This is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.  

Our on-and-off relationship with our European allies and friends is in another low spot. There’s a lot of developments that have been going on that I don’t think they quite appreciate have created a loss of confidence in the United States about the reliability of our NATO allies. 

And this transcends the earlier existential problem that all of our NATO allies, 32, had over 20 years promised but reified that and ratified it the last 15 years, they would spend 2% of GDP on defense. And as you remember, in 2016, after the election, and Donald Trump, remarked as he was going to enter office in 2017 that all but six of them had not met their requirements. 

And after all this bullying, all this acrimony, now almost all of them, I think with one exception, have made the 2%. But now we’re into another series of crises.  

The former head of German intelligence was just found out in his retirement, I think he’s 80, that he was a traitor, and that he had been selling or trafficking in secrets that involved German and NATO security to existential enemies like China and maybe Russia. 

That creates a lack of confidence in the security that we have with the Germans.

And Britain, remember, we have a dual-use base, an RAF and a U.S. Air Force base in the United Kingdom, and the idea, of course, is forward deployment. So if we would get into a crisis with China, with Russia, over Ukraine, almost anywhere in the world, we would have maybe 11 of our $320 million B-1 bombers that have capability to carry nuclear weapons and huge payloads, but they would be based and safe in this air base that was patrolled by our allies, the British. 

Now we learn that some terrorists had a dry run where they got very close to this base and were in the process of filming it and doing reconnaissance work.  

And we learned two things from the British government, Prime Minister [Andy] Burnham. Number one, they were trained by or in the service to Iran, the greatest terrorist threat in the world. 

And number two, they were let out on bail.  

How can you say that—the most dangerous terrorists that we’ve seen in the U.K. that are actually scouting out ways to destroy an American bomber fleet is from Iran, or at least influenced by Iran or hired by Iran, but then let them out on bail?  

And then we get to the recent argument from our allies that they want nothing to do with the Iran war. 

They understand that the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s oil and the oil of the Gulf are  critical to their oil needs, and they understand that the wealth of the Gulf States is essential for them to export commodities. And they understand the principle that Iran is a dangerous country.  

And for 50 years, they have said in a course with us that it should not and will not be nuclear, although neither they nor the American presidents, seven of them, have done anything about it. 

So we go and try to stop that threat. France then immediately says that this was not an approved U.N. war, and they cannot use French airspace to use American assets, not NATO assets, American assets, in, over their airspace. The U.K. says you cannot use the Diego Garcia base, which is critical in the Indian Ocean, for operations in the Middle East, long-distance operation. 

Italy says you cannot use your dual-use base with us in Sicily to land aircraft to go after Iran. Spain says you’re not gonna use our base. You’re not even getting near our airspace.  

Switzerland and Austria are neutral, but they’re pro-U.S., and if their push came to shove, they wouldn’t be able to avoid a European continental war, and they would seek protection from whom? Probably us. They said nobody gets near our airspace.  

None of these European countries said we will help the U.S. Navy patrol the Strait of Hormuz to ensure that it’s open and global commerce is uninterrupted. Okay. 

And of course, we have our Canadian friends who said last year we may or may not have met our 2%, but for the last 15 years, we won’t spend 2%. 

But of course, we expect to be, under the nuclear umbrella of, as we have been, of the United States, and we expect if there was ever an existential threat to the North American continent, you would not distinguish Canadian from American interest, even though we’re not armed and not capable with 79 45-year-old jets, given your 4,000 or 5,000. 

So I could go on, but you get the impression that it’s again a reminder that it’s a one-way street. Remember the argument that our European friends are using to us. They are saying, “You’re a NATO power, and you’re pledged to protect the North American, space.” Of course, we’ve never… Only once after 9/11, and that was sort of symbolic. 

Some NATO planes helped us after 9/11 to make sure there were not terrorists in our skies. But generally, the threats that face Europe are not going to threaten the United States, and the threats that face the United States, we don’t count on NATO partners, volunteering to go to Taiwan or to protect us from a Chinese missile. 

None of that. All we ask is, “Can we use our NATO assets, the use of our bases, and your airspace to cut the travel time, the distance, from our bases, to Iran, and we don’t have to come all the way from the United States?”  

And they said, “No. You cannot do that.” And so we are saying, “Well, Ukraine  is threatened by Russia, but Russia’s army does not threaten us.” 

There’s no way in the world that the Russian army is ever going to run the United States. It is going to overrun Ukraine maybe, maybe the Baltic states, maybe some of the Scandinavian states, maybe the European states. But it’s not gonna ever endanger us.  

We have a strategic problem with Russia, and we handle that on our own with our nuclear deterrent: submarines, land base, and bombers. 

So let’s get this straight, Europe. You are saying to us that when we have a shared threat and it’s in your neighborhood, and it’s of interest to us that you will not help, but you’re not gonna go beyond that, but you will not even lend your airspace to help us.  

And at the same time, you’re saying, as the NATO big guy in the alliance, that you expect us to guarantee your safety and to arm the Ukrainians to the teeth and to deter the Russians from invading further and closer into Europe, even though we know, according to your logic, they’re not threatening us at all. 

Now, the truth of the matter is, if Ukraine is overrun and Russia goes into the Baltic states or Europe, we will probably come, as is our obligations under NATO. But the Europeans are making that harder and harder to sell to the American people because it’s a one-way street. When we need you to protect Europe, you better be there. 

When you need us not to protect us from a nuclear weapon from Iran, not to join us in battle, just to let us use your airspace, you can’t even do that. And we had to be uncouth and crude and scream and yell to make you protect yourself with a meager 2% investment of GDP in defense. I know what you’re gonna say to us. 

