A Leftist Anti-ICE Fantasy

By Joan Swirsky

In my meandering imagination, I was a liberal, yearning to join the anti-ICE peaceful protest in Minneapolis… 

In my meandering imagination, I was a liberal, yearning to join the anti-ICE peaceful protest in Minneapolis and trying to figure out how I would let our government know how strenuously I object to their policy of deporting illegal aliens.

I summoned up an article I had read by the esteemed Daniel Greenfield in which he spelled out in vivid detail the exact kinds of people I would be supporting, defending, and advocating for, all who had been charged with or convicted of the following crimes:

  • rapists;
  • a “child fondler”;
  • sex predators;
  • child-molesters;
  • pedophiles;
  • the sodomizer of a young girl;
  • another charged with “strongarm sodomy of a girl”;
  • criminal sexual conduct, fourth degree, of a victim 13 to 15 years old;
  • murderers;
  • muggers;
  • “lewd or lascivious acts with a minor”;
  • “sexual exploitation of a minor — prostitution”;
  • “enticement of a minor for indecent purposes”;
  • “sexual exploitation of a minor — material — film”;
  • “strongarm sodomy of a boy”;
  • “sodomy-girl-strongarm.”

“This is what Renée Good died for,” Greenfield wrote.

“Yes,” I responded to Greenfield, in my fantasy as a liberal.  “Keep them all here.  They are human beings.  They are victims of poverty, of deprived upbringings, of mean people who want to deport them.  That’s not who we are!”

How I Joined the Ranks

In my fantasy, I didn’t quite know how I would make my appearance at the anti-ICE protest.  I thought about digging out my “make peace, not war” t-shirt, but I couldn’t find it.  Then I looked for some fairly recent placards I carried quoting phrases from Antifa and BLM, but the only ones I found in my garage were yellow with age and damaged by humidity.

And then it hit me.  What better thing could I do to demonstrate my strong but peaceful intentions than to emulate Alex Pretti and bring my nine-millimeter semi-automatic Sig Sauer handgun with me, complete with two high-capacity magazines, and tuck it into my waistband?

After all, what says peaceful protest more than a loaded gun?

But uh-oh.  As writer and editor Olivia Murray points out, the P320 Sig Sauer Mr. Pretti was wielding is notorious — and has generated numerous lawsuits — for going off spontaneously, even when in a holster!

Then I asked a liberal friend and avid supporter of the anti-ICE protestors what he would do if his daughter were raped, and he knew who the rapist was.

“I’d kill him…with my bare hands!” he said with conviction.

“So you believe criminals should see justice?” I asked him.  “Like the criminals being deported?”

“That’s different,” he said.

Then I asked an even more left-wing neighbor what she would do if she looked out her second-floor window and saw a guy trying to break into her house.

“I’d call the Sixth Precinct,” she said, referring to our local police department.

“So you believe criminals should be arrested…and tried and convicted?” I asked her.  “Like the criminals they’re deporting in Minnesota?”

“That’s different,” she said.

Maybe it was the sheer hypocrisy, or was it the stupidity, or was it just simple boilerplate leftism?  Whatever it was, it snapped me out of my liberal, leftist, progressive fantasy with a start.  It was the instant that my background as a N.Y. State–certified psychotherapist, who had practiced for over 20 years, recognized the stunning irrationality — or was it the clinical insanity? — of those who have joined this protest, including the elected officials who are fomenting all the chaos and violence.

There’s Good, and There’s Stupid

Less than a month ago, when Renée Good, at a similar demonstration, decided to obstruct traffic and then drove her 4,000-pound SUV into an officer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who was rounding up illegal alien career criminals.  She was shot and killed for her attack.

The craven media tried to soften her image by calling her a poet, just as they wanted the public to know that Alex Pretti was an oh, so caring intensive-care nurse.

But why was Mr. Oh, So Caring wearing a tactical vest or failing to have a carry ID for his loaded gun, which is mandated by Minnesota law?  Didn’t he learn his lesson the week before, when he sustained a broken rib after he scuffled with federal agents at another anti-ICE protest?  Here is the video that shows a man identified as Alex Pretti attacking ICE agents and kicking out their tail lights before he is tackled.

In addition, writer Tyler Durden reports that “according to Jeanne Massey, a neighbor, Pretti was part of a ‘Signal ICE’ group chat of volunteers who organized a sophisticated operation to track ICE activity in real time and alert each other when agents were in the area.”

Tip of the Iceberg

According to writer and publisher Terry A. Hurlbut, “the State of Minnesota, alone (so far) among the fifty States, is making insurrection and rebellion against the United States.”  He suggests that the reason may be because the Trump administration discovered such massive fraud —  the president now estimates it at $100 billion — from Minnesota alone, and that is why Governor Tim Walz; Mayor Jacob Frey; and “government employees, in key positions, are actively supporting criminal behavior,” including

  1. obstruction of justice,
  2. stalking and attempted murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and even
  3. stalking and attempted murder of journalists sympathetic to the rule of law.

Washington Times columnist Don Feder reminds his readers that “every totalitarian dictatorship started with violence in the streets.  The French Revolution started with the storming the Bastille and ended in the Reign of Terror.  The Russian Revolution began by Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace and ended in firing squads and gulags.  National Socialism started with Brownshirts brawling in the streets of Weimar Germany and ended in World War II and the Holocaust.”

Feder adds,

Don’t be fooled by the carefully planned chaos unfolding in Minneapolis.  Today’s street theater isn’t just about immigration enforcement any more than the 2025 “No Kings” protests were just about challenging President Trump’s authority, or the 2020 George Floyd riots were just about so-called police brutality.

All are part of a revolution in the making that could spell the end of democracy in America. Left-wing agitators plan to destroy constitutional government. The battle to keep U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting murderers and rapists is the latest front in a wide-ranging war.

Businessman and author Kenin M. Spivak believes that “the heated campaign against ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is really an effort to open the borders and keep them open.”

Most of the recent vitriolic opposition to ICE is a feint by unrepentant open-borders progressives. They won the first round when Joe Biden was elected president, lost the second when Donald Trump returned to office, and are back for a rematch. For most, the venom has little to do with how ICE performs its mission and everything to do with preventing the Trump administration from undoing Biden’s brazen deluge of illegal migrants.

Grown-Up Time

After witnessing this wildly out-of-control situation, the adults in the White House, led by President Trump, sent ICE acting director Tom Homan to Minnesota to take direct command of immigration enforcement, to speak directly to Gov. Walz (who my late always-diplomatic mother would call “not overburdened by brains”), and to Mayor Frey (didn’t we all know this kind of irritating rabble-rouser in school?).

As reported by Pamela Geller, the president confirmed that he and Walz spoke by phone in a “very good” conversation.”  Although the governor bashed Pres. Trump ahead of his meeting with Mr. Homan, apparently he changed his tune after they met.

But Jack Davis reported that “they met, they talked, and they did not agree.”

“President Trump has been clear,” Homan said.  “He wants American cities to be safe and secure for law-abiding residents — and they will be.”

Frey, on the other hand, said that “all he wants is for the federal government to leave his city,” adding defiantly that “Minneapolis Does Not and Will Not Enforce Federal Immigration Laws.”

Always, Always, Always Follow the Money

It costs millions upon millions of dollars to wage a revolution, an insurgency, a massive movement to undermine a government, especially the all-powerful American government.

And you can bet that most of the people participating in this anti-government, anti-law-and-order action are not millionaires or billionaires, but rather regular working-class or middle-class people who are being handsomely paid to act out their benefactors’ fury.

Who is paying for all this?  According to reporting by Cristina Laila for GatewayPundit.com, super-sleuth James O’Keefe “went undercover inside the Minnesota Mob” and learned that “an entire network of NGOs, unions, and activist groups including ‘SEIU’ [Service Employees International Union], ‘Make the Road New York’, and the ‘Independent Socialist Group’ are all behind this chaos.”

Newsman Bill O’Reilly was also curious and learned that a man named Neville Roy Singham, a Chinese billionaire, has been funneling “tens of millions” of dollars into America to “radical organizations to foster rebellion and destroy the government.”

“This isn’t some organic thing,” O’Reilly adds.  “This is a foreign power!”

Moreover, writer and economist Antonio Graceffo details how the Minneapolis-based activist group Defend 612 “has mobilized tens of thousands of supporters through encrypted communication networks to disrupt federal operations” through a complex funding structure linked to “liberal foundations, shell entities, politicians, and third-party organizations, some of which ultimately trace back to billionaire George Soros.”

Defend 612, Graceffo adds, “provides anti-ICE ‘know your rights’ training, organizes and supports protests, and maintains a decentralized rapid-response network designed to interfere with ICE enforcement in real time.”

And looky here! Craigslist now advertises for protesters in California, offering $6,500–12,500 a week, depending on one’s level of chaos.

What Now?

If history is any measure, the left-wing anarchists and hired patsies aren’t going anywhere.  But neither are President Trump and his team of law-and-order advocates.

On the law-and-order side, an appeals court just sided with the Trump administration to lift Minnesota protest curbs on ICE agents.  Now it remains to be seen if the Congress will pass the legislation the president has just proposed to end sanctuary cities across the country.

But even more recently, the president has decided on a strategic pullback and has issued this statement:

I have instructed Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, that under no circumstances are we going to participate in various poorly run Democrat Cities with regard to their Protests and/or Riots unless, and until, they ask us for help. We will, however, guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.

Gotta love it…let them devolve and self-destruct on their own!

Journalist Don Feder sums the whole mess up neatly: “The battle of Minneapolis will decide whether America is governed democratically or ruled by self-appointed elites backed by goon squads.”

As for me, I can only hope that the god of mercy spares me another liberal fantasy!

©2026 . All rights reserved.

How China Sold America the Wind Turbine Scam

By John Droz, Jr.

This is a repost of a worthwhile article — this one was on Front Page.

I am sharing this as it is a story of trillions of dollars of waste, huge financial losses to citizens in “hosting” communities, scientifically documented adverse health effects to thousands of innocent citizens, enormous harmful environmental consequences, a major national security risk, etc. — with zero net benefit!

