Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear that when President Donald Trump speaks of America First, that means that the U.S. needs to prioritize problems closer to home.
In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Rubio said it was “no accident that my first trip abroad as secretary of state, to Central America on Friday, will keep me in the hemisphere. “
“This is rare among secretaries of state over the past century,” Rubio pointed out. “For many reasons, U.S. foreign policy has long focused on other regions while overlooking our own. As a result, we’ve let problems fester, missed opportunities and neglected partners. That ends now.”
Rubio spoke of Trump’s agenda emphasizing securing the nation’s borders and “reversing the disastrous invasion abetted by the last administration,” adding, “We need to work with countries of origin to halt and deter further migrant flows, and to accept the return of their citizens present in the U.S. illegally.”
“We see a prosperous region rife with opportunities,” he declared. “We can strengthen trade ties, create partnerships to control migration, and enhance our hemisphere’s security. El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic — the countries I will visit on this trip — all stand to benefit tremendously from greater cooperation with the U.S.”
“These nations were neglected by past administrations that prioritized the global over the local and pursued policies that accelerated China’s economic development, often at our neighbors’ expense,” he noted.
“Covid exposed the fragility of America’s dependence on far-flung supply chains,” he recalled. “Relocating our critical supply chains to the Western Hemisphere would clear a path for our neighbors’ economic growth and safeguard Americans’ own economic security. … As our regional partners build themselves up, they can more easily resist countries such as China that promise much but deliver little.”
Speaking of mass migration to the United States and the ever-present danger of drug cartels, he continued, “Illegitimate regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are intentionally amplifying the chaos. All the while, the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage — such as at the Panama Canal —t o oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.”
“I am confident that the countries I will soon visit will be ready partners,” he asserted. “Like President Trump, their leaders are pragmatists who put their citizens first. And because they are pragmatists, they also know that there is much more to be gained from working with the U.S. than not.”
“The threats Mr. Trump was elected to stop are threats to the nations of our hemisphere as well,” he stated. “We share a common home. The safer, stronger and more prosperous that home becomes, the more all our nations stand to benefit. Together, there are few limits to what we can accomplish.”
On Thursday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly thanked President Trump for his executive order targeting anti-Semitism.
Trump’s executive order, issued Wednesday, implemented additional measures to add to his December 2019 executive order 13899 targeting anti-Semitism.
“Executive Order 13899 provided interpretive assistance on the enforcement of the Nation’s civil rights laws to ensure that they would protect American Jews to the same extent to which all other American citizens are protected,” the new executive order stated. “The prior administration effectively nullified Executive Order 13899 by failing to give the terms of the order full force and effect throughout the Government. This order reaffirms Executive Order 13899 and directs additional measures to advance the policy thereof in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, against the people of Israel. These attacks unleashed an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence against our citizens, especially in our schools and on our campuses. Jewish students have faced an unrelenting barrage of discrimination; denial of access to campus common areas and facilities, including libraries and classrooms; and intimidation, harassment, and physical threats and assault.”
The White House noted, “Every Federal executive department and agency leader will review and report to the White House within sixty days on all criminal and civil authorities and actions available for fighting anti-Semitism. Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities. The Order demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws.”
“On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I thank President @realDonaldTrump for his executive order to fight antisemitism and support for terrorism on American campuses. Thank you, @POTUS, for standing up for truth and justice,” Netanyahu wrote on X.
On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I thank President @realDonaldTrump for his executive order to fight antisemitism and support for terrorism on American campuses.
Thank you, @POTUS, for standing up for truth and justice.
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) January 30, 2025
Regarding the huge increase in anti-Semitism across American campuses after the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of over 1,200 Israelis, Tablet Magazine reported in February 2024, “Schools with the highest levels of antisemitic hostility include elite private universities in the Northeast, as well as large public universities in California and the Midwest. A study titled ‘In the Shadow of War: Hotspots of Antisemitism on US College Campuses,’ found the greatest anti-Semitism was displayed on the campuses of Boston University, Columbia University, George Washington University, New York University, Ohio State, University – Columbus, Queens College – CUNY, University of California – Berkeley, University of California – Los Angeles, University of California – San Diego, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin – Madison.”
“The 2023-2024 ADL annual report on anti-Israel activism on U.S. campuses tallied 2,087 anti-Israel incidents of assault, vandalism, harassment, protests/actions and divestment resolutions between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2024, a staggering 477% increase in those categories compared to the same period in 2022-2023. This marks the highest number ever documented by ADL,” the Anti-Defamation League noted.
President Donald Trump held a press conference Thursday morning after the crash between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight near Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., Wednesday night. After expressing the nation’s grief for those lost in the tragedy, the president denounced past Democratic administrations for weakening air traffic control standards.
“I speak to you this morning in an hour of anguish for our nation,” Trump began. “This was a dark and excruciating night in our capital and a tragedy of terrible proportions. We grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so sadly.”
After expressing sympathies for the victims, Trump stressed the need for stronger Federal Aviation Administration standards and took aim at Democratic administrations which he said had weakened them.
“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” he said. “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary. You remember that only the highest aptitude, they have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people, were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers. That was not so, prior to getting there. When I arrived in 2016, I made that change very early on because I always felt this was a job that, and other jobs too, but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence, and we didn’t really have that, and we had it.”
