Plus: A Venezuelan beauty queen, a Minnesota knucklehead, and a crying communist

Andrew Stiles

Friday, January 9, 2026.

Dr. Oz, the senior government health official, wants Americans to stop drinking alcohol for breakfast. With all due respect, man, maybe next week.

2026 has barely gotten out of bed, and it’s already too sloshed to drive. We’re all just trying to keep up. If you’re not already drunk by the time you read this—what are you even doing? You’re clearly not spending enough time on social media. Stop playing with your kids or pretending to work, go inside, pour yourself a pint of cheap gin, and scroll until you’re too angry or depressed to get off the toilet. The world’s problems aren’t going to solve themselves. We need you on the front lines.

Let’s start with the good news: Americans are coming together to denounce the unfortunate yet justified execution-style murder of an innocent agitator who accidentally made the poor decision of trying to vehicularly manslaughter a heartless law-abiding ICE agent who feared for his life in Minneapolis, of all places. Schools are canceled today due to “safety concerns.” What’s the worst that could happen?

Even better news: American special forces apprehended Nicolás Maduro on the sixth anniversary of the drone strike that killed Iranian terror boss Qassem Soleimani, may he rest in pieces. Liberals were outraged, for obvious reasons. They scolded Venezuelan refugees for celebrating. They mourned the Cuban mercenaries who died defending a dictator. They published one of the most amusing fact-checks we’ve ever seen.

What they’re saying: “It looks weak,” a Democrat told Axios while refusing to go on the record for fear of being branded an anti-communist. We’re curious to know if this anonymous Democrat joined his colleagues to commemorate the Jan. 6 Capitol tour by singing “God Bless America” at a candlelight vigil. That was awesome.

The correct take: Neocons were overjoyed because—as Tucker Carlson revealed in October—Maduro’s ouster meant the Jewish cabal could finally realize its dream of Making Venezuela Gay Again. And, honestly, using Delta Force was a lot more efficient than the old way of doing things: sending Oberlin grads in USAID uniforms to lecture impoverished children about eco-friendly dildos. Embarrassing the Russians, bombing Hugo Chávez’s tomb, and seizing the oil supply was just a tasty bonus. Stay gay out there!

Meanwhile, in Iran: Anti-regime protesters across the country are destroying statues of Soleimani and chanting “Death to Khamenei” as the punk-ass supreme leader cowers in his bunker and draws up plans to flee to Russia if things get out of control. You might have noticed that the “Globalize the Intifada” crowd could not be more indifferent to the courage of Iranians risking their lives to bring down a fascist theocracy—which is odd, because everyone knows “intifada” is just a harmless rallying cry for all who struggle against oppression. It has nothing to do with hating Jews.

Crucial context: The Iranian uprising comes amid the country’s worst drought in more than 50 years, which has exacerbated the economic and social tensions. How has the regime tried to address the problem? If you guessed “blame Israel for manipulating the weather,” then you’d be correct.

AMBER Alert: Speaking of anti-Semitic climate hysterics, where’s Greta Thunberg? We can’t wait to follow her forthcoming yacht trip to Iran to document the regime’s atrocities. The adult child activist is probably just sorting out some legal issues after being banned from Venice for one of her latest stunts—dumping green dye in the Grand Canal to protest climate change. Then she’ll be off to Tehran. Bon voyage!

Bottom line: If the Iranian regime collapses in the next couple of weeks, or if Greenland becomes a U.S. colony, we’ll have no choice but to rename the month of January after Donald Trump. No figure in American history can match the accomplishments he’s racked up during his presidency in the first month of the year. “Donuary,” “Trumpuary,” or just “Trump.” Credit where credit is due.

The Donroe Doctrine: As far as Greenland is concerned, overwhelming military force should always be the first option for acquiring new territory. But that doesn’t mean Trump shouldn’t explore a less aggressive option that often succeeded in settling international disputes until the feminists started complaining.

Tampon Tim pulls out: Tim Walz ended his reelection campaign for governor of Minnesota amid growing frustration over his handling of a welfare fraud scandal involving billions of taxpayer dollars. “I will fight back with everything that I have,” Walz said at a press conference explaining his decision to quit. He followed that up by suggesting that Minnesota was “at war with the federal government.” Look, just secede and join Canada already. No one is going to miss you.

Walz is best known as the prancing moron who made Kamala Harris seem shrewd and insightful by comparison. Why else would she have picked him as a running mate? Doing what comes naturally, the mainstream media incessantly praised Walz as a paragon of modern masculinity. Owning a flannel shirt and being an asshole were cited as evidence of his working-class appeal. He was supposed to help the campaign attract male voters, but he only ever looked comfortable gabbing with the ladies of the View.