Put another way, this is a classic story of humungous adverse consequences all because politicians and community leaders did no real Critical Thinking.

In the same vein, this good piece also recently came out: Energy Wisdom is Lacking Among Public Officials… And this today…

For decades, the United States has been guided by a story about energy that presents wind power as one of the few responsible paths forward. The idea has been repeated so often that it eventually stopped sounding like a policy proposal and began to sound like a moral duty.

Wind energy was described as the answer to climate change, the way to rebuild American manufacturing, and even a strategy to strengthen national security. Once that view became popular in national politics, questioning it was treated as a refusal to accept science rather than an effort to understand the actual costs and tradeoffs.

The problem is that this story never came from a neutral scientific study. It came from a mix of international institutions, corporate lobbying efforts, and foreign governments that realized they could benefit from it. China benefited more than anyone else. What American leaders described as a clean-energy transition became, in practice, a significant transfer of industrial power to a competing nation that understood the economic opportunities far earlier than the United States did.

China’s rise in the renewable-energy market was a direct result of Western governments focusing more on climate politics than on common sense. While American and European leaders focused on emissions pledges and public messaging, China built the factories and rare-earth mining operations needed to dominate the global wind-turbine market.

Today, Chinese companies control more than 70 percent of the world’s wind-turbine supply chain and more than 80 percent of the rare-earth materials needed for turbine generators and other green-energy technologies. That dominance was built through state subsidies, centralized financing, and government direction that enabled Chinese producers to undercut American and European manufacturers, leaving most unable to compete.

This created an apparent contradiction: The United States now relies on China for the equipment that supposedly underpins American “energy independence.” Democrats rarely acknowledge this because it raises an uncomfortable question. How can a country strengthen its strategic position by depending on a foreign rival for the core parts of its energy system?

The question only grows once China’s own energy system is considered. While the United States has closed more than 300 coal plants since 2010, China has expanded coal use on a massive scale, adding roughly two new coal plants per week in recent years.

Those plants provide the power needed to run the factories that build wind turbines for export. As a result, American emissions fell on paper while global emissions continued to rise, simply shifting from one country to another.

This is the difference between symbolic climate policy and real environmental change, and for years, the United States has chosen symbolism.

A significant reason the Green Scam continues is the way climate science is communicated. Many people assume the United Nations’ climate reports are released exactly as written by scientists. In reality, draft reports are reviewed and edited by government officials before publication.

The summaries—usually the only parts the public sees—are negotiated line by line to ensure the final language supports specific policy priorities.

Science relies on open debate, repetition of results, and the ability to test conclusions, not on political negotiation. When science is filtered through policymakers before reaching the public, it becomes messaging rather than fact, and messaging cannot guide a country’s energy strategy.

This problem becomes even clearer when looking at who speaks publicly about climate science.

Many of the most visible voices do not work in climate modeling, atmospheric physics, or geophysics. Their backgrounds are often in unrelated fields, but because their views align with the dominant narrative, they are presented as experts. The scientific method requires observation and evidence. Public debates often rely on authority and repetition.

Wind energy shows what happens when climate policy is shaped by politics instead of evidence. In practice, U.S. wind turbines operate at capacity factors between 32-35 percent, meaning they produce far less energy than their maximum output most of the time.

Because wind is intermittent, states still depend on natural gas or coal to keep the grid stable. That dependence increases system-wide costs. States that built wind energy the fastest—notably California and New York—saw retail electricity prices rise far above the national average over the past decade. Taxpayers also fund new transmission lines, grid upgrades, and the costs of turbine retirement.

Wind turbines are often placed along major bird-migration pathways, leading to significant declines in bird populations, including protected species such as golden and bald eagles. Estimates from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicate wind turbines kill between 500,000 and 700,000 birds in the United States each year, with some studies suggesting totals above one million.

China benefits from all of these outcomes. It exports turbines, grows its industrial power, and expands its influence in global supply chains. The United States, meanwhile, accepts higher energy costs, greater grid instability, and increased dependence on foreign manufacturing, all while believing it has taken the lead on climate issues.

I could have submitted multiple additional comments to this article (e.g., see my prior commentary on this topic), but opted to only do the following:

FYI, during all the years of robotic accolades for wind energy, there has never been a Scientific Study that has concluded that industrial wind energy saves a consequential amount of CO2. Think about that!

The wind industry lobby did put forth “studies,” but they were all based on “computer simulations.”

Computer simulations have value when we don’t have sufficient empirical data. However, with hundreds of thousands of wind turbines world wide we have PLENTY of empirical data.

Despite that, there has never been a Scientific Study (i.e. using legitimate empirical data) that has concluded that industrial wind energy saves a consequential amount of CO2.

Oh, one more thing… There have been MANY scientific studies that have concluded that wind energy is likely a Net Liability regarding fixing Climate Change. For example, see here.

©2026 All rights reserved.

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CALIF-FRAUD: Almost 20% of ALL U.S. Home Health Activity Comes From Just One Place — Los Angeles

By The Geller Report

California is facing mounting calls for a sweeping audit after MASSIVE fraud was exposed — a staggering 18% of all U.S. home health activity comes from just one place: Los Angeles County.

That single county now has more hospice agencies than 36 states combined.

One doctor alone was caught fraudulently billing taxpayers $120 MILLION.

Investigators uncovered a surreal scam hub: 287 hospice providers packed into a two-mile radius — operating out of strip malls, unmarked offices, even a wrecking yard and vacant lots. No patients. No care. Just paperwork.

As one whistleblower put it: “I could fill this out from Kazakhstan and have a hospice license waiting for me.”

This isn’t incompetence.

Gavin Newsom isn’t just allowing it — he’s complicit.

How can anyone vote Democrat??

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

POSTS ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

New Governor Who Ran On ‘Transparency’ Reportedly Uses Loophole To Host Secret Ritzy Dinner With Donors

By The Daily Caller

Politicians are gonna politician.

During her campaign, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill vowed to bring “transparency and accountability” to the governor’s office. She even said she wanted to get dark money out of politics. But, of course, she appears to have already reneged on her promise after reportedly using a loophole to host a secret ritzy dinner with her deep-pocketed donors.

Sherrill recently hosted a dinner for executives, lobbyists, unionists, and anyone else who could afford a $100,000 minimum entry donation, Politico reported Sunday. Thanks to a loophole, donors could give well over $250,000, despite a state law that caps inaugural contributions at $500, and the identities of those donors will probably never see the light of day.

That’s because they were reportedly donating to Mission to Deliver NJ, a non-profit, 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization created by Sherrill’s allies to fund the inaugural parties and other related events for the governor. Those who donated over $250,000, the “Commander” tier, got four tickets to the posh pre-inaugural dinner, a spot on the group’s finance committee, and “quarterly briefings from top officials,” Politico reported.

“As a 501(c)4, you’re talking about donations that are unlimited and dark, so nobody’s even aware of who’s potentially buying influence from the new administration,” Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform for Campaign Legal Center, told Politico. “The typical New Jerseyan doesn’t know even who’s part of that select group that has helped fund the inaugural ball, but they’re going to see the potential outcomes of that when a policy favored by special interests gets more support from the governor.”

Jose Lazano, Mission to Deliver’s leader, said the group was only set up to pay for Sherrill’s inaugural ball. They are also planning events for America’s 250th anniversary and possibly the 2026 FIFA World Cup games and the tournament’s final match, which will be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

“There is zero intention to do anything political at all,” Lozano said in its defense. He claimed the group will not push for Sherrill’s agenda, nor has it shared any donor information with Sherrill herself.

Well, color me extremely skeptical.

Dark money might be one of the worst, if not the worst, factors that have turned American politics, at the state and federal levels, into a corrupt clown show. It has turned the ethos of one man, one vote, into one Ivy League degree and a blank check, one vote.

Sure, politicians have engaged in shady behavior since time immemorial. They have always lied, as well. But the amount of dark money sloshing around the system, especially in national politics, is unprecedented. And anytime a politician reneges on a promise, as is the case with Sherrill, I still find it annoying, even though I should know better.

AUTHOR

John Loftus

Editor at Large

RELATED ARTICLE: New Jersey Governor’s Race Could Reshape Democrats’ Entire Political Identity

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CFACT Report Takes Down UN Assault on Plastic

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Plastics are a great equalizer.

Thanks to plastic, never before in history have the necessities of life been so plentiful and affordable.

Plastics make an abundance of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, healthcare, and information technology available to all.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business, launched in November 2025 with UNEP backing, promotes a “circular economy” through mandates and bureaucratic control.

CFACT’s report, The Next Plastics Playbook: Inside the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2030 Business Agenda by Melanie Collette, reveals it as a push for one-size-fits-all global regulation that could undermine plastics’ immense benefits.

You are almost certainly reading this on a plastic device. You’re probably wearing plastic as well.

Lightweight, corrosion-resistant plastics cut transport costs and, crucially, make essentials affordable. Plastic packaging extends food shelf life, reduces waste, and delivers staples like rice, oil, and medicine to remote or low-income areas.

Plastic is essential to our entire economy, so naturally, the UN wants in.

Plastics drive the world economy, contribute trillions in value, employ millions globally, support jobs in manufacturing and healthcare, and are essential to human well-being.

The UN plastic agenda risks stifling these advantages by favoring big corporations over smaller ones and imposing rigid rules that ignore local needs, eroding sovereignty and consumer choice.

True progress requires voluntary innovation and evidence-based, localized solutions — not centralized UN mandates.

As the climate agenda crumbles, we dare not permit a UN bureaucratic comeback under the guise of saving us from plastic.

Read the full CFACT report.

For nature and people too.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

New Analysis Cites 4 Ways CBO’s Budget Baseline Always Favors Increased Federal Spending

By Family Research Council

Four key assumptions in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) analytical tool for projecting federal spending and revenue trends heavily distort its results in favor of continually increasing outlays and expanding government regulation, according to a new Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) analysis.

