The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presents itself as an innocuous Muslim civil rights group—a reputation it reinforces with litigation and claims of anti-Muslim bigotry. But the group finds itself under increasing scrutiny for alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas. Last November, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated CAIR a terrorist organization. The following month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis followed suit, citing CAIR’s being listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorism financing case.

But as other states move to sideline CAIR, California is embracing this alleged terror front. CAIR-CA, the organization’s largest statewide affiliate, is flush with taxpayer cash. In the last five years, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) has rubberstamped at least $41 million in funding to the group. The vast majority of that money, it turns out, comes from the federal government. These federal dollars are flowing into CAIR-CA’s coffers even after it was the target of a recent Department of Justice investigation.

This City Journal report—based on a trove of documents provided to us by the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based nonprofit—reveals good reason for the DOJ to be digging into CAIR-CA. It also raises serious questions about why Gavin Newsom’s government is funding a chapter of an organization with alleged terrorist ties.

CAIR was founded in 1994 with the ostensible aim of advancing Muslim-American civil rights. The organization claims that it “is not and never has been an agent” or affiliate of “any militant group.” But the historical record offers justification to question that characterization.

CAIR’s co-founders, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, were leading members of the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. That committee “effectively became the US-based Hamas infrastructure,” according to a George Washington University Program on Extremism report. In an October 1993 meeting planned by the Palestine Committee—secretly monitored by the FBI—participants discussed how to support Hamas’s efforts as well as how to help derail the Oslo Accords.

A year later, CAIR was born, with Ahmad and Awad assuming leading roles. For 11 years, Ahmad served as CAIR’s national chairman. Awad remains CAIR’s national executive director.

Some of this information came to light during the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, which saw five of that sham charity’s leaders convicted for collectively funneling more than $12 million to Hamas. The investigation uncovered a network of Hamas-linked organizations. While CAIR was not prosecuted, the court found “ample evidence to establish” that it was associated with the Palestinian terror group. An FBI Special Agent reportedly testified at trial that CAIR was a “front group for Hamas.”

Lara Burns served as an FBI Special Agent for more than two decades and was the lead investigator on the Holy Land Foundation case. She currently serves as the head of terrorism research at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

“You can’t look at what CAIR is doing today in isolation,” Burns said. “The government established the fact [during the trial] that a conspiracy existed among these organizations, including CAIR, to support Hamas, and that acts were taken in furtherance of that conspiracy. . . . CAIR’s role was to operate an entity out of Washington, D.C. that would serve to defend the interests of the rest of the network—against scrutiny from the media, against scrutiny from law enforcement. . . . In my opinion, the executive director, Nihad Awad, and other components of CAIR that were a part of this original infrastructure, are still operating CAIR in furtherance of an agenda to support Hamas.”

CAIR-CA leaders have also effectively endorsed Hamas’s perspective on the Middle East. On October 7, 2023, the day of Hamas’s terror attack on Israel, Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, posted to social media: “We are witnessing decolonization.” On July 31, 2024, following the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Billoo again took to social media, where she declared him a martyr. On November 12, 2023, Hussam Ayloush, the CEO of CAIR-CA, likened Israel to Nazi Germany and said, given the Jewish state’s “occupation” of Palestine, that “Israel should be attacked.”

One would think that CAIR’s ties to an Islamist terror group would make government agencies pause before providing it with public funds. But under Governor Gavin Newsom, California’s state government has seemingly never met a “marginalized group” it did not want to shower with other people’s money. CAIR-CA is rolling in tax dollars.

In 2022, CDSS awarded CAIR-CA $7.2 million in federal funds via a state program to provide immigration-related legal assistance. For its part, CAIR-CA pledged to serve approximately 1,800 people through September 2024, and earlier this year, claimed to have fulfilled that promise “across . . . various subgrantees.” According to IAN, a public records request submitted to the CDSS did not confirm how many legal cases have been handled as part of the grant; in its most recent annual report, CAIR-CA said that it had helped “dozens of Afghan families” through the project. In September 2025, CDSS rubberstamped an additional $23 million in federal funds for CAIR-CA.