So it’s a one-way street. And so we have made the argument that in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, which are the backyards of Europe, it’s essential that Iran not get a nuclear weapon for their protection and ours, and we are willing to handle that problem. We’re not asking NATO, we’re not asking individual countries to bomb, Iran or to send weapons. 

We have open borders. We’re overrun with immigrants. We made bad decisions about our green energy. We warred on fossil fuels. We have certain culture that has a 1.3 continental-wide fertility rate that’s unsustainable.  

We have immigrant populations that do not want to assimilate. And we have a socialist paradigm that is not sustainable, so we can’t help you. You can’t help. 

At least you could say, “This is not working. This is not working, and we want to make reforms in our economy, our energy, our immigration, so we can free up capital to fulfill our partnership, and we want it 50/50. When you need us, we’re there, and when we need you, you’re there.” And if it doesn’t happen that way, then the NATO paradigm is not sustainable. 

It will not work for the Europeans to deny us just the use of the airspace to deal with a common threat and then expect us to risk our key cities in any potential nuclear standoff with Russia, because that’s what would happen. To protect the integrity of Europe, if we couldn’t do it with traditional forces, it would ultimately be a standoff to use American deterrence to protect Europe, and that would entail our danger to protect your continent. 

And so, yes, we can be crude. Yes, we can yell and scream, but ultimately, this remains an asymmetrical and thus unsustainable relationship.  

Victor Davis Hanson is a Daily Signal senior contributor, hosting a podcast, producing video commentaries, and writing a weekly column. He is the author of “The Counterrevolution The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement.”

In August, Jessica Bowie was arrested in connection with a plot to blow up New York State legislators at the capitol building while pretending to be delivering DoorDash and then in Oct, Benny Caldera Jr. was arrested in a plot to shoot up the Texas State Capitol.

The two terror plots targeting state capitols and legislators in two different states took place less than three months apart and while these are the sorts of terror plots that might have been expected of Islamic terrorists, Bowie and Caldera were Americans, and yet their plots were Islam-inspired.

The Bowie and Caldera terror plots were not the first Islam-inspired attacks in America.

Last year, Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago radical leftist, murdered an engaged couple at the Capital Jewish Museum, while shouting, “Free Palestine”. A spectrum of Islamist and leftist groups ranging from the DSA Liberation Caucus to the Bronx Anti-War Coalition, to Unity of Fields, linked to Iran, endorsed the Islam-inspired terrorist attack in Washington D.C.

The Bowie and Caldera attacks show that the situation has only escalated from there.

Jessica Bowie’s terrorist attack was more directly inspired by Islamic terrorism. Bowie, a white woman living in Albany, New York, the location of the state capital, appeared to have converted to Islam at some point and posted messages such as “Praise be to Allah for September 11th” and denounced the legislators as “enemies” of Allah.

Benny Caldera Jr. had allegedly told a friend, “I am going to the Capitol and I am going to shoot it up. These people have to be exterminated.” He had supposedly said goodbye to his parents.

Like many Muslims and radical leftists, Caldera appeared to be obsessed with AIPAC, a pro-Israel group that has a limited presence in Texas, while Bowie did not specifically mention Israel, but focused on the opportunity of bringing “harm to the enemies of Allah.”

Bowie’s attack appeared to be better thought out than Caldera’s. Bowie lived near the New York State Capitol and had been conducting site surveillance, having made “it a point to have picnics by the capital to observe and [have] coffee in the observation hall” and had planned her attack for a time when state senators were holding meetings. Her plan was to detonate a nail bomb and harm as many officials as she could while pretending to be doing a food delivery run.

The common denominator between Bowie and Caldera however appeared to be that they had both accepted Islamic propaganda about America and it eventually turned them into terrorists and a threat to the centers of government in two very different parts of the country.

Despite ongoing efforts by the FBI, Islamic terrorist narratives circulate on social media like never before and have been adopted by fringe and not so fringe domestic political movements. Islamic terrorists and terror states find a range of social media defenders from the DSA to Tucker Carlson. Even Al Qaeda propaganda, like ‘Osama’s Letter to America’, actually written by Adam Gadahn, a California hippie turned Al Qaeda spokesman, has made its way across social media, boosted by enemy platforms from TikTok to Tucker.

The fundamental message that America is bad and that Muslim terrorists are righteously resisting us has even been embraced by DSA Democrats and their growing number of allies who have mainstreamed Hasan Piker, a Turkish Muslim influencer, who argued that Al Qaeda is better than America and that, “America deserved 9/11”.

Who needs ISIS beheading videos or Osama bin Laden video dumps to Al Jazeera when the New York Times and politicians like Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed are boosting this kind of rhetoric that was once considered Al Qaeda propaganda?

In the years after the September 11 attacks, there was a focus on preventing Al Qaeda and other Jihadist groups from recruiting Muslims in America. Not only did those strategies fail, but Americans are increasingly being directly and indirectly recruited to commit terror acts for Islam.

The threat of Americans converting to Islam and turning to terrorism, including unlikely people like teens from Maine and Tennessee, is being accompanied by more Islamic-adjacent or Islamic-inspired attacks in which the perpetrators may not be aware that they are engaging in second degree Islamic terrorism.

The perpetrators don’t necessarily formally convert. For example there have been multiple ‘Free Palestine’ stabbings of innocent people, both Jewish and non-Jewish in New York City in which the perpetrators shouted the terrorist catchphrase. The most recent such attack took place over the summer when Raul Morales stabbed an Asian man and a Jewish man while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and “Justice for Palestine.” It’s not clear that Morales had ever formally converted, but investigators found copies of both Das Kapital and the Koran in his apartment.

Some of this may be due to unstable people being barraged by second-degree Islamic terrorist propaganda on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok which does not directly promote Islam, but instead promotes fake Gaza atrocities, and may not even be coming from Islamic sources, but from Chinese and Russian bot armies which use them as a way to undermine America.

