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

The MOAB is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal and has been used only once before in a strike on a village in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province in 2017

=============================================================

The US military has drawn up new strike plans against Iran that include potentially using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the “mother of all bombs,” according to a report from CNN.

The MOAB is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal and has been used only once before in a strike on a village in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province in 2017. The US said the strike killed dozens of ISIS-K fighters, and the now-defunct US-backed Afghan government said no civilians were killed because they evacuated due to the ISIS occupation. But since returning, the residents have dealt with environmental effects and the damage from the attack, which destroyed about 30 civilian homes.

The CNN report said that the potential target of the MOAB includes Iranian energy infrastructure, with one source telling the outlet that President Trump ordered the military to develop additional strike packages against Iranian targets that include “a lot of energy infrastructure” and the potential use of a MOAB.

The MOAB is about 30 feet long, and due to its size, it must be dropped from a C-130 cargo aircraft close to the intended target, meaning that any MOAB strike on Iran would be vulnerable to Iranian air defenses.

The other potential target is Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, known in Iran as Kolang Kouh. The US and Israel have alleged there may be nuclear activity underneath the mountain, allegations that Iranian officials have denied. The problem with a MOAB strike is that it is designed for a massive surface-level blast, not for penetrating underground like the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the bunker-busting bomb that the US dropped on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, which is heavier than the MOAB but carries less explosive.

Sources speaking to CNN said a potential MOAB strike could be more of a psychological operation. “POTUS has unfortunately put himself in a situation where he is almost compelled to do something and, without the ammunition designed to penetrate that level … you have to look at psychological effects for which the MOAB is well-equipped,” a source familiar with the planning told the outlet.

Any MOAB strike could result in devastating civilian casualties since the bomb has the power to destroy nine city blocks. The CNN report said that some US officials have warned that dropping the massive bomb was unlikely to force Iran’s capitulation or achieve a strategic military victory.

Dave DeCamp, Headline USA

From gas prices to Lindsay Clancy, the left is out of control.

Patricia McCarthy | October 15, 2026

The hysteria of the week among those same, tough, equal-to-men feminists is a joke told by comic Shane Gillis on SNL about how women dress at the gym.  He used the word whore.  It wasn’t particularly funny because women have dressed in tight-fitting workout clothes forever.  Short shorts are de rigueur.  From the left’s meltdown, one would think he had announced he was pro-life and pro-Trump.

That would certainly get their rage juices flowing.  These women and their submissive male defenders most definitely want everything not only both ways but every way, depending on their political purposes of the moment.  Right now, it serves their purpose to be outraged at everything, any little joke, any scandal they can use against conservatives, however irrational it may be.  They author their own debasement.

But our left is so Trump-deranged, they pounce on anything, no matter how irrelevant, if they can find a way to blame Trump.  Social media denizens can find a way to blame him and his supporters for anything they think they can use against him, no matter how ludicrous or far-fetched.

The left studiously ignores the damage Obama and Biden did to this country and blames Trump for the consequences of their folly.  Obama engineered the division between blacks and whites just as they were disappearing.  Biden’s maladministration created the invasion of 20+m migrants that took jobs from Americans, raised housing costs to accommodate the influx, and generated the high costs of everything else as regulations on fossil fuels tightened.

Biden essentially allowed Putin to invade Ukraine by suggesting a small incursion would be O.K. with him.

The Biden administration was the most tyrannical in U.S. history.  Thousands of conservatives were surveilled, punished, harassed, etc.

Trump was relentlessly persecuted by leftist DAs and AGs and Biden’s DOJ.

Parents who showed up at school board meetings were hounded, and even arrested, for expressing complaints.

Transgenderism was aggressively promoted, including the mutilation of young children, as was the inclusion of boys’ and girls’ sports, defying common sense.

All of which was and remains counter to basic American values.  If this left takes the House and Senate, the country will decline so fast, our heads will spin.

The hysteria of the week among those same, tough, equal-to-men feminists is a joke told by comic Shane Gillis on SNL about how women dress at the gym.  He used the word whore.  It wasn’t particularly funny because women have dressed in tight-fitting workout clothes forever.  Short shorts are de rigueur.  From the left’s meltdown, one would think he had announced he was pro-life and pro-Trump.

That would certainly get their rage juices flowing.  These women and their submissive male defenders most definitely want everything not only both ways but every way, depending on their political purposes of the moment.  Right now, it serves their purpose to be outraged at everything, any little joke, any scandal they can use against conservatives, however irrational it may be.  They author their own debasement.

