Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics,

Progressivism isn’t just an ideology; it’s also becoming a mental health condition.

Spiraling past the tendentious spin and lies that have long shaped American discourse on both sides of the aisle, the loudest voices on the left are losing the capacity to grasp reality. As a character in a recent Wall Street Journal cartoon put it: “You’ve got it all wrong. What I’m saying isn’t misinformation. It’s denial.”

Take Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s recent denunciation of “White House senior aides” for “sowing fear, intimidation and division” by, among other things, calling Democrats “fascists.” Given not just his party’s but his own frequent use of such rhetoric – comparing ICE agents to Nazis who disappear immigrants and vowing that Republicans “cannot know a moment of peace” – the jaw-dropping irony of his complaint was lost on no one, except, apparently, Pritzker and his allies. It raises the question: How did he think he could get away with this?

He is not alone. In recent weeks, progressives have been assailing President Trump’s very real attacks on free speech, without wrestling with the fact that they have long been the driving force behind cancel culture, hate speech codes, and broad-based censorship efforts.

They have been attacking Trump for weaponizing the justice system against his political enemies without coming to grips with the fact that they did exactly that during the Biden administration.

These efforts seem darker and more disturbed than the old political tactic of telling small lies to achieve larger truths. More than simply Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids, they reflect the progressives’ flight from reality, into a world of their own making, a belief that the visions inside their heads are truer than what the rest of us can plainly see. Where sane people try to work through the ineluctable contradictions of their own thoughts – which many of the right are struggling to do in response to Trump’s overreach – progressives have abandoned this mental effort.

Poisoned by leftist arguments that there is no truth, only power, they believe they can make things so simply by saying them – which is crazy. How else to explain:

• An August article in the New Yorker that stated: “Liberals used to be the counterculture; today, they’re the defenders of traditional norms and institutions.” That, of course, might come as news to those who disagree with the liberal view that sex is assigned at birth and who always thought equality, not equity, was the foundation of American liberty.
• A September column in the New York Times that quoted a University of Pennsylvania historian who claimed that Obama and Biden “didn’t think they had the power to disregard statutes passed by Congress and the text of the Constitution. They didn’t think they had the power to do things like treat the presidency as an office that permits its occupant to use the power of the state to reward friends and punish enemies and engage in self-dealing and enrichment.” Evidently, Professor Kate Shaw is unaware of the multiple cases brought against Donald Trump and his allies, the business dealings of Hunter Biden, or the first son’s pardon.

Consider Jimmy Kimmel’s infamous claim that Charlie Kirk’s left-wing assassin was actually MAGA. Given the mountains of evidence to the contrary, including the killer’s own words, it boggles the mind that anyone would come to this conclusion, much less say it in front of millions of people. But the talk show host was, in fact, articulating an unmoored view embraced by many voices respected on the left. Kimmel wasn’t simply trying to spin the news to help his side, he was repeating a story that makes sense if you have convinced yourself that only right-wing people engage in political gun violence and that your side is inviolately virtuous.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon gets even more troubling. As fears of political violence have intensified since Kirk’s murder, the New York Times has posted several pieces assassinating his character. One of its star content creators, Ezra Klein, for example, provided little pushback on a recent podcast as the racialist writer Ta-Nehisi Coates repeatedly labeled Kirk a “hatemonger.” The newspaper also published a long essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, who led the paper’s controversial 1619 Project which tried to put slavery at the center of American history, which repeatedly called Kirk a bigot.

Her only evidence to support this inflammatory portrayal is one 168-word paragraph in a 2,568-word piece that cherry-picked, out-of-context snippets – he said ‘there’s a war on white people in this country’ he referred to a transgender athlete as an ‘abomination’ – to cast Kirk’s opposition to the woke agenda, gender affirming care and his concerns about black crime and Islam as “unabashed bigotry.”