“The CBO baseline is important because it is used as the official benchmark against which legislative proposals are scored. The biases in the baseline allow the true costs of legislation to stay hidden from the public and members of Congress,” according to EPIC’s director of Budget Policy. Dickerson’s analysis was first delivered as part of the R Street Institute’s recent Virtual Federal Budget Reform Forum: Recommendations for Congress.

Dickerson points to four flaws in the baseline, three of which, in effect, make projected spending look much higher than it could otherwise be, and one of which makes tax revenues coming into the U.S. Treasury Department appear to be bigger than they actually are if Congress makes no changes in outlays or current law. The four flaws, according to Dickerson, include:

  • Discretionary appropriations are assumed to continue and grow with inflation each year. The result is a spending level authorized for one year for a specific program or agency which is assumed by CBO to continue throughout the 10-year period covered by the baseline.
  • Certain direct spending programs larger than $50 million are assumed to be extended beyond their statutory expiration. This means a program with an annual budget greater than $50 million is assumed by CBO to go on indefinitely until Congress acts to the contrary.
  • Entitlement programs are assumed to make all scheduled benefit payments, even if a program’s trust fundand financing are inadequate to do so. This means a program like Social Security and Medicare, which depend in great part upon trust funds — taxes paid into the system by employers, workers, and the self-employed — will continue paying full benefits using general revenues.
  • Excise taxes dedicated to a trust fund are assumed to be continued beyond their statutory expiration. Under current law, the federal government receives between $75 and $100 billion annually from excise levies on alcohol, gasoline, and tobacco products.

Together, the resulting bias “hides tens of trillions of dollars in spending in the baseline,” Dickerson contends. For example, of the $85 trillion in total spending the baseline projected for the 2025-2034 period, nearly 30%, or $25.5 trillion, is made up of spending not specifically authorized by Congress.

The EPIC analysis comes as Congress and Trump confront the reality that federal spending has increased more than 80% since 2015, zooming up from $5.01 trillion that year to $7.01 trillion in 2025. Entitlement spending on programs like Social Security and emergency spending related to the COVID-19 pandemic were the major drivers of the explosion in outlays.

The four flaws are included in CBO’s baseline budget tool due to requirements included in the 1985 Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control that was adopted in the first year of the second term of then-President Ronald Reagan. Legislation introduced in the 118th Congress by Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) — the No Bias in the Baseline Act — would eliminate all four of the flaws. The Virginia Republican is a member of the House Budget Committee.

Being in the center of controversy is a familiar position for CBO staffers. Most recently, House Republicans harshly criticized what they view as CBO’s chronically low projections of the positive economic impact of tax, regulation, and spending cuts at the federal level.

In its Concurrent Resolution on the 2025 Budget, for example, House Republicans noted one of the flaws pointed out by the EPIC analysis, noting that CBO “is obligated to produce an economic forecast that assumes an indefinite extension of current law, including the explosion of deficit and debt levels over the next decade. This is partly why CBO is forecasting average real Gross Domestic Policy (GDP) growth of just 2.0 percent over the next 10 years, well below the long-term trend of 3.1 percent in the United States.”

Similarly, in May 2025, when CBO released two analyses requested by House Democrats evaluating aspects of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) issued a sharply worded refutation.

“This is a smoke and mirrors tactic to try to deceive the American people into thinking that the One Big Beautiful Bill will benefit the top 10 percent at the expense of the bottom 10 percent. Ironically, the only thing Democrats are proving is that our policies are a massive success,” Arrington said.

“First, they’re not measuring economic benefits to low-income earners; they’re measuring federal resources distributed. For instance, there are fewer transfer payments to people on welfare if you prohibit illegal immigrants from accessing these programs and enact common sense work requirements to stop trapping people in dependence,” he continued.

“Second, when you allow Americans from every walk of life to keep more of their income, you lift millions out of poverty, just as we witnessed in President Trump’s first term. Democrats measure success by how many people are stuck on the welfare rolls; Republicans measure success by how many Americans are lifted off of them,” Arrington explained.

And Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who is also the number three ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee, told the Senate in an April 2025 floor speech during debate on the OBBB that CBO’s baseline budget analysis incorrectly evaluates tax policies.

“There’s an inherent bias in Congress’s scoring process where tax policy is treated differently than spending policy. If tax rates are scheduled to increase, like they are right now if we don’t act, preventing that tax hike is counted as a ‘cost’ in uncollected future revenue. But many spending programs are assumed to be extended beyond their expiration, so the spending just continues and continues, unabated, which the budget rules say do not have any cost,” Crapo told colleagues on the Senate floor.

Spokesmen for Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chairman Arrington (did not respond to The Washington Stand’s request for comment. Also not responding were spokesmen for Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrats on the two congressional budget panels.

For all the controversy, Dickerson expressed optimism to TWS that needed changes are coming. “The CBO is an important resource for lawmakers. It can also be a source of frustration, particularly when CBO fails to be transparent about its scoring, assumptions, and biases. While Director Swagel has taken steps to improve CBO, more work remains to be done,” he said.

“There is significant interest on both sides of the aisle in addressing the shortcomings at CBO. The House Budget Committee has signaled that CBO oversight will be a major focus, including conducting regular oversight hearings and advancing the first-ever audit of CBO’s operations,” he added.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Leftwing Radical Judge KILLS Trump Voter-ID Executive Order That Democrats Were Hell-Bent On Stopping

By The Geller Report

Election integrity is the Democrat party’s death sentence.

Where the hell is the GOP Congress? Pass the SAVE Act and impeach Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

Federal judge strikes down parts of Trump executive order on citizenship verification for voter registration

A federal judge struck down portions of President Trump’s executive order on voter ID

By Jasmine Baehr, Bill Mears Fox News, January 30, 2026:

A federal judge on Friday struck down key portions of President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at tightening citizenship verification for voter registration and absentee ballot applications, ruling the White House overstepped its constitutional authority.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, the power to set rules for federal elections.

Kollar-Kotelly blocked provisions in the executive order that would have required documentary proof of American citizenship on federal voter registration and absentee ballot forms.

“The Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote, permanently enjoining the administration from implementing the challenged provisions of the order.

Trump signed the order, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” on March 25.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

Infamous Anti-Trump Judge Blocks Trump Order Requiring Citizenship Proof on Voter Registration Forms

Democrats Collude With Judges To Keep Allowing Noncitizens To Vote In U.S. Elections

Corrupt Democrat Judge Blocks Trump Admin’s Proof of Citizenship Requirement to Vote

Radical Leftwing Judges’ Lawless Bans On Trump’s Clearly Legal Executive Actions Have Extremist Records

Clinton Appointed Judge BLOCKS DOGE From Reviewing Financial Transactions

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Who Is Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Nominee To Lead The Fed?

By The Daily Caller

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he is nominating Kevin Warsh to be the next Federal Reserve chairman, replacing Jerome Powell, whose term ends in May.

Warsh worked as an aide to former President George W. Bush, who later appointed him to the board of the Federal Reserve. The youngest ever Fed governor, Warsh served in that position from 2006 to 2011. He also previously worked as a mergers and acquisitions specialist at Morgan Stanley, and during his tenure as a Fed governor, served as a liaison between the central bank and Wall Street. He helped arrange the government’s bailout of insurance giant AIG.

The most important thing we need to know about Warsh’s background is where he stands on monetary policy, inflation, and interest rates. And, the fact that he was dead wrong about the housing market in the lead-up to the 2008/2009 Financial Crisis.

Throughout his career, Warsh has cultivated an image of an inflation “hawk” rather than a “dove.”

Roughly, the Fed hawks believe that keeping inflation low and prices stable is absolutely paramount to the U.S. economy. The Fed doves, on the other hand, are more loose with monetary policy, and believe that spurring economic and job growth by lowering interest rates and making money easier to borrow should take precedent over keeping inflation low. This dove policy is known as Quantitative Easing.

In the fallout from the 2008/2009 financial crisis, Warsh had sought to keep then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, a dove par excellence, at arm’s length.

In November 2010, the Fed voted on Quantitative Easing 2 to buy large amounts of treasuries, lower long-term interest rates, and re-purchase mortgage-backed securities that went bust during the housing crisis. Of course, juicing the economy by creating money out of thin air runs the risk of high inflation. Warsh voted for QE2, yet days after he wrote in The Wall Street Journal that strategy should be “necessarily limited, circumscribed and subject to regular review.”

“Policies should be altered if certain objectives are satisfied, purported benefits disappoint or potential risks threaten to materialize,” he added.

Even as the financial crisis began to unfold in 2008 and the Fed moved to slash interest rates, Warsh warned that using the “hammer,” his phrase for rate-cutting, could backfire.

“If the economy were to weaken somewhat further, we should be inclined to resist expected, reflexive calls to trot out the hammer again,” he said.

But Warsh was also dead wrong in the lead-up to the crisis and the housing market’s collapse from 2007 to 2010.

“If the housing situation is beginning to stabilize, I find it hard to believe that broader anxiety about it will affect business spending or the consumer as some of these scenarios contemplate,” he said during a Fed meeting in January 2007.

In that same meeting, he predicted that economic trends pointed to “strong, balanced economic growth for 2007.” That year ended in the Great Recession.

Now, in 2026, Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have been calling for lower interest rates, leading some commentators to question the president’s pick. Why would he nominate a so-called “inflation hawk” who might support higher interest rates?

Well, Warsh has already publicly called for interest rate cuts while arguing that the Trump administration’s tariffs will not lead to higher inflation. And he has also argued that reducing the Fed’s holding of U.S. bonds would allow for rate cuts that would not trigger inflation.

In a speech in April 2025, Warsh blasted America’s “irresponsible spending,” saying that it has been on a “dangerous trajectory,” especially since COVID-19. Fed leaders like Powell, Warsh said, had encouraged government spending but “didn’t call for financial discipline at the time of sustained growth and full employment.” They also got too political, according to Warsh.

“The more the Fed opines on matters outside its remit, the more it jeopardizes its ability to ensure stable prices and full employment,” Warsh argued.

He also called for a “regime change” at the Fed during an interview with CNBC in July 2025, saying the central bank was facing a “credibility crisis.”

