Normals know that you leave the cops alone when they’re making an arrest. Leftists, though, have created a new normal …

On Jan. 7, 2026, an extremist protester attempted to ram ICE agents in Minneapolis with her SUV, and subsequently died from gunshot wounds when agents appropriately responded to the threat.

She and her girlfriend had been on the scene for some time, objecting to the ongoing ICE action, harassing the agents as they were doing their job.

Leftists watch one video, from one perspective, and claim she was murdered; reasonable people watch an array of videos of the incident from several directions, and recognize it as self-defense on the part of the agents.

Many in the Left are understandably horrified, thinking, “that could have been me.” Some on the Left didn’t waste time mourning, knowing they can fundraise off this incident while the iron is hot.

Like all officer-involved deaths, there will be an internal investigation; the videos will be studied, witnesses will be interviewed, official determinations will be made. For now, at least, under the American system, the agent who fired at the charging vehicle is innocent until proven guilty.

But there are some things we can recognize from the incident right away, which should enlighten us about a nationwide problem.

These activists are not behaving rationally.

Normal people, when they see a police bust taking place, either leave the area or step back to watch from a safe distance. Whether it’s a mass arrest of a flash mob at a retail store, or police breaking up a late night brawl at a bar, even people who simply “can’t tear their eyes away from the train wreck,” at least manage to find the presence of mind to stay out of the policemen’s way.

But these activists, for nearly a year now, have often been getting close to the operations, as close as they can. We see them blowing whistles to warn criminals of the police presence. We see them jeering the agents, even throwing rocks or other projectiles at them, or just getting in their faces, trying to provoke a response.

In normal times, this would be recognized as insanity.

No matter whether you’re from a good law-abiding family or a mafia neighborhood, you are taught from childhood to always be deferential to law enforcement officers. Always.

You give them room, you stay out of their way, you don’t provoke them. If you’re stopped for a traffic ticket, you keep your hands where the police can see them so they don’t consider you a threat. If you see an arrest in progress, you cross the street so you don’t impede their work.

Everybody knows this.

From childhood.

But something has changed in recent years. As the BLM riots and the 1% riots — and the Antifa riots and the George Floyd riots — all spread and normalized violent demonstrations, the Left started giving their activist members a new kind of marching order:

The Left is now ordering its members to act up, to push the envelope with ICE and other forms of law enforcement. These foot soldiers of the radical Left aren’t thinking of blowing whistles and throwing hands, and blocking the street with their cars, all by themselves; they are following the precise instructions of their activist leadership.

Perhaps they aren’t bright enough to realize that when you interfere with law enforcement doing their job, it’s a crime.

Maybe they don’t have the sense to realize that visibly warning criminals that the police are after them can make them accomplices to those criminals, guilty of aiding and abetting an escape.

Or maybe they are bright enough to realize that what they’re doing is criminal – it’s not all that hard a concept to grasp – but they have been told they have nothing to fear, because the officials never prosecute these things.

Well, what these people are forgetting is that the American legal system is designed, as they say, not just for government and society, but also “for your own good.”

That is, we don’t just have laws against obstructing officers in the performance of their duty in order to help catch the criminals; we also have these laws because if you obstruct them in the pursuit of their job, you are also putting yourself in danger, and you’ll put other innocent bystanders in danger as well.

These protesters are the ones making these situations more dangerous, for all concerned. These protesters can claim all they want that federal law enforcement is “bringing chaos,” but they know it’s a lie. Leave them alone to do their job, and there would be no chaos.

It’s the protesters, getting in the way, blocking agents with their bodies or with their cars, alerting criminals that the police are after them, who make these situations volatile, increasing the odds of unnecessary injury or death, as just occurred in Minneapolis.

Watch the response by the Left in the days and weeks to come.

Clearly, the obvious reaction to today’s death should be for the Left to call on their members to stand down, to stop the harassment and provocation of ICE immediately. To cool both the rhetoric and the action right away, to prevent further bloodshed.

But what are the odds of that?

Watch the Left. You will see them fundraise off this unnecessary loss of one of their own. You will see them double down, and continue telling their members to blow their whistles, and position their vehicles, and do everything they can think of to be human obstacles.

Because the Left doesn’t really care about the safety of their own members (if they did, they wouldn’t have spent the past sixty years doing everything possible to stop the incarceration of street criminals). What they care about is disruption. Destruction. Lawlessness.

That’s what they campaign on. That’s what they fundraise on.

And when their members are injured or killed as a result of their own horrible advice, they can use these manufactured martyrdoms for PR.

Don’t believe me? Look at every other Marxist movement in history, from Lenin to Mao, from Castro to Pol Pot. The Left always devours its own. They have no more respect for the lives of their own members than they do for anyone else.

It’s just how Marxism works.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker. Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his biting political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his 2024 collection of public policy essays, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, exclusively on Amazon.

Image: Screen shot from X video

Related Topics: Leftists, Minnesota

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President Donald Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark fits into a long, little-known pattern in U.S. history. From quiet discussions after the Civil War to a $100 million offer in the wake of World War II, American leaders have repeatedly seen Greenland as a strategic prize.

Here’s a look:

1867–1868: Early US interest after the Alaska purchase

After the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia, officials under Secretary of State William Seward discussed acquiring Greenland as part of a broader push into the Arctic.

