Mayor Eric Adams did the right thing, and a very hard thing, in dropping his re-election bid Sunday; we expect he’ll devote his final months in office to some crucial final services to the public as New York City’s chief executive.

With competing in November off the table, he’s liberated to do what he’s always done best: Stand up as the voice of principled, moderate Democrats — a true progressive who can call out the destructive extremism of the frontrunner, Zohran Mamdani.

Adams will go down in history as a far better mayor than his recent poll ratings suggest: He took over with the city still in lockdown, and led us out of COVID and back into economic growth — then got hit with a migrant crisis made in Washington.

Made by a national administration that saw him as uppity for calling out the madness, and moved to destroy him because of it.

Yes, he left himself vulnerable to that lawfare, with unwise choices of top staff and advisers; it took him years too long to build the strong team he should’ve had on Day One.

Yet he still managed vital changes — new housing policies that will pay off for a generation or more; a crucial reorientation of city reading instruction toward proven methods; a necessary shift to confronting serious mental illness rather than enabling it; restoring the NYPD’s emphasis on neighborhood safety first.

Last month saw the fewest city shootings since modern records began in 1993, continuing a months-long trend with six of the seven major felony categories seeing marked declines this year.

The NYPD has undone the COVID era crime spike and continued to make further progress — despite being handicapped by the no-bail law and other demented state “reforms” as well as crime-coddling judges and prosecutors.

New York Post Editorial Board

While some on Wall Street are worried about a recession, recent economic data show that GDP growth is actually speeding up faster than earlier numbers indicated.

On Thursday, second-quarter growth was revised even higher, to 3.8% from a prior reading of 3.3%, on robust consumer spending. That’s after a first-quarter dip that was driven by President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Meanwhile, third-quarter growth is shaping up to be hotter. Durable goods orders for August jumped more than expected, according to data released on Thursday. And the personal income and spending report on Friday showed consumption remained healthy in August while also topping forecasts.

Given that consumer spending represents over two-thirds of the U.S. economy, the gains more than offset weakness in housing, which remains buffeted by high home prices and mortgage rates.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDP tracker now puts third-quarter growth at 3.9%, up from an earlier estimate of 3.3%, citing the consumption data and a narrower trade deficit in August.

Growth may not stop at that lofty rate. Stephen Brown, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a note on Friday that the income and spending data should further ease fears that the U.S. is on the cusp of a sharp slowdown.

He also noted that discretionary spending, which typically is cut when consumers are suffering, drove growth. And while gains in spending have outpaced income for the last three months, the August savings rate was still at a relatively high 4.6%, meaning consumers are not yet overextended.

“The rise in real consumption in August means that, given the stronger momentum going into the third quarter, we now have third-quarter consumption growth tracking as high as 3.3%, up from 2.3% last week,” Brown added. “Third-quarter GDP growth will be as high as 4%.”

To be sure, stronger GDP also means the Federal Reserve will be under less pressure to lower rates aggressively. Capital Economics expects the Fed to cut at only one of its two remaining meetings this year, while Wall Street is betting on cuts at both meetings.

Recession fears

The upbeat growth forecast contrasts with warnings from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, who has said the economy is “on the precipice of recession.”

---

The upbeat growth forecast contrasts with warnings from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, who has said the economy is “on the precipice of recession.”

While the third quarter, which ends on Tuesday, looks good, he predicted the U.S. will be most vulnerable to a recession late this year and early next as the impacts of Trump’s tariffs and immigration crackdown peak.

And despite consumption staying resilient in the face of elevated inflation and tariffs, housing could still lead the economy lower. Zandi has pointed to building permits as the most critical economic variable for predicting recessions, and they are now at pandemic-era lows.

The gains in aggregate consumption also obscure the sharp divide among American consumers, and the growing reliance on top earners.

Moody’s recently estimated that the bottom 80% of earners have merely spent in line with inflation since the pandemic, while the top 20% are driving growth.

“As long as they keep spending, the economy should avoid recession, but if they turn more cautious, for whatever reason, the economy has a big problem,” Zandi noted.

Jason Ma, Fortune Magazine

---

Some enthusiasts for “gun control” on the left are trying to claim that Charlie Kirk’s assassination shows that Kirk’s support for the Second Amendment was wrong.