“It’s not just about a person, it’s about an approach to economics … I’m troubled when I see them moving the goal posts,” he said. The Fed has “done a very good job of blaming others for its mistakes,” and its decisions on inflation were made “poorly,” he added.

Only time will tell if Warsh is a hawk in the vein of Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman from 1979 to 1987, who kept interest rates high and stamped out inflation; or, if he is a mix of hawk and dove, willing to cave to pressure from Trump, Bessent, and Wall Street.

Judging by his vote on QE2 in 2010, he may be someone who wants to fight inflation in theory, but doesn’t have the Volcker-esque gumption to do it in practice. The market’s reaction, on the other hand, suggests asset holders are afraid that he will pull the trigger and raise interest rates.

Something of note:

“Warsh is married to Jane Lauder, the daughter of prominent Republican donor Ronald Lauder, who was a classmate of Trump’s at the Wharton School. Lauder donated $5 million in March to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super political action committee.”https://t.co/5JzsDMkEtJ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 30, 2026

Warsh is married to billionaire heiress Jane Lauder, the daughter of Ronald Lauder, a big GOP donor. According to Bloomberg, Lauder donated $5 million to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, in March 2025.

Make of that what you will.

AUTHOR

John Loftus

Editor at Large. Sign up for John Loftus’s weekly newsletter here! Follow John Loftus on X: @JohnCFLoftus1

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

John Thune: Senate to Vote on SAVE Act—With Photo ID Requirement

By The Geller Report

“We’ll have that vote.” “We’ll have that vote.”

Why hasn’t he held that vote? Why has he done nothing?

Passing the SAVE Act before the midterm elections this fall would be a game changer. Senate Majority Leader Thune: It includes right now a requirement that you be a citizen to register to vote, but it doesn’t include a requirement that to vote you’d be a resident. So, in other words, if you’re going to have what we call voter ID or photo ID, when somebody goes into the ballot box to vote, that’s not currently covered in the bill. So that’s being fixed and addressed. And I think the new bill that comes out, hopefully we’ll deal with that. But I mean, at some point we’ll have that vote. I’m for it. I think most of our colleagues in the Senate are, and it hasn’t had consideration in the relevant committee yet, but I know there’s a high level of interest in among members in getting a vote on SAVE Act (Breaking).

GOP leaders are pressing to force a vote. Let Democrats go on record as saying they don’t want to protect the vote. Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin: “We’re still living with the consequences of Joe Biden allowing over 10 million illegal aliens to flood into our country,” said Senator Mullin. “Under current law, individuals are only required to attest to their citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Given the heavy influx of illegal aliens who are now living in the United States, the SAVE Act is a necessary precaution to prevent ineligible voters from participating in our federal elections. I urge my colleagues to pass the SAVE Act and support stricter identification requirements for election security” (Mullin).

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All right reserved.

Minneapolis Mayhem, ICE Updates, and More

By Family Research Council

President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda has arrested headlines for over a year, but violent riots and a series of fatal shootings have intensified scrutiny over immigration raids in Minneapolis. Earlier this month, 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent when she struck the agent with her vehicle after impeding enforcement operations. Just last week, 37-year-old Alex Pretti was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents when he showed up armed to protest immigration enforcement operations and involved himself in a physical altercation with law enforcement. Subsequently, the president deployed Border Czar and former ICE chief Tom Homan to Minneapolis to take control of operations. Here are the latest updates.

‘Noem, Go Home?’

In the wake of the violence in Minneapolis, multiple Democratic legislators have called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign, threatening to impeach her if she does not leave of her own volition. Now, Republicans are joining Democrats in clamoring for Noem’s ouster. According to Fox News, frequent Trump critics Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have joined Democrats in calling on the president to fire Noem. “I think the President needs to look at who he has in place as the Secretary of Homeland Security. I would not support her again,” Murkowski said, referring to her vote to confirm Noem, “and I think it probably is time for her to step down.”

Tillis faulted Noem and, more broadly, the Trump administration, especially White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, for stalling a partly-bipartisan amnesty push for illegal immigrants. “I don’t know if it’s lost yet, but if it is an opportunity lost, I put it squarely on the shoulders of people like Noem and Stephen Miller,” Tillis said. Referring to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) handling of Pretti’s death, he added, “Those two people told the president, before they even had any incident report whatsoever, that the person who died was a terrorist. I mean, that is amateur hour at its worst.”

Following Pretti’s death, Noem referred to him as a “domestic terrorist” and official DHS channels, citing the handgun and multiple magazines Pretti brought with him when interfering with federal law enforcement, claimed that he sought to “massacre” federal agents. The characterization has been criticized as premature and has reportedly inspired some frustration within DHS’s ranks, particularly among ICE agents, who fear that they are being blamed for some of the more aggressive riot control tactics used by USBP.

The president has asserted that he will not ask Noem to resign, but he did reportedly question his Homeland Security Secretary in a two-hour Oval Office meeting Tuesday. According to The New York Times, Noem and her top advisor, former Trump campaign official Corey Lewandowski, met with the president, who was joined by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Communications Director Steven Cheung, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, to discuss the optics surrounding Pretti’s death and Noem’s response. The New York Times reported that no indication was given that either Noem or Lewandowski was at risk of losing their jobs.

Notably absent from the Oval Office meeting was Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s immigration policy over the past decade and one of the president’s closest and longest-serving allies. According to Axios, Noem faults Miller for DHS’s response to Pretti’s death, with the Homeland Security Secretary saying that Miller told her to label Pretti a domestic terrorist and a threat to federal law enforcement personnel. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Axios quoted Noem as saying. Unnamed sources reported that Miller “heard ‘gun’ and knew what the narrative would be: Pretti came to ‘massacre’ cops,” but that the USBP agents involved in the shooting were quick to shut up and lawyer up, impeding the White House’s fact-finding in the matter.

However, other sources faulted USBP Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino for the miscommunication. “Bovino should be blamed,” one unnamed source told Axios, “not Stephen.” According to Miller and several other sources, Bovino and USBP quickly relayed potentially incorrect or incomplete information immediately following Pretti’s death, resulting in DHS’s controversial messaging. “The initial statement from DHS was based on reports from CBP on the ground,” Miller told the New York Post. “Additionally, the White House provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors,” he noted. “We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.”

Not a Pretti Picture

More information is emerging surrounding the controversial shooting of Pretti. A preliminary DHS review of the incident found that Pretti and another rioter were physically obstructing federal agents, despite being told multiple times to move out of the way. Pretti resisted arrest and struggled with USBP agents, when one agent shouted that Pretti had a gun, a loaded Sig Sauer handgun. Shortly afterwards, at least two federal agents began firing at Pretti, discharging roughly a dozen times. It was not until after Pretti had been shot that another agent announced that he had taken Pretti’s weapon from him. USBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility Investigative Operations Directorate also confirmed that the agents involved were wearing bodycams and that footage has been collected.

While many have touted Pretti’s credentials as a Veterans Affairs nurse, CNN reported that Pretti was already “known” to federal agents due to interfering in previous operations, including a physical altercation in which his rib was broken, just a week before he continued inserting himself into law enforcement operations and was killed. According to a Fox News report, Pretti was a member of an anti-ICE organization that used complex communications and tracking networks to plan obstructions to law enforcement operations. Pretti and others were already waiting for federal agents at the site where Pretti was killed. Pretti’s ex-wife confirmed that he had also been involved in the violent riots that rocked Minneapolis in 2020, following the death of George Floyd.

The president has committed to a thorough investigation of the events surrounding Pretti’s death. “We’re doing a big investigation. I want to see the investigation. I’m going to be watching over it. I want to see it myself,” he told reporters Tuesday. “I love all of our people. I love his family, and it’s a very sad situation,” he continued, advising anti-ICE activists not to bring guns to confrontations with federal law enforcement.

Lives on the Line

Pretti’s armed altercation with federal law enforcement agents and subsequent death comes in the midst of increased violence and threats against ICE personnel and other federal agents. According to a Breitbart News analysis, recent months have seen an 8,000% increase in death threats against ICE agents, including threats against their families, and a 1,300% increase in violent assaults against ICE agents. Breitbart quoted a voice message left on an agent’s phone as an example of the threats made against law enforcement personnel:

“I hope your wife dies. I hope your mom and dad die. I hope everything wrong that could go in your life happens. I hope you have the most miserable life. I hope you get hit by a bus. I hope you’re paralyzed, and your wife leaves you, and starts getting [expletive] by [other men] every day. You are a traitor to the American people, to the values that made our country. You should kill yourself. You’re [expletive] disgusting.”

According to the Washington Examiner, DHS is currently investigating the case of a woman who attempted multiple times to purchase firearms “to protect herself from ICE Agents, and also to kill ICE Agents.” In another instance, Virginia Commonwealth University fired a nurse for a series of social media posts advising anti-ICE activists to use paralytic drugs and poison ivy brews against ICE agents and encouraging single women to use dating apps to meet ICE agents and then poison their drinks.

DHS Assistant Secretary for Communications Tricia McLaughlin partly faulted Democrats for the rise in hostility, citing the dehumanizing rhetoric they use against federal law enforcement officers. “Comparing ICE day in and day out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences,” she warned. “Every day there are more assaults, more vehicle-ramming attacks, more attempts to kill our officers.”

Twin Cities Stalemate?

After having been deployed to Minneapolis this week, Homan has already begun negotiating with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) to ensure that immigration enforcement operations can continue with as little conflict as possible, pressuring the two Democrats to end their “sanctuary” policies and cooperate with ICE. “We all agree that we need to support our law enforcement officers and get criminals off the streets. While we don’t agree on everything, these meetings were a productive starting point and I look forward to more conversations with key stakeholders in the days ahead,” Homan reported Tuesday evening of his meetings with Walz and Frey. “President Trump has been clear: he wants American cities to be safe and secure for law-abiding residents — and they will be.”