Seward noted the territory was rich in natural resources, including coal. But the idea never advanced to a formal offer, as Congress had little interest in pursuing another Arctic acquisition.

1910: Proposed land swap involving Greenland

Under President William Howard Taft, American diplomats floated a complex land-exchange plan that would have transferred Greenland to the United States in return for concessions elsewhere. Denmark rejected the proposal, and it quickly collapsed.

1946: Formal post–World War II purchase offer

At the outset of the Cold War, President Harry Truman’s administration formally offered Denmark $100 million in gold to buy Greenland, citing its strategic importance. During World War II, a U.S.-built airfield on the island had served as a major refueling point for military planes en route to Europe.

Denmark rejected Truman’s offer, though the U.S. retained military access. That presence continues today at the remote Pituffik Space Base, the U.S. Department of Defense’s northernmost installation.

R. J. Rico, CBN

…the Minnesota protests look less like a local eruption and more like the latest deployment of an international revolutionary machine.” —Insurrection Barbie on “X”

Chrump, Chrump Chrump. . . . He’s come to occupy the Left’s minds like an infestation of weevils chawing away the ligaments of civilized society. But, of course, the whole wicked, Cluster-B, anomie-driven, insurrectionist extravaganza is a made-for-video production bought and paid for by a tiny coterie of super-wealthy megalomaniacs untouched by consequence — George and Alex Soros (The Open Society Foundations), Shanghai-based American Neville Roy Singham (Codepink and more), Reid Hoffman (funder of Trump prosecutions and more), Lauren Powell Jobs (The Atlantic and the Emerson Collective), Hansjorg Wyss (Berger Action Fund), Bill Gates (of course). . . .

Their main client in all this mischief is the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party’s chief motivation, its raison d’être going on at least ten years now, has been to hide its multifarious crimes, its vast racketeering operations now garishly on display in the state of Minnesota, where the grift just went too far and was done right in America’s face.

Who can possibly fail to see how it works? Import a bunch of people from a foreign land. . . enable them to set up a vast network of social services frauds. . . organize them for ballot harvesting and election fraud. . . and kick-back bundles of money to Democratic Party politicians. If anybody notices, yell “racist!” Sound the klaxon to turn out a thousand LARPing protesters on the Soros payroll. Provide them with signs, banners, black-bloc outfits, cartoon costumes, pride flags, umbrellas, snacks, bullhorns, pallets of bricks, and hope that some of them get hurt so you can manufacture the next martyr.

The crescendo of this long-running seditious treason was the wide open border during the four-year fake presidency of “Joe Biden,” including the colossal coordinated scam of funding who-knows-how-many NGOs with additional US taxpayer money, funneled through the UN, to process, transport, and outfit with social security numbers and debit cards X-millions of alien mutts, professional terrorists, gang-bangers, mental patients, and actual soldiers from faraway lands, and sprinkle them into every cranny of the republic to queer the next election and otherwise cause as much disruption as possible to the everyday life of actual US citizens.

They flooded the country with millions dependent on the Democratic Party’s largess — your tax dollars — and now they are doing everything possible to prevent the removal of this riffraff back to their countries of origin. Starting a civil war over it, in fact, because that’s what it’s come to. The federal agents tasked with the removal operation are apparenty not allowed to defend themselves when the LARPing street cadres attack them. There have been 66 car attacks against ICE officers since January, 2025. State and local officials in Minneapolis have behaved so dishonestly that federal investigators kicked them off what is now a federal case in the matter of “ICE-tracker” Renee Nicole Good, shot dead at the scene in her car. Minnesota will not be permitted to turn ICE agent Jonathan Ross into another Derek Chauvin. That sort of hustle is over.

What you can now discern in the winter darkness through fog of tear gas is that the Democratic Party will choose to destroy the country rather than face the consequences of its long-running crimes. Everybody knows now that the sort of social services grifts uncovered in Minnesota, with the kickbacks to Democratic politicians, have been going on all over America. The president has ordered an “all-of-government” effort to find the fraud and prosecute it, and you can assume the effort will tend to concentrate on the very states and cities where the Democratic Party dominates. Expect election fraud to bubble up in this cauldron. The evidence of a stolen 2020 election is finally emerging and converging with the larger illegal immigrant story.

It’s also clear now, that the NGO racket associated with all that is going to be dismantled — the money-stream from the likes of Soros & friends. They are going to get RICOed, their assets could be seized, and the public will learn a whole lot more about the damage they have done to the country. The Left’s NGOs not only support the on-the-ground street action, they also provide thousands of “executive” jobs and salaries to the Maoist nose-rings and transy-boys churned out of the higher ed diploma mills who are otherwise unemployable in any real economy with their race-and-gender studies diplomas.

The Democratic Party apparently realizes that the latest round of scandals and crimes might be its last rodeo. After a day of hearings this week, featuring several Minnesota politicos who testified about sketchy goings-on in the state, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FLA) launched criminal referrals against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and MN Attorney General Keith Ellison. That’s apart from whatever the DOJ has already been working on, and it is probably the beginning of a nation-wide web of prosecutions moving toward the midterm election that will drag in many other big dawgs of the party, including 2028 front-runner Gavin Newsom. The suicide of the Democratic Party has gone live, Donald Trump assisting.

James Howard Kunstler

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