people who suicidally threw themselves against Iraqi fortifications in the 1970s have grown old, managing what has become not just a security force, but a for-profit business organization that owns much of the nation’s war production as well as the nuclear program. Its increasingly elderly leadership will do anything to maintain their elite status. If that organization is neutralized or forced underground by U.S. air strikes on their fixed installations and cyberattacks on their command and control systems, their ability to disrupt legitimate protests becomes nil. They might make effective insurgents in a civil war, but they would no longer be running the country. By bombing their barracks and forcing them into hiding, we could ensure that they cannot intimidate the crowds trying to advocate regime change. Military analyst William Lind once said that the best way to ultimately defeat an insurgency is to let them take over the government because, for once, we will know where they are. The Revolutionary Guard Corps is no longer either revolutionary or a true corps in the military sense of the word. By bombing their barracks and forcing them into hiding, we could ensure that they cannot intimidate the crowds trying to advocate regime change. As in 1979, without the iron hand of the palace guard, the regular army and police with likely refuse to try to suppress the crowds. Selective targeting of the IRGC barracks, headquarters, and supply facilities would paralyze their efforts to prop up the corrupt and increasingly fragile regime. Unlike Venezuela, we really don’t care what a post-theocratic regime in Iran looks like. Even if it is hostile to U.S. and Western interests, it will be years before Iran can cause organized mischief in the region or rebuild its nuclear program. It would be great if Iran evolves into a stable democracy, but that is the business of the Iranian people. As heartless as it sounds, an internal civil war would not be in our worst interest as long as long as it it does not cross borders and destabilize the rest of the region. A civil war would likely be a multi-sided affair involving monarchists, regime loyalists led by the IRGC, and those claiming to seek pure democracy. The latter would likely include radical socialists and what is left of the communists; that is a good reason for us to stay out of post-regime internal politics. What Iran looks like in the future will likely be determined by which side the regular security forces — army and police — come down on. What we should avoid at all costs is a U.S. ground intervention. It is not needed and might actually incite the nationalistic Iranians to support the regime against us. If President Trump wants to assist the demonstration with U.S. power, it would be in our interest to use our air and cyberspace power to disrupt the IRGC and allow the Iranians to sort things out themselves. READ MORE from Gary Anderson: Regime Modification in Caracas Stop Building Battleships, Start Building Fear Learning From the Past, Leading in the Present Gary Anderson has experience with regime change and/or nation-building attempts in Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International by the Mehr News Agency.

Two years ago this month, I wrote an essay here at American Spectator entitled “We are at war with Iran’s mullahs.” In it, I noted all the ways in which the theocratic Iranian regime had long been waging war against the United States, sometimes pinpricks, sometimes more deadly actions, but always an insistent drumbeat of actions aimed at advancing the cause of radical Islam and undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East and throughout the world. (RELATED: We Are at War With Iran’s Mullahs) In the intervening two years, this problem only became worse, largely because Joe Biden did nothing meaningful to counter the threat, leaving Donald Trump the unenviable task of unpicking a mess many years in the making. Today, however, we find ourselves in a much better position than ever before, largely because the supine response of the Biden years has been replaced by a muscular rejection of the mullahs’ assault on our interests and those of our Israeli allies. Smash Hamas? With our encouragement, Israel has achieved massive results, although the job is not yet fully done. Subdue the Houthi attacks on shipping? Again, not “mission accomplished,” but mission substantially advanced. Corral the worldwide threat posed by Hezbollah? Consider the extent to which Israel, again with our encouragement, has diminished their military capabilities and crippled — via exploding pagers, quite literally crippled — much of their leadership. And now, through our arrest of Nicolás Maduro, we’ve begun the neutralization of a burgeoning Hezbollah military presence in our own backyard. Above all, rather than the endless coddling of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, and again, in concert