Walz is evidently considering cooperating with the Trump administration, much to the outrage of his constituents. Anti-ICE activists stormed the Minnesota state capitol building Tuesday and staged a mass protest outside Walz’s office, chanting slogans such as, “ICE out now!” and “Do your job!” The governor had met with Homan Tuesday afternoon and had spoken with Trump previously, in what the president characterized as “productive.” He later quipped, “It couldn’t have been a nicer conversation. It’s hard to believe that’s the same guy I watch on TV or the debate not doing so well, because we had a reasonable and good conversation. If you believe it, he’d like to get this over with!”

In an interview following his meeting with Homan, Walz classified the Border Czar as “a professional,” which he said was not his experience of Noem and Bovino. “The tone was different, there was a tone shift,” he said of his talk with the Trump immigration official. While insisting that he would still like to see ICE leave Minnesota altogether, Walz admitted, “It was progress. Look, I never got a call from Bovino or Noem, nothing.” However, the governor still faulted federal operations for unrest in Minneapolis, rather than his own actions and rhetoric. “They started this fire.”

Frey also spoke with Homan, but has continued to reject the administration’s requests to end “sanctuary” policies. “Surprisingly, Mayor Jacob Frey just stated that, ‘Minneapolis does not, and will not, enforce Federal Immigration Laws,’” the president reported in a Truth Social post Wednesday morning. “This is after having had a very good conversation with him. Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the Law, and that he is PLAYING WITH FIRE!”

Appearing on “Washington Watch” Tuesday night, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) stressed the damage done by Democrats’ anti-law enforcement rhetoric, in addition to the importance for Republicans to follow through on the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. “All the other jurisdictions around the country where ICE is doing that job, they have cooperation from local officials, so there are no problems,” Harris observed. “The problems are when you have a governor and a mayor openly telling people in Minnesota to go against the Constitution, go against the ability of the federal government to enforce immigration law,” he continued. “You have a rogue governor and a rogue mayor, that’s the problem in Minnesota.”

“Republicans were elected to the majorities with President Trump to close the border and to begin the deportation of the 10 to 12 million people who crossed the border illegally under the Biden administration. We have to get that done,” Harris emphasized. “Unless you think that the 10 to 12 million people who came in illegally under the Biden administration should be invited to stay forever, you need ICE.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

FBI Agents Search Election Hub in Fulton County, Georgia in Court-Authorized 2020 Vote Investigation

By The Geller Report

“FBI agents were seen Wednesday carrying out a search at an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, a location that became ground zero for concerns and complaints about voter fraud beginning in 2020.”

FBI agents carried out a court-authorized search Wednesday at the Fulton County Election Hub in Georgia, a facility tied to longstanding controversy over the 2020 election. The FBI confirmed the action but declined to provide details, saying the investigation is ongoing and related to the 2020 vote. The search comes amid renewed scrutiny of Fulton County, which has been at the center of election disputes, recent DOJ efforts to access ballots, and the now-dismissed racketeering case brought by DA Fani Willis against President Trump and others.

“It’s not just that none of the 315,000 early votes for Fulton County, GA in 2020 were not signed.

They never turned over ANY zero tapes for those votes. That’s the entire beginning record of the election.

They provided 137 unsigned closing tapes, but ZERO signed or unsigned opening tapes.

They made the early votes up and this is what the recounts were supposed to match. (They didn’t.) It was all a fraud and they never produced the results that the second machine count and the hand recount were supposedly matching.”Liz Harrington

FBI agents search election hub in Fulton County, Georgia

Agents were seen entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center

By: Ashley Oliver, David Spunt, Fox News, January 28, 2026:

Drama unfolds over televised Georgia court hearing in election fraud case

FIRST ON FOX: FBI agents were seen Wednesday carrying out a search at an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, a location that became ground zero for concerns and complaints about voter fraud beginning in 2020.

Agents were seen entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, a new facility that state officials opened in 2023 that was designed to streamline their election processes.

It was not immediately clear what the FBI agents were investigating, but Fox News Digital is told the probe is related to the 2020 election.

The bureau said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital that FBI Atlanta was executing a “court authorized law enforcement action at 5600 [Campbellton] Fairburn Rd.”

“Our investigation into this matter is ongoing so there are no details that we can provide at the moment,” the bureau said.

The Department of Justice did not provide comment.

President Donald Trump lost the election in Georgia in 2020 by a wafer-thin margin and claimed various instances of fraud had tainted the results. Those claims did not survive court scrutiny. Fulton, a suburb of Atlanta and the state’s most populous county, drew significant attention at the time.

A machine count and two recounts confirmed that former President Joe Biden had won the state, leading Trump to feud with Georgia’s leaders for years.

The DOJ sued Fulton County last month seeking access to ballots related to the 2020 election.

Trump’s grievances in Georgia were compounded when he and numerous co-conspirators were indicted by a grand jury in Fulton County Superior Court in 2023 over allegations that they engaged in a racketeering scheme involving illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.

The case never made it to trial as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from prosecuting it. An independent entity called the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council decided to dismiss the indictment last year, saying it would not be in the interest of the state to continue with the case…….

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Fulton County Admits 315,000 Illegal 2020 Votes Were Counted

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Fulton County DA Fani Willis Paid Her Lover $654,000 of Taxpayer Money since January 2022 to Act as Special Prosecutor to Get Trump

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MADNESS: Fulton County Grand Jury Recommended Charges Against Sen. Lindsey Graham, Other GOP Senators

Radical Fulton County DA Asks for October 2023 Trial For Frontrunner Trump and All 19 of His Lawyers

House Judiciary Chairman Launches Probe Into Corrupt Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Hours Before Trump is To Be Arrested

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Big Legal Win for Trump, ICE—and a Setback for Agitators

By The Daily Signal

Amid escalating tensions in Minnesota, Immigration and Customs Enforcement scored a court win on Monday in staving off agitators.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put a stay on a lower court ruling that restricted ICE agents from arresting, detaining, or pepper-spraying agitators without probable cause, Fox News reported.

“We accessed and viewed the same videos the district court did,” the appeals court ruling said.

“What they show is observers and protesters engaging in a wide range of conduct, some of it peaceful but much of it not. They also show federal agents responding in various ways.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that this was a “WIN AGAINST JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IN MINNESOTA.”

“The [Justice Department] went to court. We got a temporary stay,” Bondi said in the post. “NOW, the 8th Circuit has fully agreed that this reckless attempt to undermine law enforcement cannot stand.”

The federal complaint against the Department of Homeland Security and ICE alleged federal law enforcement violated the civil rights of six protesters.

On Jan. 16, U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and imposed a preliminary injunction to stop tactics used by ICE toward protesters who were demonstrating against immigration enforcement.

Menendez said plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their challenge that federal agents violated protesters’ First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights as part of Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities.

AUTHOR

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Fred on X: @FredLucasWH.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Led by Johnson, House Completes Improbable Budgeting Sweep

By Family Research Council

Greenland, Venezuela, and the president’s spat with Canada may have stolen the world’s attention, but the real revelation may be what’s happening here at home. With the snow on its way and no time to spare, House Republicans accomplished what hasn’t been done since America’s top movie was “Titanic” and dial-up AOL was still cutting-edge technology: they finished a federal budget — just like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) promised they would.

For the Louisiana leader, witnessing history that hasn’t been made since 1997 had to be one of the most gratifying milestones of his speakership. With a majority as wide as a blade of grass, the idea that anyone — let alone this divided chamber — could put their heads down and unite long enough to do their most basic job is a colossal feat.

Johnson, the perennial underdog, cheered the achievement at a press conference Friday before members hit the road to beat the winter storm. “The naysayers said it couldn’t be done, but they were wrong. House Republicans just finished passing all 12 appropriations bills — restoring regular order, cutting spending, locking in Trump-era priorities, and ending Biden-era budgets. No omnibus. No backroom deals. Just hard work and results. Americans sent us here to fix Washington — and this is how it gets done. Huge credit to [Appropriations Chairman] Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and the House Appropriations team,” he said.

Holding signs that read “12 of 12!” the conservative crew that drove the effort took a victory lap. “We aren’t here for another stopgap or temporary fix,” Cole had insisted on the House floor before the final vote. “We are here to finish the job by providing full-year funding and closing out all 12 bills with certainty and direction. …These bills were written with those priorities in mind.”

When the herculean task was complete, something no oddsmaker would have predicted with Congress’s track record, Cole heaped praise on Johnson. “This speaker is the reason that these 12 bills happened,” Cole declared.

For Johnson, the vindication only builds on his already impressive legacy — not that the humble attorney would admit it. “This is a monumental achievement,” he agreed. “Despite the noise, despite our slim margins, despite the fact that most members in the House have never gone through a regular, member-driven appropriations process before, this team got it done,” he said.

Cole also touted the lower price tag of this year’s basket of funding. “Republicans set out to spend less — and total FY26 funding does just that.We committed to codifying DOGE cuts — and these bills cut waste and rein in government bloat.” He paused and added, “This is what responsible governance looks like. This measure is the product of sustained engagement and serious legislating. It advances reforms, delivers full-year funding, and reflects a Congress doing its job.”

In a rare spirit of compromise, several Democrats also joined the unlikely return to governing, supporting most packages by a surprising margin, messaging that they, too, had secured some wins. Even Democrat Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), ranking appropriator, cheered the passage. “We got the bills done, and we came out very well, and that should be proof enough that we need to make the process work,” she said.

For both sides, the eagerness to avoid another government shutdown was a powerful motivator after the political pain of last year’s. But they aren’t out of the woods yet.

The Senate, which spent the last 10 days in recess, will come back to a pile of work — and very little time to do it. Six of the 12 appropriations bills still need the chamber’s approval — including some of the most contentious budgets. But, as The Washington Times points out, Johnson did everything he could to lighten the load by splitting the six bills into two more manageable packages. With the January 30 deadline breathing down Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) neck, “Senators will have to take a big swing at passing all six bills before sending them to President Donald Trump’s desk,” Politico explains. But the fact that we’re even talking about that prospect, the outlet acknowledged, “would be a stunning feat for lawmakers and leadership — especially in such a bitterly divided Congress.”