“And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before,” Trump stated. “I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”
“I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office, and here’s one,” he said quoting Fox News article from January 2024: “The FAA diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.”
The article stated:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which says “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.” The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.
“’The Initiative is part of the FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring plan,'” Trump quoted. “Think of that. ‘The initiative is part of the FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring plan, which says diversity is integral to achieving FAS mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel.’ I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think it’s just the opposite.”
“The FAA website shows that the agency’s guidance on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23 of [2022]. They wanted to make it even more so,” he stated. “And then I came in, and I assume maybe this is the reason; the FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a real winner. The guy’s a real winner. You know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation. He’s a disaster. He was a disaster as a mayor. He ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster. Now he’s just got a good line of bulls***. The Department of Transportation, his government agency charged with regulating civil aviation, well, he runs it —45,000 people — and he’s run it right into the ground with his diversity. So I had to say that it’s terrible.”
Given his criticism of the former Transportation Secretary, the president said in response to a question from Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan that it was helpful to have his new secretary confirmed the day before.
.@MaryMargOlohan: "Is it helpful to have your Secretary of Transportation confirmed, and does this intensify your interest in getting other nominees confirmed quickly as well?"@POTUS: "We want fast confirmations. And the Democrats are doing everything they can to delay them." pic.twitter.com/EOCBzqawxP
During his remarks, Trump hammered past administrations for maintaining that the FAA was “too white.”
“Then it’s a group within the FAA, another story determined that the workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately,” the president continued. “This was in the Obama administration just prior to my getting there — and we took care of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, we took care of everybody at levels that nobody has ever seen before. It’s one of the reasons I won. But they actually came out with a directive: too white. We want the people that are competent.”
On Monday, a man who apparently claims to be a woman was arrested in Washington, D.C., after reportedly intending to murder Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.
Ryan Michael English, 24, who prefers to be called Riley Jane English according to his attorney, told officers of plans to come to Washington, D.C., and kill Bessent. English was arrested while transporting Molotov cocktails. According to WWLP, police said English intended to kill top Republicans in the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), but changed his “mission” to kill Bessent “after reading an internet post about a confirmation hearing.” Bessent is the highest ranking openly-gay official in the Trump administration.
“Police allege her intentions in Washington included burning down the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank,” WWLP reported, adding that the police report stated English’s actions were “specifically to ‘depose’ these political offices and send a message.”
English reportedly claimed to have a congenital heart defect and only had months to live, WUSA9 reported. The detention memo quoted English as saying, “I didn’t have a plan in my mind. I felt like I had to do this. I felt like I was on a mission… Maybe I told myself to have faith and just see where this goes and I had been thinking about for this for a while because of Luigi Mangione. I have seen the response to that and that situation… It was not an everyday thing and it extremely shook up everything.”
Assistant federal public defender Maria Jacob contended that English should be released, noting English had no criminal history and had only shown “poor judgment in effectuating a protest,” adding, “Ms. English took no action to use the items she possessed and instead immediately presented herself to an officer.”
Mangione, 26, has been accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in early December. Later that month, he pled not guilty to state charges of murder and terrorism. He also faces federal charges of stalking and murder, which makes him eligible for the death penalty. Only days before that, roughly 100 supporters of Mangione gathered outside the courthouse brandishing signs reading, “Free Luigi,” “Private Healthcare Is A Crime Against Humanity,” and “Deny, Defend, Depose.”
After Minnesota Democrat governor and failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz ranted on MSNBC that Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute after President Trump’s inauguration, it was suggested on Musk’s X that Musk sue Walz.
And Musk agreed.
Walz appeared on MSNBC with host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night, and in the process of making several unhinged statements, such as accusing Republicans by saying, “They want to destroy the federal government,” attacked Musk, declaring, “We spent three days debating, having them try to debate if President (sic) Musk gave a Nazi salute. Of course, he did.”
That prompted widespread criticism, including from conservative activist Robby Starbuck writing on X, “Creepy Tim Walz says ‘of course Elon did a Nazi salute. I hope Elon sues him for all he’s worth.”
Creepy Tim Walz says "of course" Elon did a Nazi salute. I hope Elon sues him for all he’s worth. pic.twitter.com/fGCrAno02g
As per usual with the Left, calling conservatives nazis seems to be a ubiquitous meme for Walz. In late October, when President Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Walz compared it to a Nazi rally from the 1930’s.
“Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz declared in Henderson, Nevada. “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”
Walz was apparently referring to an American Nazi Party rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939 organized by the pro-Hitler German American Bund that over 20,000 people attended.
While Walz was making his comments, the Democratic National Committee was projecting digital messages on Madison Square Garden’s exterior saying, “Trump praised Hitler.”
If Musk does sue Walz, it could be devastating. “Walz’s net worth is estimated at between $117,000 and $330,000, with most of his assets tied up in a retirement account, according to the document,” CBS News has reported. “While his financial disclosure didn’t outline the value of his federal pension benefit, it could be worth as much as $800,000, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal.”
Minnesota Democrat governor and failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz got positively wild-eyed talking about President Donald Trump’s plans to freeze federal funds, in the process repeating the Left’s insistence that Elon Musk— whom Walz sarcastically called President Musk — gave a Nazi salute at Trump’s inaugural.