with Israel, Donald Trump did what his predecessors utterly failed to do, smashing the industrial foundations of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, delaying for years, perhaps forever, a looming threat that had exerted a paralytic effect on our policy in the Middle East and elsewhere — even here at home. Our war with the mullahs was in no way a war with the people of Iran. When I framed the problem two years ago, I insisted that we simply needed to fight back for a change. This we have done. But I also insisted on an important distinction, namely that our war with the mullahs was in no way a war with the people of Iran. It was clear then that the people of Iran no longer wanted to live under a stiflingly theocratic and economically incompetent dictatorship. On more than one occasion, they’d taken to the streets to signal their unhappiness, and on each occasion they’d received nothing in the way of encouragement from the U.S. Obama wanted a deal with the mullahs more than he wanted to help the suffering people of Iran — this much was clear. The same was true of Biden. Now, as the people of Iran take to the streets once again, this time more massively, more powerfully, more insistently than ever before, we’ve reached a crossroads. Instead of the indifference and the sometimes thinly-veiled hostility of the Obama and Biden years, we make it clear, in no uncertain terms, that the U.S. stands with the people of Iran in their pursuit of freedom. Unlike his predecessors, Donald Trump has sent a clear message, both powerful and surprisingly nuanced. He has bluntly called out the Iranian regime’s violence toward its people, threatening a range of coercive measures if the regime continues its attempt to violently suppress the will of the people. At the same time, he has carefully avoided calling for regime change or aligning the U.S. directly with emerging political factions. This is critical. It may be messy, and it may not produce results that perfectly align with our own interests, but letting the Iranian people themselves throw out the mullahs represents the best possible next step. And as Stephan Kapustka cogently argues, resist the temptation to put our hands on the scale as the Iranian people work out their future. (RELATED: The Prince and the Protests) The Iranian “street” wants the mullahs gone, and the only thing that is keeping them in place is their monopoly on the instruments of violence. If we can change this part of the equation, if we can freeze the use of force to suppress the demonstrations, then the regime will inevitably collapse. Its only strength is its monopoly on the instruments of violence. We understand that even now, the Department of War is providing the president with targeting options to achieve just such a result. One hopes that these include striking at the pillars of the theocracy’s power structure, most notably the IRGC, the “Revolutionary Guard,” and its Basij internal security forces. Down through the years, the Basij has demonstrated its eagerness to attack unarmed demonstrators — they might well be a bit less eager if their bases and barracks become subject to Tomahawk missile attacks. Any such action, however, should concentrate on the IRGC, and, at least at the beginning, avoid targeting the Artesh, Iran’s regular army. The Artesh is frequently described as “non-political,” in contrast to the IRGC. This is misleading — the higher reaches of the Artesh command structure are filled, inevitably, with regime loyalists. But the very nature of how the army is recruited means that the enlisted ranks and many junior officers are “of the people” as much or more than being creatures “of the regime.” Thus far, we’ve not seen the army leave its barracks to support the demonstrators, but it may be that this will only take a little nudge on our part. Cripple the IRGC, let the generals of the Artesh know that we are watching them very carefully, and use all our communications capabilities to persuade the troops to stand with the demonstrators, at the very least to disobey if ordered to fire on the demonstrators. This is the classic pattern of regime overthrow, repeated again and again down through the centuries. It can happen in Iran, and contra Obama, we should do our best to encourage this. Should we fear blowback from the Iranian regime? Our Jed Babbin has analyzed this, concluding that the dangers are real, but manageable if we are on our guard. A particular concern, one that I’ve written about repeatedly, is the infiltration of terrorist cells through our southern border–we know this occurred, including considerable numbers of potential Iranian/Hezbollah elements, during the years of the Biden border flood. And we know that there are more than a few home grown American sympathizers, the same people who fill our streets with a “hate America” message, but sit on their hands as the Iranian people cry out against the cruelest