Reflecting on last week, the speaker took his usual humble, future-looking posture. Sitting down with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill,” he pointed to the high stakes of the election. “We must continue what we’ve been working on, continue to move forward. … We passed the House appropriations bills through the House … [in] regular order. [It’s the] first time in many years that’s happened,” he noted. “We’re rebuilding the muscle memory, as I like to say, and it’s a great advancement to returning power to the people and being better stewards of taxpayer funds.”

And yet, with 11 months until a very significant election, it’s still a daunting task to lead this group, Perkins noted. True, the speaker nodded. “But you know, Scripture says you don’t worry about tomorrow. You focus on the troubles of today because the day has enough. And we do that hour by hour, day by day, in faith and in prayer. We walk forward, we advance these priorities. … And we demonstrate day by day that we’re doing the right thing for the right reason. And I think the voters are going to reward that,” he predicted. “I don’t think they want the chaos and the communism that comes with today’s Democrat[ic] Party. I think they want us to continue to fulfill our promises. And that’s what we’ve done so far. That’s what we’ll do this year. And that will be rewarded at the ballot box.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Defense Watchdog’s Audit Finds 245% Increase in Remote DOD Workers after Biden Ordered Their Return to Offices

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Theory and Practice of Sanctuary Cities and States

By Linda Goudsmit

I began publishing a series of humanitarian hoax articles in July 2017, each article beginning with the same dire warning paragraph:

The humanitarian hoax is the deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

I identified former president Barack Hussein Obama as the huckster-in-chief and by October 2019, after reaching 50 hoaxes, decided to publish the collection as a book. The Book of Humanitarian Hoaxes: Killing America with ‘Kindness’ was released in June 2020.

It is now January 2026 and time to examine the consequences of the humanitarian hoax policies launched by humanitarian huckster-in-chief Obama during his deceitful 2008-2016 tenure. I have reprinted Hoax 9 below for its historical context.

H OA X 9

The Humanitarian Hoax of Sanctuary Cities

October 1, 2017

The humanitarian hoax is the deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguisedenemy.

Barack Obama, humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years by persuading America to accept his obstructive, politically correct sanctuary city policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed to destabilize and destroy civil society.

The term “sanctuary city” originated in the 1980s when San Francisco passed a city ordinance forbidding city police and city magistrates from assisting federal immigration officers in enforcing immigration policies that denied asylum to refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador. The mission of the sanctuary city was to protect innocent refugees from deportation—although these immigrants were in the United States illegally, they had not committed any other crimes.

Today [2017], sanctuary cities are actually sanctuary jurisdictions because they include cities, counties, and, probably soon, states. Over 300 sanctuary jurisdictions exist in America today, actively hindering federal authorities in their ability to seize illegal criminal aliens, rapists, murderers, terrorists, and drug dealers for deportation.

The shocking murder of twenty-one-year-old Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015, publicized the danger of sanctuary jurisdictions. The shooter, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico with seven felony convictions, had been deported five times and intentionally sought shelter in San Francisco. Yet officials in “sanctuary city” San Francisco refused to turn him over to federal authorities for deportation and instead released him into society, enabling him to kill Kate Steinle.

The three Muslim migrant boys ages 7, 10, and 14 who sexually assaulted, raped, and urinated in the mouth of an innocent five-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, on June 24, 2016, were protected as well. No jail time, no deportation. Instead, according to a courtroom observer, they were found guilty of lewd conduct and placed on probation. These monsters were shielded by the mainstream media and local city officials, who tried to cover up the case and pretend that Twin Falls was a model for multiculturalism. Wendy Olson, Obama-appointed U.S. attorney for Idaho, stunned the country by threatening to prosecute Idahoans who spoke out about the heinous crime in ways SHE considered “false or inflammatory.”

Judge Thomas Borresen issued an equally stunning gag order that denied the right of anyone in the courtroom to speak about the sentencing even AFTER the case ended. Mathew Staver, chairman and co-founder of the nonprofit legal assistance agency Liberty Counsel, says the ruling is completely illegal. “Case law is clear,” he says. “You cannot gag someone after the case is over.”

Twin Falls is one of two Muslim refugee relocation centers in Idaho. Rather than identifying itself as a “sanctuary city,” Twin Falls has chosen the equally disingenuous name of “welcoming city” and declared itself to be a “neighborly community.” REALLY? Protecting rapists and censoring free speech is definitely not neighborly for the victims!

The word sanctuary implies safety from a threat; it does not mean shelter for immigrant criminal felons, rapists, murderers, and terrorists who threaten the safety of law-abiding citizens. Why would any law-abiding citizen endorse the protection of these criminals, whether they are illegal aliens or legal citizens? The answer lies in the active participation by the mainstream media in the Humanitarian Hoax of Sanctuary Cities. The media have deliberately romanticized sanctuary cities as humanitarian havens for the oppressed instead of honestly reporting them as despicable safety zones for criminal aliens. The colluding media have duped the trusting American public and exploited their compassion and goodwill.

The original mission of sanctuary cities has been perverted from the protection of innocent refugees into the protection of guilty criminal aliens at the expense of public safety. Sanctuary cities in America continue to flagrantly defy federal law. Thirty years after San Francisco became the first sanctuary city, California seeks to become the first sanctuary state.

The protection of illegal aliens from deportation incentivizes illegal entry into the United States, which has enormous economic and political consequences. Illegal aliens overload our welfare system, cost American taxpayers a whopping $116 billion per year, and rob Americans of their jobs.

Barack Obama gave sanctuary jurisdictions the freedom to ignore detention orders from the federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with his June 2015 executive action establishing the Priority Enforcement Program, allowing local agencies to ignore ICE notifications of deportable aliens in their custody.

To understand Obama’s motive, simply look at the benefits to Democrats of increasing the number of illegal aliens:

  • Secures more Democrat votes for the leftist agenda. Elected leftist Democrats will grant illegals immunity to vote legally and eventually grant them citizenship, knowing they will vote Democrat and ensure Democrat leadership for the foreseeable future.
  • Creates social chaos by importing populations with hostile cultural norms.
  • Creates divisiveness by taking American jobs.
  • Alienates legal citizens, who receive far fewer government benefits than do illegal aliens.
  • Eventually collapses the economies of sanctuary jurisdictions.

Obama’s executive action flagrantly violated 8 U.S.C. § 1373, a 1996 law requiring government entities and officials to cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor of ICE.

Finally, in July 2016 Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), chair of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Committee on Appropriations, took action against the danger and sent a letter to the Department of Justice demanding that federal law enforcement grants be denied to cities not in compliance with the 1996 law.

During the five years from 2011 to 2016, local and state governments received over $3.4 billion in federal law enforcement grants. Rep. Culberson gave sanctuary jurisdictions a choice: either continue to receive the grant money or protect dangerous illegal criminal aliens. They could no longer do both.

Sanctuary jurisdictions doubled down and continue to defy the law. San Francisco and Santa Clara counties challenged President Trump’s policy in court. In April 2017 U.S. District Judge William Orrick, an Obama appointee, issued a temporary ruling that blocked the president’s directive to withhold federal funding from cities that refuse to comply fully with federal immigration enforcement. The lawfare campaign designed to delay and disrupt President Trump’s America-first agenda was launched.

No-go zones are geographic areas within a country that brazenly disregard the laws of the country. No-go zones establish a two-tier system of justice within a country because they observe a different set of laws. All across Europe, Islamists have established religious no-go zones that recognize Islamic Sharia law exclusively. All across America, leftists have created sanctuary jurisdictions that flagrantly defy federal law.

People will stand quietly and peacefully in long lines until one person jumps the line. It is a fascinating social dynamic that as long as members of a group abide by the same rules, the consequence is harmony. It is the unfairness of the line-jumper that creates anger and social chaos. Social chaos for seismic social change is the goal of the Leftist/Islamist axis that supports the two-tier system of justice created by secular sanctuary jurisdictions and religious no-go zones.

The globalist elite who fund the leftist humanitarian hucksters are desperate to block Trump’s policies that defund sanctuary jurisdictions. The colluding mainstream media continue to deceitfully portray leftist sanctuary jurisdictions as altruistic, denying that protecting illegal criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans is a sinister leftist political tactic designed to destabilize and destroy America.

If the globalists are successful, the world will be returned to the dystopian existence of masters and slaves because a willfully blind American public was seduced by the Humanitarian Hoax of Sanctuary Cities. The humanitarian hoax will have succeeded in killing America with “kindness.”

END

In 2015 sanctuary jurisdictions numbered 300 cities, in 2026 the expansion of sanctuary jurisdictions now includes cities, counties, and states numbering:

  • 200-300 sanctuary cities
  • 300-400 sanctuary counties
  • 17 sanctuary states including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington + the District of Columbia.

As of late 2025 the proportion of Democrat-controlled vs. Republican-controlled cities, counties and states show a stunning correlation between Democrat control and sanctuary policies:

  • 200-300 sanctuary cities = 94-97% Democrat-controlled, 3-6% Republican-controlled
  • 300-400 sanctuary counties = 80-90% Democrat-controlled, 10-20% Republican-controlled
  • 17 states = 82% (14) Democrat-controlled, 18% (3) Republican controlled

Chaired by Jim Jordan, the January 18, 2024, interim staff report of the Judiciary Committee discloses the catastrophic results of Biden’s open border policy. Titled, “New Data Reveal Worsening Magnitude of the Biden Border Crisis and Lack of Interior Immigration Enforcement,” shows an estimated 5,000 illegal aliens a day were released into the United States. The report reveals that during the two years between January 20, 2021, and August 31, 2023, over 5 million illegal aliens were released into the United States.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates there are approximately 18.6 million illegal alien immigrants living in the United States as of March 2025.