Make communists cry again: Zohran Mamdani is staffing the New York City mayor’s office with like-minded radicals. His press shop includes a number of pampered socialists who cultivated their disdain for capitalism while attending some of the most exclusive and expensive prep schools in the country. Mamdani’s communications director, Anna Bahr, is a former Rachel Maddow intern and Bernie Sanders aide who graduated from Oakwood School in Los Angeles (annual tuition: $55,000). Julian Gerson, the mayor’s top speechwriter who crafted the bone-chilling line about replacing the “frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” went to the Dalton School in Manhattan (annual tuition: $67,000).

Then there’s Cea Weaver, the newly appointed director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. An obnoxious white woman who holds degrees from Bryn Mawr and NYU, Weaver has come under fire for stating her insane beliefs on social media. She’s denounced homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy,” argued that public policy should be engineered to “impoverish the white middle class,” and expressed a desire to abolish private homes and replace them with “public housing for everyone.” The New York Times called her a “firebrand.”

Weaver broke down in tears this week when reporters peppered her with questions outside her apartment (in gentrified Brooklyn). She ran back inside after being asked to defend the structurally racist $1.6 million house her mother owns in Tennessee. Mamdani supporters were furious. They condemned the free press—a pillar of our cherished democracy—for bothering a “young woman attempting to make the world a better place.” (Weaver is a 37-year-old public official.) Making communists cry was once considered a basic civic obligation, a time-honored American pastime.

We used to be a proper country.

After Renee Nicole Good died trying to kill an ICE agent, the left is lusting after a blood-and-thunder civil war, but it doesn’t have to end this way.

Allan J. Feifer | January 9, 2026

On Wednesday, Renee Nicole Good died in Minneapolis after being shot in a defensive shooting by an ICE agent who had previously been hit by a car in a similar situation. Almost everyone is focused on the specific events of that day rather than what is clearly an escalatory spiral with no endpoint in sight.

Andrea Widburg wrote an excellent post the other day that correctly redirected us to the growing schism between leftists’ grasp on reality and their actions. Not highlighted in this article are the special circumstances that the left has cultivated over the last generation, which have set the country up for an eventual reckoning that increasingly looks like a war between the states.

The Founders always understood that regional differences in taste, culture, society, economics, and more would continue under the framework of a united country. That is one of the principal reasons we have independent states, governed by a system of governors and individual legislatures, rather than an all-powerful federal system. It was believed that common interests would ensure harmonious relations between the states, as their basic proclivities would always align. The Founders never foresaw that artificial constructs would change that commonality of interests. But it has happened!

Democrats can be very crafty. The history of sanctuary cities shows that, while they began in the 80s, it was only in this century that the movement grew and became radicalized, eventually thwarting federal laws and enforcement efforts.

Americans, even law-and-order Americans, don’t like heavy-handed enforcement against citizens. Additionally, America has a history of diverse political thought, giving rise to the current schism between the left and the right.

While the right has generally been more law-abiding, especially in the last fifty years, the left has become more activist. Bolstered by left-leaning politicians, attorneys general and district attorneys, violent rhetoric of all kinds has found a willing home in Blue States and cities.

Yesterday’s shooting is a direct result of these policies that are encouraging the crazies to act out their fantasy of being radicals without (they believe) the risk of getting hit over the head, arrested, jailed, and ultimately shot. Politicians are responsible for all this Blue State violence and have created a dangerous situation for law enforcement.

They issued these statements after Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the ICE narrative “bullshit” and told ICE to “get the f*** out of Minneapolis.”

A credible case can be made that in Blue States with strong anti-authority laws, attitudes, and an energized, protected base of leftists, the inevitable clashes will snowball into dangerous territory requiring the federal government to intervene, leading to an escalatory spiral that may not stop.

These governors are playing with fire. This is how relatively minor internal divisions can turn into civil wars. Today’s permissive environment is going to lead to more cities being burned down and many injuries and deaths. The left believes that ultimately the federal government will back down and look the other way on myriad issues, giving them the win.

I don’t believe that’s going to happen. They’ve been miscalculating for a long time. At a certain point, we’re going to have to push back—hard. If we don’t, events will explode, and only the most ardent leftists and nihilists are pushing for that.

God Bless America!

Allan Feifer. Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com.