To assess the quality of evidence, note that she repeats the long-debunked claims that Trump “called the white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., ‘very fine people.’ ” To demonstrate that her views have wide currency, she writes that “Last year, The Washington Examiner, a conservative news outlet, published a column calling the organization Kirk co-founded, Turning Point USA, ‘one of the most destructive forces in Republican politics.’” What she ignored was that the author of that piece, Ben Rothove, published a short piece in the New York Times 16 days before her essay was published that declared, “I was wrong about Charlie Kirk.”

Hannah-Jones is, of course, entitled to her views – but not her own facts. It is telling that she and her editors thought it was appropriate to print a piece that made no effort to contextualize Kirk’s statements, or to try to understand why so many people in the world admired him. Their goal, instead, was to demonize an adversary by assertion. This is our truth. Perhaps more disturbing are two quotes in the piece that suggest Kirk’s murder was acceptable. “I cannot have empathy for him losing his life when he put mine at risk,” one black educator told Hannah-Jones.

“I firmly believe that no one should be killed for their beliefs, no matter how harmful those beliefs might be,” another person told her. “But we are watching our rights being stripped away. 

Such views, of course, resonate with those of thousands of others who celebrated Kirk’s murder; just as many progressives have cheered Luigi Mangione’s cold-blooded murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson last December.

I hesitate to say that the Times was sanctioning Kirk’s assassination. But it is clear that progressives are proceeding down a dangerous path where facts, truths, and human decency are being overwhelmed by their dark desires.

In 2024, 6% of the U.S. population lived in extreme poverty, equal to 20.4 million people.

While there are different definitions of extreme poverty, this is represented as those earning less than $8,160 in annual income, or half of the poverty line. As the federal budget makes cuts to food assistance and healthcare, levels of extreme poverty run the risk of worsening even further.

This graphic, viaVisual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the share of each state living in extreme poverty in 2024, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Washington D.C. Has the Highest Level of Extreme Poverty

Last year, more than one in 10 residents of the nation’s capital lived in extreme poverty. 

Going further, economic hardship disproportionately impacts people of color in Washington D.C., with one in three black children living in poverty between 2019 and 2023, on average.

As we can see, Southern states also rank among the most impoverished. In Louisiana, 9% of residents live in extreme poverty, and on average, 18.9% lived below the poverty line between 2021 and 2023.

Meanwhile, 7% of New York’s population are extremely impoverished, equal to an estimated 1.4 million people.

On the other end of the spectrum is New Hampshire with the lowest rate nationally, at 3.9%. The Granite State benefits from a stable job market, low unemployment, and a strong education system. Paired with relatively affordable healthcare, these factors contribute to higher living standards for its residents, reducing the risk of poverty.

Trump’s Industrial Policy juggernaut continues.

Moments after the close when we saw some abnormal moves in the stock of yet another North American small cap stock focused on mining strategic minerals, we quickly skimmed through Trilogy Metals’ just released presentation and told readers that yet another “Uncle Sam bear hug” deal was in the works, pointing out the company’s disclosure of DOD funding to develop a cobalt supply chain. 

Trilogy Metals (TMQ) soars after microcap miner ($343MM market cap) reveals DOD funding of its “Bornite Project to advance domestic cobalt supply chain” pic.twitter.com/ILauxrLBrn

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 6, 2025

13 minutes later it was official: the US said it will take a 10% stake in Canadian minerals explorer Trilogy Metals as part of a $35.6 million investment to secure critical energy and mining projects in Alaska. The US deal also includes warrants to purchase an additional 7.5% of the Vancouver-based company.

In an announcement Monday, President Donald Trump said the White House is reversing a Biden-era decision to reject Ambler Road, a project to help access vast critical mineral deposits in Alaska’s Northern Brooks Range –  home to some of the world’s richest known copper-dominant polymetallic deposits – to open up critical energy and mining projects.

The 211-mile (340-kilometer) highway would connect a remote mining district with deposits of copper, cobalt, gallium, germanium and other minerals.