The destructive radical leftist sanctuary policies launched by Barack Obama and advanced by Joe Biden continue to destabilize America and create chaos in every city, county, and state where they have been institutionalized. Obama’s particular deceit is word perversion. The word sanctuary is a powerful emotionally triggering word that generates virtuous feelings of empathy, compassion, protection, and shelter for the innocent. The problem, of course, is that illegally entering the United States is a crime, so there is no such thing as an innocent illegal alien. But we are no longer talking about illegal aliens who have committed no other crimes. Today we are discussing the illegal alien perpetrators of violent crimes.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton reports that President Trump’s nationwide March 2025 initiative, Operation Take Back America, “aims to repel the invasion of illegal immigration and protect American communities from perpetrators of violent crimes.”

The illegal aliens that President Trump is deporting in 2026 are criminals who have committed the most heinous crimes in America including murder, rape, promotion of child pornography, sexual assault of a child, burglary, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, arson, unlawful possession of a firearm, and domestic violence. Fitton explains that “Most are members of violent gangs, including the renowned Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Tren de Aragua, Latin Kings, 15th Street Gang, Sureños, Paisas and Tango Blast.”

What was the political motive of the open borders and sanctuary policies of the Obama and Biden administrations? Obama’s deceitful sanctuary policies were the first step in today’s radical leftist Democrat nullification. Nullification is derived from its root word nullify which means to make legally null and void; invalidate; cancel; overturn. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines nullification as:

  1. The act of nullifying or the state of being nullified.
  2. The action of a state impeding or attempting to prevent the operation and enforcement within its territory of a law of the U.S.
  3. Jury Nullification: the acquitting of a defendant by a jury in disregard of the judge’s instructions and contrary to the jury’s findings of fact.

The theory of sanctuary cities and states was weaponized as the instrument and practice of nullification. And nullification is being supported through seditious lawfare––the strategic weaponization and abuse of the legal system to delegitimize President Trump; impede his presidential efforts to restore law and order in America; and to create overwhelming chaos. Lawfare is the term that combines law and warfare. Lawfare is the abusive exploitation of the legal system against political opponents including appointing radical leftist judges who ignore the law and rule from their own radical leftist political ideology.

The radical leftist Democrat party, with the help of colluding RINOs (Republicans in name only) and the globalist mainstream media, have been bludgeoning law-abiding Americans with Orwellian policies that protect vicious illegal alien criminals at the expense of law-abiding citizens. They have been using lawfare to advance their goals and to neutralize President Trump. WHY? Because nullification, the absolute refusal of states to apply federal law which under the U.S. Constitution they are obligated to do, is designed to challenge the Constitution and ultimately shatter the United States into separate states.

The trajectory and progression from sanctuary cities to sanctuary states to nullification of the supremacy of federal and constitutional law, culminates in the collapse of the union of fifty states. What then? Possibilities include:

  • Sanctuary states withdrawing from the union
  • Civil war between sanctuary states and constitutional states
  • Demise of the United States of America with constitutional states remaining united in a constitutional republic as envisioned by our Founding Fathers, and sanctuary states reconstituted in form and content parallel to the European Union––ideologically, politically, and economically united but not necessarily contiguous geographically.

The radical leftist Democrat party is the ideological, political, and economic enemy within. Its anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian, pro-Muslim, Marxist platform is wholly antithetical to the precepts and constitutional laws of the United States.

Current events in Minnesota demonstrate the defiance and nullification protocols being encouraged by Democrat Governor Tim Walz and the Democrat mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Telling citizens to defy ICE agents and challenge their federal authority is nullification. These seditious events and challenges are being promoted across the country in Democrat-controlled sanctuary cities and states. They are the movement of the radical leftist Democrat/Socialist party. This is an ideological war being waged by Americans, against Americans, in America!

Sanctuary cities and states are a consummate humanitarian hoax designed to collapse the United States. They are an essential part of the overarching globalist war on nation-states. Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite.

The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. Europe has already fallen, and the radical leftist Democrat/Socialist party in America, funded and fomented by the globalist elite, is using lawfare, sanctuary cities, and sanctuary states as its instruments of nullification to collapse the United States from within. Nullification is globalism’s existential threat to America that must be confronted and defeated.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: President Trump: Sanctuary Cities/Blue States ZERO federal dollars starting February 1, 2026

Please visite Linda’s pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com  and her website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Order her book: Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier––Reality Is is available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats on barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, and directly from Ingram in paperback.

Bureaucrats’ Political Donations Hint Census Bureau Over-Counting for Democrats May Not Be Coincidental

By Family Research Council

Undercounting the population in red states like Texas and Florida in 2020 cost Republicans at least six seats in the House of Representatives, while overcounting in blue states like California and New York contributed to 18 new Democratic seats, according to Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas).

“In 2020, the Census Bureau undercounted in primarily deep-red states like Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas, all red, while overcounting in radical blue states like Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island,” Hunt told a November 19, 2025, hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

“This egregious error led to many states being denied proper representation in Congress and the Electoral College. So much so that these errors costs Republicans … six seats in the House. In addition to the 2020 miscounting, including illegal immigrants in the Census has improperly granted radical Left blue states 12 additional seats in the United States House of Representatives. That is a total of 18 seats gain and that is a huge problem. And those are the facts,” Hunt told the hearing.

The Census Bureau acknowledged the over and under counts in a May 2025 report. The Census Bureau uses its population counts as the basis for determining how many House of Representatives seats are in each of the 50 states. The census counts all present individuals without distinguishing between citizens and noncitizens, meaning a higher head count gives a state more House seats, without regard to citizenship status. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in all federal elections, as well as the vast majority of state and local contests.

Not all of the undercounted states were red, as deep-blue Illinois was among this group, while not all of the overcounted states were blue. Ohio and Utah, both red states, were among the over-counted group, according to the Census report.

Most congressional Republicans like Hunt support requiring Census Bureau counters to at least include a question about the citizenship of every counted individual, while most congressional Democrats oppose such a requirement. The issue has intensified in recent years, especially during the Biden administration’s open-border era in which millions of illegal immigrants crossed into the U.S.

Legislation originally introduced in the House of Representatives in 2025 by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) — The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote and provides criminal penalties for violations. The measure, which has 110 House co-sponsors, including Hunt, passed the lower chamber but has not been acted upon by the Senate. President Donald Trump supports the measure.

Hunt did not address the issue of whether political bias within the Census Bureau’s workforce could be a factor in the significant under and overcounting, but The Washington Stand’s review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign contribution data for the years 2023, 2024, and 2025 found a huge bias in favor of Democrats among donors who said they work for the agency.

During the three years indicated, the FEC records disclosed 4,037 contributions by individuals who listed “U.S. Census Bureau” as their employer. Of those contributions, 3,583 went to Democrats, compared to 455 made to Republicans, for a 7-1 ratio. The average Democrat contribution was for $29, while the average Republican contribution was $229.

Interestingly, the total dollar value of the contributions by Census Bureau workers to Democrats was $104,597, only slightly more than the $104,130 total given to Republicans.

Federal workers like those at the Census Bureau are covered by the Hatch Act, which bars partisan political activities by government employees while on official duty. The Hatch Act does not limit the right of government employees to work for candidates while off-duty, to contribute to the candidates of their choice, or to participate in activities supporting candidates, as long as federal property is not used in the process.

Two-thirds of the Democratic contributions, or 1,999 of the 3,582 total, were given through Act Blue, a digital site that acts as a conduit for campaign funding from individuals to favored candidates. Winred, the similar digital site created by Republicans to counter Act Blue, accounted for only 253 contributions to GOP candidates by Census Bureau workers.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, received 347 contributions from Census workers, compared to just 69 for Trump, her 2024 Republican rival.

Apprised of the Census Bureau employee contribution bias, Hunt provided the following statement to The Washington Stand:

“The inaccuracies and deliberate manipulations embedded in Democrat-led Census reporting expose a level of corruption that plagued the previous administration and continues today under radical Left leadership. Despite these efforts, the American people saw through the deception and delivered a decisive victory for Donald Trump in the last election.

“Now, with Republicans holding all three chambers of government, we have both the responsibility and the obligation to correct these abuses immediately and restore integrity to the process by ensuring that Census data reflects only United States citizens.

“The irony is unmistakable. For years, Democrats have warned of a supposed threat to democracy, while actively engaging in the very practices that undermine it — manipulating systems designed to distort representation and influence elections. Democracy is not endangered by transparency and lawful governance. It is endangered by those who abuse institutions for political gain.”

Hunt will not be in the House of Representatives in 2027, as he is seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate in a hotly contested primary that also includes Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Lone Star State’s long-serving incumbent, Senator John Cornyn. The primary election is March 3.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

German Chancellor Admits Europe ‘Wasted Incredible Potential’ By Bureaucracy, Over-Regulation

By The Daily Caller

German Chancellor Freidrich Merz told the World Economic Forum (WEF) that Germany and the European Union (EU) have “wasted incredible potential” during his speech Thursday.

Merz, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said the EU has wasted its potential for growth by curtailing freedom and responsibility.

“Both Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms and personal responsibility,” the Chancellor stated in his remarks to the WEF in Davos, Switzerland. “We are going to change that now.”

“We must reduce bureaucracy substantially in Europe,” Merz continued. “The single market was once created to form the most competitive economic area in the world. Instead, we have become the world champion of over-regulation. That has to end.”

German Chancellor Merz admits:

Both Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging their feet on reforms and by unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedom and personal responsibility.

We must substantially… pic.twitter.com/BSQib4BWqZ

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 22, 2026

“Security and predictability take precedence over excessive regulation and misplaced perfection,” he added.

Merz also stated in his speech that Europe “is not at the mercy” of what he described as a “new world order.”

“The old world order is unraveling at breathtaking pace. We have entered an era where only power counts, a dangerous place,” the chancellor said, according to multiple outlets. “We [Europe] do not have to accept this new reality as fate.”

Merz recently admitted the country’s shutdown of nuclear power plants was a “serious strategic mistake” in a speech to the German Chamber of Industry.

The chancellor said in November 2025 that he would “begin discussing repatriation of Syrians in Germany,” after previously refusing to work with a right-wing party advocating for the policy.

AUTHOR

Jack Cowhick

Contributor

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Reflections on the Anniversary of “Roe v. Wade”

By Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.