That our people should live in their own homes is a sentiment deep in the heart of our race and of American life,” said President Herbert Hoover, perhaps the most important advocate of mass homeownership in the country’s history, in 1931. “They never sing songs about a pile of rent receipts.”

But a ballad about the rental market is overdue. When rich-world interest rates began to surge in 2022, renting became a better deal than buying. House prices have since stagnated or slumped in many places, and rates are falling. Even so, there is reason to think that the winning streak for renters will continue.

According to Zillow, an American property website, the monthly cost of buying and keeping a home—including taxes, insurance, a modest maintenance cost and a downpayment of 20%—came to less than that of renting from 2015 to 2021, an era of ultra-low interest rates. Since then, however, the picture has flipped. Today a new buyer pays about $400 more a month. In several of the country’s largest cities, the difference runs to thousands of dollars a month.

This is not just an American phenomenon. According to CBRE, an estate agent, there is no Australian precinct where it is cheaper to buy a flat than to rent one. Rathbones, a British wealth-management firm, estimates that rental yields—the amount landlords make from tenants relative to the price of the house—are 5% or so, not much above the 4.4% for five-year fixed mortgages. Given that landlords must also meet steep maintenance and tax costs, this indicates renters are getting a good deal.

Renters often fear they are throwing away money by handing it to landlords, while buyers build up home equity. But property is not the only investment available. Arthur Cox of the University of Northern Iowa finds that, even from 1984 to 2013, a period of rising house prices and declining interest rates, people were sometimes better off if they avoided homeownership. In three of the six American metropolitan areas he investigated, renting and investing the extra money that would have been required for mortgage payments in stocks and corporate bonds was the more profitable choice.

True, in some places renters have recently lost ground. In Hong Kong, for instance, rental yields have risen from less than 2.5% four years ago to 3.5% today. The shift has been driven by a slump in house prices, which have fallen by a third in real terms since 2021.

But there is a difference between mortgages in Hong Kong and those in other rich-world locations. Hong Kong’s borrowers mostly take on floating-rate mortgages, which typically move with the Federal Reserve’s short-term interest rates. Elsewhere, mortgages are more likely to depend on longer-term rates. And they have barely budged: despite recent interest-rate cuts, five- and ten-year government-bond yields mostly sit where they did three years ago. In America 30-year mortgage rates remain above 6%, more than twice the rock-bottom levels reached in the covid-19 pandemic. Although buyers can find shorter-term mortgages, they take on the risk of a rebound in inflation when doing so.

Picking a likely victor in the ongoing battle between tenancy and ownership thus means taking a view on the future path of long-term interest rates. Your columnist would suggest that they look worryingly sticky. Concerns about government debt and long-term inflationary pressures are not going anywhere.

Moreover, in recent years renter-friendly regulation has swept the West. Britain’s Renters’ Rights Act makes it more difficult for landlords to evict residents, and enables tenants to challenge rent increases via tribunals. Many American cities have frozen regulated rents, as Zohran Mamdani, New York’s new mayor, intends to do in his city. Such rules are terrible news for anyone considering making an investment in housing. They tip the calculation further in favour of tenants.

Buyers have reasons to own a home that surmount cold financial logic. Many feel the same emotional pull that animated Hoover almost a century ago. Others want a secure and long tenure. And in some markets, it is just a question of practicality: finding a large, single-family home to rent can be difficult. But for the cool, unemotional resident weighing up the pros and cons of buying, there is a clear winner. Absent a much steeper fall in house prices, a sudden decline in long-term interest rates or a protracted surge in rents, renting will remain the better option. ■

The Economist

In the olden days, when people had their property confiscated, their freedom crushed, and their lives destroyed in the name of Marxism, their fate was inflicted by strongmen like Joseph Stalin. Nowadays, there is the added humiliation of being menaced with this malicious ideology by metrosexual soy boys like Zohran Mamdani and silver spoon AWFLs like his henchwoman Cea Weaver, who cannot find the inner strength to deal with being called out on her hypocrisy.

The New York Post reports on Weaver, Mamdani’s Commissar for Socialized Housing:

The 37-year-old, who has faced backlash for blasting homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in the past, teared up when she emerged briefly from her apartment building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at about 9 a.m.

Weaver, who was tapped by Mamdani to be his new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants, quickly ran back inside after she was asked about the $1.6 million home her mother owns in Nashville, Tennessee.

Only people who have had everything handed to them can believe in an ideology that calls for everything to be handed to everyone at everyone else’s expense.