Trump’s move directs the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and US Army Corps of Engineers to reissue any necessary permits needed to build the road.

“This was something that should have been long operating and making billions of dollars for our country and supplying a lot of energy and minerals and everything else,” Trump said during an event in the Oval Office.

Trilogy Metals has mining claims in remote areas of Alaska, including a joint venture with Canadian mining giant, South32 Ltd.

The planned investment is the latest example of the Trump administration taking stakes in North American critical minerals companies to help counter China’s dominance in the industry. Just last week, the US agreed to acquire a direct interest in Lithium Americas Corp., which is developing the Thacker Pass lithium project in Nevada. In July, the US Defense Department agreed to a $400 million equity investment in MP Materials Corp. to fund a plant for rare-earth magnets. It is expected to do the same with USA Resources and 

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Ambler Road will be a toll road constructed from gravel, and will be sensitive to environmental concerns. Trump said the effort will include the construction of two bridges. The Interior Department blocked construction during former President Joe Biden’s term, folding to the pressure of one or more bluehaired environmental Karens, saying that the road would impact wildlife including caribou.

US shares of Trilogy soared more than 150% in after-market trading following the announcement of the deal. Billionaire John Paulson is a top shareholder in Trilogy, with an 8.7% stake through his investment fund Paulson & Co, according to the latest data compiled by Bloomberg.

Those wondering who may be next, here is a snapshot of comps from the company’s own presentation.

Trilogy’s full presentation laying out the Ambler Road opportunity is below (pdf link).

Authored by Eric Salzman via Racket News,

I almost fell off my chair a couple of weeks ago when I saw a Bloomberg article titled “The Junk Bond King Opens a Shrine to Capitalism Near the White House.” My thoughts instantly turned to an episode of “The Sopranos” in which Tony and the crew discuss building the Newark Museum of Science and Trucking.

The $500 million Milken Center for the Advancement of the American Dream (MCAAD) is funded by such titans as Citadel Enterprise America’s CEO Ken Griffin, Carlyle founder David Rubenstein, music mogul David Geffen, Walmart multi-billionaire Alice Walton, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates. MCAAD’s website highlights The David Geffen Hall of Dreams, The Kenneth C. Griffin Holodeck Experience, The Word Cloud and much more! I decided to see it for myself, but first, a quick story.

Back in 2017, a Bloomberg interview with Milken caught my attention.

Milken stated about PE:

This is their golden age. You can leverage, you can borrow without covenants, and so for equity holders it affords you very unusual rates of return.

There was also this: “For bond investors today the yields are extremely low, and so therefore you’re not really getting paid much of a premium to invest, but even more important is that the covenants are gone.”

I opined on my former employer’s small blog that PE’s “Golden Age” might be disastrous for the bond and loan holders if they are getting small yield risk premiums with little to no covenants (financial instruments that lenders use to control their risk).

I also noted that in the end, Milken pleaded guilty in 1990 to six felony counts of securities fraud and reporting violations (for which Trump pardoned him in 2020) that resulted in nearly two years of prison, a $600 million fine, and a lifetime ban from the securities industry.

About a week later I received an email from someone at the Milken Institute, the philanthropic think tank that Milken founded in the early 1990s. Milken wanted to speak to me about the article. I told my company, and was told I couldn’t do it. I said to myself, “I’m speaking to Michael Milken!”

My financial career started in the 1980s when Milken was a giant. There are essentially four money-making roles in Wall Street’s bond business: traders, salespersons, strategists and desk heads. Milken had a reputation as being the best at all four roles at the same time. Like it or hate it, the man reinvented finance.

On the appointed day, I called Milken. After exchanging greetings, he said that I was mistaken in my article, mainly because overall, companies are better managed as private entities — basically the same message he had been giving since the early 1980s. I told him that all I was saying was that if it’s a great time for PE borrowers, it probably wasn’t a good time for the lenders (bond and loan holders) because they weren’t getting compensated enough for their risk.