The assassin appears to have used a hunting rifle. It is a variant of the extremely common Mauser 98, with a telescopic sight. It is one of the most common types of hunting rifles existing in the United States, probably in the world. This is the type of rifle that the vast majority of those pushing for more limitations on the ownership and use of firearms specifically remove from their restrictive lists. Even in Australia, it is easier to obtain a permit for this type of rifle than it is for a slingshot.

Hunting rifles with telescopic sights are generally easier to get than most types of firearms, except in the most totalitarian and restrictive countries in the world.

---

From mediaite.com:

So the area north of Campus Drive Road where the suspect crossed over—you saw some of that in the video that we released last night—consists of a grassy area with trees on the edge of the UVU campus. Investigators discovered a bolt-action rifle wrapped in a dark-colored towel. The rifle was determined to be a Mauser Model 98 .30-06 caliber bolt-action rifle. The rifle had a scope mounted on top of it.

The cartridge cases in the rifle show how the murderer has been indoctrinated with far-left ideology:

Investigators noted inscriptions that had been engraved on casings found with the rifle. Inscriptions on a fired casing read: “notices bulges” capital “O-W-O what’s this?” Inscriptions on the three unfired casings read: “hey fascist!” “catch!” Up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols. A second unfired casing read: “Oh Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao.” And a third unfired case read: “If you read this, you are gay LMAO.”

According to Wikipedia, “Bella Ciao” is an anti-fascist folk song. Unfortunately, the accused killer did not have enough self-reflection to understand that killing your opponent because you cannot beat him in an open debate is a very fascist thing to do.

Newsweek.com quoted an influencer who claimed Charlie Kirk lost the gun control debate. From newsweek.com:

On X Brandy Bryant, a self-styled transgender comedian with 21,000 followers on the platform, posted: “Breaking: Charlie Kirk loses gun debate.”

Brandy Bryant is exactly wrong. When you have to kill someone to silence them, it shows you have lost the debate. The left is driven to violence because they have lost the debate.

---

On Reddit, Mormaglis wrote this:

 While there might not be a perfectly secure system, there are obviously systems that greatly reduce the accessibility of firearms for those who would use them to harm others. You might not be able to say for certain that it wouldn’t have prevented the assassination – but you can reasonably say that it would reduce the likelihood of an assassination occurring.

---

There are systems that might be secure enough to do this. They are called totalitarian systems.

The bolt-action hunting rifle is the type of firearm least subject to control. People who hunt and have no prior history of violence, such as the assassin, are most likely to be able to access this type of firearm.  The argument is common among people who want the population disarmed.  They refuse to acknowledge the benefits of widespread ownership of firearms.

From reddit contributor 7097556El3-93, writing about British gun control:

But realistically, hardly anyone wants to actually kill politicians, and only 1% of those have the means to do so at long range with a gun. So the percentage of people with both the means and the motive is vanishingly small. This is one of the positive impacts of strict gun control. Another is that if anyone sees anybody else with a gun then there is an immediate and fair assumption that they are a dangerous threat, which makes it even harder to execute an assassination.

The writer ignores the fact that Charlie Kirk was not a politician. He was a political thinker, writer, organizer, and debater.  He was killed for his political speech. As previously noted, the type of firearm used is exactly one of the easiest for a person to obtain in strict gun control regimes such as England, Australia, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. They are very hard to obtain in totalitarian regimes such as China, North Korea, Venezuela, or Cuba. The politicians there have made a lot of enemies. Those who want to kill a politician have some of the strongest motivations to obtain a means to do so. The writer does not mention violent crime has increased in England with the imposition of gun control. The writer does not mention people in England have lost the right to free speech and England is becoming more and more authoritarian.

If you use a gun to assassinate someone who is opposed to gun control, it does not mean they were wrong to oppose gun control. It means the person opposed to them lost the argument and resorted to force. Charlie Kirk was a strong proponent of free speech, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and limited government. He was a Christian. He was effective. It is why the left demonized him.

It is why he was killed. He was winning the argument.

---

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

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29 Comments

Most Voted 

Will Munny

 11 days ago

Charlie Kirk is the Socrates of our time.

“I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think.”

They killed Socrates too.

11

swmft

 11 days ago

The left could not win or at least bring to a draw a debate against charlie ,so true to form anything they cant beat and makes them look stupid they destroy however they can kill burn down blow up …story of the demoncraps

10

View Replies (3)

Boz

 10 days ago

This.