“Republicans always want to talk about cutting government, Walz told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday. “That’s in theoretically. They never want to be specific because we know that these programs are incredibly popular.”
“I would say Rachel, that it was cruel; they planned it,” Walz moaned. “Yes, it was somewhat buffoonish but I’m not quite certain that we’re reading that right. I think this is a case of that this is a trial balloon to see how much tolerance we had. … It’s like you caught someone and they stole everything out of your house and you caught ‘em and you told ‘em to put it back and when you start lookin’ some of it’s still gone.”
He attacked GOP governors, declaring, “They’re never gonna bring this the legal way because no Republican will vote for this. And the deafening silence of Republican governors, these are my colleagues, some of ‘em are my friends, but shame on you.”
“They want to destroy the federal government,” Walz insisted. “This buyout of employees, because now they’ve threatened them.”
“The resistance is strong, you’ve felt it,” Walz declared, getting wild-eyed. “Americans, lo and behold, like democracy and feeding their children.”
“You know that overused term, ‘The frog in the boiling water?’ We’ve been in the damn pot way too long,” Walz said. “I think it’s speaking up. It’s thinking about your neighbors. It’s writing and putting those members of Congress – look, there is no spine amongst those folks – but this is real.”
Walz mocked Republicans for resisting Democrats calls over the years to defund the police: “They’re talking about defunding the police, things that they’ve puffed their chests up and say they’re good with, making their case.”
“To the voters, I’m with this too. Everybody’s fatigued. Trust me, I get it,” Walz complained. “It was pure hell, and the disappointment and the frustration, and I’m, you know, soul-searching – what could we have done to make the case? Because we knew this was coming. We knew the implication. And they’re throwing so much at us that we’re fatigued.”
He then attacked Musk, saying, “We spent three days debating, having them try to debate if President Musk gave a Nazi salute. Of course, he did.”
On Tuesday night, President Trump’s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, repeatedly countered CNN’s Jake Tapper’s attempts to vilify Trump’s order to pause federal funds.
Prior to the interview, Tapper spoke of the order, asserting, “We’re pushing for answers,” then conjectured that the order would hurt vulnerable people in society, saying:
It is a freeze or a pause on hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated by Congress and spent by the federal government on things such as, well, school breakfast and lunch programs that feed more than 10 million children, and Section Eight housing assistance that helps pay the rent for more than 9 million people. The majority of them, we should note, are seniors, children or those with a disability, or grants from the EPA to states and localities to ensure that they have clean drinking water or Head Start programs that serve nearly 800,000 low income children from birth to age five. And of course, Meals on Wheels, which feeds more than 2 million seniors who have no other means of purchasing or preparing meals.
Tapper then asked Miller, “Let’s just walk through this because obviously there’s confusion. Is this pause going to affect Medicaid?”
Miller responded with a straightforward answer: “It does not affect any service that the government is required to provide, does not affect any entitlement, does not affect any service to citizens, does not affect any individual benefit, any public assistance program or anything of that nature.”
Miller then offered an example of the misuse of government funds: “We found after the president had issued a pause on funding to NGOs that were settling illegal immigrants, we found that bureaucrats at HHS were trying to funnel billions of more dollars to those resettlement agencies and try to get around the executive order. It became clear that bureaucrats were still trying to funnel unapproved discretionary grants of funds to their pet projects. So OMB, led by Russ Vought felt it was necessary to protect taxpayer resources to issue clearer guidance establishing for these discretionary grants of funding that are not directed by Congress that they go through a political approval process at the agency.”
Despite Miller having just laid out a salient reason for the pause, Tapper asked, “First of all, why a pause? An investigation — sure, I get that. Auditing, sure. Why a pause?”
“Well, Jake, once you spend money, you can’t get it back,” Miller explained. “So in other words, if you don’t put federal programs under review that are wasteful or harmful to taxpayers, and then people hit send … you wouldn’t believe the payments we’ve had to pause over the last few days with bureaucrats trying to funnel money out of the door, to funnel money to the World Health Organization, funnel money to resettlement organizations, funnel money to foreign countries.” For that reason, Miller said, “of course, you have to put a pause on these discretionary grants of funding and have a political review process.”
Miller underscored that “the review process does not include any public benefit programs,” including Meals on Wheels.
“OMB has been clear about this. Jake, we have to get control over this government,” Miller said bluntly. “You know, I’ll just say on this point about NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, Joe Biden gave just one NGO responsible for resettling illegal aliens, $3 billion with a B, $3 billion. President Trump, when he said drain the swamp, he meant it. And yes. So those kinds of spending programs are going to be put under review.”
Miller then highlighted the political affiliations of the current bureaucracy. “There’s two million employees in the federal government, overwhelmingly the career federal service in this country is far-left, left-wing,” he said.
“I don’t know that to be a fact,” Tapper interjected.
“Well, I’ll give you a great example,” Miller replied. “We looked at USAID as an example. Ninety-eight percent, 98 percent of the workforce either donated to Kamala Harris or another left-wing candidate, just as an example.”
“You’re demonizing an entire workforce as having a–,” Tapper pronounced.
“Wait, wait,” Miller countered. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you just say that, saying someone voted for Kamala Harris is demonizing them?”
“No,” Tapper claimed. “So your suggestion is that there’s a bias.”