Milken realized that I wasn’t criticizing the private ownership model; I was just taking the other side of the coin. From there we had a very pleasant 15-minute discussion, really just about life in general. After we hung up I said to my wife, “That guy really could sell ice to an Eskimo. Today is Tuesday and if he told me it was Thursday, I’d believe him!”

The Museum

First the good news. Admission is free except for the Kenneth C. Griffin Holodeck Perpetual Story Machine exhibit, which is $15. The MCAAD is a beautiful space with lots of cool digital art displays and a very friendly and helpful staff. Interestingly, the center is located in the old Riggs Bank Building, which is kind of funny considering that a scandal involving the failure to monitor millions of dollars of suspicious transactions from Saudi Arabia after 9/11 eventually sank the bank in 2004.

Overall though, I was disappointed. After reading Bloomberg’s review, I thought the center would be some sort of wild Clockwork Orange experience where words, slogans, visions and flashing lights would come at me in rapid succession to alter my cynical mind into buying into the Milken and Friends version of the American Dream. The David Geffen “Hall of Dreams” sort of did this with charts and graphs about America’s changing opinions on topics such as gay marriage, but I walked out of it as cynical as ever. Words like “Opportunity” and “Immigration” were on the ceiling, and strange white digital clouds “floated” on the glass railings. Perhaps they were supposed to represent dreams.

It made me feel like I was back in the 3rd grade being taught the super-sanitized fairytale version of American History from a textbook published in 1962. Boring pablum. Nowhere was this more evident than the Holodeck. Three saccharine-sweet clichéd stories of making it in America against steep odds that made nearly zero use of the advertised cutting-edge tech. Instead of talking holograms, we got cartoonish-looking people on a screen.

A bit of a disconnect from reality?

The feel-great American dream vibe of the MCAAD differs quite a bit from a recent Wall Street Journal and NORC survey:

The share of people who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living fell to 25%, a record low in surveys dating to 1987. More than three-quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be better than their own, the poll found.

Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream—that if you work hard, you will get ahead—no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys.

Interestingly, soon after entering the MCAAD you can sit down at a little booth and pick videos from the “Foundations of the Dream Gallery” and listen to both everyday Americans as well as famous ones like Katie Couric and Elmo from Sesame Street. Yes, Elmo shares his American dream story. You could choose different themes or groups of people like “Walmart.” This option provides testimonials from Walmart employees who got their start at the company and have made a nice life and career. That jogged my memory that Alice Walton, a scion of the family that started Walmart, was a big contributor to the center.

This was pushback against the narrative that Walmart was one of the main actors in hollowing out America’s manufacturing base, such as in this 2015 study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute that showed the effect Walmart had on American manufacturing jobs and the trade deficit with China.

When the U.S. supported China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, the argument was that millions of jobs would be created in China which in turn would create tremendous demand for U.S. imports. Those imports would create great jobs for Americans displaced by manufacturing moving to China.

That didn’t happen. Instead, companies like Walmart expanded like wildfire with their low-cost product strategy as their vendors moved out of the USA and profit margins for much of corporate America increased sharply with the reduction in labor costs. However, for the displaced American worker, labor unions were broken, wages stagnated and good jobs with benefits were replaced with part time, low-wage jobs at companies like… Walmart.

Meanwhile, the Chinese consistently manipulated their currency, subsidized industries and essentially broke many WTO rules while the United States looked the other way. The combination of cheap imports and stagnant wages in the U.S. dramatically lowered inflation. Lower inflation drove interest rates down substantially. Then when Wall Street had its subprime mortgage bubble burst in 2008 causing “The Great Recession,” we had a decade of Federal Reserve interest rates at or near zero. The chart below shows the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury Note from 1990 to 2021. We start at about 9% and end up lower than 2%.