Because the leftist goal is to make the whole country into a slum, Weaver hates “gentrifiers” who improve lousy neighborhoods:

“There is no such thing as a ‘good’ gentrifier, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren’t,” Weaver wrote in a 2018 post.

She even complained about the gentrification of her own Crown Heights neighborhood — which the well-to-do commie helped gentrify by living there.

If only we could cure hypocrisy, this would also cure moonbattery.

Communications networks go dark right after start of Tehran protests urged on by exiled crown prince; protesters chant ‘death to the dictator’ and ‘death to the Islamic Republic’

Thousands of people in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.

The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the Shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.

Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including eight minors, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.

Thousands of people in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.

The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the Shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.

Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including eight minors, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.

Thousands of people in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.

The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the Shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.

Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including eight minors, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.2/2Skip Ad

The NGO said Wednesday was the bloodiest day since the demonstrations began, with 13 protesters confirmed to have been killed.

“The evidence shows that the scope of the crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding that hundreds more have been wounded and over 2,000 arrested.

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The growth of the protests increases the pressure on Iran’s civilian government and its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. CloudFlare, an internet firm, and the advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference. Attempts to dial landlines and mobile phones from Dubai to Iran were connected. Such outages have in the past been followed by intense government crackdowns.

Meanwhile, the protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless. It remains unclear how Pahlavi’s call will affect the demonstrations moving forward.

“The lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran,” wrote Nate Swanson of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, who studies Iran.

“There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Walesa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.”

Thursday’s demonstration rallies at home and in the street

Pahlavi had called for demonstrations at 8 p.m. local time on Thursday and Friday. When the clock struck, neighborhoods across Tehran erupted in chanting, witnesses said. The chants included “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Others praised the shah, shouting: “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!” Thousands could be seen on the streets.

“Great nation of Iran, the eyes of the world are upon you. Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands,” Pahlavi said in a statement. “I warn the Islamic Republic, its leader and the [Revolutionary Guard] that the world and [President Donald Trump] are closely watching you. Suppression of the people will not go unanswered.”

Iranian officials appeared to be taking the planned protests seriously. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper published a video online claiming security forces would use drones to identify those taking part.

Iranian officials have offered no acknowledgment of the scale of the overall protests, which raged across many locations Thursday, even before the 8 p.m. demonstration. However, there have been reporting regarding security officials being hurt or killed.

The judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported a police colonel suffered fatal stab wounds in a town outside of Tehran, while the semiofficial Fars news agency said gunmen killed two security force members and wounded 30 others in a shooting in the city of Lordegan in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province.

A deputy governor in Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province told Iranian state television that an attack at a police station killed five people Wednesday night in Chenaran, some 700 kilometers (430 miles) northeast of Tehran.

Iran weighs Trump threat

It remains unclear why Iranian officials have yet to crack down harder on the demonstrators. Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” America “will come to their rescue.”

Trump’s comments drew a new rebuke from Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

“Recalling the long history of criminal interventions by successive US administrations in Iran’s internal affairs, the Foreign Ministry considers claims of concern for the great Iranian nation to be hypocritical, aimed at deceiving public opinion and covering up the numerous crimes committed against Iranians,” it said.

Biggest protests since Mahsa Amini’s death

Iran has faced rounds of nationwide protests in recent years. As sanctions tightened and Iran struggled after the 12-day war, its rial currency collapsed in December, reaching 1.4 million to $1. Protests began soon after, with demonstrators chanting against Iran’s theocracy.

Prior to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the rial was broadly stable, trading at around 70 to $1. At the time of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, $1 traded for 32,000 rials. Shops in markets across the country have shut down as part of the protests.

With the announcement that he is withdrawing from the Minnesota governor’s race, Tim Walz is on the hunt for a new career. Fortunately, The Babylon Bee has come up with the following list of jobs he’d be absolutely fabulous for:

1. Learning Center Director: These have flourished into multi-billion-dollar businesses under his watch.
2. Chief counselor at the “Pray Away The Straight” camp: What a perfect fit.
3. One of those wacky inflatable tube men at a car dealership: He’s already doing the motions. Might as well get paid.
4. Supervisor of the tampon dispenser at a men’s correctional facility: He’s the world’s foremost expert on stocking feminine products in masculine spaces.
5. Head coach for the Minnesota Vikings: Run that pick-six, Timmy.
6. Member of the Village People: He would reportedly prefer to be the one who wears leather chaps.
7. Perverted uncle impersonator: It’s a niche market, but who could be better?
8. President of Somalia: A natural transition.