“No,” Miller answered. “But you use the word ‘demonizing.’ You just said that I’m demonizing somebody by saying they voted for Kamala Harris.”
Tapper scrambled to regain control, insisting, “Let’s get back on track.”
“I am on track,” Miller said. “What I’m saying to you is this, there are two million employees in the federal government. … They’re overwhelmingly left of center … The American people voted for dramatic change implemented by Donald Trump. So it is essential for him to get control of government, to establish a whole of government process for Donald Trump’s political appointees, to review discretionary grants of spending for pet projects that are not directed by Congress. In other words, these are pots of money where Congress hasn’t said how to spend it or where to spend it. This might be something like saying, I want to build a $500 million fountain in the courtyard of the Department of Commerce. This might be something like saying, I want to fund gender studies in Afghanistan. There has to be political control and review.”
Miller then slammed the media for deliberately characterizing the OMB guidance as confusing, saying, “I can’t help it if left-wing media outlets published a fake news story that caused confusion.”
“Does anyone believe that an unaccountable career-tenured bureaucrat should be able to approve vast sums of money for the projects that they personally agree with, that no accountable employee in the federal government has reviewed?” Miller asked.
“We always knew that the media was going to spin up fake stories, to try to create controversy, to try to create scandal,” Miller concluded, then slyly added, “I’m not saying you, Jake. I would never say you.”
At a recent meeting of the House Committee on Homeland Security, evidence was presented of how China is posing a grave cybersecurity threat to the United States.
“Over the last year, the U.S. government has discovered a number of PRC [People’s Republic of China] state-sponsored threat actors deeply embedded in and across the nation’s critical networks: Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, and most recently Silk Typhoon, have compromised our critical infrastructure, hacked sensitive communications, breached federal workstations …” Chairman Mark E. Green (R-TN) stated.
“The U.S. authoring agencies have confirmed that Volt Typhoon has compromised the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure organizations—primarily in Communications, Energy, Transportation Systems, and Water and Wastewater Systems Sectors—in the continental and non-continental United States and its territories, including Guam,” the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reported in February 2024.
“Microsoft has identified a nation-state activity group tracked as Flax Typhoon, based in China, that is targeting dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the likely intention of performing espionage,” Microsoft noted in August 2023.
“Salt Typhoon refers to a sophisticated cyber espionage operation orchestrated by a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group, commonly known as Earth Estries, Ghost Emperor, or UNC2286,” Armisreported. “This state-sponsored actor has been linked to high-profile breaches targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, including major telecommunications providers such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Lumen Technologies.”
“China has engaged in … maturation in how they conduct these operations,” Adam Meyers, senior vice president of Counter Adversary Operations at CrowdStrike, testified at the House committee hearing. “Today, they’re using exploits that target external facing devices that are connected directly to the internet that effectively bridge enterprises to the internet. These devices are often unmanaged. In many cases, they may be legacy or have proprietary capabilities – that means that they don’t run modern security tools … like a router or a VPN concentrator. Things that are meant to connect the enterprise to the network or allow remote users to authenticate in.”
“The nodes, so to speak, between silos,” Green suggested.
“Yes, sir, and these are highly prioritized and highly valuable targets with these threat actors,” Meyers replied. “They’ve nationalized their vulnerability research program in 2018. For example, they changed the national security law in China, and all vulnerability research has to be submitted through the Chinese government. Whereas, here in the United States, we follow something we call responsible disclosure, where if I find a vulnerability in a product, I notify that product vendor in order to try to get it fixed. They’re effectively nationalizing that resource so they can use that for exploits against American technology and American companies. Once they gain that access, they attempt to remain stealthy and either conduct espionage in order to inform political and military decision-making, or in the case of ‘Vanguard Panda,’ also known as ‘Volt Typhoon,’ the prepositioning that we’ve discussed here, which would be potentially useful to bring down some of these networks that Mr. Montgomery mentioned in time of conflict.”
Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, pointed out, “This operational preparation of the battlefield, it is a war-making action, and we have to take it much more seriously. I think the idea that they’ve pre-positioned malware or that they have capabilities that lie in wait that can come out at the right time, as we’re making a decision to respond to a crisis in Taiwan or crisis in the Baltic States. TRANSCOM operates on these unclassified networks with civilian systems. This is why I think former Representative [Now National Security Advisor] Waltz is right, in the sense that we have to go on the offensive. We now have to actually publicly execute operations against Chinese cyber infrastructure to say: ‘We know you did this; we know you use this infrastructure to do this, and we’re going to remove that infrastructure from your capability.’ … Otherwise, the Chinese are going to keep doing what they’re doing.”
“These incidents are not over,” Meyers continued. “‘Salt Typhoon’ is an ongoing activity by an adversary, as is ‘Volt Typhoon,’ or what we call ‘Vanguard Panda.’ So this is something we need to continuously engage; we need to continuously identify, root them out, and put a stop to them––cut off their access.”
Qatar’s support of the terrorist group Hamas, as well as its past criticism of Donald Trump, has come under renewed scrutiny as the authoritarian state acts as the mediator between Israel and Hamas.
Qatar is being relied on to negotiate a cease-fire deal, in which innocent hostages, whether dead or alive, have or will be exchanged for as much as 50 times more Palestinians, many of whom murdered Israeli parents and their children. That same Qatari government has supported Hamas and vilified Israel ever since the October 7 massacre.