Significantly wider corporate profit margins combined with historically low interest rates were nirvana for corporate America, especially Wall Street and hence, the $500 million Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. Perhaps they should add another floor to the museum with a hologram exhibit of this bit of history. The MCAAD didn’t have to go full-bore pessimistic, but at least Milken and Friends could give a nod to the serious challenges America still faces to make the dream come true for millions more. Instead, there are only brief mentions of things like racial and gender exclusion sprinkled about in the different exhibits.

If the MCAAD is, as Rachel Goslins, the center’s executive director stated, “unapologetically hopeful about the American dream,” shouldn’t the many challenges and potential ideas to solve them be addressed somewhere? After all, hope is not a strategy.

“Why?” was my biggest question when I left the MCAAD. Why would Milken and the other billionaires spend lots of money and time putting all this together?

The messaging of the MCAAD is consistent with what we have witnessed over the last few years from both sides of the political spectrum. Economists-turned-pundits like Paul Krugman told Americans in 2023 that they shouldn’t feel crappy about the economy as inflation raged. He blamed the disconnect between strong economic data and many citizens’ negative opinions on the economy on political partisanship.

Meanwhile, President Trump recently proclaimed in a Truth Social post that, “Prices are WAY DOWN in the USA with virtually no inflation.”

There’s plenty of inflation. Healthcare costs continue to rise, housing costs continue to rise, food prices continue to rise, auto and home insurance continue to rise. It’s a long list of rising.

The politicians and the plutocrats of all stripes can lie to the American people about many things and get away with it. However, when it comes to how Americans are feeling about their economic reality, as Dylan said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation,

Welcome to the first Monday in October. Know what that means? It means, by federal statute (28 U.S.C. § 2), that the Supreme Court convenes for its new term. Thank goodness, because it’s pretty obvious by now that the Party of Chaos seeks to hogtie and paralyze the executive branch of the government in order to promote the chaos that the Party of Chaos has deftly created for our country. Something must be done.

Chaos is now the Democrats’ preferred milieu for American daily life. They call it The Resistance, bethinking themselves heroic revolutionaries, much like the Jacobins did in Paris, 1793-94, when they tried to turn French society upside-down and inside-out with their insane social “reforms” while they went about chopping the heads off of 17,000 fellow citizens (another 10,000 died in prison awaiting the guillotine). The Jacobins were intoxicated by blood-letting. Their antics lasted less than one year, at the end of which they were briskly routed from the revolutionary assembly hall and escorted within hours to appointments with their own beloved head-chopping device. . . end of story.

The Democratic Party is likewise demonstrably insane. Look no further than the mobs calling themselves Antifa and Transtifa assaulting the federal immigration buildings around the country and promising overtly to injure and even kill their opponents. These are not mere protesters, and everyone knows it, including the upper echelons of the party. They are a riffraff of the violent mentally ill committing criminal acts. Many of them are getting paid for their capers by shadowy NGOs, backed by deranged billionaires. In the case of Portland, Oregon, they have been protected for years by the political establishment, including the governor, the mayor, the police, who will not arrest them, and DAs who won’t prosecute them.

They are ostensibly devoted to stopping the deportation of illegal immigrants, but that is really just the most convenient sob-story to hang their real intentions on — which are to destroy the country currently configured as a Republic and bring on a despotic utopia of free stuff — liquidating anyone who opposes them in the process. They are not all communists, strictly speaking, but the utopia they seek certainly smells like the nightmare societies operated by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

Many of us are opposed to that outcome, including the president of the US, Mr. Trump, who is finally sending federal troops into these places to put a stop to all that. The Antifa street actions in Portland and Chicago give off the odor of actual insurrection, though they have not been labeled as such yet. The police in Chicago have literally declared that they will not assist or protect federal agents going about their business. The police in Portland have been ordered by their superiors to stand down with Antifa.