Ol’ Tim is certain to land on his feet somewhere. What other jobs would be perfect for him?

The Babylon Bee

Democrats seem to think that laws and policies they don’t like can be thwarted by an angry mob or an insurrectionist governor.

Forget January 6. It turns out January 7 might go down as the date when insurrection really arrived in America — not from the MAGA right, but from the anti-Trump left.

In the aftermath of the fatal shooting Wednesday in Minneapolis of a woman who appears to have tried to ram an ICE agent with her vehicle, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced at a press conference that he had issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard to mobilize to “protect Minnesotans” from “rogue ICE agents.”

When asked if the National Guard would be deployed against federal agents, or if anything like that has ever happened before, Walz said, “We’ve never been at war with our federal government,” and at one point told Minnesotans, “do not allow them to deploy federal troops here.”

It’s an almost unbelievable series of statements from a sitting governor. If taken at face value, it amounts to a threat to use the Minnesota National Guard for an anti-federal insurrection — something that has never quite happened in American history (the late 1850s armed conflict between the Mormons and the U.S. Army comes to mind, but Utah was a territory at the time, not a state). If Walz actually follows through with that threat, it will be an open act of sedition.

In that case, the moderate response would be to immediately arrest Walz, federalize the Minnesota National Guard, and declare martial law. Is Walz radical and clueless enough to actually do this? He was willing to let Minneapolis burn in the 2020 BLM riots before he activated the National Guard to restore order, so who knows.

But it’s not just Walz. Every Democrat leader in Minnesota was angling to out-insurrection each other on Wednesday it seems. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to “get the f*ck out of Minneapolis,” said the idea that the ICE agent was acting in self-defense was “bullsh*t,” and claimed ICE had come to Minneapolis to “literally kill people.” The shooting, Frey declared, was murder.

Frey and Walz are making these statements based on videos everyone has seen. At the time they made them, they had no special knowledge or facts about what happened, beyond what the rest of us had. To deploy this kind of maximal, incendiary rhetoric, in a city and a political climate as volatile as Minneapolis, is tantamount to begging for riots and mob violence from anti-ICE mobs.

Indeed, for many months now Frey and other leading Minnesota Democrats have been demonizing ICE agents and urging their radical base to disrupt lawful ICE operations. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, currently the leading candidate for one of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seats, urged activists to “put your body on the line” to stop ICE agents from “kidnapping” people.

If Republicans were deploying this kind of rhetoric the left would call it “stochastic terrorism,” a term which refers to the repetition of hostile rhetoric, amplified by news media, with the aim of goading people into committing ideologically motivated violence, randomly and unpredictably. The term gained notoriety in recent years as an epithet left-wing journalists decided to hurl at President Trump.

Yet what’s playing out now in Minnesota is a textbook case of stochastic terrorism — perpetrated by that state’s highest political officeholders. Walz and Frey and Flanagan are calling for (and getting) political vigilantism. The police chief of Minneapolis has urged city residents to call the police if they see masked ICE agents making an arrest, promising that Minneapolis police would intervene. Walz routinely calls ICE agents the Gestapo. So does Frey. So do many leading Democrats all across the country.

Keep in mind, they’re doing this because they don’t want the Trump administration to enforce existing immigration law. These ICE agents have not gone rogue. They are duly authorized by DHS and are conducting lawful operations. Democrat elected officials, not just in Minnesota but across the country, have decided that because they don’t want federal immigration laws to be enforced it’s okay to urge people to interfere, harass, assault, and impede ICE.

As a result, we have a network of anti-ICE activists (including the woman who was shot Wednesday) roaming the country, tracking agents and inserting themselves into ICE operations. Over the past twelve months there have been hundreds of incidents of “protesters” ramming ICE agents with their vehicles. Democrats have encouraged and incited this — all the while knowing that at some point, it would lead to someone getting shot by an ICE agent. Almost like they wanted it to happen.

As I write this, angry mobs are flooding the streets of Minneapolis. Rioters already smashed in the doors of the federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. The city might well burn in the coming days, as it did in 2020.

The lawlessness of the leftist mob is to be expected at this point. That’s not to say they shouldn’t all be rounded up and prosecuted at least as severely as the Biden administration prosecuted J6ers. But something must also be done about the Democrat politicians who are inciting violence and, in Walz’s case, flirting with insurrection.

Trump has a chance here to do what he should have done in 2020 during the BLM riots. Whether he acts boldly or falters in the coming days might not just define his presidency. It might also be the defining moment in our national divorce, our Bleeding Kansas, the moment to which we someday look back and say, it was all over after that.