4

Popsicle

 10 days ago

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is tragic, and shows the lengths to which some people will go to silence those who they disagree with.

On an unrelated subject, to those who post comments to these articles: Please write in complete sentences and use punctuation. Failure to do so makes the writer seem less than intelligent, and feeds into anti-gunners view that gun owners are ignorant rednecks. That is a perception that gun owners don’t want or need. Sorry if this offends anyone, but there it is.

Last edited 10 days ago by Popsicle

4

China Berry

 9 days ago

The motives of the killer are still up in the air. The cartridge cases have many layers of memes/meanings behind them. Many not left wing. Is he a- 1 Groyper – ie far right wing follower of Nick Fuentes, an anti semite who sent followers to college campuses to harass Charlie and promoted the Bella Ciao song?2 Black Pilled Accelerationist that sees no hope for mankind and wants to burn everything? 3 Performative gamer showing off for other online friends with the references to Up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols, the gaming alias “Donald Trump”… Read more »

-1

Nick2.0

 10 days ago

Kirk and his organization should’ve seen this coming. For over a decade they’ve been going into the monster’s lair, aka American colleges, the MOST dangerous place in America for those unafflicted with the woke mind virus to be, and poking said monster with no visible security. In all the videos I’ve seen of TPUSA events, I’ve never seen security. That’s asking for trouble at a minimum. Now, factor in he and his group are nationally known… STUPID! Someone will no doubt accuse me of being happy he’s dead, and excusing the assassin or assassins. But no. I’m only pointing out,… Read more »

-4

BolsheviksLoveCensorship

 11 days ago

No, he was killed because his jewish backers became angry with him for straying off the reservation. He had become aware over the course of 13 years the true nature of Israel and began to publicly question jewish subversion.

-19

View Replies (19)

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By CDI Staff Sep 28, 2025 06:31 EDT 2 mins

Bill Maher, an American comedian, political commentator, and television host known for his sharp, often controversial critiques of religion, politics, and culture, used his HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday (Sept. 26) to spotlight ongoing violence against Christians in Nigeria. 

Maher has hosted the long-running show since 2003, featuring unscripted debates with guests from across the political spectrum. During a panel discussion, U.S. Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, thanked Maher for raising the issue and said the media has failed to cover the tragedy.

“Nigeria, the fact that this issue has not gotten on people’s radar, it’s pretty amazing,” Maher said. “If you don’t know what’s going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck. You are in a bubble.”

“I’m not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria. They’ve killed over a hundred thousand since 2009. They’ve burned 18,000 churches. These are the Islamists, Boko Haram,” he said. “This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.”

Where are the kids protesting this?” he asked, criticizing the lack of mainstream media coverage and noting the absence of public outcry in the United States.

Measure of anti-Christian violence in the country is already at the maximum possible, persecution watchdog says

Nigeria remained among the most dangerous places on earth for Christians, according to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. Of the 4,476 Christians killed for their faith worldwide during the reporting period, 3,100 (69 percent) were in Nigeria, according to the WWL.

“The measure of anti-Christian violence in the country is already at the maximum possible under World Watch List methodology,” the report stated.

In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report.

Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.

The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.

Nigeria ranked seventh on the 2025 WWL list of the 50 worst countries for Christians.

How does America survive when its citizens belong to two divided camps that believe fundamentally incompatible things?  

Over the last century, there has been a trend to establish “truth and reconciliation commissions” in countries emerging from periods of political terrorism, totalitarianism, or civil war.  The idea is to acknowledge the crimes and atrocities that past governments officially sanctioned and to recognize the harms inflicted upon their victims.  As is often the case when governments “disappear” citizens or throw them in gulags for their politically incorrect thoughts, it is the not knowing that haunts society.  Survivors bereft of answers are left with inconsolable anguish.  The commissions are often used as a first step toward healing grave national trauma.

It is no surprise that these commissions generally reflect the worldviews of the prevailing government that forms them.  Communist governments are quick to label past “right-wing” officials as “murderers” while memorializing their own murderers as “patriots,” “civil rights heroes,” or “noble revolutionaries.”  Politically correct governments in the West today often describe their countries’ founders and explorers as “racists,” “white supremacists,” “imperialists,” and perpetrators of “genocide.”  No doubt the people alive during these consequential periods of history would take exception to the way they are remembered, but descendants — particularly descendants in possession of political power — maintain at least a temporary monopoly over the historical record.