The president has a duty to protect federal property and the lives of federal employees. You might have noticed that federal district judges have been marshaled by occult Lawfare forces to play a role in The Resistance — to issue stays and temporary restraining orders (TROs) on all and every federal action to put down apparent insurrection. The judges refuse to recognize the Antifa mob actions as anything but lawful assemblies, and they are plainly lying about that.

This has got to stop and the SCOTUS has got to do it now that they are open for business this first Monday of October. The court has what’s called an emergency docket, which allows for expedited interventions on behalf of the executive branch in events that demand it. The emergency docket bypasses the standard merit docket process, which entails oral arguments and detailed opinion. The court’s decisions in such emergency cases are likewise temporary stays of lower court stays and TROs, pending a case moving into the regular merit docket, where arguments are made and definitive decisions are issued on what the law allows the president to do. It’s kind of hard to imagine that SCOTUS would rule against the president defending federal property and lives.

The Party of Chaos is pretty obviously trying to gin up a constitutional crisis at the same time that Chuck Schumer’s Senate Democrats have shut down regular operations of the government in a foolish game of “chicken.” Before long, Americans will suffer from the shutdown, especially middle-class government employees (largely Democrats) who have bills to pay like everybody else. Tomorrow, to aggravate matters, Tuesday, a massive Antifa mob action is planned for New York City.

The play here for the Party of Chaos is the same old routine straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: instigate action on the enemy in order to provoke a reaction by them that will allow the radicals to yell “tyrant” and “fascist.” The Party of Chaos is against all order and authority that is not their own order and authority — which is the kind you get with Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot: rank despotism, mass murder, lockdown, prison, censorship, poverty, and lawless law. The objective is to maneuver President Trump into declaring a national emergency so they can call him names. The SCOTUS needs to sort all this out without delay.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

President Trump on Sunday said that he would bomb Iran again if the country restarts its nuclear program, warning the US was “not going to wait so long this time,” a threat that comes amid growing signs that another US-Israeli war against Iran may be coming.

“The B2s, what they did. Those beautiful flying wings, what they did, they hit every single target. And just in case, we shot 30 Tomahawks out of a submarine,” Trump said in a speech at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, during a celebration of the US Navy’s 250th birthday, referring to the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 22.

Trump claimed in the speech that Iran was going to have a nuclear weapon “within a month,” but before Israel launched the war, US intelligence determined Tehran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon, and even if it chose to, it would take years to actually develop a deliverable weapon.

“They were going to have a nuclear weapon within a month,” Trump told a crowd of US Navy sailors. “And now they can start the operation all over again, but I hope they don’t because we’ll have to take care of that too if they do, I let them know that. You want to do that, it’s fine, but we’re going to take care of that and we’re not going to wait so long.”

Trump went on to say that he had B-2 pilots visit him in the Oval Office, who said the US had been working on plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities for 22 years, but that no president before him wanted to do it.

The president has previously acknowledged that he bombed Iran on behalf of Israel. “Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out,” he said in an interview with the Daily Caller published on September 1.

Since the ceasefire that ended the 12-day US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump has threatened to bomb Iran again several times. At the same time, the Trump administration is demanding that Iran enter negotiations to give up its nuclear enrichment program and place limits on its ballistic missiles, demands that Iranian officials have made clear are a non-starter.

President Trump names the USSS George H.W. Bush, “Navy One” for the day:

“Everybody knows this is, as you know, Navy One. For the day. Only for the day. It’s Navy One, like Air Force One. This is Navy One.”

First Lady Melania Trump approves!
pic.twitter.com/DroEpD05te

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 5, 2025

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently reaffirmed his prohibition on the development of nuclear weapons but also vowed Tehran wouldn’t give up its civilian nuclear enrichment program, framing it as a matter of national pride. He also rejected the idea of imposing limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program.

A senior official in Israel’s cybersecurity agency who was arrested in a child sex sting in August has been indicted by a Clark County grand jury on Friday, six weeks after he was mysteriously allowed to flee the United States back to Israel.