In 2024, CAIR-CA’s IRS filings revealed that it had distributed more than $4 million in subgrants to 39 organizations. Among these sub-grantees were various groups with Islamist ties. For example, CAIR-CA sub-granted roughly $185,000 to California chapters of the Muslim American Society (MAS). GWU’s Program on Extremism identifies MAS as an open “Brotherhood legacy group” in the U.S. In 2004, a top MAS official estimated that nearly half of the organization’s activists were Muslim Brotherhood members. (MAS, which did not respond to our request for comment, claims to have “no affiliation” with the Muslim Brotherhood.)

CAIR-CA also sub-granted $30,000 to the Islamic Society of Orange County, which has ties to an individual connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1992, ISOC’s director invited Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh,” to deliver a lecture, during which he reportedly “dismissed” nonviolent interpretations of jihad. A year later, Rahman was charged with seditious conspiracy for his connection to the attack. (ISOC did not respond to our request for comment.)

In 2024, CAIR-CA sub-granted $117,000 to California “relief” chapters of the Islamic Circle of North America. ICNA was originally established as a U.S. affiliate of the Jamaat-e-Islami movement, whose founder’s ideology influenced the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, in 2000, a former ICNA president penned an article that seemingly endorsed the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the U.S. (ICNA did not respond to our request for comment.)

CAIR-CA has claimed, however implausibly, that it has no control over the selection of its sub-grantees. In January 2026, the director of CAIR-CA, Hussam Ayloush, wrote to a congressional subcommittee claiming that his organization “had no input or role” in determining the sub-grantees. Instead, he suggested that CDSS had selected them.

While CDSS told IAN that it “reviews and authorizes all . . . subgrantees,” the department did not release records showing that it approved or authorized the CAIR-CA sub-grants. Additionally, Alyoush’s signature appears on the sub-grant contracts, which, according to IAN, suggests that CAIR-CA exercised significant discretion over millions in federal tax dollars.

“Ayloush personally signed every one of these ALSP [Afghan Legal Services Project] grants as executive director of CAIR-LA,” a spokesman for the Network Contagion Research Institute and IAN told the New York Post. “[A]n entity contractually charged with administering funds and subgranting services necessarily plays a role in identifying subgrantees and their performance under the grant.”

In response to our request for comment, a CAIR-CA spokesman called allegations against the organization “baseless” and “part of a broader defamation campaign.” “All contributions and grants that CAIR California receives are fully reported, accounted for, and used strictly for their intended purposes,” he said, “subject to rigorous internal and external auditing and reporting. This transparency is why both private and public funders have worked with us and continue to do so.”

In March 2025, IAN requested that the Department of Justice launch an investigation into CAIR-CA, stating that a “forensic audit” was needed to determine the scope of the organization’s “financial misconduct, compliance [breaches], and support for terrorism.” Three months later, the DOJ confirmed that an investigation was underway.

Given California’s track record under Newsom—on whose watch the state has lost billions of dollars to fraud—taxpayers should not hold their breath that state agencies will hold CAIR-CA accountable. Nor should they expect California to come to its senses anytime soon and stop turning over buckets of tax dollars to a chapter of a “civil rights” group with alleged ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But the failures of California state government present an opportunity for the Trump administration. If the Department of Justice were officially and permanently to revoke CAIR-CA’s accreditation with the Executive Office for Immigration Review—a status that the group relies on to receive federal immigration funds—then tax dollars currently flowing into its coffers would be halted. In other words, the solution is simple: turn off the taps.

Yes, the United States effectively inherited the existing institution of slavery in the territory acquired through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France (which had briefly reacquired it from Spain in 1800). The U.S. did not introduce slavery there as a new practice; it was already well-established under prior colonial rule, and the transfer preserved the property rights of slaveholders.

Historical Context of Slavery in the Louisiana Territory

* French origins: France introduced chattel slavery to the Louisiana colony starting in the early 1700s, importing enslaved Africans (beginning around 1710) to support plantation agriculture, alongside some raids on Native American groups for labor. The Code Noir (1685) regulated slavery in French colonies, outlining rules for treatment, manumission, and rights of free people of color.

* Spanish period (1762–1800): Spain continued and expanded the transatlantic slave trade in the territory. By the time of the Purchase, there was a significant population of enslaved Africans, especially in the lower Mississippi Valley (present-day Louisiana), along with free people of color. Spain had banned enslavement of Native Americans in 1769, but some mixed-descent individuals remained in bondage.