oppression. Not least of the current ICE efforts should be to deal with this threat, although it can’t be accomplished quickly enough. (RELATED: A Dying Regime With a Loaded Gun) Much can go wrong in the days to come, as such historical examples as the 1956 Hungarian revolt remind us. But to stand aside as a suffering people are standing for themselves? To be offered a golden opportunity to see the world rid of one of its most cancerous geopolitical growths? Acting carries significant risk, but doing nothing is also a form of action, and in this instance, undoubtedly the worst form of action — we’ve let this threat fester for far too long. Cripple the regime’s capacity for coercion. Let the will of the Iranian people prevail. Be on guard against the thrashings of a monster in its death throes. This moment may not soon come again. Ignore the naysayers, and rebuke those who ignore real humanitarian disasters in favor of self-serving (or Communist China-serving) anti-ICE resistance cosplay. In much the same manner as the recent arrest of Maduro, this is a moment for the grown-ups, not the Squad and its ilk. Remember the present moment, so full of hope, so fraught with consequence, is only a moment. The mullahs must go, and when that happens, the world will be a better place. However, the poison of radical Islam will still be coursing through the world’s bloodstream, and much will remain to be done, at home and abroad, before health is restored once again. But seize the present moment and seize it now. READ MORE from James H. McGee: The New York Times Keeps Getting It Wrong on Nigeria Arresting Maduro: Not a ‘Green Light’ to Xi or Putin Protecting Nigeria’s Christians: Trump’s Strike Against ISIS James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk find the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian-backed Venezuelan terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.

Retail theft no longer begins or ends in a store aisle. What Americans once understood as “organized retail crime” has evolved into something far more dangerous and far more costly: a sweeping wave of cargo theft targeting the trucks, trains, ports, and warehouses that move the goods every community depends on. And unless policymakers treat cargo theft with the same seriousness they’ve recently brought to retail crime, American families will pay the price in fewer jobs, higher costs, and shrinking access to the everyday products that keep life moving. Protecting freight isn’t just protecting commerce; it’s protecting the everyday lives of millions of Americans who depend on it. Put plainly: cargo theft is retail theft, just earlier in the chain. And its consequences are bigger. The New Face of Organized Crime: Theft on the Move For years, Americans watched viral videos of coordinated smash-and-grab rings clearing out pharmacies, department stores, and big-box retailers. That was alarming enough. But now, thieves aren’t waiting for merchandise to reach a store. Recent data from CargoNet, the nation’s leading supply-chain theft tracking organization, found 3,625 reported cargo theft incidents in 2024, a 27 percent increase from 2023 and the highest ever recorded. Losses exceeded $454.9 million, with an average theft value of over $200,000 per incident. They’re hitting: Freight trains parked on city tracks, breaking open containers with industrial tools in broad daylight. 18-wheelers stopped at rest areas and distribution hubs, sometimes attacking drivers themselves. Port and airport cargo facilities, where high-value shipments are targeted before they ever leave the ground. These aren’t petty theft operations. These are coordinated criminal networks exploiting weak security points in America’s freight system, and the ripple effects travel far beyond the warehouse gate. Why Every American Should Care  Cargo theft isn’t an industry problem. It’s a household problem. When a truckload of electronics disappears, or a train car full of consumer staples is looted, the fallout touches: Your wallet Insurers raise premiums. Shippers pay more for security. Retailers absorb losses. And you pay the difference at checkout — on everything from detergent to diapers to televisions. Your access to goods Retail theft has already forced stores in vulnerable communities to close their doors. Cargo theft accelerates that trend by disrupting supply before products even reach neighborhoods. Your job market Truck drivers, rail workers, warehouse teams, and retail employees all rely on stable, predictable freight movement. When supply chains become a target, investment slows. Hiring slows. Communities lose economic opportunity. With 3.6 million U.S. truck drivers and over 150,000 Class I railroad workers, the economic footprint of freight is enormous. Cargo theft undermines all of it. The Current Response Isn’t Enough Congress has taken a meaningful first step with the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (H.R. 