Tom Alexandrovich, who helps guide Israel’s cybersecurity policy, was representing Israel at Black Hat USA, a professional conference in Las Vegas, when he was one of seven people swept up in a major, multi-agency sting operation targeting pedophiles soliciting sex acts with minors. According to court records, on Aug 6, the 38-year-old Alexandrovich allegedly committed the felony offense of using computer technology in an attempt to lure a child into sexual abuse. That particular crime encompasses children under 16. The next day, he posted a $10,000 bond at the Henderson Detention Center and fled the fucking country. 

Online court records show that Alexandrovich is expected to appear on Oct. 15 for an initial arraignment, and is being represented by Las Vegas-based defense attorney David Chesnoff – who President Trump appointed to a position on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. 

Why is an alleged Israeli high-level government pedophile being represented by a Trump nominee? Chesnoff also represented an Israeli dual citizen who pleaded guilty to lying about the Bidens taking a $5 million bribe from Burisma. Really weird. 

In any event, according to the indictment, Alexandrovich “willfully, unlawfully and knowingly” with an undercover FBI agent, whom he believed was under 16, with the intent to “solicit, persuade or lure” them into sexual conduct through online apps such as WhatsApp and Pure, the latter of which is an app that allows users to “date, play and misbehave” anonymously. 

As the news broke six weeks ago, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reflexively denied Alexandrovich had done anything wrong, claiming that “the employee, who does not hold a diplomatic visa, was not arrested and returned to Israel as scheduled.” Subsequently confronted with court records, Israel’s Cyber Directorate said the earlier false statement “was accurate based on the information provided to us,” and that Alexandrovich is now on leave “by mutual decision.” 

As we noted at the time of his arrest, it’s not clear why or how he was allowed to return to Israel, which has a reputation as a haven for pedophiles who prey on American children. Citing a Jewish watchdog group, a 2020 CBS News report found that, in just the previous six years, more than 60 Jewish Americans who’d been accused of pedophilia had fled to Israel, taking advantage of Israel’s “Right of Return” law that lets any Jewish individual in the world enjoy instant citizenship (though they are still subject to extradition). 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order Monday blocking federal immigration agents from using city-owned property for immigration enforcement operations – just one day after we learned that the city ‘waved off’ cops responding to a vehicle-ramming attack on Border Patrol agents over the weekend.

Johnson has established “ICE-free zones,” referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – as part of his ‘Protecting Chicago Initiative.’

“Today, we are signing an executive order aimed at reining in this out-of-control administration,” Johnson said during a Monday press conference. “The order establishes ICE-free zones. That means that city property and unwilling private businesses will no longer serve as staging grounds for these raids.”

“The Trump administration must end the war on Chicago,” Johnson continued. “The Trump administration must end this war against Americans. The Trump administration must end its attempt to dismantle our democracy.”

Johnson has directed Chicago agencies and departments to identify spaces within the next five days that have been targeted during ICE raids and post a clear message to federal immigration officers that the city-owned property would not be used for immigration enforcement, including as a staging area, processing location or operations base. -Fox News

The move follows a Monday lawsuit from Gov. JB Pritzker attempting to block the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Chicago. 

Johnson accused the “extreme right” of refusing to accept the results of the Civil War (!?) when slavery – a Democrat thing – was abolished. 

“They have repeatedly called for a rematch, but in the coming weeks, we will use this opportunity to build greater resistance. Chicagoans are clear that militarizing our troops in our city as justification to further escalate a war in Chicago will not be tolerated,” he said.

“The right wing in this country wants a rematch of the Civil War,” Johnson continued. 

BREAKING – Brandon Johnson has just illegally established “ICE-free zones” across Chicago to prevent federal agents from enforcing the law, just days after ICE was pinned down by armed rioters and Chicago PD was blocked from assisting them. pic.twitter.com/2smGLfuw24

— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) October 6, 2025

Johnson said that Chicago would “not tolerate ICE agents violating our residents’ constitutional rights,” or the Trump administration’s “disregard” for state and local authority, Fox News reports. 