* Brief French return (1800–1803): Napoleon reacquired Louisiana from Spain via the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso but never fully reimposed control on a large scale. His broader plans for a New World empire (including using Louisiana to supply Saint-Domingue/Haiti) collapsed due to the successful Haitian Revolution (a massive slave rebellion that led to Haiti’s independence in 1804) and disease among French troops. Napoleon restored slavery in other French colonies in 1802 but sold Louisiana before deeply reasserting it there.

At the time of the Purchase, slavery was a functioning economic and social institution in parts of the territory, particularly around New Orleans and agricultural areas. The Purchase doubled the size of the U.S. and brought in a diverse population that included thousands of enslaved people.

The Louisiana Purchase Treaty and Its Provisions

The 1803 treaty (signed April 30, 1803) made no direct mention of slavery or its abolition. Key relevant language came in Article III:

“The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible according to the principles of the federal Constitution to the enjoyment of all these rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the Religion which they profess.”

In the legal and social context of the era, enslaved people were treated as property under colonial (and later U.S.) law. Protecting “property” rights thus meant the U.S. recognized and upheld existing claims to enslaved individuals. President Thomas Jefferson and Congress had no intention of ending slavery in the acquired lands; they focused on governance, citizenship for free inhabitants (including free people of color in some cases), and eventual statehood.

Early U.S. actions included:

* Temporary restrictions on importing new slaves into the Orleans Territory (except those brought by migrating owners), but these were quickly weakened or removed due to local opposition.

* The territory (later split into the Orleans and Louisiana Districts) adopted laws similar to those in southern U.S. states while incorporating some French/Spanish precedents. Slavery expanded significantly post-Purchase, fueled by the cotton gin, sugar plantations, and the domestic slave trade. New Orleans became a major slave-trading hub.

Broader Impacts

The Purchase did not “create” slavery in the region but integrated an existing slave society into the U.S., exacerbating sectional tensions over whether new states carved from the territory would allow slavery. This contributed to debates leading to the Missouri Compromise (1820), the expansion of the domestic slave trade, and ultimately tensions culminating in the American Civil War. Parts of the territory (e.g., future Missouri) already had some slaveholders; lower Louisiana had many more.

In short: The U.S. acquired a territory where slavery was a longstanding colonial practice under France (and Spain). By guaranteeing property rights and incorporating the inhabitants without disrupting the institution, the U.S. inherited and then expanded slavery there under American law and governance. The Haitian Revolution indirectly enabled the sale by derailing Napoleon’s plans, creating an ironic link between the end of slavery in one former French colony and its reinforcement in another.

Today’s Democratic Party has abandoned its traditional working-class, patriotic roots and embraced a radical Jacobin ideology built on division, coercion, and political extremism.

By Victor Davis Hanson

May 7, 2026

Today’s Democratic Party has abandoned its traditional working-class, patriotic roots and embraced a radical Jacobin ideology built on division, coercion, and political extremism.

For the past century, the agendas of the Democratic Party were predictable. They professed concern for working Americans and supported blue-collar unions.

Unemployment insurance, a 40-hour work week, disability insurance, and Social Security were their trademarks—often rapidly achieved by growing government bureaucracies and continually raising taxes. Still, many Democrats were socially conservative.

By the 1970s, Democrats still deplored antisemitism. Party officials had rejected their own segregationists to champion civil rights.

Presidents like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy all supported strong defense and military deterrence.

All that is now passé.

The only vestigial Democrat left in Congress is Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, himself roundly despised by Democrat leaders.

Today, supporting Israel and calling for campuses to stop their institutionalized antisemitism is Democratic political suicide.

Forty years ago, any Democrat with a Nazi tattoo was political toast; today, he can become the party’s nominee for the Maine Senate race.

So, the current Democrat Party is no longer truly democratic at all. Its new spirit and methods resemble the radical Jacobin Party of the French Revolution. Today, Democrats claim that if any opponent gives a Roman salute, he is a Nazi—while insisting that one of their own with a Nazi tattoo is not.

Jacobinism rejects Martin Luther King Jr.’s emphasis on the “content of . . . character.” It instead prefers fixating on “the color of . . . skin.”

It aims to divide the nation arbitrarily between the noble oppressed and the toxic oppressors.

So these new Jacobins have institutionalized racially separate college dorms and graduation ceremonies, along with hiring and promoting on the basis of race.

The new Jacobins destroyed the southern border and welcomed in 10–12 million illegal aliens, seen as a future proletariat constituency. Today’s Jacobins would now ridicule Bill Clinton’s 1990s calls for secure borders and an end to illegal immigration as “fascist” and “racist.”