2853/S. 1404) legislation aimed at improving federal coordination and intelligence sharing. It recognizes the problem. It creates a mechanism to track it. But cargo theft requires a broader, more forceful strategy: State and local law enforcement must treat cargo theft as a major crime, not a property nuisance. These networks operate across multiple counties and states — yet responses are often siloed. Coordination must become the norm. Prosecutors must impose consequences that match the scale of the crime. A $500,000 stolen shipment cannot be treated like shoplifting. Criminal penalties should reflect the economic and community impact. Public-private partnerships need to be strengthened — especially in port cities and freight hubs. Industry has invested billions in logistics infrastructure. Government must invest in protecting it. Data collection must dramatically improve. Right now, cargo theft is underreported, inconsistently tracked, and often misclassified. Policymakers can’t solve what they can’t measure. A National Economy Cannot Function if Its Freight Is Up for Grabs  America’s supply chain is a living ecosystem. When organized criminal networks target freight, they don’t just steal products; they steal stability from families, workers, and local economies. If retail theft was the warning light, cargo theft is the alarm bell. We cannot wait until more stores shutter, more jobs disappear, or more communities lose access to the goods they rely on. Policymakers at every level must recognize cargo theft for what it is: a fast-escalating national threat that demands coordinated national action. Protecting freight isn’t just protecting commerce; it’s protecting the everyday lives of millions of Americans who depend on it. READ MORE: Railroads Must Keep Pace With the Economy Childhood Nicotine Poisoning and Public Policy Minnesota Welfare Scandal Is the Fraud Warning Americans Finally Noticed Phil Bell (pbell@towerkgroup.com ) is CEO Tower K Group. David M. Ozgo (ozgodavid@gmail.com)  is Executive Director of the Center for Transportation Advancement.  

It is one of President Donald Trump’s oldest rules for success. Of his many pre-presidential books, there is one in particular of note – for a reason that, as President, he still follows his own advice closely. The book’s title? Trump: Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success, Among the Trumpian wisdoms to be found here was this: “If you don’t believe in your product and can’t talk it up, who will?” Take a look at this press release, a release actually put out not quite a year ago, in March of 2025, from the Trump White House. The title? “50 WINS IN 50 DAYS: President Trump Delivers for Americans.” The release says, among a number of things, this:  “Today, President Donald J. Trump marks 50 days in office and he has already established himself as the most consequential President of our time. The winning never stops — and President Trump is just getting started.” Indeed. Now we have moved ahead to 2026. The 2026 elections have arrived. And as the White House reminds us in their recently released list of Trump accomplishments, they include: President Trump secured the border in unprecedented fashion. Illegal border crossings have declined to the lowest level ever recorded — down 94% from last February and down 96% from the all-time high of the Biden Administration. In one sector, illegal border crossings are down 99% over 2023. Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin: “If Fox were to send me down there right now, I would have trouble finding a single migrant on camera.” CBS immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez: “Typically, when we go to the U.S./Mexico border, we at least see one group of people who are trying to cross into the U.S. illegally. We did not see a single migrant.” President Trump is deporting illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and drug dealers en masse. The list of illegal immigrant criminals arrested and set for deportation include convicted killers, child molesters, child pornographers, gang members, terrorists, and drug traffickers. President Trump is bringing manufacturing back to America. The U.S. gained 10,000 manufacturing jobs in President Trump’s first full month in office — led by the auto sector, which gained the most new jobs in 15 months. This is a swift turnaround after losing an average of 9,000 manufacturing jobs per month in the final year of the Biden Administration. President Trump rescinded every one of the Biden Administration’s job-killing, pro-China, anti-American energy regulations. President Trump ended the unfair practice of forcing women to compete against men in sports. President Trump made it the official policy of the U.S. government that there are only two sexes. President Trump resumed construction of the border wall — adding to the more than 400 miles of border