That’s how the relatively crude crowdsourced solicitations by Al Qaeda, after the Bush administration destroyed its strongholds in Afghanistan, have evolved into a much more sophisticated multipoint crowdsourced network with buy-in from not only much of the Muslim world, but also non-Muslim enemy nations, as well as plenty of propagandists in America.

The combination of foreign social media bot armies, the influencer economy and the growing radicalization of what used to be mainstream Democrats has made ‘second degree’ Islamic terrorism into the wave of the future. Americans are joining Al Qaeda’s mission of infiltrating the country, attacking its every vulnerability and weak point and ultimately bringing it down.

And sometimes the perpetrators themselves don’t even know it.

Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine

For all of our technological marvels, a No. 2 pencil and sheets of paper filled with oval boxes remain a key determinant of success.

Sure, plenty of high achievers didn’t ace the SAT, ACT, MCAT, LSAT, and GMAT. But the vast majority of wealthy and influential Americans notched high scores in the alphabet soup of standardized tests, which are key gateways to the American dream.

And yet, even as we invest these measures with tremendous power, we feel uneasy about them. Sifting and sorting, differentiating people by their abilities, may be crucial to a well-run society, but it also runs counter to our bedrock commitment to equality. Hence the common narrative that these tests simply reflect privilege; scores are not earned so much as bought by people who game a rigged system for unfair advantages. As the Black Lives Matter riots arose in 2020, this thinking led top universities to stop requiring test scores for admission – a policy many have now reversed after finding it difficult to assess applicants without them.

While the intelligentsia seeks to have it both ways on standardized testing, depending on and demonizing them at once, they remain committed to casting another effective measure of ability as beyond the pale: Intelligence Quotient tests. IQ may be scientifically sound and powerfully predictive of outcomes, but it is political dynamite because of the profound challenge it poses to the equality thesis. This concept holds that, by and large, we are all born to the same. Differences emerge almost immediately as the environment, especially family life and access to quality education, starts writing on the blank slates of our minds.

IQ challenges this narrative because it measures innate capacity. You can’t study for the test or hire tutors to boost your score, which remains stable throughout your lifetime. The prince and the pauper can swap their positions of wealth and status, but not their ability to solve problems.

A person’s IQ, of course, does not reflect one’s human worth, dignity, or goodness – lots of rotten people have high IQs. But those with high IQs are better able to master complex ideas and processes, to perform the tasks that often lead to material success. A successful society identifies and empowers these people so their gifts can benefit the rest of us.

We may bow to the importance of IQ by acknowledging the genetic advantages of those at the tippy-top of their fields – hard as we try, you and I were never going to be another Albert Einstein or Marilyn Vos Savant. But we also pretend that the rest of us are pretty much the same.

This is nonsense – and everybody knows it. Intelligence isn’t distributed along a sideways hockey stick but along a bell curve. Human beings evince a range of intellect. But our commitment to equality is so strong that in society – though not in private conversation – we deny it.

Unlike the similar critiques of standardized tests, this equality argument is more often implied than voiced when it comes to IQ because the science leads to the opposite conclusion. Basically, we try to wish and censor it away.

IQ is doubly taboo because on the rare occasions when it is discussed, it is usually in the context of race. Charles Murray, for example, was pilloried two decades ago for exploring these connections with co-author Richard J. Herrnstein in “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.” Today, another American academic, Nathan Cofnas, is facing criminal charges for violating Belgium’s antiracism laws regarding his work exploring the persistent IQ gap between African Americans and other groups.

While our free speech laws protect Cofnas – who discussed his research in a recent episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast – from prosecution in America, his work remains verboten. Two black scholars, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, expressed a prevailing view about this issue in their recent interview with Cofnas when they acknowledged that the data about race and IQ – which has found African Americans, as a group, score about 15 points lower than whites and Asians – was accurate but questioned the point of discussing it. “Why do we need to talk about that?” McWhorter asked. “What is the point in how we are organizing society … [in] show[ing] us that black people have the lowest IQs?”

It is hard to argue with Cofnas’ response that, given the predictive value of IQ, intellectual honesty demands that we consider it when interpreting outcomes and devising public policy. The code of silence McWhorter advocates would only remove a key data point from our understanding of the obstacles people face. Cofnas’ focus on race, however, also clouds the issue.

If anything, the IQ gap provides a strong argument for a colorblind society. It is absurd to categorize people according to race and ethnicity. No group has a pure lineage. Asian, black, and white Americans came from far-flung corners of the globe, with different cultural and genetic histories.

Dumping these disparate peoples into concocted entities erases these significant differences. It engenders racist thinking by prompting us to see people as members of groups rather than unique individuals. By assigning them to artificially created entities – and then expecting those constructs to have equal outcomes – we falsely advance a form of biological determinism sharply at odds with the equality thesis by casting race and ethnicity as overriding determinants of success rather than ability. Your race is your destiny. This makes it hard for us to identify the consequential factors shared by many individuals across these groups that may make it hard for them to reach their potential.

Now a reality check: A truly colorblind society is not going to emerge any time soon because race and ethnicity serve as sources of identity and belonging. They may be arbitrary social constructs, but they also serve a powerful purpose. In addition, the equality thesis is so attractive from a moral and a political perspective that we are unlikely to abandon it. Believing that anyone can rise to the top is, after all, the essence of the American dream.

Since we seem destined to continue embracing the equality thesis, the persistent gaps in IQ and other test scores behoove us to acknowledge that our efforts – robust anti-discrimination laws and massive social spending – have not worked. In some sense, DEI efforts are an admission of that failure, as they seek to reapportion society’s spoils based on race rather than merit. This brute-force approach, however, also leads to division and discrimination while doing nothing to help people become more qualified. 