As the October 7 massacre of over 1200 Israelis began, Hamas leaders celebrated from their comfortable quarters in the Qatari capital of Doha. On that same day, the Qatari government issued a statement that blamed Israel for the massacre, writing, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds Israel solely responsible for the ongoing escalation …”
.@paulrubens nailed it: #Qatar told Hamas to keep the hostages, proving it’s no friend of the U.S., Israel, or any hope for peace.
We in America can’t overlook how Qatar enables terror—it’s time to call it out.
As the terms of the ceasefire deal have come to light, criticism has mounted for using Qatar as a negotiator. “Again, Qatar celebrates Hamas and the October 7 mass slaughter and kidnappings,” bestselling author Mark Levin commented Sunday, citing Qatar-owned media’s glorification of the terror attack. “How can these terrorist lowlifes mediate anything?”
Again, Qatar celebrates Hamas and the October 7 mass slaughter and kidnappings. How can these terrorist lowlifes mediate anything?https://t.co/5g30NDda8B
Qatar’s record of promoting anti-Trump propaganda has also come under the spotlight. “The state-controlled media in Qatar, a regime that has long been the patron of radical groups, smeared President Donald Trump as a ‘Nazi’ and as a ‘vulgar’ and ‘insufferable’ person during his first term as president,” Breitbart noted.
Among the hundreds of Palestinians to be released under the deal are “three architects of the Jerusalem bus bombing on June 11, 2003, the perpetrator in a 2018 terror stabbing in the West Bank, and one of the organizers of a December 2002 attack inside the kitchen of a yeshiva, killing two students and two IDF soldiers,” the AJC noted.
Qatar’s leaders have been demanding a ceasefire within hours of the attack by Hamas. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in a recent interview with Israeli journalist Arad Nir, reportedly said, “We’ve been calling since, since the beginning, since October 8, that we need to get this done as soon as possible.”
“Excuse me? Get what done?” responded Daniel Rubenstein, who has served as an advisor to Israeli prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett. “You think that the proper response to the October 7 Massacre, while Hamas terrorists were still on the loose in Israel, was to get a deal done that would ensure that Hamas leaders would survive what they had just unleashed, that hundreds or thousands of convicted Palestinian terrorists would be released from Israeli prisons, and that Hamas’s army would remain completely intact and would be in a position to carry out another massacre at a time and place of its choosing?”
“Friends, please understand: Qatar told Hamas to keep the hostages until Hamas gets a deal that allows Hamas to remain in power in Gaza,” Rubenstein warned. “I am stunned that I have to be the one to explain this to everyone. Wake up.”
Are people under the impression that on October 7, 2023, Qatari government officials in Doha walked down the street to the office where Hamas leaders were watching Al Jazeera and thanking God for the success of Hamas's invasion and said to them: "Guys, what you did was really…
A 2022 study conducted by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) stated, “Receipt of foreign funding was associated with increased levels of campus antisemitism, and this relationship was larger when the foreign funding came from Middle Eastern/authoritarian states,” adding that a 2019 ISGAP research project “revealed, for the first time, the existence of substantial Middle Eastern funding (primarily from Qatar) to U.S. universities that had not been reported to the Department of Education as required by law.”
President Trump has canceled Dr. Anthony Fauci’s security detail.
“The Trump administration has cancelled Dr. Anthony Fauci’s security detail. Dr. Fauci has now hired his own security detail, according to a source familiar with the situation,” ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jon Karl reported.
When a reporter asked about the decision, Trump stated, “I think when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off. And y’know, you can’t have ‘em forever. So I think it’s very standard. If it would be for somebody else, you wouldn’t be asking the question.”
“The question is very fair, but y’know, you work for government; we took some off for other people, too,” he continued. “But you can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for the government. … They all made a lot of money; they can hire their own security people, too.”
“A person familiar with the situation said Dr. Fauci had done just that, and now had his own security detail,” The New York Times reported. “Dr. Fauci did not have Secret Service protection; he was protected by federal marshals and later by a private contractor whose fees were paid by the government, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service.”
After the preemptive pardon former President Biden gave Fauci was slammed, Fauci retorted, “Let me be perfectly clear. I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me.”
Forbes noted in April 2022, “Dr. Anthony Fauci made $417,608 in 2019, the latest year for which federal salaries are available. That made him not only the highest paid doctor in the federal government, but the highest paid out of all four million federal employees.”
For the past two years, Dr. Anthony Fauci has received $15,000,000 in taxpayer-funded security services – despite having returned to private citizenship. Open the Books discovered the arrangement within a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the U.S. Marshals service and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Up until at least late September, this agreement between the two government agencies has left the American taxpayer on the hook for the costs attached to Dr. Fauci’s lifestyle, which included a publicly-funded chauffeur and a fully staffed U.S. Marshals security detail. The $15 million does not include the costs associated with his personal security from April 2020 to December 2022, which was handled by the same parties while he was still serving in government.
In an apparent attempt to mock pro-life Republicans, a Mississippi Democrat state senator has introduced a bill with a highly unusual name.
State Sen. Bradford Blackmon (D) introduced the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act,” which would make it illegal for someone “to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.”
Mississippi state Sen. Bradford Blackmon has made headlines due to his new bill, the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act.”