Although Democrat politicians and Antifa terrorists hysterically insist that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are “disappearing” foreign nationals present in the United States illegally, that is not the case.  But that lie — reinforced on Wikipedia, news blogs, and on cable news — is one example of an expanding collection of diametrically held beliefs deeply dividing the American people.  

American citizens who are opposed to open borders and endless illegal immigration see ICE agents as performing critical tasks.  Those agents put their lives on the line every day in order to arrest illegal aliens — many of whom have been convicted or accused of serious crimes — and protect American citizens.  Democrat politicians, however, call ICE agents “slave catchers” and “Gestapo thugs.”  Antifa-affiliated groups dox officers, physically harass them, and even shoot at them.  Anarcho-communists explicitly call for “war against ICE.”  Deranged leftists stalk and assault Trump administration officials every day.  Half of America sees ICE officers and administration officials as selfless patriots who should be honored for their sacrifices.  The other half wishes them death.

Right now, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and MSNBC are all very upset that former FBI director Jim Comey has been indicted for false statements and obstruction of a federal proceeding.  Well known political pundits are all repeating some version of this statement: We have never had a situation in which a sitting president has so brazenly used the criminal justice system to go after his political adversaries.  This is the consensus opinion of those with institutional power, prestige, credentials, and fame.  Yet to ordinary Americans without such accolades, elite talking heads sound delusional, amnesiac, and maliciously deceptive.

How could people at the height of their professions possibly describe the indictment of Jim Comey as “unprecedented”?  Americans for the last ten years have witnessed abject weaponization of the Justice Department and Intelligence Community against Donald Trump, his associates, and his supporters.  Hillary Clinton’s inner circle and Barack Obama’s trusted lieutenants co-opted  the FBI and CIA in an effort to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy, remove him from office, and perhaps even convict him for treason.  Jim Comey was instrumental in this nefarious plot.  As journalist Matt Taibbi said the other day, “think of the national security implications of implying that your own president is a spy for a foreign country. … You can’t have an FBI director doing these sorts of manipulations and lying to Congress about it and getting away with it.”

Yet the Russia Collusion Hoax was only one part of a decade-long effort to destroy Trump and his MAGA movement.  Democrat saboteurs working for the U.S. military and CIA turned a normal conversation with the president of Ukraine into Trump’s first impeachment.  Then the FBI and DOJ labeled the January 6, 2021 protest against election fraud an “insurrection” — laying the grounds for Congress to pursue a truly unprecedented post-presidential impeachment.  For years, FBI director Chris Wray lied to Congress and the American people about the presence of federal law enforcement officers near the Capitol that day.  Only in 2025 have we now learned that nearly three hundred plainclothes FBI agents were on the ground during the protest, along with dozens of informants and an unknown number of other federal and local agents, all possibly stirring up mayhem.

Millions of American have long suspected that agitators created a “false flag” event on January 6 to help justify a subsequent prosecution of Trump and preclude his running for president once again in 2024, but those voices were censored on social media accounts for years.  Treating Trump and his supporters as “terrorists” became the order of the day for both Silicon Valley and the federal government.

FBI SWAT teams busted into the homes of ordinary families in predawn raids to make it clear to MAGA Americans that — unlike Antifa and Black Lives Matter members — conservatives enjoy no “privilege” to protest official authorities in the United States.  The Biden administration — arguably illegitimate since it secured election “victory” through blatant mail-in-ballot fraud — chose not to cool things down for the sake of the country.  Instead, Obama holdovers running Biden’s presidency prosecuted high-profile members of Trump’s team for spurious “crimes”; harassed conservative parents opposed to leftist teachers’ racial and sexual indoctrination of their children; and intimidated pro-life activists, Christians, and just about any group too closely aligned with Trump’s MAGA agenda.  

Joe Biden called Trump a “criminal” and the “greatest threat to democracy” and labeled MAGA voters “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.”  His administration conspired with social media companies to censor Trump and conservatives, generally.  The Biden White House created several iterations of a “disinformation” board in order to justify Democrats’ continued ban on political dissent and conservative speech.  Lawfare specialists successfully disbarred Trump’s lawyers for simply defending their client’s interests.  Then Democrat lawyers orchestrated civil and criminal lawsuits against President Trump in half a dozen jurisdictions while working to remove him from the 2024 ballot in crucial battleground states.  And after years of Democrats calling President Trump a “Russian agent,” a “dictator,” a “Nazi,” a “fascist,” and every other kind of vile pejorative that might convince a delusional listener to believe that Trump had no right to live, at least two separate assassins tried to murder him last year — killing one civilian and wounding several others in the process.

At no time in American history has such a large-scale effort gone into utterly destroying a political candidate, his aides, and his voters.  Yet when the current DOJ decides enough is enough and that at least one of those anti-Trump conspirators should be prosecuted for perjury and obstruction, the mainstream media lose their collective mind.

We may not be emerging from the aftermath of a terrible civil war, but America is nonetheless desperately in need of a “truth and reconciliation commission.”  The problem is that we can’t agree about anything.  One side believes in God; the other side largely does not.  One side believes men can become women and that a “climate apocalypse” is about to kill us all; the other side refuses to play along with such fantastic delusions.  One side believes that government agents provide citizens with certain privileges; the other side knows that rights exist regardless of bureaucratic decree.

It may be impossible to reconcile a nation so divided about basic truths.  We must try.  Otherwise, the real trouble is just beginning.

J. B. Shurk, American Thinker

Following President Trump’s announced intention to surge federal forces into Portland, Oregon, where riots are held daily outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, the useful idiots of Anti Profa are planning a “direct action” for Sunday, September 28th. 

This is a significant escalation. As is so often the case, the independent journalist and Antifa foe Andy Ngo broke the news.

A direct action has been planned for Sept. 28 at the Portland ICE facility after Trump issued a statement that he plans to send in troops to protect the federal property. Antifa and communists have said they refuse to back down and plan to escalate their rioting. They have called…

The post continues:

They have called for militant reinforcements in Seattle and Los Angeles.

It is belaboring the obvious to note that this could get really ugly, really fast. Since the president only announced the deployment on Saturday, it’s unlikely any significant number of federal forces have yet to be deployed. 

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Antifa was recently designated as a domestic terrorist group by President Trump, and they richly deserve it. The question is this: How in the world do the actions Antifa claims to be planning not constitute an insurrection under the Insurrection Act of 1807? 10 U.S. Code § 252 – Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority, would seem to apply here. That section states:

Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.

That would appear to state that the President of the United States would, in the event Antifa does what they claim they want to do, have the legal recourse to unleash the full might of United States federal forces to restore order. To point out that this wouldn’t end well for Antifa is the grossest of understatements. What’s a trifle baffling is that this legal recourse hasn’t been invoked before now.

Britannica defines an insurrection as:

…an organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government or governing authority of a nation-state or other political entity by a group of its citizens or subjects; also, any act of engaging in such a revolt. 

That’s precisely what Antifa is doing. It was even more egregious in the summer of 2020, when not only did rioting useful idiots cause several deaths and a billion or so dollars in property damage, but some actually seized a portion of the city of Seattle, installed an armed thug as the ruler of the area, and expelled civil authorities. Granted, they were so incompetent that they couldn’t feed themselves, and their rebellion collapsed, but that doesn’t make the crime any less.

Sunday will tell the tale. Will it be a violent conflict? Or a fizzle?

Ward Clark, Red State

A $1.8 billion lawsuit brought by an anonymous activist and the state of Texas is seeking to recover money they say Planned Parenthood illegally took from Medicaid.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Thursday in the case, Doe v. Planned Parenthood.

When Planned Parenthood was exposed for selling fetal tissue and organs, Louisiana and Texas quickly moved to revoke the organization’s Medicaid eligibility. Court orders delayed the revocation.

As the courts debated Planned Parenthood’s eligibility, the group continued to make Medicaid reimbursement claims despite the uncertain status until 2020, when the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the states.

In a lawsuit filed in 2021, a whistleblower sued Planned Parenthood under the False Claims Act. Designed to protect taxpayer dollars from fraudulent actors, the False Claims Act requires that “any person who knowingly submits, or causes to submit, false claims to the government is liable for three times the government’s damages plus a penalty that is linked to inflation,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice website.

Pro-life leader and legal expert Jennie Bradley Lichter called the case an “existential threat” to Planned Parenthood in an opinion piece for The Hill.

Lichter, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, wrote that “under the False Claims Act, money obtained from the government while ineligible — even if collected under a court order that is later overturned — must be repaid in full.”

Susan Baker Manning, general counsel for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, denied that the legal theory has any merit.

“This theory is yet another effort to weaponize the law to attack Planned Parenthood,” Manning said in a statement on Wednesday. “This case has one goal: to shut down Planned Parenthood and deny patients access to sexual and reproductive health care.”

Katie Glenn Daniel, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s director of legal affairs, said Planned Parenthood “had no right” to the taxpayer money.

“The whistleblower in this case, Doe, is suing on behalf of the people to recover taxpayer dollars Planned Parenthood had no right to take and still has not voluntarily paid back, plus fees and interest,” Glenn Daniel told CNA.

“The nation’s largest abortion business felt so entitled to taxpayer money, it spent years billing Medicaid after being disqualified by Texas and Louisiana — a direct result of their disregard for human life exposed by David Daleiden’s undercover videos showing their role in the sale of baby body parts,” Glenn Daniel said.

As part of a recently enacted tax package, the federal government cut Planned Parenthood funding. More than 40 locations are closing this year. The New York Times reported alleged medical negligence at New York-based Planned Parenthood locations earlier this year.

“Despite reports of medical negligence, declines in actual health services, and record political spending, Planned Parenthood demands the taxpayer faucet stay flowing forever,” Glenn Daniel said.

Kate Quinones, Catholic News Agency

We need digital IDs. State governors are pushing it. Gavin Newsom last year allowed drivers licenses onto Apple and Google wallets. This “mobile drivers license,” or mDL, is a digital ID, and one more link in the chain.

And it is Americans, including Bill Gates and the controlling owner of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who are financing the digital ID push. “ The NHS [National Health Service] in the UK has an incredible amount of population data, but it’s fragmented,” he told Blair in February of this year. “It’s not easily accessible by these AI models. We have to take all of this data we have in our country and move it into a single, if you will, unified data platform… The secret is to get all of that data in one place.”

In September, Ellison made clear that he viewed the power of data centralization in behavior change. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly watching and recording everything that’s going on.”

Ellison’s Oracle is an AI database cloud computing company and he is its best salesman. Ellison, the second richest man in the world, and owner of CBS and CNN, has “donated or pledged at least £257m to the Tony Blair Institute,” reportedthe New Statesman last week. “Ellison donations have helped it grow to more than 900 staff, working in at least 45 countries.”

The nightmare scenario for mass, constant spying on citizens is not theoretical. China in 2019 created a social credit system with rewards that include better employment, school admissions, and shorter wait times in hospitals, and punishments including denial of access to public services and social events, denial of train and air tickets, and public shaming.

One study found that at least one-third of total “offenses” were not actually against the law and thus expanded “local government authority into moral and social domains beyond the law,” found researchers.

UK’s Big Brother Watched recently warned that a digital ID system, even if initially limited, could be a gateway to more invasive government surveillance and intrusion.

Why would any liberal and democratic Western government like Britain want such a thing?

Money is no doubt a big part of it. Oracle and other high tech companies stand to make billions taking bits of our money here and there for every transaction. Governments like Keir Starmer’s also seem eager to give them billions in contracts to monitor and analyze the population.

We found no evidence Starmer would personally benefit financially from digital IDs, however, and as a political leader, he must consider whether his actions are popular, and digital IDs are not. A YouGov poll released yesterday found UK opinion toward digital IDs was 42 percent in favor and 45 percent against. And given the negative reaction to them online, popular opposition will likely rise.

Tony Blair Institute’s (TBI) polling may have misled Starmer. TBI’s first question primed people to think about how inconvenienced they’ve felt without a digital ID, a blatantly manipulative form of polling.

No honest pollster seeking to give a client a realistic understanding of how the public thought about digital IDs would have started with that question, because they know the importance of framing.

The second question was equally biased. “Some are suggesting the government should introduce a new app, allowing instant access to a range of public services.” The framing suggests awareness on the part of the pollster that the public had a negative view of “digital ID,” hence the use of the “app” euphemism.

The third question was “Do you think there is digital technology that could help tackle these issues… Processing asylum seekers and managing the UK’s borders.”

One reason to think Starmer relied on the TBI’s biased polling is that Starmer pitched the digital ID as necessary to stop mass migration. “I know working people are worried about the level of illegal migration into this country,” said Starmer. “Digital ID… will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.”

The notion is absurd. Nations have maintained borders for hundreds of years without the need for digital IDs.

Given how badly the Starmer government’s digital ID roll out appears to have backfired, why did Starmer and Blair push it?

One possibility is that they really believe in the mission of improving people’s lives. That is already how they justify it. Said Starmer, “it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly – rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.”

But it is hard to believe Starmer and Blair really viewed the difficulty of finding where you left your utility bill as a high-priority social problem.

It appears more likely that they are hiding their reasons and that the real motivation is the same as the Chinese government: to control the population.

Gates last year released a Netflix documentary calling for sweeping AI-powered censorship of people he disagrees with on vaccines and other issues.

The Starmer government’s digital IDs should be a wake-up call to all of us. For years, various people have been raising concerns about digital IDs but free speech and privacy advocates have clearly not done enough to stop them. That needs to change.

The good news is that the backlash to the digital IDs appears strong and growing. And anyone can see that, when they spoke, Blair was taking instructions from Ellison.  “You can pipe this data from these three thousand separate data sources into a single unified database,” said Ellison, “and that’s what we need to do.”

The episode should wake us Americans up to the continuing threat of total surveillance and censorship. Powerful American high-tech elites see dollar signs in controlling our data — and our behavior.

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Michael Shellenberger, X

Trump fumed, ‘Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship?’

In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother?

Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.

Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.” To be clear, Omar will not be denaturalized, nor deported.

But amid Omar-gate, President Trump fumed that she was “SCUM,” derided her “Country of Somalia,” and asked, “Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship???”

The accusation is nearly a decade old, prompted in part by court filings and a trail of murkier evidence.

Public records show that Omar entered a religious marriage with a man named Ahmed Hirsi in 2002, separated in 2008, and then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. Elmi, a British citizen who later attended college in the US. It is Elmi who some have suggested may be Omar’s brother, an allegation Omar has consistently denied.

The marriage with Elmi ended in 2011, but they did not obtain a legal divorce until 2017. In that same period, Omar reconciled with Hirsi, had another child with him, and even filed joint tax returns with him in 2014 and 2015, despite still being legally married to her alleged brother.

In 2020, the Daily Mail quoted an old friend of Omar, Abdihakim Osman, who claimed Omar herself had described Elmi as her brother – and admitted she married him to get the papers he needed to study in the US. Osman claimed Elmi was introduced around Minneapolis as family, and that Omar told him explicitly she was helping her brother get student loans. Omar has flatly denied this, dismissing the story as “baseless,” but has refused to provide documentary evidence to settle the matter.

In 2018, one conservative outlet discovered archived Instagram posts from 2012 that appear to show Ahmed Elmi calling Ilhan Omar’s daughter his “niece.” In 2015, photos from a London trip placed Omar alongside Elmi and relatives, all appearing under the shared surname “Elmi.” But these posts are no longer available and cannot be independently verified.

The Star Tribune tried to confirm Elmi’s identity but ran into the same problem: Somali records are difficult to obtain, and Omar herself declined to clarify.

While this scavenger hunt remains incomplete, what is beyond doubt is that Omar’s life today bears little resemblance to the humble origins she once invoked.

Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu in 1982, the youngest of seven children. Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was a colonel in the Somali army who brought the family to a Kenyan refugee camp before they eventually resettled in Minneapolis, where Omar grew up in public housing and later entered politics.

She built her brand as the daughter of refugees, a progressive outsider weighed down by student debt – the antithesis of a silver spoon Congressman. But her most recent financial disclosure revealed a net worth as high as $30 million — a staggering increase of 3,500 percent in a single year.

The source of that fortune is her most recent husband, Tim Mynett. His venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, ballooned from under $1,000 in 2023 to as much as $25 million by the end of 2024. The firm’s board is stacked with powerful names, including former senator and ambassador to China Max Baucus.

Rose Lake Capital’s website once bragged about structuring “legislation” before that word was quietly removed. It now claims $60 billion in assets under management. Around the same time Rose Lake took off, Mynett’s California winery, eStCru, jumped from being worth just $50,000 to as much as $5 million. Both companies have faced lawsuits alleging fraud, which have since been settled.