A recent historian said that a line from the Declaration of Independence is the most important sentence in history. Well, certainly that sentence is exceedingly important, but I agree with those who counter-argue, “No, actually John 3:16 is the most important sentence in history.”

Meanwhile, the great statement in the Declaration is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Creator has bestowed upon us the right to life, but how can you square that right to live with the supposed right to abortion?

I write this piece around the anniversary of the January 22, 1973, Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade and its companion decision of the same day, Doe v. Bolton. These two decisions combined gave us abortion on demand even up to the moment of birth. And about 65 million abortions have taken place since that day.

Although Roe was overturned in 2022 by the Dobbs v. Jackson, the fallout from Roe continues. It’s like a phantom limb syndrome, where one is feeling a missing limb as if it’s still attached.

Abortion is the Holy Grail to the Amerian left. It dominates virtually all other considerations.  Roe v. Wade has been tantamount to Scripture to some on the left.

But, lo and behold, it was all based on lies.

One of the main lies was that an abortion was needed for “Jane Roe” (whom we later learned was Norma McCorvey) because she was supposedly gang-raped. But that was not true. She had just been impregnated by her boyfriend.

McCorvey just wanted an abortion, and her attorney falsely promised to help her get one, knowing full well it could not happen in time (since cases that go up to the Supreme Court take a while to adjudicate).

Another lie is that the baby in the womb is a blob of tissue or clump of cells—but not a human being, deserving of legal protection. The heart starts beating at 22 days after conception, arm and leg buds appear by 28 days, and brain waves can be recorded by 40 days. Some blob.

Yet another lie to sell abortion was the number of women who supposedly died in America because of illegal abortions. Abortionist Bernard Nathanson told the media that each year about 10,000 women died from illegal abortions.

And yet a willing media reported this statistic as if it were gospel truth. I’ve read that in 1972, the last year before Roe, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta had reported that 39 women in America had died from illegal abortions. That may be 39 too many, but it’s a far cry from 10,000.

Thankfully, both Norma McCorvey and Bernard Nathanson became pro-life Christians and came to strongly oppose abortion.

We are also grateful that Roe was overturned in the 2022 case of Dobbs v. Jackson, but there is still widespread support for abortion, among many Americans—even among some professing Christians.

But God says He opposes the shedding of innocent blood. And our nation’s founders said that God has given us the right to life.

America has recently celebrated Martin Luther King day. And I’m grateful that his niece, Dr. Alveda King, is outspoken in her pro-life views.

I’ve interviewed Alveda King a few times for Christian media, and she told us: “In 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the first recipients of the Margaret Sanger Award. Margaret Sanger is the founder of Planned Parenthood, and they are the largest abortion providers in America. So, people say, ‘Oh wow, Dr. King supported Planned Parenthood.’ Actually, he did not.”

Alveda explains why not: “If you read Dr. King’s statements or if you knew him as I did, Dr. King said, ‘The negro cannot win if he’s willing to sacrifice the futures of his children for immediate personal comfort and safety.’ In 1966, abortion was illegal in absolutely every state….If anybody had said that same organization will be at the forefront of the abortions or deaths of over 50 million babies, then Dr. King would have said, ‘No thank you.’ Dr. King was a pro-life, gentle person.”

Alveda added: “It’s unjust to kill a little person because they’re little. A woman has a right to choose what she does with her body, but where is a lawyer for the baby? How can the dream survive, if we murder the children?”

On this anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we’re thankful for the progress made in the right-to-life movement. But we also see we have much ground to cover in America to see a resurgence of valuing the right to life, at all stages of development.

©2026 All rights reserved.

4 Ways Trump Has Dismantled the ‘Deep State’ Since Inauguration

By The Daily Signal

On the anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second term inauguration, here are four ways he has dismantled the deep state in Washington.

1. Reinstating ‘Schedule F’

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to reinstate Schedule F, which makes it easier for the president to fire bureaucrats.

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This reclassified about 50,000 career civil servants in “policy-influencing” roles as at-will employees.

The executive order said that accountability was lacking in the federal bureaucracy.

“In recent years, however, there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career Federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership,” the order said.

“Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service, beginning with positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”

2. DOGE

The Department of Government Efficiency reportedly reduced federal employment by about 271,000 jobs.

DOGE also provided a list of 9,474 contracts and vehicles that have been terminated by the department.

In the spirit of DOGE, the Trump administration cut off the funding streams for immigration groups that moved illegal aliens across the country. The Environmental Protection Agency clawed back extravagant grants to climate alarmist groups. The State Department shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development. Congress finally cut off funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

3. Shutdown Cuts

During the recent government shutdown, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought cut $8 billion of blue-state energy projects.

“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” Vought said.

In addition, the Department of Transportation sent letters to the Chicago Transit Authority informing it that two projects receiving a total of $2.1 billion in federal funding were under administrative review, for race and sex-based contracting practices that potentially violated the Constitution.

4. Investigating ‘Deep State’ Abuses

In July, a CIA report found that John Brennan, the agency’s director in the Obama administration, overrode internal concerns to claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

The agency’s current director John Ratcliffe ordered the review. It found that evidence used by Brennan to show that Russian President Vladimir Putin was aiding Trump in the 2016 election was rushed, restricted in its access, and disseminated too widely for a highly classified report.

“Central to the judgment that Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win was one highly classified CIA report,” the report said. “Brennan had tightly restricted access to this information within CIA; it had been collected in July but not disseminated in CIA serialized reporting until the week of 19 December.”

The review notes that “media leaks” indicated intelligence agencies “had already reached definitive conclusions risked creating an anchoring bias” before “work on the assessment even began.”

AUTHOR

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House Correspondent for “The Daily Signal.” Send her an email. Elizabeth on X: @TheElizMitchell.

Dan Franzese Launches Campaign for Congress in President Trump’s Home District in Palm Beach County [Florida’s 22nd District]

By Editorial Board – DrRichSwier.com

 /PRNewswire/ — Dan Franzese announced today the official launch of his campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in President Donald J. Trump’s home district in Palm Beach County, Florida (FL CD -22), running on a record of business leadership, community service, and conservative values.

WATCH: DAN FRANZESE FOR CONGRESS 2026

Franzese is a proud America First candidate who enters the race focused on affordability, accountability, and ensuring South Florida families have a representative who delivers results and puts the district first.

“Florida needs leaders who know how to build, manage, and deliver results, not just talk about them,” said Dan Franzese. “I’ve spent my life creating jobs, balancing budgets, and solving problems. In Congress, I will focus on affordability, responsible governance, and policies that strengthen Florida families and our local economy.”

An honors graduate of Amherst College who also earned an MBA at the Wharton School of Business, Franzese built a decades-long career in finance and investment management, helping grow businesses, create jobs, and responsibly steward capital. He later brought those same principles to his community, serving as a church treasurer and chief financial officer, strengthening financial controls and restoring fiscal balance, an experience he says is essential for effective representation.

Franzese was the Republican nominee for Florida’s 22nd Congressional District in 2024, winning a competitive three-way primary with 53 percent of the vote and mounting the strongest challenge ever against the long-time Democratic incumbent, Lois Frankel. He earned the 2024 endorsement of President Donald J. Trump, who praised Franzese as a leader who understands how to grow the economy, lower taxes, and eliminate government waste.

“With President Trump leading our nation, Florida needs strong partners in Congress who will help advance policies that deliver real results,” Franzese said. “I will work side by side with President Trump to keep America strong by defending our Constitution, promoting economic growth, and ensuring accountability to the people we serve.”

Franzese emphasized that his campaign will focus on Florida-first priorities, practical solutions, and restoring trust between voters and their elected representatives.

“This campaign is about results, not rhetoric,” Franzese added. “Floridians deserve a representative who understands their lives, respects their values, and knows how to get things done.”

You can learn more about Dan and his campaign at DanForUSA.com.

Contact: Vicky Franzese at web@danforfl.com

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HUGE WIN: Supreme Court Reopens Mail-In Ballot Fight

By The Geller Report

BREAKING: In a HUGE win, the Supreme Court just ruled that Congressional candidates can legally challenge mail-in voting laws reviving a GOP challenge to the late-counting of mail-in ballots

Illinois allows late mail-in ballots to be counted late, after election day for up to two weeks

SCOTUS has upheld Rep. Bost’s (R) standing to challenge this law in favor of a SINGLE election day.

The U.S. Supreme Court has revived a Republican-led legal challenge to an Illinois election law that allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive up to 14 days later. In Supreme Court of the United States’s decision in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, the justices ruled that the plaintiffs—including Rep. Mike Bost and two Republican presidential electors—have standing to sue, overturning lower-court rulings that had dismissed the case for lack of harm.

The challengers argue Illinois’ late-receipt rule violates federal election statutes governing the timing of federal elections. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the law itself; instead, it sent the case back to continue in lower courts, reopening a high-stakes fight over whether ballots received after Election Day can legally be counted in federal races.

Supreme Court revives GOP lawmakers’ challenge to Illinois election law

by Jessica A. Botewlho, The National News Desk • Wed, January 14, 2026:

WASHINGTON (TNND) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday revived a legal challenge by Republican lawmakers to an Illinois election law that allows ballots received after Election Day to be counted, ruling that the challengers have standing to bring their case despite lower court’s earlier decisions to the contrary.

The case, Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections (No. 24-568), was brought by U.S. Rep. Mike Bost and two Republican presidential electors who argued that the state’s practice of counting certain absentee ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day violates federal election statutes.

FILE – Rep.-elect Mike Bost (R-IL) yells out as Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (R-FL) delivers remarks in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 06, 2023 in Washington. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
FILE – Rep.-elect Mike Bost (R-IL) yells out as Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (R-FL) delivers remarks in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 06, 2023 in Washington. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Under Illinois law, mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day may be counted if received within two weeks after the election.

Lower courts had rejected the lawsuit before it reached the Supreme Court. Both the federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing — meaning they failed to show they were sufficiently harmed by the law to bring a constitutional challenge.

The Supreme Court’s decision reverses that determination, allowing the case to proceed.

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AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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