Essentially, the bill makes it unlawful for a person to ejaculate during sexual activity unless the intention is to conceive a child.… pic.twitter.com/offpGdN2XC
“All across the country, especially here in Mississippi, the vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman’s role when men are fifty percent of the equation,” Blackmon told WLBT News. “This bill highlights that fact and brings the man’s role into the conversation. People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can’t say that bothers me.”
Fines to be implemented would be $1,000 for a first offense, $5,000 for a second offense, and $10,000 for a third offense. The bill states that the law would not apply to sperm “donated or sold to a facility for the purpose of future procedures to fertilize an embryo or discharged with the use of a contraceptive or contraceptive method intended to prevent fertilization.”
“You have male-dominated legislatures in Mississippi and all over the country that pass laws that dictate what a woman can and cannot do with her body,” Blackmon said. “I was raised by strong parents that preached equality for all. My mother and my father both believe in equal rights for women … When a bill has been filed that would regulate what a man is able to do with his own body in his own home, it suddenly has people in an uproar. I am trying to figure out when it isn’t okay for the government to dictate what you do in the privacy of your own home, apparently it is when the laws regulate men.”
“The reactions from some quarters relating to my bill indicate that men are not held to the same standard when it comes to the intrusion into their personal private affairs as women have been held to with the reversal of Roe v. Wade,” Blackmon declared. ”It is rich that the landmark Supreme Court decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization began it all, here, in the state of Mississippi.”
Conservative pundit, Erick Erickson, responded to Blackmon’s bill on X, saying, “You can immediately tell this legislator is a Democrat because the piece doesn’t mention his party affiliation at all.”
You can immediately tell this legislator is a Democrat because the piece doesn’t mention his party affiliation at all. https://t.co/gHXWPqYnfz
President Donald Trump, who has harshly criticized California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom in the wake of the savage fires that engulfed Los Angeles County, will visit the city himself on Friday.
Newsom invited Trump to California after the Palisades and Eaton fires had erupted.
Asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night whether he would meet Newsom during his visit, Trump replied, “I haven’t even thought about it.”
The Daily Wire previously reported:
President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly warned California Governor Gavin Newsom about needing to do a better job of managing the state’s resources to prevent massive wildfires from erupting. …
“The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management,” Trump wrote in November 2019. “I told him from … the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers. … Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states …
..Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states…But our teams are working well together in…..
Trump’s 2019 comments followed two massive fires in California, the Walker Fire in Plumas County, which started in early September 2019 and consumed almost 55,000 acres, and the Kincade Fire, which started in Sonoma County on October 23, 2019, and consumed almost 78,000 acres. In 2019 alone, 34 wildfires that burned at least 1,000 acres reputed in California.
This year, on January 8, Trump called on Newsom to resign.
“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!”
The next morning, Trump reiterated, “Fire is spreading rapidly for 3 days — ZERO CONTAINMENT. Nobody has ever seen such failed numbers before! Gross incompetence by Gavin Newscum and Karen Bass….And Biden’s FEMA has no money — all wasted on the Green New Scam! L.A. is a total wipeout!!!”
Another major fire has engulfed an area in Los Angeles County, as the Hughes Fire that started on Wednesday morning north of Santa Clarita and near Castaic has covered more than 10,000 acres and is only 14% contained.
According to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, roughly 31,000 area residents threatened by the Hughes Fire were under evacuation orders and 23,000 under evacuation warnings by Wednesday night.
“We’re still expecting some dry humidity and then gusts of winds possible up to 60 mph,” Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuna said. “It’s super dry. Anyone spark will have a new start of a fire that establishes and raises quickly.”
Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Sheila Kelliher reassured the public, telling CNN that water supply should not be a problem, as fire crews have access to Castaic Lake and other reservoirs.
However, a new problem may arise this weekend as rain is expected to fall, possibly causing mudslides. “The Los Angeles and San Diego areas will get more rain this weekend than in the last six months combined,” CNN reported.
“A lot of that rain may fall in a relatively short amount of time,” Ariel Cohen, who the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles, conjectured, which could lead to “the possibility of at least shallow debris flows, mudslides and landslides. The burn scars, with the widespread loss of trees, shrubs and vegetation, will have a much lower capability of handling the rain and will be more susceptible to failure. It behaves more like cement; the ground can’t accept the water, so it all goes to runoff immediately.”
The prospective mudslides could be dangerous, “taking down other structures and certainly be a threat to life and property,” Cohen said. Meanwhile, the catastrophic Palisades Fire, which has killed 11 people, burned more than 23,000 acres, and destroyed 6,662 structures, is still only 72% contained. The Eaton Fire, which killed 17 people and burned more than 14,000 acres, is 95% contained.
A movement has burgeoned among Reddit users to ban links to X, formerly known as Twitter, and Reddit has no plans to interfere with such actions.
“Since Tuesday, hundreds of subreddits have discussed and/or implemented bans against the site formerly called Twitter, as reported by 404 Media,” Ars Technica reported. “Reddit users in support of X bans like the one instituted by r/londonontario have pointed to various reasoning, including not being able to see tweet links without having an X account, Elon Musk appearing to make a Nazi salute at the presidential inauguration on Monday (as cited by r/Christianity’s and r/newjersey’s bans, for example), and general dislike for Musk and/or how he runs X.”