wall built during his first term. There are more accomplishments listed in this White House release. But the point is made by the release itself. The hard political point is that this is the sixth year in office for the president. And history shows it can be difficult for a president to carry the day in a six-year election. But that said, the election is critical for the last two years of the Trump administration. So without doubt, this very competitive president who has written an entire book on How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success will be criss-crossing America as if he himself were on the ballot. Which, in a way, he will be — constantly reminding Americans of the Trump administration’s accomplishments. So, as said often enough in this corner? Stay tuned. The 2026 election has arrived. Buckle in. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Hakeem Jeffries Urged on Protests: Getting One Protestor Killed Trump Rescues Venezuela The Trump-Kennedy Center Kerfuffle

Mattel introduces, 67 years after the original article, Autistic Barbie. “The autistic Barbie doll features elbow and wrist articulation, enabling stimming, hand flapping, and other hand gestures that some members of the autistic community use to process sensory information or express excitement,” Mattel announced. The dolls, dressed in loose-fitting, purple clothes to reflect the autistic community’s alleged comfort-over-aesthetic sensibilities, come with such accessories as fidget spinners and noise-cancelling headphones. “The doll is designed with an eye gaze shifted slightly to the side,” Mattel explains, “which reflects how some members of the autistic community may avoid direct eye contact.” Is this a joke? The description conjures up an image of a stereotype in miniature. One could see Dan Akroyd introducing it, maybe after Bag O’ Glass, in a Saturday Night Live skit on inappropriate toys or Sal from Impractical Jokers following up Q’s Toilet Soldiers with Autistic Barbie. Given the large number of autistic children, perhaps it becomes a popular birthday party gift? Mattel actually spent 18 months designing the doll in collaboration with the Autism Self Advocacy Network (ASAN). In other words, it passes muster with people within the autistic community. Given the large number of autistic children, perhaps it becomes a popular birthday party gift? And Barbie, a fashion icon, follows the fashions. She changes every so often. The doll first bent her knees in 1966. Dimensions shifted ever so slightly over the years. By 2016, Mattel offered petite, tall, and curvy Barbies as fat acceptance and body image became de rigueur causes. As women increasingly went to work, so did Barbie: as a zookeeper, astrophysicist, Mountie, surgeon, and dozens of other professions. “We followed the trends,” Carol Spencer, an early Barbie designer, confessed to the Today show several years ago. “Barbie was to change as we changed. So, in that regard, we kept her up to the minute with whatever was happening, whatever was popular, that the children could have interest in.” Some of the doll’s iterations more accurately reflected what the adults could have interest in. Four years ago, Mattel marketed its first transgender Barbie. Down Syndrome Barbie and Barbies with hearing aids, wheelchairs, and prosthetic legs arrived around the same time. Now comes Autistic Barbie. A Black Barbie and an Asian Barbie, given both the immediately recognizable differences in features and the market for such a variation, seem understandable. Do autistic children recognize themselves or Autistic Barbie as autistic? The question stems from ignorance rather than a desire to make a rhetorical point. Growing up during the 1980s, I had never heard of the term “autistic” to describe another kid. I’m not sure if that derives from children using other, often mean, names to describe their peers who exhibited what we now identify as autistic behavior, because the condition affects more people in the 2020s than it did during the 1980s, or if a push incentivized by government handouts encourages parents to obtain such a diagnosis for their child (teachers and social workers have alerted me to such schemes, the rarity of which, I do not know). It all remains quite mysterious to me. So, too, does Autistic Barbie. We live in a curated world where cable television delivers news catered to the preferences of the viewer, the internet nudges interest in songs, books, and articles based on an algorithm’s analysis of past choices gleaned through cookies, and the supermarket offers choice overload on seltzers (lime? cranberry lime? raspberry lime? lemon-lime?) and much else. In this context, Autistic Barbie seems not a curiosity but an inevitability. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Died This Week — By Suicide The Left’s Ugly Response to a Beautiful Woman’s Death Stranger Things Season 5: Rooting for the Villain