The most recent nihilist developments in American society can be attributed to these Jacobin “Democrats”: biological men competing in women’s sports; critical legal theory that normalizes cashless bail; race-based reparations; violent felons arrested and back on the street hours later; radical abortion on demand until birth; attacks on the concept of the cultural “melting pot”; and opposition to organized Christianity.

These agendas lack broad majority support. So street theater and violence focus on Tesla dealerships, ICE officers, conservative campus speakers, and, at times, any journalists covering the unrest.

Jacobins make excuses for pro-Hamas campus violence, which often targets Jewish students. The often violent and corrupt Black Lives Matter movement was a Jacobin ancillary.

Free speech is labeled “disinformation” and “misinformation”—synonyms for not toeing the Jacobin Party line. Until recent pushbacks, near-religious radical green agendas warred against fossil fuels and cost the working classes billions of dollars for sky-high fuel and electricity costs.

Like the Robespierre brothers of old, the most radical Jacobins are so often to be found among the wealthiest and most privileged Americans. Radical New York mayor Zohran Mamdani grew up as a rich Ugandan. Radical, self-described communist Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner attended one of the most elite and expensive prep schools in the United States.

When avowed socialists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders barnstormed the country, they did so via private jets.

Radical “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar cannot decide whether she is worth $30 million or nothing. Hard-left California billionaire, gubernatorial candidate, and radical environmentalist Tom Steyer is a billionaire who jump-started his fortune by investing in coal plants overseas and offshoring profits to avoid taxes.

At least 10 states are drafting laws to tax the net worth, as well as the income, of “billionaires and millionaires,” apparently for their “social” crimes. Mayor Mamdani taps on the window of philanthropist Ken Griffin as a warning to get out of town. The mayor of Seattle scoffs at the rich leaving her state with their billions due to new punitive taxes, offering a sarcastic “bye.”

In the old days, Democrats were embarrassed by their radicals and distanced themselves from the Weather Underground, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panthers. Today, left-wing bomb throwers are the Democrat Party.

Hasan Piker, another multimillionaire, $200,000 Porsche-driving communist, has openly supported “social murder.”

So Piker praised Luigi Mangione’s targeted murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Meanwhile, Jacobins on social media expressed disappointment that all three assassination attempts on Donald Trump failed. The arsonist who burned down Pacific Palisades was a Mangione acolyte and saw his destruction as a revolutionary act, perhaps a form of mass “social murder.”

Jacobin politicians call for Trump to be “eliminated,” label him as a “fascist,” and call for “any means necessary” to end his presidency. The aim is to lower the social and psychological barrier to violence.

The Jacobin Democrats of today are systematically destroying the legacy of the Democratic Party. And why not?

Their model is not the American Founding, but the radical mandated equality—and violence—of the French Revolution.

Victor Davis Hanson

Speaking in an interview that followed his primary election defeat in Texas, where MAGA voters ousted him and replaced him with the far better Steve Toth, longtime anti-Trump RINO Dan Crenshaw went on an angry and conspiratorial rant in which he claimed that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), of all people, had stirred up anti-RINO sentiment against him.

In the interview, Crenshaw began his angry and conspiratorial rambling about why he lost with commentary about how it is mean that conservatives don’t like him, saying, “There’s nothing, especially conservatives, there’s nothing they love more than to tear down their own and figure out a reason why, even if they have to make it up, and it’s sort of part of the culture, right? It’s like, ‘Let’s Go RINO hunting.’”

Contrasting that with the left and blaming Ted Cruz, thought by many in MAGA to be something of a RINO, for it, Crenshaw said, “You know, the Democrats don’t have a term like that, but the Republicans do. That’s been going on for years and years and years, and it’s been…I think the source of a lot of it is Ted, Senator Cruz.”

Crenshaw continued, the journalist agreeing with him, by keeping up the ridiculous and conspiratorial attacks on Sen. Cruz, saying, “Yeah, that’s been obvious to me for years, years and years and years. That’s been obvious to me. He just finally pulled his mask off. Maybe he’ll look better now.”

The journalist then laughed at his joke about Cruz looking better, and Crenshaw awkwardly went back and forth with her on it in a semi-flirtateous way, saying, “Why did you laugh that was so mean? Are you saying he doesn’t. Anyway, you laughed. I didn’t laugh. You laughed. And hold it together.”