“NBC News has identified more than 50 subreddit communities where moderators have since announced that links from X, formerly Twitter, will no longer be allowed in new posts and comments. The communities protesting range in size from dozens of members to millions, totaling at least 40 million members,” NBC News reported on Wednesday. “Not allowing links to X in large subreddits could be a major way to suppress Musk’s platform’s reach when it comes to the communities on Reddit that are taking part.”
Musk’s motion at the presidential inauguration has been mischaracterized by members of the Left, the media, and among Democrats as a Nazi salute when it was nothing of the kind; he was making a motion from his heart toward the crowd to show his appreciation.
“A Reddit spokesperson told Ars that decisions to ban or not ban X links are user-driven. Subreddit members are allowed to suggest and institute subreddit rules, they added,” Ars Technica stated. “Reddit has a longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of association,” the spokesperson added.
“As 404 Media noted, some Redditors are also pushing to block content from Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta properties in response to new Donald Trump-friendly policies instituted by owner Mark Zuckerberg, like Meta killing diversity programs and axing third-party fact-checkers,” Ars Technica noted.
According to a new report, President Donald Trump has revoked the security details for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Pompeo’s senior policy adviser, Brian Hook, who also served as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran, and Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton.
All three men have been threatened by the theocratic regime of Iran, which blamed Pompeo and Hook for the assassination of Iranian terror master, Iran Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
“God willing, we are looking to kill Trump [and] Pompeo … and military commanders who issued the order should be killed,” Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace force, said in February 2023.
Pompeo, a staunch supporter of Trump during his first term, had both praised and criticized Trump after he left office, lauding Trump’s work on the southern border but criticizing him for supposedly mishandling classified documents and additional spending which raised the deficit.
Last August, a Pakistani national with what FBI Director Christopher Wray called “close ties to Iran” was arrested and charged with orchestrating a scheme to reportedly assassinate Trump as well as other government officials.
According to court documents, in April 2024, Asif Merchant, 46, who revealed he has a wife and children in both Iran and Pakistan, came to the U.S. after spending time in Iran. He contacted someone about his alleged scheme; that person, who became a confidential source (CS), then contacted the FBI. In early June in New York, Merchant met the CS and outlined his alleged plot to commit a series of assassinations in the U.S.
In November, federal law enforcement officials foiled another plan to assassinate then-President-elect Trump that was connected to Iran.
The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against multiple individuals who were involved in plots to murder an Iranian dissident, two Jewish Americans, and Trump on U.S. soil.
Prosecutors indicted Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran, on multiple charges, including murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, money laundering conspiracy, conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the Government of Iran.
The Trump State Department, headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has reportedly implemented a policy stating that any U.S. outposts in the country and abroad may fly only one flag: the United States flag.
Flags that were flown at the behest of the Biden administration such as the LGBT pride flag and Black Lives Matter flags will no longer be flown, although the Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA) emblem and the Wrongful Detainees Flags are permitted to be flown.
The order states, according to The Washington Free Beacon, which obtained a copy, “Starting immediately, only the United States of America flag is authorized to be flown or displayed at U.S. facilities, both domestic and abroad, and featured in U.S. government content. The flag of the United States of America united all Americans under the universal principles of justice, liberty, and democracy. These values, which are the bedrock of our great country, are shared by all American citizens, past and present. … The U.S. flag is a powerful symbol of pride and it is fitting and respectful that only the U.S. flag be flown or displayed at U.S. facilities, both domestically and abroad.”
A State Department employee transgressing the new policy will “face disciplinary action, including termination of employment or contract, or reassignment to their home agency.”
In April 2021, then-Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken authorized U.S. embassies and consulates to fly the rainbow pride flag on the same pole as the American flag. “According to the cable and a State Department official, Mr. Blinken authorized diplomats to fly the pride flag before May 17, which is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, and to continue their display at diplomatic outposts through the month of June,” The New York Times reported.
In June 2021, the U.S. embassy in Nassau “raised the rainbow Pride Flag to honor the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons in The Bahamas and around the world,” the State Department stated. “The widely recognized rainbow flag will fly from the flagpole of the U.S. Embassy in Downtown Nassau, and at the Chief of Mission Residence on Sanford Road.”
“The administration also raised the Black Lives Matter flag at the U.S. embassy and consulates in Brazil to celebrate Black History Month in February 2022,” the Free Beacon noted.
On Monday, his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order which stated that the United States government would not give citizenship to a child whose mother had emigrated to the country illegally and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth or if the mother’s presence was lawful but temporary and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident.
On Tuesday, 22 states with Democrat attorneys general sued Trump over the order.
The executive order noted that the Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But, the order added, “The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
The attorneys general filed their complaint in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, the cities of San Francisco and Washington, D.C., joined in the effort, The New York Times reported.
New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, complained, “Presidents are powerful, but he is not a king. He cannot rewrite the Constitution with a stroke of the pen.”
The ACLU also immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the executive order, prompting Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, to respond, “Radical Leftists can either choose to swim against the tide and reject the overwhelming will of the people, or they can get on board and work with President Trump to advance his wildly popular agenda. These lawsuits are nothing more than an extension of the Left’s resistance – and the Trump administration is ready to face them in court.”
As far back as 2015, National Review noted, “According to Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) legal policy analyst Jon Feere, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security in April, between 350,000 and 400,000 children are born annually to an illegal-alien mother residing in the United States — as many as one in ten births nationwide. As of 2010, four out of five children of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. were born here — some 4 million kids.”
“The 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. It says that ‘[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ are citizens,” Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation has written. “That second, critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by advocates of ‘birthright’ citizenship. Critics erroneously believe that anyone present in the United States has ‘subjected” himself’ to the jurisdiction” of the United States, which would extend citizenship to the children of tourists, diplomats, and illegal aliens alike. But that is not what that qualifying phrase means. Its original meaning refers to the political allegiance of an individual and the jurisdiction that a foreign government has over that individual.”
On Tuesday, after President Trump announced he would pardon roughly 1,500 people and commute the sentences of 14 others connected with the January 6, 2021, protests at the U.S. Capitol, California Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia delivered an unhinged rant targeting the recipients of Trump’s actions.
Garcia, who had already falsely claimed, along with other leftists, that Elon Musk had executed a Nazi salute at the inaugural, was interviewed by longtime Trump critic Jim Acosta of CNN.
“There’s obviously the potential for some of these rioters, some of these people who attacked the Capitol, to go out there and reoffend,” Acosta suggested. “I mean, what happens if one of these pardoned criminals goes out and commits another act of violence?”
“Well, let’s be real clear about what Donald Trump did,” Garcia replied. “He completely went in and pardoned, commuted sentences of some of the most violent people that we know of, whether it relates to damage and trying to overthrow our government.”
Interestingly, Garcia has apparently had no public comment condemning President Biden commuting the sentences of 37 people on federal death row in addition to Leonard Peltier, who had been convicted of the brutal murders of FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams.
“These are people that stormed the Capitol because Donald Trump told them to do so,” Garcia said. “They attacked police officers. Police officers, as you know, were either greatly harmed, some died after the attack because of what happened. And they desecrated the Capitol offices, storming the House floor. And yet Donald Trump. with the stroke of a pen, frees them.”
Then Garcia wildly asserted that the recipients of the pardons should not be allowed in public, saying, “These are dangerous people, who, many of them should not have access to guns, should not have any sort of access to being out in the public. I visited many of these folks in the D.C. jail on behalf of the Democratic House Conference.”
Acosta asked what Garcia had found.
“First of all, they had no remorse; they kept chanting, ‘Let’s go, Brandon,’” Garcia said with horror. “They kept saying they were proud of what they did. These are people that should have no business being free and certainly should be held accountable for their crimes through the court process.”
Turning to Trump, he charged, “And so, look, Donald Trump did a lot of shameful things yesterday. I think this is the top of one of the worst.”
“He is going to double down on what he knows he can get away with,” he continued. “The man was told through the court system, through his supporters for the election, that you can break the law; you can attack people; you can be racist; you can essentially support the most wealthy in this country, bring in billionaires to help run the government and then you’re gonna be rewarded. And so I think we’ve gotta be very clear that Donald Trump and his administration is (sic) going to be a threat to our democracy, a threat to our institutions, and we’ve gotta push back.”
Three key Ohio State football players in the team’s 34-23 national championship victory over Notre Dame publicly thanked God after the game Monday night.
Ohio State quarterback Will Howard, who was named offensive MVP of the game after passing for 231 yards and 2 TDs while rushing for 57 yards, stated, “First and foremost, I gotta give the glory and the praise to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, man. I wouldn’t be here without him. I wouldn’t be here without my teammates, without my family, without everyone that bet on me back in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, man, I’m at a loss for words right now.”
While receiving the Offensive MVP Award, he added, “Before I say anything, I gotta give my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ all the glory, all the praise. Amen,” adding he was “so glad God gave me a chance to be a Buckeye.’
Ohio State QB Will Howard following an MVP performance: “First and foremost, I gotta give the glory and the praise to my lord and savior Jesus Christ.” pic.twitter.com/X9brwU8Hzw
Linebacker Cody Simon, named Defensive MVP, echoed, “The Lord did something special on this team and we’re just so thankful. Everyone on this team, we all bought in. I love every guy out here – put the work in this whole year.”
Defensive end Jack Sawyer, who made three tackles, added, “This is the best feeling I’ve ever felt in my life. This is exactly what we had envisioned when we all decided to come back – to go out and do it this way and end on this note. We just thank God for giving us the ability to go out and here and do it, through the ups and the downs. He was with us on our side and we knew that. Overcame the adversity and, man, this just feels so good.”
It wasn’t just Ohio State players who publicly acknowledged God on Monday night; after he scored the first touchdown of the game, Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard pointed to his armband that had “Matthew 23:12” written on it: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Even before the game, Leonard told Sports Michiana, “I truly think things happen for a reason. Not only us, but Ohio State as well. I think we’re the two main teams to just publicly display our faith the most. I don’t know if this is some divine teaching, you know, who put us here. I truly believe that Jesus was looking over both our shoulders throughout the whole season and put these two teams on a pedestal for a reason.”
Riley Leonard feels Notre Dame & Ohio St are the 2 teams to publicly display their faith the most.
“I don’t know if this is some divine teaching that put us here but I truly believe Jesus was looking over both of our shoulders… and put these 2 teams on a pedestal for a reason.” pic.twitter.com/gxcKMByPb0
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