Greater minds than mine will have to figure out the path forward. But expecting a different result from the same action is stupid.

J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. Follow him on X @jpederzane.

By: Hans Mahncke

On Oct. 14, MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reported that FBI Director Kash Patel had secretly traveled to Russia for meetings with the Russian security service, the FSB. The sensational story was attributed to two anonymous sources and immediately suggested that the FBI director was involved in some sinister dealings with Moscow.

There was just one problem. Patel was in Virginia, attending an event at Liberty University. Within hours, Dilanian was forced to retract his report.

What makes this episode particularly revealing is Dilanian’s history. In 2014, The Intercept exposed emails showing that Dilanian, then at the Los Angeles Times, had routinely submitted drafts of his articles to CIA officials for review before publication, even making changes based on their feedback. In one exchange, he sent a revised draft to his CIA contacts asking, “Does this look better?”

At what point does it become absurd to keep treating people like this as journalists?

There is an entire world operating behind the headlines that most Americans know almost nothing about. A world in which political operatives, intelligence officials, and the media work together in an interconnected system that manufactures scandals, destroys reputations, and unleashes the power of government against political opponents.

Russiagate exposed this world, yet 10 years later, conservatives still talk about media bias, as though the problem were simply journalists who dislike Donald Trump.

The real problem is media lawfare. The media are embedded in the machinery itself, performing functions every bit as important as those carried out by political operatives and intelligence officials. And that machinery will never be understood or taken down so long as its media participants continue to be treated as journalists.

Russiagate remains the prime example of how this machinery operates. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manufactured the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and used its contractors, Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, to disguise its allegations as independent intelligence. That much is now widely understood, at least among conservatives. What remains far less understood is that major media organizations were themselves integral to the operation.

The Washington Post helped launch the Russia narrative in June 2016 with a breathless article declaring that Russian hackers had stolen files from the Democratic National Committee. Years later, CrowdStrike Services’ own president admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the data had ever left the DNC’s computers. Meanwhile, Fusion GPS worked directly with New York Times editors and reporters, supplying material for the paper’s false August 2016 story about Paul Manafort that directly led to his removal as Trump’s campaign chairman.

But perhaps the most revealing example involved ABC News and an innocent American businessman named Sergei Millian.

In the summer of 2016, ABC’s Matthew Mosk arranged for Millian, who was traveling in Asia, to return to New York for a July interview with Brian Ross. According to Fusion GPS’s own account, its founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, told ABC to get Millian on camera.

The arrangement served two purposes. First, to obtain footage of Millian that could be weaponized against Trump. Second, it would bring Millian to New York at a specific time, allowing Steele’s operative Igor Danchenko to meet him and subsequently attribute fabricated allegations of Trump-Russia collusion to him.

Danchenko traveled to New York but failed to meet Millian. That failure was instrumental in exposing the fraud underlying Steele’s central collusion allegation. The supposed source of the dossier’s most explosive claims had never even spoken to the man who supposedly obtained them from him. The entire sourcing chain for the central conspiracy allegation was nonexistent.

Mosk and Ross, meanwhile, got their interview. But ABC never broadcast it.

Instead, two months later, on Sept. 22, Good Morning America suddenly aired a few carefully selected clips portraying ordinary real estate transactions involving Russian buyers as suspicious.

That very same day, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released an attack advertisement featuring the ABC footage.

The only inference that can be drawn is that ABC had supplied the footage to Clinton’s operation in advance, with the Good Morning America broadcast providing a convenient alibi for how the campaign obtained it. After sitting on the interview for two months, ABC released precisely the material Clinton needed, on precisely the day she needed it.

Millian understood that he had been set up. He accused Mosk of manipulating his statements, conducting the interview under false pretenses, and destroying his reputation. “You m[a]liciously lied to me,” he told Mosk.

And these same so-called journalists reappeared in another Russiagate episode. On Dec. 1, 2017, Ross falsely reported that Trump had “instructed” Michael Flynn “to contact Russian officials during the [presidential] campaign.” ABC was forced to retract the claim and suspend Ross. Mosk was also credited on the report.

Another revealing episode occurred in September 2016, when Clinton’s contractors at Fusion GPS arranged for Steele to brief supposed journalists from ABC, Yahoo News, The New York Times, and The New Yorker at Washington’s Tabard Inn. The Washington Post received a separate briefing. Clinton’s own operatives were personally introducing reporters to the man her campaign was paying to manufacture allegations against Trump. Yet none of those reporters disclosed the arrangement to their audiences. It took Devin Nunes’ congressional investigation, more than a year later, to begin exposing the connections that the media themselves had never seen fit to reveal.

Two days later, Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff published Steele’s allegations against Carter Page, which the FBI subsequently cited in its surveillance application against Page. Clinton’s political allegations had been turned into media stories and then used by federal investigators as apparent independent corroboration.

After Trump’s election, the process became even more brazen. FBI Director James Comey briefed Trump on salacious allegations from Steele’s dossier, creating the official event CNN needed to report the story. Internal FBI correspondence shows that Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe were aware of how the briefing would provide CNN with its news hook.

These were interconnected operations involving campaign contractors, intelligence officials, and media personnel, each playing a different role within the same machinery.

And Russiagate was only the beginning. The Ukraine impeachment operation, CNN’s presence at the pre-dawn FBI raid on Roger Stone, the Trump indictments, and the Covid origins cover-up, including the “Proximal Origin” paper, all involve deeply entangled working relationships between political operatives, government officials, intelligence agencies, and media organizations.

There is an entire lawfare ecosystem whose participants, relationships, and methods remain largely hidden from public view. And nothing protects that ecosystem more effectively than the continuing fiction that its media participants are merely journalists.