John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist

President Trump, who rose to power denouncing the architects of the Iraq War, has ended up embracing their worldview.

Donald Trump is often described as a “populist,” a “nationalist,” or as someone who sits outside the traditional ideological categories. However, when one examines his foreign policy closely, a different picture emerges. Trump is, in practice, a neoconservative. 

He is not a neoconservative in the sense we once knew: he does not cloak American interventions in the language of democracy promotion, human rights, or universal values. Instead, he is a neoconservative without the values. What makes him distinctive is not the substance of his policies, but the way he frames them, stripped of the moralizing tone. Oddly enough, this makes his foreign policy more transparent—and perhaps, in some ways, more refreshing.

Classical neoconservatism was never only about hawkish foreign policy. It was about the marriage of power and ideals. The movement argued that American might was essential not just to secure interests but to shape the world in America’s image. Its architects spoke of freedom as a guiding principle and cast interventions as noble missions to uplift societies. The failures in Iraq and Afghanistan discredited much of this idealism, but at least the worldview maintained coherence: American force was justified because it was said to serve universal values.

Trump’s foreign policy, however, looks strikingly similar in its outcomes yet arrives without the pretense. Take Israel. Trump is perhaps the most pro-Israel president in American history. He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and midwifed the Abraham Accords. These were all longtime neoconservative priorities. Yet Trump did not package these moves as part of a grand moral project. He spoke of them in terms of deals, strength, and straightforward defense of an ally.

Or consider Ukraine. Despite his soft rhetoric toward Vladimir Putin, Trump approved lethal aid for Kyiv in his first term, a step that the Obama administration avoided. He pressured NATO allies to increase their defense spending, a move that neoconservatives had long demanded to strengthen the transatlantic alliance. Again, this was a policy that fit the neoconservative agenda, but Trump never presented it as a struggle between freedom and tyranny. For him, it was about fairness, deterrence, and not letting America be taken advantage of.

The most striking example may be Afghanistan. Trump criticized “forever wars” and promised withdrawals, but he has also recently floated the idea of returning to Afghanistan after the Biden administration’s chaotic exit. That sounds very much like the old neoconservative argument: American credibility requires intervention. The difference is that Trump does not wrap this position in talk of saving Afghan democracy or defending women’s rights. He says it plainly: America cannot look weak.

Paradoxically, there is an element of honesty in this approach. The Iraq War was sold as an effort to liberate a people and plant democracy in the Middle East. Trump, had he been in charge, might have said instead: Saddam Hussein is a threat, and we will remove him to prove our power. It is brutal, transactional, even cynical—but it is clear. For a public that has grown weary of noble lies and disappointed promises, there may be something refreshing in that candor.

Some will object that Trump cannot be called a neoconservative. Didn’t he run against the neocons? Didn’t he rail against Iraq and promise an end to foreign entanglements? That is the rhetoric. However, upon examining the record, the policies align: strong support for Israel, a tough stance toward Russia, and a willingness to project force abroad when credibility is at stake. In substance, Trump stands much closer to the neoconservative tradition than his “America First” slogans suggest.

The difference lies in the varnish. Neoconservatives insisted that America’s interventions were for the good of humanity. Trump insists they are for the good of America, full stop. That lack of moral varnish is what makes his foreign policy appear so unpredictable to analysts who listen to his isolationist talk while ignoring the neoconservative outcomes.

This raises a provocative possibility: Trump may be pioneering a new phase of American interventionism. Call it value-free neoconservatism. It keeps the hawkish policies but strips them of their missionary zeal. It abandons democracy promotion as a central project, recognizing how discredited it became in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, it leans into naked power politics. Interventions are justified because they show strength, secure allies, and prove America will not be humiliated.

For America’s allies, this shift can be disconcerting. They may welcome the support but feel unsettled by its transactional rationale. For adversaries, it is potentially more dangerous because it signals that American force might be wielded without even the fig leaf of moral justification. For Americans themselves, though, the bluntness can feel like a relief. After years of hearing leaders speak about democracy while delivering quagmires, a leader who says outright that power is about power may sound more believable.

The irony is that President Trump, who rose to power denouncing the architects of the Iraq War, has ended up embodying their worldview. He has kept their hawkish instincts while shedding their moral pretenses. In that sense, he is the purest neocon of all: a man who believes in using American strength to shape the world but does not bother pretending it is for anyone but for the benefit of the United States.