The overlap with Omar’s official role is clear. After the launch of Rose Lake, Omar formed a congressional US-Africa Policy Working Group. She and Mynett have since appeared at events promoting investment in Africa – exactly the kind of opportunity Rose Lake now pursues. At face value the arrangement is indistinguishable from influence-peddling.

The same Omar who has scorned politicians for leveraging their office for gain now appears to be doing it herself, handsomely. In America, the socialists have a funny way of always cashing in.

So, back to Trump’s accusation. Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? As it stands, it’s impossible to say one way or the other. Omar continues to deny the allegation as baseless.

What is certain is that Omar has prospered enormously in America, moving from refugee housing to the halls of Congress to a personal fortune worth tens of millions.

That story is perhaps the greater indictment. The congresswoman who speaks endlessly of justice and equity appears to have mastered the very Washington tricks she pretends to loathe.

Barack Obama’s long-promised presidential library is shaping up to be just as corrupt as his administration. You probably haven’t heard much about this in the media, but recent tax filings reveal that money donated to the Obama Foundation—supposedly earmarked for his sprawling “presidential center” in Chicago—is quietly being redirected to one of the left’s most notorious dark money groups: the Tides Foundation.

The numbers tell the story. In 2022 and 2023, the Obama Foundation handed over $2 million to Tides, a group best known for serving as a clearinghouse for radical left-wing causes and for shielding donor identities. It should come as no surprise that George Soros heavily backs Tides, and Tides is directly tied to groups organizing anti-Israel protests. That includes demonstrations against the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities. In other words, donations made in the name of funding a presidential library are now helping bankroll organizations promoting antisemitic activism under the guise of social justice.

That’s pretty on-brand for Barack Obama.

“The Tides Center played an administrative role in the program by processing grants while Cities United [a nonprofit] managed the application process,” the spokeswoman said in an email. Grants ranged from $15,000 to $30,000 each over the two summers.

Tides has also handled donations for Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which sued the group in California Superior Court last year. It alleged “egregious mismanagement” of more than $33 million in its funds, according to court documents. That lawsuit is ongoing.

In addition to sending donations to Tides, the Obama Foundation has sent more than $3 million in 2022 and 2023 in grants to Gofundme.org for undisclosed “grassroots leaders to empower girls through education,” according to the group’s filings.

Meanwhile, the foundation admitted it has so far spent more than $615 million building the Obama Presidential Center, which is scheduled to open in spring 2026, according to its website.

The group, which received just $129,320 in donations in 2022, spent more than $27 million on salaries.

While community members struggle, insiders at the Obama Foundation are doing just fine. The foundation’s CEO, Emeka Jarrett, earned over $750,000 last year. The executive vice president, Rob Cohen, pocketed nearly $650,000, and also maintains ties to the Pritzker Realty Group. His connection to Penny Pritzker—sister to Governor J.B. Pritzker—only highlights the tangled web of Democratic powerbrokers who are thriving while the project supposedly dedicated to “the people” spirals out of control.

ICYMI: A ‘Deranged Leftist’ Assaulted a Trump Admin Official at the United Nations

Meanwhile, the presidential center itself—originally sold to the public as a beacon of civic pride for Chicago’s South Side—has turned into a financial pit. Construction on the 20-acre site in Jackson Park began years ago, with a ballooning price tag that has already exceeded $615 million, far above the initial $500 million projection. The opening date has slipped again, now pushed to spring 2026. Local residents aren’t thrilled either. One lawyer described it bluntly as a “monstrosity,” pointing to rising costs, neighborhood headaches, and little actual benefit to the people forced to live around it.

This entire project reeks of the kind of carefully crafted con job only career political operators could pull off. Sell it as a beacon of unity, then funnel millions to radical, antisemitic causes, all while insiders pocket obscene salaries. It’s a true reflection of the same kind of corruption that plagued Obama’s presidency.

The Obama Presidential Center is a $615 million con, funneling money to radical causes and insider salaries. The mainstream media won’t cover this, but we will. Support our work by joining PJ Media VIP. Use promo code FIGHT for 60% off for ad-free access and sharp reporting. Support America First journalism.

Matt Margolis is a conservative commentator and columnist. His work has been cited on Fox News and national conservative talk radio, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dan Bongino Show. Matt is the author of several books and has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America’s Voice News, Salem News Channel, and even CNN.