Which brings the story back to Ken Dilanian of MS NOW. On Oct. 13, just one day before his latest Russia story collapsed, federal Judge Timothy Kelly extended an order preserving White House access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, finding that the administration had likely violated their constitutional rights by excluding them over unfavorable coverage.

The ruling illustrates how conservatives remain trapped in a fundamentally mistaken paradigm.

Trump complains about fake news, DOJ argues about White House access, journalists invoke press freedom, and judges apply the same old precedents about viewpoint discrimination. The entire debate revolves around the supposed rights and privileges of journalists, when the fundamental question should be whether the individuals claiming those privileges are actually performing the functions of independent journalists.

Take Marc Elias and Norm Eisen, two prominent figures in the political lawfare onslaught of the past decade. No one would seriously argue that either man has a constitutional right to access the West Wing to pursue his political objectives. Yet when media personnel perform essentially the same functions, participating in the same operations, pursuing the same objectives, and working toward the same outcomes, we are suddenly told that denying them access is an assault on the Constitution. The fact that one operates under a law firm’s letterhead while another operates under the CNN or ABC logo changes absolutely nothing about the function being performed.

And this is the point which conservatives have failed to grasp.

The entire approach must change. DOJ must begin examining media personnel as participants in the lawfare machinery rather than framing cases around journalistic bias. The FCC must bring far greater scrutiny to the conduct of broadcast licensees implicated in these operations. Above all, the public must understand how this hidden ecosystem functions.

For 10 years, conservatives have been fighting the wrong fight because they have fundamentally misunderstood the machinery they are up against.

Hans Mahncke is the founder of the Counterlawfare Institute. He holds LL.B., LL.M. and Ph.D. degrees in law. He is the author of “Swiftboating America: Exposing the Russiagate Fraud, from the Steele Dossier to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.”

Nearly half of all Muslims in France say they would think about going into exile if sovereigntist candidate Marine Le Pen is elected President next year, with a massive one in five followers of Islam saying they would definitely leave the country.

French news magazine Marianne has published the findings of large sample polling conducted for them by Ifop that suggests a large proportion of the country would simply refuse to keep living peacefully in France if their preferred candidates don’t prevail in the April 2027 Presidential Elections. Some 46 per cent of Muslims in the 9,600 respondent poll — a large sample for European polls — said they would consider “leaving France to settle in another country”.

Because the French government is officially secular its collection of data on matters like faith and ethnicity among the population can be patchy, but according to recent estimates adherents of the Muslim faith make up around ten per cent of all people in France. With around 70 million permanent residents, this could mean three-and-a-half million people responding to the election by considering going abroad.

While claims of voluntary deportation around election time are not unknown and often prove to be hyperbole, there is a hardcore within that group at 20 per cent of Muslims in France who say they have already made their minds up and will “certainly” go abroad if Le Pen is sworn in as President, approaching one-and-a-half million people.

This desire to leave may be down to concern about what Le Pen’s France may be like. Some 80 per cent of Muslims said they fear “increase in attacks and discrimination”, and 27 per cent said they would try to hide their religious choices in daily life. Even 18 per cent of hijab-wearing women said they would consider stop veiling if Le Pen won the election, the pollster claimed.

Muslims living in France are not the only group who told the pollster they’d consider going abroad. Almost as welling to sit out a Le Pen Presidency were supporters of hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who seems a credible candidate to make it to the Presidential run-offs against Le Pen, and whose party has been accused of stoking recent riots in France for their own political ends. According to Marianne, 43 per cent of Melenchon voters say they’d consider leaving France.

With his polling hovering around 17 per cent nationally, the results imply five and a half million leftists in France who would consider reacting to losing an election by moving abroad.

Voluntary expatriation isn’t the only option on the table that opponents of Marine Le Pen perceive. The prospect of the left attempting to bring the country grinding to a halt in revenge against a democratic election looms large, with the Marianne / Ifop polling finding that three-quarters of leftist Melenchon voters would simple ignore new laws they consider “unjust” and join in a general strike against the government, a level of resistance raising the fear of “gridlock” in the country.

Left-wing resistance movements or not, any such attempts to bring down the government would be up against a democratic mandate and some policies which, this polling suggests, are popular. Part of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party platform is banning the burka in public — a traditional Arab modesty garment that provides near-total coverage of a woman now associated with fundamentalist interpretations of Islam — and possibly gaining a re-enforced mandate for it by hosting a national referendum on the matter.

Per Ifop, 53 per cent of French people are “opposed to Muslim women wearing the veil in public, even if they choose to do so”, and 60 per cent want a ban referendum, suggesting the measure could possibly become law.

A majority of French also support banning organisations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood with an overwhelming 80 per cent in favour. Presse Agence states support for banning these groups is even held among a majority of left-wing voters, and even if it just misses out on an outright majority, a huge 48 per cent of Muslims were also polled to agree with the measure.

Breitbart

John Solomon just pulled back the curtain on the federal case now surrounding Rep. Ilhan Omar — and his explanation makes the raid look much bigger than a one-day political spectacle.

The headline from Monday was dramatic enough: federal agents entered Omar’s Washington, D.C., home with a court-authorized search warrant and carried away boxes of evidence.

But Solomon says the most important questions are who the real target is, what investigators were authorized to seize, and whether the endgame could reach far beyond an ordinary criminal charge.

Jesse Watters summarized the newest seizure and subpoena details Thursday night

Trending Politics reports that Homeland Security Investigations agents seized Omar’s cellphone, personal computers, passport, notebooks, and several boxes during Monday’s search. The warrant also authorized agents to collect immigration records tied to Omar and members of her family.

Omar and her husband were reportedly the only people home when agents arrived. She remained there for at least part of the search but did not provide passwords for the seized electronics.