So, they pretend to be outraged by high gas prices despite their hatred of fossil fuels, the Cornell debauchery despite decades of promoting that kind of behavior, a stupid joke that would offend no one in a normal course of events.

But our left is so Trump-deranged, they pounce on anything, no matter how irrelevant, if they can find a way to blame Trump.  Social media denizens can find a way to blame him and his supporters for anything they think they can use against him, no matter how ludicrous or far-fetched.

The left studiously ignores the damage Obama and Biden did to this country and blames Trump for the consequences of their folly.  Obama engineered the division between blacks and whites just as they were disappearing.  Biden’s maladministration created the invasion of 20+m migrants that took jobs from Americans, raised housing costs to accommodate the influx, and generated the high costs of everything else as regulations on fossil fuels tightened.

Biden essentially allowed Putin to invade Ukraine by suggesting a small incursion would be O.K. with him.

The Biden administration was the most tyrannical in U.S. history.  Thousands of conservatives were surveilled, punished, harassed, etc.

Trump was relentlessly persecuted by leftist DAs and AGs and Biden’s DOJ.

Parents who showed up at school board meetings were hounded, and even arrested, for expressing complaints.

Transgenderism was aggressively promoted, including the mutilation of young children, as was the inclusion of boys’ and girls’ sports, defying common sense.

All of which was and remains counter to basic American values.  If this left takes the House and Senate, the country will decline so fast, our heads will spin.

Elon’s comment to spin up Amazon competitor isn’t a fluke… Amazon has major problems…

Amazon has become a Chinese flea market operating inside an American distribution empire… 55.9% of its top 10,000 sellers are now China based, while American entrepreneurs invest in developing products, building brands, proving demand and creating the very markets that overseas competitors move in to capture…

The pattern is well documented… an American inventor develops something successful, Chinese knockoffs flood the marketplace, prices collapse, original listings get hijacked, and fraudulent intellectual property complaints can even force legitimate sellers offline…

Forearm Forklift watched revenue and American jobs disappear, Drop Stop fought Chinese made patent infringement, PopSockets took its counterfeit problems to Congress, and federal investigations have exposed fraudulent takedowns and insiders manipulating seller accounts…

All inside a marketplace where Amazon controls visibility, advertising, enforcement and access to the customer, collecting $172 billion in seller services and another $68 billion in advertising revenue annually…

Now Elon Musk suggests building an Amazon competitor after reports of Amazon blocking Grok purchasing bots… and suddenly this connects directly into the larger architecture I’ve been mapping around American manufacturing, tariffs, the elimination of de minimis exemptions, autonomous logistics, alternative financial rails and Super Intelligence (SI)…

Imagine verified American manufacturers connected directly to consumers through intelligent purchasing agents that authenticate product origins, protect intellectual property, compare actual value and bypass the machinery that allows innovators to be displaced inside their own marketplace…

With X potentially providing discovery, Grok providing intelligence and an entirely new commerce network connecting production, payments and delivery…

The implications reach far beyond Amazon… China has leveraged America’s retail infrastructure to reach American consumers at extraordinary scale, while American innovators have become increasingly dependent on the same platform that exposes them to imitation and marketplace abuse…

I’ve been mapping the rebuilding of America’s sovereign industrial stack from production through distribution… Musk’s comment opens another potential front, connecting that machinery directly to the American household…

America creates the product… the next battle is over who controls the marketplace, the purchasing decision and ultimately the economic value of American innovation…

Observing Consciousness, X

President Trump announced on Truth Social that the Fort Hood terrorist will still be executed by firing squad as scheduled, but it will not be livestreamed:

Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major turned traitor, is a very bad and evil man, who killed 13 people, including a pregnant soldier, who died, along with her unborn son, and injured, very seriously, 32 more innocent people. Barack Hussein Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intercepted electronic communications between Hasan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. When reviewed by his FBI terrorism task force, investigators concluded that Hasan’s emails were not a threat. This assessment of the Obama Administration’s actions was later considered to be a key intelligence failure.

With all of that being said, I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device. He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed. That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

This is breaking and will be updated if necessary.

Publius, Liberty Daily

Above the rain-soaked streets of Warsaw, the observation deck of the Varso tower overlooks Joseph Stalin’s gift to Poland that has divided opinion for decades.

For some, the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Science is a drunk confectioner’s nightmare; standing as a relic of oppression that should have been demolished. For others, it is an icon on the skyline and a monumental warning from history.