That may not make for inspiring rhetoric. It certainly does not make for comfort abroad. But in an era when Americans are deeply skeptical of foreign adventures, Trump’s stripped-down version of neoconservatism might be the only form that can survive politically. It is, in its own way, the most honest expression of what neoconservatism always was.

About the Author: Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, directs the university’s Center for Governance and Markets. She is the author of several books, including Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Clearly a case of self-defense, based on the numerous videos.

You would think Minneapolis’s leaders would do all they could to try to salvage their city’s riot-prone image in the wake of the George Floyd debacle. But you’d be wrong.

Here’s the latest idiocy coming out of what looks like a sad situation for a leftist woman lacking reasonable judgment around police operations, according to the New York Times:

A federal officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis during an immigration enforcement operation Wednesday, as the Trump administration intensified a crackdown on illegal immigration. Details of the shooting remained unclear, with conflicting accounts from local and federal officials.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in a statement that an agent had opened fire after a woman “weaponized her vehicle” in an attempt to kill federal officers. Mayor Jacob Frey called her account “bullshit” in a news conference, describing the shooting instead as “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”

Well, no, it was not bee ess, and anyone looking at the videos on X can clearly see that it looked like a protester ramming ICE agents in the course of their duties, using her car as a weapon, and an agent or agents firing back through the windshield, which can only be done from the front. To any reasonable observer, that’s self-defense, even as it led to an unfortunate ending for the leftist.

None of this has stopped the radical left, led by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, fromfrom over-reacting. Frey shrieked profanity at the television cameras to keep things whipped up.

Mayor Frey described the shooting as “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” He took issue with the federal government’s description of the shooting, describing it as “bullshit,” saying that he had viewed video of the incident.

He went toilet-mouth on national television, too:

It’s like he’s trying to whip up a riot, another burn-a-thon against Minneapolis’s ever-diminishing businesses for Gov. Tim Walz’s wife to open her windows to inhale.

As if that is in Minneapolis’s interest.

This isn’t leadership, it’s collaboration with leftists, rioters, and terrorists, and effectively calling on them to deliver more.

It’s highly probable that they will, looking to make themselves a new George Floyd as fraud hearings over Somali theft of billions in state and federal funding makes headlines.

And worse still, Frey was issuing de facto threats about people getting killed about a week ago, instead of doing all he could to tamp down the raging leftists.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents the area, preferred to go the liar’s route to this event, sounding like a mendacious left-wing lawyer:

A legal observer, she claimed, which suggests she probably knew these obstructors.

Ahem. Omar didn’t explain why the ‘legal observer’ was acting illegally. Any real legal observer knows not to interfere with lawmen as they go about their duties, let alone not try to ram anyone with a car.

But Omar’s got a mob to whip up, too, so the lies come easy.

Obviously, another disaster is in store for Minneapolis’s battered business owners. The rage-protests are already being set up, and Frey will cover himself by wanly calling on them to be peaceful, which knowing them, is unlikely to happen.

The left has the press on its side, but even that is a tattered weapon with all the X videos going around showing different sides of the ramming incident indicating self-defense.

Yes, it’s sad for the protestor, but these things inevitably happen, given that lawmen don’t know right off the bat if the person ramming them with their car and ignoring orders to stop is armed, a cartel leader, a human smuggler trying to escape justice, or a mere leftist trying to escape responsibility for reckless actions.

That doesn’t excuse Minneapolis leaders, truly among the worst in the country, for taking measures to ensure more rioting in their city from out-of-control leftists. They’ll get it, and then where will Minneapolis be?

Monica Showalter, American Thinker

President Trump has ridiculed Denmark’s dog sled teams in Greenland.

He has cited mysterious Chinese and Russian ships prowling off the coast.

He seems increasingly fixated on the idea that the United States should take over this gigantic icebound island, with one official saying the president wants to buy it and another suggesting that the United States could simply take it. Just a few days ago, Mr. Trump said: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.”

But the question is: Does the United States even need to buy Greenland — or do something more drastic — to accomplish all of Mr. Trump’s goals?

Under a little-known Cold War agreement, the United States already enjoys sweeping military access in Greenland. Right now, the United States has one base in a very remote corner of the island. But the agreement allows it to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases across Greenland, “house personnel” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.”

It was signed in 1951 by the United States and Denmark, which colonized Greenland more than 300 years ago and still controls some of its affairs.

“The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants,” said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.

“I have a very hard time seeing that the U.S. couldn’t get pretty much everything it wanted,” he said, adding, “if it just asked nicely.”