Agents reportedly stayed at the residence for an extended period while carrying out documents and other material.

The report says the potential offenses listed in the warrant included immigration fraud, false statements in immigration proceedings, and conspiracy. Omar and her husband were reportedly home when agents arrived, and Omar did not provide passwords for the electronic devices.

More than a dozen subpoenas have also reportedly gone to people in Omar’s family circle while a Minnesota grand jury examines immigration records. No charge has been filed against Omar, and the sealed warrant affidavit has not yet been made public.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh reportedly narrowed prosecutors’ access to Omar’s records before approving the search, reflecting the constitutional protections that apply to members of Congress. Agents then remained at the residence for an extended period while removing documents and other material.

The same report says investigators are examining how Omar obtained citizenship after arriving from Somalia as a refugee in the 1990s. The central paperwork question is whether records treated her as 17 or 18 when her father naturalized — an age distinction that could determine whether derivative citizenship was available.

That is where Solomon’s analysis becomes so important.

In a new interview with Glenn Beck, the Just the News founder said a judge had to find probable cause before authorizing the search. He believes investigators may be examining two broad lanes: alleged immigration irregularities involving Omar’s family and questions raised by her financial disclosures.

Watch Solomon’s full breakdown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbU7HyN6zK0 Glenn Beck asked Solomon to explain what investigators may be looking for and why they acted so close to an election. Solomon focused first on the long-running dispute over Omar’s birth year and how old she was when she became a U.S. citizen.

That one-year difference could matter. Solomon explained that a minor could derive citizenship through a naturalized parent under the rules in effect at the time, while an adult would have to qualify independently.

He pointed to records that once placed Omar’s birth year in 1981 before official biographies were changed to 1982. Investigators are now reportedly examining whether Omar or her late father listed her as 17 rather than 18 in the relevant paperwork.

A fresh summary of the expanding case shows how the warrant, family subpoenas, birth-year issue, and separate financial inquiry now fit together:

Ilhan Omar’s bad week, by the numbers: 1️⃣ A warrant reportedly citing false statements, immigration fraud & conspiracy 2️⃣ Grand jury subpoenas for her family 3️⃣ A birth year changed from 1981 to 1982 4️⃣ A second federal probe into her finances. Her husband: “I have no… pic.twitter.com/05IA9ZXMdC

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 14, 2026

Solomon also raised a possibility that would explain the unusual election-season timing: Omar may not be the principal criminal target.

Another family member could be the target, he said, while Omar could be treated initially as a witness or as the holder of evidence investigators wanted to secure. What agents found could still lead to a separate action involving her.

And here is the part that changes the entire picture.

Solomon said that even if an old criminal offense were outside the normal statute of limitations, evidence of material fraud in the naturalization process could still support a civil denaturalization proceeding. That would be a different legal track from prosecuting a decades-old crime.

He was careful not to claim investigators have already proved their case. A warrant means a judge found probable cause to search for specified evidence; it does not establish guilt.

Solomon expects the public to learn much more if the warrant application and inventory of seized material are unsealed. Those records could reveal the government’s probable-cause theory and show what agents considered important enough to remove from the home.

A fresh Wall Street Journal report now points directly at the civil path Solomon described, saying the administration is building a case that could strip Omar’s citizenship and ultimately lead to deportation proceedings:

BREAKING WSJ:

The Trump admin’s investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar is aimed at building a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her, according to U.S. officials and other people familiar with the probe. https://t.co/PHvSOihjJN

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 14, 2026

The second investigative lane Solomon described is moving too. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has confirmed that her office is investigating Omar’s financial disclosures after the reported value of businesses tied to Omar’s husband rose sharply.

Omar says the search is political retaliation and has denied wrongdoing.

That defense does not erase the warrant, the subpoenas, or the evidence agents carried away.

It also does not answer the birth-year discrepancy, the derivative-citizenship question, or why federal investigators believed records inside the home would advance an ongoing criminal probe.

Solomon’s bottom line was not that an indictment is guaranteed. It was that the Justice Department and HSI appear to be operating in a different gear, with enough movement across several investigations that the public may finally get concrete answers.

For years, Americans have watched explosive allegations disappear into the Washington fog. This time, agents showed up with a judge-approved warrant, seized devices and documents, and put family members under subpoena.

Now the evidence gets to speak — and if Solomon is right about the path investigators are following, the raid may have been the opening move rather than the finale.

WLT Report

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) October 12, 2026

We recently covered new bombshell research showing that trans folks are in desperate need of mental health support, not surgery.

Revolver:

The progressive medical community and activists have been feeding parents a line of hooey for years now.

The message was basically this… either you affirm your kids’ gender confusion and mutilate them quickly, or things will get worse, and they’ll harm themselves.

And when some weak or totally misguided parent believes their child might hurt themselves, that kind of pressure can shut down just about every logical debate in the book.

But what happens if the medical treatment doesn’t make the psychiatric problems magically go away? Or worse, what if the kids showing up at these clinics were already dealing with serious mental-health issues that weren’t being addressed properly in the first place because the “trans” movement is the new political and social trend of the day?

Well, a major new study out of Finland is bringing all of this back into the spotlight, and the people who’ve been screaming that the trans movement is actually a massive mental health crisis are looking like the only sane people in the room.

Researchers followed more than 2,000 young people who had been referred to Finland’s gender clinics and compared them with more than 16,000 people from the general population. And the follow-up went on for 25 years.

Those are stunning numbers.

Now we know without a shadow of a doubt that the young people who underwent gender mutilation suffered serious psychiatric problems, and they only got worse as the years went on. Very sharply during the years that followed.

This shows that the psychiatric crisis didn’t disappear once mutilation entered the chat… and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. These kids needed mental help, not surgery.