Returning somewhat to his point, Crenshaw entertainingly claimed that he was a big primary threat to Cruz, who attacked him for that reason, saying, “There’s no beef. He just, he’s just, I don’t know if Cruz has any friends, you know. I mean, like, the only, the only obvious reasoning is like, he, you know, he always viewed me as a threat, like a primary threat…”

Then, when asked if he had a “weird tension” with Sen. Cruz, the ousted RINO responded, “Enough so we’re like, back in early 2021, I felt the need to talk to him and say, ‘Senator, I will never primary you. Just so you know, never going to do it.’”

Crenshaw then claimed to face continual betrayal from Cruz’s staff, saying, “There was always somebody close to him, just just oddly, just just betraying me for no reason, you know, like Michael Berry, a radio host who’s just this drunken, like, cheating loser, who like, but he did get me elected in my first term, you know, and so, but he’s, you know, and then he got mad at me because I wasn’t paying enough ad money on his radio station back in the election in 2020. Sure enough, you know. Right after that, he starts going crazy on me. And so it’s all money with these guys.”

Continuing, Crenshaw then rambled about various online political figures and “MAGA influencers” he doesn’t like, and concluded by insisting, “These losers . . . just start this cottage industry of slandering me online, just making crap up if they have to, it didn’t matter what it was. And so you know that, again, the ties to Cruz are very, are very obvious.”

When we speak to people about communism, especially young people, they often insist that although communism has failed everywhere it’s been tried, the U.S. will be successful in adopting it.

They clearly have not learned the lessons of human nature and depravity. And they might be surprised to learn that those attributes exist abundantly in this country.

We only need to study Cambodia, one of the most extreme applications of communism ever imposed, to get a hint of what might show up here. Young people in this country have a hard time relating to the Killing Fields, because the main message generally communicated is that millions of people were killed at the hands of one man: Pol Pot. But what is lost in relating the gruesome story is that Pol Pot was a communist.

During the last days of the Vietnam War in April 1975, Cambodia’s pro-American government was overthrown by the Communist Party of Kampuchea under the leadership of Pol Pot. His ideology deeply rooted in Marxist-Leninist thought, Pol Pot rallied his Khmer Rouge army in support of his vision of a self-sufficient agrarian society, founded on the principles of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China and free of foreign influence.

In order to meet that goal, urbanites needed to be evacuated from the cities. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, monks, and other professionals were sent to labor in the fields, being forced to work well beyond their strength. If you even looked like an intellectual, which could include wearing glasses, you were an enemy of the state.

The atrocities that were committed during Pol Pot’s reign are difficult to fathom. Torture and executions were common; imprisonment was standard. Eventually, Pol Pot was defeated by the Vietnamese army.

Following Pol Pot’s reign, a glass memorial was constructed in the shape of a Buddhist stupa, with 5,000 skulls displayed. If you look closely at the skulls, you may see signs of trauma embedded in them before they died. The Cambodians are committed to ensuring that their people never forget what happened to them with these kinds of memorials.

As a side note, I visited Cambodia and saw the skulls. Our tour guide explained to us that they were unable to calculate with any accuracy the number of people who had died; entire villages were wiped out so that there would be no witnesses to the genocide. To this day, the numbers range widely, from 1.3 million to 3 million, which was one-fifth to one-fourth of the country’s population.

That’s a grisly story about communism in Cambodia. But what does it have to do with the United States? There have certainly been many conversations on the incursion of socialism and communism into this country, but there is no reason to think that our practice of those two ideologies would lead to violence.

Is there?

People fail to notice that the seeds of violence have already been sown regarding communism. One of the culprits: Black Lives Matter. 

Alicia Garza, one of the main BLM founders, made her goals clear in Maine in 2019, when she told a group of eager New England leftists:

We’re talking about changing how we’ve organized this country, so that we actually can achieve the justice that we are fighting for. I believe we all have work to do to keep dismantling the organizing principle of this society, which creates inequities for everyone, even white people.

You may ask, however, what do her aims have to do with communism? Only the fact that Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the three main Founders of BLM, have been forthright about their training in, and commitment to, Marxism. Garza made the point in one interview that social movements everywhere have used Marx and Lenin to disturb the existing systems, in order to prepare for the revolution.