For the managers of the Varso – completed four years ago, as the tallest building in the EU – with its 310m-high spire rising symbolically above its Stalinist neighbour, it is a waypoint on Poland’s rapid path to economic prosperity.

“We look down on it,” says Cezary Błaszczyk, the managing director of HB Reavis in Poland, which owns the tower, gesturing at the palace opposite. A few months ago a slackline walker traversed the 500m gap between the buildings. “It was a symbolic walk from the past to the future,” says his colleague Natalia Kasperska.

“Since we are higher and taller than the Palace of Culture, we treat it as: ‘We got over communism, and now we are a country with a strong economy,’” Błaszczyk says.

Over the four decades since regaining its independence from Soviet-dominated rule, Poland has been transformed. Excluding oil-exporting states and financial hubs, incomes have converged with western levels at the fastest rate in the world; from 40% of the EU average in the mid-1990s to 81% last year.

National income surpassed $1tn (£755bn) last year, ranking Poland among the world’s 20 largest economies. International Monetary Fund projections show income per capita will soon overtake Japan and Spain.

“Four decades ago, we were in – excuse my English – deep, deep shit,” says Marcin Bosacki, the Polish deputy foreign minister.

Stirring a cup of tea and lemon in his opulent Warsaw office, he recalls queueing after school in the 1980s for up to five hours to buy butter and meat as the communist government imposed martial law.

However, the Gdańsk shipworkers’ Solidarność movement and Pope John Paul II’s 1979 pilgrimage to his home country paved the way for Poland’s transition to democracy in 1990 and an “economic miracle”. Integration with western institutions, including Nato in 1999 and EU accession in 2004, also helped.

For years, many Poles chose to emigrate to earn more abroad, in a brain drain accelerated by EU membership. Polish plumbers became shorthand in Britain for foreign labour amid the political battles over EU freedom of movement before the Brexit vote.

Now Britons are increasingly likely to have their taps fixed by Romanians and Bulgarians, after a surge in the number of Polish nationals leaving. In each year since 2021, when Brexit was enacted after a year-long transition period, twice as many Poles left the UK than arrived.

Meanwhile, Germany recorded more non-Germans moving to Poland in 2024 than heading in the opposite direction for the first time on record.

On the Varso’s 44th floor, in the Warsaw practice of Foster + Partners, Jedrzej Kolesinski and Krzysztof Gornicki are among those returnees. Both moved to London in their 20s to work in the British architecture firm’s head office – where they led the design team behind the tower they now occupy.

Gornicki says Poland has changed dramatically in the years he was away. He always wanted to return to contribute to the country, and raising a family near his parents in a safe, green city that is more affordable than London also has its plus points. Now the pair are working to design Warsaw’s new airport – the biggest greenfield infrastructure project in Europe.

“You can work globally from one location. In London we worked on projects from North America to Asia … right now, we’re doing the same thing, just from Warsaw.”

On the streets below the Varso, the sights and sounds of progress are unmistakable. Modern electric trams glide past skyscrapers, there are cranes and construction work, giant advertising boards, and dockless e-scooters.

The traditional working-class bar mleczny (milk bars) still do a roaring trade serving beetroot soup and Polish dumplings. But at the oldest, Prasowy, orders are taken on a digital touchscreen.

Once an asphalt desert designed for columns of Soviet tanks, the old Parade Square surrounding the palace has had a green makeover. Further development is planned to bolster Warsaw’s bid for the 2040 summer Olympics.

There are also growing pains. Just as the facades of Warsaw’s medieval old town – rebuilt from the rubble of the second world war – conceal 20th-century concrete, Poland’s stellar growth obscures tensions. The influx of global capital has driven up living costs, squeezing out poor Varsovians. Income inequality is among the highest in Europe, while growing political divisions set the stage for a fractious general election next year.

Convergence with the west also presents a novel challenge for a country with a reputation as a low-cost hub within the EU.

For years Poland’s cheap, skilled workforce attracted companies such as Volkswagen to build cars, Cadbury to make chocolate and banks such as JP Morgan to open global support centres. At €19.10 (£16.10) an hour, average labour costs (wages, taxes and other costs) are still half the level of Germany and France, but the gap is closing.skip past newsletter promotion.

Since 2004, the average monthly wage has more than tripled in nominal terms to 8,904 złoty (£1,723) last year. The net monthly salary in Warsaw has risen by 120% since 2016, according to Deutsche Bank, lifting it above Rome and Lisbon. A meal for two in the capital now costs more than in Tokyo and the price of a cappuccino has doubled.

Rafał Brzoska, the billionaire founder of InPost, the pan-European parcel locker company started in Kraków, says Poles deserve their reputation as hard workers. But now the country must focus on working smarter, in higher-value-added manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services.

“The next phase will depend less on catching up, and more on productivity. We don’t have labour cost advantage at all. We need to focus on productivity, technology, cheaper energy and better regulation.”

Since 2004, the average monthly wage has more than tripled in nominal terms to 8,904 złoty (£1,723) last year. The net monthly salary in Warsaw has risen by 120% since 2016, according to Deutsche Bank, lifting it above Rome and Lisbon. A meal for two in the capital now costs more than in Tokyo and the price of a cappuccino has doubled.

Rafał Brzoska, the billionaire founder of InPost, the pan-European parcel locker company started in Kraków, says Poles deserve their reputation as hard workers. But now the country must focus on working smarter, in higher-value-added manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services.

“The next phase will depend less on catching up, and more on productivity. We don’t have labour cost advantage at all. We need to focus on productivity, technology, cheaper energy and better regulation.”

There are strong foundations for its ambition. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s annual programme for international student assessment (Pisa) scores ranks Poland equal to the UK among the top countries in Europe and globally for maths, while a greater share of adults have higher education qualifications than in Germany.

He is, however, concerned about the tensions in Polish politics. Divisions between the nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, and Donald Tusk’s liberal government have grown increasingly acrimonious. Meanwhile, fringe far-right parties together hold a fifth of public support. Poland is also investing heavily in defence and energy security – aiming to boost economic growth in the process – amid Europe’s response to Russian aggression and US disengagement.

“People may put trust in someone else that has a magic remedy. [But] there is no magic remedy. We need to be super careful in terms of believing there is a secret sauce that will magically change things,” Brzoska says.

“In my opinion – unfortunately for all of us – we still need to work hard.”

As part of its growth plans, Poland is pushing to become a regional tech hub, bolstered by a $1bn investment fund backed by public and private capital to support tech startups and AI companies. The number of high-growth firms is rising, including ElevenLabs, an $11bn AI audio generation and voice cloning company named after 11 November – Poland’s national independence day.

On the eastern side of the Vistula River in the gritty and creative working-class district of Praga, the campus of the games company CD Projekt Red shows the progress being made.

He is, however, concerned about the tensions in Polish politics. Divisions between the nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, and Donald Tusk’s liberal government have grown increasingly acrimonious. Meanwhile, fringe far-right parties together hold a fifth of public support. Poland is also investing heavily in defence and energy security – aiming to boost economic growth in the process – amid Europe’s response to Russian aggression and US disengagement.

“People may put trust in someone else that has a magic remedy. [But] there is no magic remedy. We need to be super careful in terms of believing there is a secret sauce that will magically change things,” Brzoska says.

“In my opinion – unfortunately for all of us – we still need to work hard.”

As part of its growth plans, Poland is pushing to become a regional tech hub, bolstered by a $1bn investment fund backed by public and private capital to support tech startups and AI companies. The number of high-growth firms is rising, including ElevenLabs, an $11bn AI audio generation and voice cloning company named after 11 November – Poland’s national independence day.

There are strong foundations for its ambition. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s annual programme for international student assessment (Pisa) scores ranks Poland equal to the UK among the top countries in Europe and globally for maths, while a greater share of adults have higher education qualifications than in Germany.

On the eastern side of the Vistula River in the gritty and creative working-class district of Praga, the campus of the games company CD Projekt Red shows the progress being made.

As the developer behind the smash hit games series The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, the company started life in the 1990s as an importer of CD games made by US publishers.

Michał Nowakowski, its co-chief executive, says this was about the limit of Polish ambition in the early days. Now he competes globally to attract coders, games developers and graphic designers.

“In the late 90s and early 2000s I feel there was a massive inferiority complex. Among everybody who was young, you wanted to catch up with the west.”

Growing up in the 1980s, his family were expelled from Poland in the period of martial law. He recalls visiting London aged 15 and being “blown away” by the Virgin megastore and British culture. “I could never imagine Poland being like it.”

Within a generation, though, he says this attitude would be alien to his own children. “For young people now they have no inferiority complex. They don’t stop and think: ‘Can we be as good as Brits, French, Spanish?’ It’s not holding them back.

“We have really good universities and skills teaching people. I think that can take us to unprecedented heights as a country.

“We’re a proper-sized country. Not too small, not too big; no inferiority complex any more. There’s nothing holding us back.”

Richard Partington, The Guardian