You can read the entire article here:

‘Mutilate trans children or they’ll harm themselves!’ New study shows surgery makes it worse…

As a country, we don’t need to “affirm” anybody’s twisted gender choices. What we need to do is report the truth on this violent group, stop trying to hide what’s happening, and get these people the help they need before more innocent lives are injured or lost to this festering rage, confusion, and debauchery.

Revolver News

A complete Roman pottery workshop laid out on a grid has been discovered in northern France by archaeologists led by Louis Florin of the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), according to a report in La Brújula Verde. The five-acre site was occupied between the first century B.C. and the third century A.D. It includes some 50 clay extraction pits, areas for preparing clay and shaping pots with wheels, and 21 kilns. The workshop was situated on the Agrippa Road, one of a network of Roman roads that made the transport of finished pots possible. The excavation also uncovered hearths, ovens, wells, food waste, and storage jars left behind by the potters who lived at the workshop. To read about Roman pottery workshops uncovered in Germany, go to “The Road Almost Taken.”

Archaeology Magazine

Annie Andrews, a scumbag pediatrician running for Lindsey Graham’s U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina, a woman who wants sex change on demand for 8 year olds, not surprisingly thinks parents have no rights. The issue is bigger than the extraordinarily marginal concern of minors with gender dysphoria. She’s saying, explicitly, that the State owns your children and there’s nothing you can do about it. Yes, this is radical, as in Mao, Hitler or Stalin.

Yes, it’s now the mainstream of the Democratic Party everywhere, even in the South. Either you vote Republican–or you get the totalitarian policies of Mao Zedong. It’s really as simple as that.

From The Reddy Room:

I fully understand the frustrations many Republicans feel with high prices, wars, and an uncertain economy. However, when I hear Republicans claim they may vent their frustration by voting for Annie Andrews, writing in Norman, etc., I say beware the monster you may be unleashing by electing a far-left loony Democrat pretending to be moderate because of her “Republican dad” and her sudden change of heart about her liberal beliefs.

There is a great site, Therealannieandrews.com, that defines “Moderate Annie” in her own words. I listed a few items below. Please study her record in detail before you put someone in office for 6 years who will not only be there for the remaining Trump term but for the entire term of the next President.

Here is “Moderate Annie,” often in her own words:

**GUNS:**
After the 1/2023 mass shooting in CA: “It’s the f*cking guns.”
Then, in a Nancy Mace moment, she doubles down: “Sorry about my language. What I should have said is it’s the goddamn mother f*cking guns.”

**ABORTION:**
Wants to codify Roe vs. Wade by ending the filibuster in the Senate (so Democrats would only need 51 votes instead of 60). She forgets the fact that the federal government dictating policy to the states violates the Constitution and federalism.
“It is critical that Congress codifies Roe v. Wade as soon as possible. If there are not 60 votes in the US Senate, I support ending the filibuster on an issue as important as this.”

**GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE FOR MINORS:**
As recently as April 2024, she posted a video opposing H.4624, the bill banning transition procedures for minors.
She doubled down in a February 2025 post: “Gender-affirming care isn’t child abuse. It basically means not being an a$$hole to kids.”

**IMMIGRATION:**
In January 2019, she says she called then-Rep. Joe Cunningham to urge the House to keep “holding strong and not funding the border wall.”
She also opposed ending DACA, told doctors not to share information with immigration authorities as she continually advocated open-border positions. She now claims she supports “strengthening border security.” Daddy get to you, Annie??

**COVID MANDATES AND MEDICAL FREEDOM:**
“Moderate Annie” backed universal masking in schools, claimed she was “dismayed” that Mt. Pleasant Town Council voted down a mask mandate, and wanted to deny organ transplants to anyone who declined to take the COVID vaccine. Crazy Annie is more like it.

**RACE AND IDENTITY POLITICS:**
In 2024, she co-organized a group to rally white women for Kamala Harris. Her co-organizer, Shannon Watts, described the call as charging white women to “check their own privilege.” Huh? Say what, Annie??

Darline [Graham, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in South Carolina] looks pretty good to me, flaws and all. Can you imagine a Senate with Annie and Abdul El-Sayed? We can do our part and keep her out. Put away your Democratic thoughts and your write-in pens.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Probably, you have read about the recent round of riots in France. They began in late September, and are now in their fourth week. This round of riots features mostly students, and the stated bases for the protests certainly appear quite mundane, if not trivial, and certainly out of proportion to the scale and intensity of the riots. What are they so worked up about? They are demanding things like hiring more teachers, repair of dilapidated school buildings, more and better air conditioning and heating, universal school lunches at 1 euro, and so forth. (Here is a list of the demands (in French) from something calling itself the Union of Students.).

Meanwhile the riots have involved hundreds of thousands of participants on many days, multiple schools burned down, lots of violence, and thousands of arrests (the majority, but far from all, being high school students).

The big picture is that France has painted itself into the inevitable corner at the end of the progressive project. As much or more than any other developed country, France has bought into the model of the government as universal protector against all downsides in life. Decades into this, they have way excessive government spending, unsustainable public debt, economic stagnation, and not nearly enough money to go around to fund all the entitled interest groups. It’s a battle of all against all in a zero sum game where the only way to hold onto your share of the state handouts is to scream louder and riot more intensely than the others.

There are many accounts that can give you a sense of the scale and intensity of the riots. As examples, here is one from Washington Monthly on October 9, and here is another from Tablet Magazine on the same date. From the Washington Monthly piece:

This is week three of the largest French student protest movement in 20 years. Demonstrations that began at the entrances of high schools have snowballed into hundreds of thousands of marchers throughout the country—250,000 on Tuesday alone, according to the French Ministry of the Interior; 450,000, according to organizers—and violent clashes between protesters and police in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, and other cities. . . . By October 1, there were demonstrations at over 1,000 French high schools. Students at dozens of French universities had erupted in protest, too, blocking campus buildings and closing some post-secondary institutions. . . . Countless social media videos show that some protesters have not been demonstrating peacefully. Youth have set off fireworks and even lobbed mortars at school buildings; others have hurled bottles, cobblestones, and, in rare instances, hydrochloric acid at police officers, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.