“With this executive order, Chicago stands firm in protecting the constitutional rights of our residents and immigrant communities and upholding our democracy,” he continued, adding “If the federal government violates this executive order, we will take them to court.” 

On Sunday, Pritzker said that he would refuse to comply with the Trump administration’s “ultimatum” to deploy Illinois National Guard troops – calling it “absolutely outrageous and unamerican.” 

“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s invasion,” Pritzker continued. 

After Pritzker refused to deploy Illinois troops, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott authorized Trump to use 400 Texas National Guard members for deployment in Illinois and Oregon. 

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its partners have arrested 8,629 individuals across the United States as part of its “Summer Heat” campaign, the agency said in an Oct. 2 statement.

More than 6,500 out of the 8,629 arrests fell under the FBI’s Violent Crime and Gang program, said the agency.

“We are not messing around,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “Our No. 1 mission is crushing violent crime. If you hurt a child, we’re coming for you. If you jack a car, we’re coming for you. If you’re polluting our neighborhoods with deadly drugs, we’re coming for you.”

Investigators looking into violent crimes against children located or identified 1,053 minor victims as part of Summer Heat. In addition, authorities have seized 2,281 weapons, 98,000 pounds of cocaine, and 928 pounds of fentanyl.

The operations took place between June 24 and Sept. 20, with all 55 FBI field offices contributing to the offensive, the FBI said.

In one operation, the agency targeted violent offenders in four cities—Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Louisiana; Memphis in Tennessee; and Miami in Florida—leading to the arrests of 417 individuals and seizing 159 firearms.

“We are grateful for Director Kash Patel and our brave FBI agents who removed more than 8,600 violent offenders from our streets this summer,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

“Under President [Donald] Trump’s directive to make America safe again, this Department of Justice will continue prosecuting violent crime and dismantling criminal gangs who are wreaking havoc in our communities.”

In an Oct. 3 statement, FBI Dallas said it captured several criminals over the past three months, which included the arrests of Ten Most Wanted Fugitive Cindy Rodriguez Singh and Cesar Pascual Orozco.

“Under Operation Summer Heat, FBI Dallas collaborated with our law enforcement partners to apprehend fugitives, seize drugs and firearms, and arrest child predators. We remain committed to protecting our North Texas communities from violent crime,” said FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock.

The FBI’s stats come as the Trump administration has taken numerous steps to tackle violent crime in various American cities.

In August, Trump federalized D.C.’s policing. On Sept. 9, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that law enforcement had arrested 2,177 individuals in the nation’s capital since then.

Trump has also ordered federal agents to assist state and local officials in Tennessee, with the federal crackdown leading to 153 arrests in Memphis in four days since Monday.

Meanwhile, Trump signed a memorandum on Sept. 25, ordering the attorney general to fully implement the death penalty in the District of Columbia.

In a Sept. 25 statement, Free DC, a movement for self-determination rights in Washington, criticized the measure and accused Trump of wanting to “spread fear” via the death penalty decision.

“His actions are not about safety, they are only about him consolidating power,” Free DC said.

“This is yet another reminder that D.C. needs full power over our justice system—permanently. We need statehood now. Not tomorrow, not in four years. Now.”

The administration is also cracking down on illegal immigrant crimes. On Oct. 3, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the arrests of more than 1,000 illegal immigrants under Operation Midway Blitz, which targets illegal immigrant criminals in Illinois.

The agency said the arrested individuals include the “worst of the worst,” such as child abusers, pedophiles, gang members, and kidnappers.

“President Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem will not allow continued violence or repeat offenders to terrorize our neighborhoods and victimize our children,” said DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin. “Operation Midway Blitz is making Illinois safe again.”