In addition, their vice-chair made an ominous statement about the future:

Black Lives Matter is administered by an organization whose vice chair, Susan Rosenberg, is a convicted communist terrorist who served 16 years of a 58-year sentence which was commuted by Bill Clinton.

Rosenberg was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO) which ‘openly advocate[d] the overthrow of the U.S. Government through armed struggle and the use of violence.’

Let’s not forget that BLM was at the forefront of the riots and protests of the summer of 2020. To underscore BLM’s involvement, their activists were involved in 95% of the 633 incidents. The Insurance Information Institute documented that it was the costliest civil disorder in U.S. history. 

And the Left applauded the riots:

President Joe Biden praised the efforts of Black Lives Matter demonstrators during the summer of 2020 as a ‘historic movement for justice’ while speaking at a campaign event Monday.

[snip]

The summer of 2020 featured several violent protests and riots, including the siege of the Portland, Ore. federal courthouse and shootings that killed law enforcement officers in St. Louis and Oakland.

Kamala Harris also got into the act by promoting the bail fund for rioters in Minneapolis:

That endorsement helped the Minnesota Freedom Fund raise $40million, cash it soon used to release accused murderers, rapists, and thieves.

The lessons are obvious and treacherous for our future. We have a naïve group of citizens who can’t see beyond their greed for goodies that a communist regime will provide, at least temporarily. They are too deluded to recognize that they are already witnessing the destructive elements of communism in our own country in riots and protests. They refuse to believe that the violence and depravity that we have seen in other countries has already begun to happen here.

We must overcome our arrogance and naivete regarding communism in this country and face the reality of a communist conversion.

The latest man charged with trying to assassinate President Donald Trump received an apology from the judge in his court appearance Monday.

Attorneys for Cole Allen claimed in filings revealed during the hearing that the suspect had been wrongfully placed on suicide watch and denied access to a Bible.

Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui gave the government until the next day to update the court on where Allen would be held at the Washington, D.C., jail.

“Whatever you’ve been through, I apologize for the prior week,” the judge said to Allen, according to USA Today.

“I’m sorry,” the judge said at another point.

Faruqui also compared Allen’s treatment in jail to that of the defendants in the Jan. 6 melee at the U.S. Capitol, saying he had been treated worse.

“This is not the jail’s first go-around with people engaged in alleged political violence,” the judge added.

Allen’s attorneys said in a filing to the court that Allen had been cleared of being a suicide risk but was assigned to the restrictions anyway. The prisoner was refused phone calls, non-legal visits, dimmed lights, tablets, and other personal items under the suicide risk designation, they claimed.

“Mr. Allen is forced to be escorted to the shower, strip searched when entering and exiting his cell, and wear a padded vest while inside,” according to Allen’s public defender and two court-appointed attorneys.

“These conditions are excessive restrictions on his liberty that serve no justifiable purpose and deprive Mr. Allen of dignity while incarcerated,” they added in the filing.

The lawyers said Sunday that Allen has since been taken off suicide watch.

Allen was charged with attempted assassination of the president and two other charges after he allegedly fired a shotgun at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that President Donald Trump was attending. The suspect was captured on security video rushing through a security checkpoint with the gun before he was tackled to the ground and arrested.

Allen left a large digital footprint full of left-wing criticism against the president, as well as other evidence that suggested the shooting may have been politically motivated.

He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of the charges. He has not yet entered a plea to the court.

Iranians need access to weapons to challenge their rulers, President Donald Trump said on Monday, arguing that protesters would fight effectively if armed but are currently outmatched by government forces.

“They have to have guns. And I think they’re getting some guns. As soon as they have guns, they’ll fight like, as good as anybody there is,” Trump said in an interview with The Hugh Hewitt Show.

Trump also suggested that US military pressure had already significantly weakened Iran and that further action could be completed within a short timeframe.

Trump:

The Iranian people have to have guns and I think they’re getting some guns.

As soon as they have guns, they’ll fight like as good as anybody there is. pic.twitter.com/84BBqeZCPy

— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 5, 2026 “We’ve taken out much of what we’d have to do, probably another two weeks, two weeks, maybe three weeks,” he said.

Trump said large numbers of Iranians would struggle to confront armed forces without access to weapons.

“You can’t have an unarmed population against people with AK-47s,” he said, adding that even hundreds of thousands of protesters would struggle against a smaller armed force.

He said previous protests had been met with heavy force, citing the deaths of tens of thousands of demonstrators, and suggested this had made him cautious about encouraging renewed unrest.

“I’m very torn on it, because they lost 42,000 people in the first two weeks. I don’t really want to see that,” Trump said.

Past weapons transfers

Trump said during a phone interview with Fox Sunday in early April that his administration had previously attempted to send firearms to Iranian protesters but that the effort did not reach its intended recipients.

“We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them. We sent them through the Kurds. And I think the Kurds took the guns,” he said.

He repeated similar complaints, saying he was “very upset with a certain group of people” and warning they would “pay a big price.”

Several Kurdish groups have denied receiving such shipments.

Calls in Washington to arm Iranians

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has also urged the administration to pursue a policy of directly arming Iranian civilians.

“If I were President Trump and I were Israel, I would load the Iranian people up with weapons so they can go to the streets armed and turn the tide of battle inside Iran,” Graham said in an interview with Fox News on Monday.

“We don’t need American boots on the ground. We’ve got millions of boots on the ground in Iran. They just don’t have any weapons,” he added.

Graham described the idea as “a Second Amendment solution,” suggesting that arming civilians could help bring down the government without direct foreign military involvement.

He also called for alternative channels to deliver weapons, urging the administration not to rely on Kurdish intermediaries.

Military pressure and internal divisions

Trump framed his comments within a broader assessment that Iran’s military and economic capacity had been significantly weakened.

“They have no navy. They have no air force. They have no anti-aircraft,” he told The Hugh Hewitt Show.

Trump added that financial pressure may have affected the government’s ability to pay its forces.

“We don’t think they’re paying their soldiers and their Guard anymore,” he said.

He also suggested divisions within Iran’s security structure, drawing a distinction between the regular army and other forces.

“We purposefully have not gone after them too much, because we think that they’re much more moderate,” Trump said.

At the same time, he said the United States was not seeking to dismantle the country’s military institutions entirely.

“We’re not looking to decimate the army,” he said, referring to past regional experiences.

“You know, when they did Iraq… and the worst thing was they got rid of the all the leaders, so nobody knew who the leader was. And then all of a sudden, you had ISIS. We don’t want to do that.”

Nuclear focus remains central.

Despite discussing internal unrest, Trump said that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons remains the central objective of US policy.

“The one thing I will say is they will never have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Trump said any potential agreement would require the return of highly enriched uranium and limits on missile development, though he stressed that nuclear restrictions remain the priority.

Some readers have asked why Russia regards Finland’s membership in NATO as a provocation. For the same reason that Ukraine’s membership is a provocation: US missile bases on Russia’s border. The US does not currently have hypersonic missiles, but will sooner or later. Such missiles on Russia’s borders could reach Moscow in 3 or 4 minutes, clearly an existential threat. Along with Finland, Washington wants the bases in Sweden and the Baltic states, and already has missile bases in Poland and Romania.

Whereas Washington intends Finland’s NATO membership as a new provocation, we must not forget two other existing provocations that the Kremlin has declared to be unacceptable: the existing missile bases in Poland and Romania. It makes no sense for Russia to preemptively prevent missile bases in Ukraine and Finland while permitting existing bases to remain in Poland and Romania. Russian intervention against these two bases are likely the next self-defensive actions the Russians will take.

The West’s whore media has done its best to create worldwide indignation against Russia. People worked up into indignation do not perceive the irresponsibility of Western governments in gratuitously threatening Russia with missile bases on her borders. Instead of properly perceiving the placement of the bases as aggression against Russia, the indoctrinated people see Russia’s response to existential threats as aggression.

I have emphasized for years that these provocations of Russia will eventually cross a red line and result in nuclear war. I have long been critical of the Kremlin for not having stopped these provocations by putting down a strong foot. Russia had that opportunity in Ukraine, but the Kremlin chose a course that failed to make the necessary impression that countries that accommodate US aggression against Russia will experience devastation. It is less risky to make this demonstration in a non-NATO country than in a NATO one. Additionally, the Kremlin waited far too long before intervening in Ukraine, thereby giving the US 8 years to arm and train Ukrainian forces. By pussy-footing around in Ukraine, Russia will again be confronted with the same problem in Finland or elsewhere in addition to the two existing bases in two NATO members on Russia’s border. There is no doubt whatsoever that US/NATO have set a path that leads straight to nuclear war. As nothing that is outside the narrative can be published or discussed in the Western world, nothing can be done to stop this insane drive into nuclear war. It is not even possible to discuss this threat in Western foreign policy circles. Again the world is sleepwalking into war, but this war will be nuclear and the final war.

All that the Kremlin has achieved with its restraint and reliance on negotiation with the West is to intensify the pace and level of provocations. NATO’s Stoltenberg is courting both Finland and Sweden for NATO membership promising their membership would be fast-tracked, and likely other benefits including bagfuls of money. This report should wake people up to the real situation, which is expanding conflict. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/finland-sweden-nato-applications-could-be-imminent-after-stoltenberg-suggests-fast At some point existential considerations will force Russia to take the initiative and cease responding to Washington’s agenda.

The Labor Department said Thursday that U.S. initial unemployment claims totaled 189,000 for the week ending April 25, down 26,000 from a revised prior-week figure of 215,000. That is the lowest reading in more than 50 years, according to The Associated Press, citing research firm High Frequency Economics, which said the figure was the fewest new applications since September 1969.

Analysts had projected 212,000 applications for the week, according to Bloomberg.

At 207,500, the four-week moving average — a measure designed to reduce week-to-week volatility — was 3,500 below the previous week’s revised figure.

For the week ending April 18, the number of people collecting ongoing unemployment benefits reached its lowest point in two years, dropping by 23,000 to 1.785 million, according to Bloomberg. The insured unemployment rate held at 1.2%.

On an unadjusted basis, initial claims totaled 179,765, a decline of 26,668, or 12.9%, from the preceding week. The comparable figure a year earlier was 224,021.

Among individual states, New York posted the steepest reduction in unadjusted filings, shedding close to 11,000 applications, with California and Connecticut also seeing notable pullbacks, according to Bloomberg.

The historically low filing numbers have persisted even though a string of prominent employers — among them Meta Platforms, Nike, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon — have publicly announced workforce reductions, according to Bloomberg and The Associated Press. Fed Chair Jerome Powell pointed to a labor market displaying “more and more signs of stability” after the Federal Reserve opted Wednesday to hold its benchmark rate steady, according to Bloomberg.

Since the economy recovered from the pandemic-era downturn, new unemployment filings had generally held within a band of roughly 200,000 to 250,000 per week, according to the AP.

I still remember fondly the time I got an A- on my 8th grade earth science paper. It was one of my proudest moments as a student.

Meanwhile, as MIT boasts, some folks are, well, a bit beyond that.

Physics is riddled with paradoxes: Think of how information leaks from supposedly inescapable black holes or how the conventional laws of physics break down at the quantum scale. Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski ’13 believes that within these apparent contradictions, new discoveries await.

Ah yes, “how the conventional laws of physics break down at the quantum scale.” I think about that often!

Well, apparently Ms. Pasterski thinks about it quite a bit. In fact, her entire life story seems to be just one long exercise of thinking.

Born in Chicago, some of Pasterski’s earliest accomplishments include:

Building her own Zenith aircraft starting from age 12.

Attending the prestigious Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

Holding an internship at the space tech company Blue Origin at age 16.

Working as an aeronautical engineer at Boeing Phantom Works by 18.

Not a bad rap sheet for someone under 20!

She subsequently attended MIT, during which she did work at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (no biggie). She eventually graduated from the prestigious institution with “a 5.0 grade point average.” (I was not aware GPAs went that high.)

These days Pasterski’s engaged in a little light research, nothing too strenuous:

She and her colleagues are working to unite general relativity, which describes gravity and the macroscopic world, with quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of subatomic particles. It’s a field of physics research known as quantum gravity.

If Pasterski helps solve this problem that has vexed scientists for decades, the result will be the holy grail of physics: a fundamental theory of nature that characterizes pretty much everything. One day there may be engineering applications. “If you understand how things work,” she says, “you can do things with that knowledge.” But she’s in this to solve an existential puzzle — to reveal what she calls “the source code of the universe.”

If all of this makes you feel rather small, don’t worry: Pasterski “estimates there are probably only a couple of thousand people in the world with whom she can meaningfully converse about her work in physics.” It’s a small club!

She has pushed back against the moniker of “the New Einstein,” however, stating that in her hunt for the universal source code she is just “happy to be a part of this legacy that our field is building.”

Okay but we’re still gonna call you Einstein, lady!