But buying Greenland — something that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Tuesday was Mr. Trump’s latest plan — is a different question.

Greenland does not want to be bought by anyone — especially not the United States. And Denmark does not have the authority to sell it, Dr. Olesen said.

“It is impossible,” he said.

In the past, Denmark would have been the decider. In 1946, it refused the Truman administration’s offer of $100 million in gold.

Today, things are different. Greenlanders now have the right to hold a referendum on independence and Danish officials have said it’s up to the island’s 57,000 inhabitants to decide their future. A poll last year found 85 percent of residents opposed the idea of an American takeover.

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has repeatedly scoffed at the idea of being bought, saying this past week, “Our country is not for sale.”

The relatively short, straightforward defense agreement between the United States and Denmark was updated in 2004 to include Greenland’s semiautonomous government, giving it a say in how American military operations might affect the local population. The roots of the agreement go back to a partnership forged during World War II.

At that time, Denmark was occupied by the Nazis. Its ambassador in Washington, cut off from Copenhagen, took it upon himself to strike a defense agreement for Greenland with the United States. (The island is part of North America, along the Arctic Ocean and close to Canada’s coast.)

The fear was that Nazis could use Greenland as a steppingstone to America. The Germans had already established small meteorological bases on the island’s east coast and relayed information for battles in Europe. American troops eventually ousted them and established more than a dozen bases there with thousands of troops, landing strips and other military facilities.

After World War II, the United States continued to run some bases and a string of early warning radar sites. As the Cold War wound down, the United States closed all of them except one. It’s now called the Pittufik Space Base and helps track missiles crossing the North Pole.

The Danes have a light presence, too: a few hundred troops, including special forces that use dog sleds to conduct long-range patrols. In recent months, the Danish government has vowed to upgrade its bases and increase surveillance.

After American special forces captured Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, from a safehouse last week, Mr. Trump seemed emboldened. Stephen Miller, a top aide, then claimed that Greenland should belong to the United States and that “nobody’s going to fight the United States” over it. Danish and Greenlandic anxiety skyrocketed.

On Tuesday night, Danish and Greenlandic leaders asked to meet with Mr. Rubio, according to Greenland’s foreign minister. It’s not clear if or when that might happen.

Tensions between Mr. Trump and Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, have been steadily rising, as Mr. Trump pushes to “get” Greenland, as he puts it, while Ms. Frederiksen refuses to kowtow to him.

Just a few days ago, Ms. Frederiksen cited the 1951 agreement, saying, “We already have a defense agreement between the Kingdom and the United States today, which gives the United States wide access to Greenland.” She urged the United States “to stop the threats” and said an American attack on Greenland would mean the end of the international world order.

European leaders issued their own statement on Tuesday, also citing the 1951 agreement and saying, “Greenland belongs to its people.”

Analysts said that if the United States tried to use the defense pact as a fig leaf to send in a lot of troops and try to occupy Greenland, that wouldn’t be legal either.

According to the 2004 amendment, the United States is supposed to consult with Denmark and Greenland before it makes “any significant changes” in its military operations on the island. The 2004 amendment, which was signed by Gen. Colin L. Powell, who was then the secretary of state, explicitly recognizes Greenland as “an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark.”

Peter Ernstved Rasmussen, a Danish defense analyst, said that in practice, if American forces made reasonable requests, “the U.S. would always get a yes.”

“It is a courtesy formula,” he said. “If the U.S. wanted to act without asking, it could simply inform Denmark that it is building a base, an airfield or a port.”

That’s what infuriates longtime Danish political experts. If Mr. Trump wanted to beef up Greenland’s security right now, he could. But there has been no such official American request, said Jens Adser Sorensen, a former senior official in Denmark’s Parliament.

“Why don’t you use the mechanism of the defense agreement if you’re so worried about the security situation?” he said, adding: “The framework is there. It’s in place.”

But Greenland’s strategic location is not the only thing that has attracted Mr. Trump’s inner circle. The enormous island has another draw: critical minerals, loads of them, buried under the ice. Here, too, analysts say, the United States doesn’t need to take over the island to get them.

Greenlanders have said they are open to doing business — with just about anyone.

Jeffrey Gettleman is an international correspondent based in London covering global events. He has worked for The Times for more than 20 years.

Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.

See more on: U.S. Politics, Mette Frederiksen, Marco Rubio, Donald TrumpRead 1,170 comments

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• Greenland: Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted. Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in taking Greenland. But analysts say that, thanks to a little-known Cold War agreement, the United States already enjoys sweeping military access there.

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