Only briefly mentioned in the Washington Monthly piece is that the student rioters feature a plurality of first- and second-generation immigrants, and that the far-left identitarian political party LFI (“La France Insoumise,” or “France Unbowed”) has strongly supported the protests. But WM does have this picture (credited to the AP) of student protesters atop the Monument to the Republic in Paris. WM’s caption says that the protesters are “displaying the French flag,” but somehow they don’t notice the Palestinian flag over there in the lower left.

To get more on the far Left involvement angle, you can go to more conservative news sites, like Dominic Green on October 10 in the New York Post here:

Mobs of students in the streets. Schools going up in flames. Police using tear gas and flash-ball guns. Hundreds of injuries and thousands of arrests. . . . The disorder is backed by the far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party. Its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is second in the polls for next year’s presidential elections. . . . [O]n the streets of Paris, LFI deputy Thomas Portes was filmed shoving police officers. LFI deputy Bally Bagayoko, who has said that “violence is legitimate,” danced with a student mob at the gates of their school amid burning trash cans.

Mélenchon may view getting out in front of these protests as his ticket to getting elected President next Spring. In another view, it may be sealing his fate of defeat.

But note that until these latest riots came along, Mélenchon’s biggest issue was the effort to undo the reform of “retirements” that current President Macron put through in 2023. “Retirements” (“retraites”) is their word for the equivalent of our Social Security, a universal unfunded pay-as-you-go pension system. Until Macron’s 2023 reforms, they basically had universal entitlement to start collecting a pension at age 60. Our Social Security system by comparison currently has the entitlement to full pension at age 67, and our system is still going broke. Macron put enormous effort into getting the retirement age raised somewhat. (It’s now a complicated mishmash, mostly 62 today and increasing toward 64 by 2030, with various exceptions.). That was a big accomplishment, a huge favor to the French people. It was also not nearly enough to put the system on a sustainable footing, and at the same time the reform put a huge dent in Macron’s popularity from which he has never recovered. Of course Mélenchon wants to undo it.

So in a state that is out of money, the Left wants lots more money for education, and also lots more money for retirements. And then there’s healthcare. France has that thing that our Left views as the Holy Grail: universal (or near universal) free or nearly free healthcare. Achieved at the cost of way underpaid doctors, rationed care, declining hospitals, and little to no medical innovation. The Left thinks that the solution there is also more money. They recognize no limits, and no tradeoffs.

So let’s look at the big picture of French public finance. Per capita GDP is around $50,000 — just over half of ours. Public spending consumes an incredible 57% of GDP, compared to ours of around 38%. That means that the average French worker has around a third of the disposable income of his American counterpart. And Mélenchon and the Left want lots more public money for retirements and for education, and for health care. GDP growth stagnates. The annual budget deficit is in excess of 5%, which is a slightly lower percentage than ours — but then, our federal government can borrow in a currency that it can print, and France can’t do that.

Brivael Le Pogam is a French AI entrepreneur who has just written a long post on X on this subject that has apparently gone viral. I’ll give you a lengthy excerpt:

I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you. I come from your future. In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream. Here’s what it looks like from the inside. . . .

Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them. The promise was protection. The result is stagnation. The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. . . . Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe. . . . Trust me. You don’t want to be France.

Le Pogam’s next post (from October 13) is very long and in French, but you can click a translate button to get an English version. Here’s my translation of the opening sentences:

I have never been as optimistic as I am now. Not in spite of the current chaos, but because of it. I am going to explain to you why the empire of lies built by the Left is going to collapse, and why this is not an opinion but rather a matter of physical reality. . . .

In this long post, Le Pogam’s thesis is that the Left’s empire of lies is filled with contradictions and frictions, which will gradually wear down the operation of its machine; and that artificial intelligence will inevitably accelerate the contradictions and frictions and make the collapse happen more quickly.

I hope he’s right about this. But then, “more quickly” may be not nearly soon enough. When the Soviet Union fell, I thought that the likes of North Korea and Cuba, not to mention China, would quickly follow. But here we are 35 years later, and another entire generation has passed on, suffering unto their death under these horrible regimes, and all of the regimes are still around. France is not remotely in as much trouble as any of those.

And what does a collapse of the leftist program in France, or another such developed country, look like? No democratically elected government has yet succeeded through a democratic process in doing away with universal entitlements once enacted. (Maybe Argentina has recently come the closest.). Most likely the precipitating cause of such an entitlement rollback as predicted by Le Pogam would be a financial crisis, as when a France goes to market to role over a chunk of debt and nobody will buy the stuff, forcing a default. Then what? The debt holders don’t have any easy mechanism to force a reduction in other spending to get themselves paid. Refusal to lend more could to some degree force gradual adjustment through unavoidable balanced budgets. But the big banks of the world have a sorry history of quickly re-opening the lending spigot to defaulted sovereign borrowers. A default could easily be followed by a process of years or decades of gradual adjustment, without there ever being any clear reckoning.

And France has what I consider to be a big advantage over the U.S. — since they have adopted the euro, they can’t borrow in a currency they can print. The U.S. can>/i> borrow in a currency it can print, which gives it the ability to prolong the blowing up of the disaster potentially for additional decades, ending in a much bigger debacle when it all collapses.

I suspect that about zero of the voters who are about to vote for Democrats have given a moment’s thought to any of these considerations.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian