Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

Sen. John Fetterman said Wednesday night that activist pressure within his own party is prolonging the partial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, offering his observations from within the Democratic caucus for why the standoff has stretched into its sixth week.

Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity” on March. 25, the Pennsylvania Democrat said ongoing protests against the Trump administration—such as the “No Kings” rallies nationwide—have left some senators unwilling to vote to restore DHS funding. He said they “might be afraid to reopen” the government because demonstrators are pushing demands that he said were never achievable.

Fetterman called the shutdown “fundamentally wrong,” adding that the dynamic is one he has opposed before.

The partial shutdown entered week six since most DHS funding lapsed on Feb. 13. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which operates under the DHS, has operated without pay throughout, generating lengthy airport delays.

“Here we are at the airport every week, I talked to countless TSA agents and they are all hurting,” he said. “They are angry. They are frustrated. They’re exhausted, too, what they’ve been put through.”

He said TSA workers should be in the Democrats’ “wheelhouse” because they are union government workers, but now the party was “refusing to give them a paycheck.”

“So it’s always wrong, regardless of the party doing it,” he said of shutting down the government. “You can see the kind of chaos that’s created across right now. [People are] selling their blood.”

He added that the timing compounds the problem, with spring break travel and World Cup preparations now underway.

“Do the right thing,” he said. “Put the country ahead of the party.” 

Fetterman has been the only Democrat to vote with Republicans throughout the current standoff. He cast that vote again on Wednesday, when Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) moved to advance a DHS funding bill that failed 54–46, short of the 60 votes needed to proceed. The Senate has now failed to pass DHS funding legislation four times.

Senate Democrats submitted a counteroffer to Republicans on Wednesday centered on reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the central sticking point in the talks.

The offer includes requirements for judicial warrants before agents enter private property; restrictions on enforcement near schools, hospitals, churches, and polling places; and a mandate that ICE agents identify themselves by name, agency, and badge number.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the proposal a “reasonable, good faith” offer and accused Republicans of acting in bad faith after presenting a plan with no ICE reforms, despite verbally agreeing to some during weekend talks.

Republicans have pushed to separate ICE funding into the budget reconciliation process, which would allow it to advance with a simple majority. The White House has signaled openness to that approach. Democrats in the House have also tried and failed several times to get their Republican colleagues on board with their own proposals, which would fund all DHS agencies other than ICE and Customs and Border Protection.

Republicans also want any deal to include the SAVE America Act, which would require photo identification for voting and proof of citizenship for voter registration—a provision Democrats have pledged to block.

Democrats say they are not against photo identification for voting, but have concern with President Donald Trump’s attempt to attach additional provisions to the bill, including restrictions on mail-in voting and measures barring transgender athletes and transgender procedures for minors, something Fetterman agrees with his colleagues on and has said he will not support.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump “is seeking to lower the profile of his mass deportation effort, and has directed his top advisers to adopt a new approach on one of his central campaign promises.”

According to the report, Trump has had conversations with his top advisors and First Lady Melania Trump in which he’s indicated that he’s “become convinced that some of his administration’s deportation policies have gone too far, and voters don’t like the term ‘mass deportation.’”

The desire for an immigration reset is being driven in part by Trump’s White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who believes the president’s immigration team has turned one of his marquee issues into more of a challenging issue ahead of the midterms, the people said. As a result, the administration is attempting to change not only how it talks about the issue—but also what actual enforcement looks like on the ground.

The report also explains that White House border czar Tom Homan has been behind the shift, steering the agency back to basics — prioritizing “bread-and-butter arrests” and focusing on criminal aliens already in local custody and ready for transfer.

Now, another report from the New York Times, reveals that ICE arrests are averaging more than 1,100 per day this year — nearly double last spring’s pace of roughly 600 — and that “custodial” arrests are driving those numbers. It’s also not surprising that Republican-led states with strong federal-local cooperation generate far more of these transfers, while sanctuary jurisdictions generate far fewer.

Some of the biggest totals are coming out of places like Florida and San Antonio, where there were no headline-grabbing raids.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles and Chicago — cities that were hit with high-profile enforcement operations — have actually seen arrest numbers fall steeply in recent months. Sanctuary cities, however, are largely flat.

The loudest operations weren’t always the most productive, and the quietest ones were getting the job done.

The Miami field office — which covers Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands — logged nearly 10,000 arrests between mid-December and March 10, outpacing Dallas, Atlanta, and San Antonio. Florida has maintained high and steadily climbing arrest numbers all year without a marquee federal operation dominating the news cycle. The work just kept happening. San Antonio followed a similar pattern — consistent and effective.

Los Angeles and Chicago, both cities that saw aggressive, high-profile crackdowns last year, saw arrest numbers peak and then fall. Chicago’s field office, which covers six states, hit its ceiling during Operation Midway Blitz between September and December and still sits below the national per capita average.

Los Angeles and Denver both peaked last summer and have been trending downward since.

High-visibility raids make headlines, but the data points to what the real problem is: sanctuary policies that limit coordination with local police, along with rhetoric from Democrat leaders in those states and municipalities.

“About half of ICE immigration arrests nationwide in 2025 were from what the agency calls ‘custodial’ arrests, in which ICE takes someone who is already in custody from another law enforcement agency,” the report explained.

“These arrests were much more common in states led by Republicans, where law enforcement is more likely to cooperate closely with federal immigration authorities.” Arrests were “less common in places where ‘sanctuary’ policies limited local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE and handing over people who have been arrested in connection with other crimes, but may or may not have been convicted.”

That need for coordination also helps explain why operations on the ground can become more volatile when cooperation breaks down. The consequences of these sanctuary policies, and the rhetoric of Democratic leaders, have been deadly. Two anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis were killed in January while engaging with immigration agents. Renee Good was shot and killed when she attempted to run over an agent with her car during an ICE operation. Alex Pretti assaulted agents while carrying a loaded gun.

“We need state and local law enforcement cooperation, so we don’t have to have such a presence on the streets,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.

The Trump administration seems to have the answer it needs already to fix the perception problems related to immigration enforcement.

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump plans to sign an order that will pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents who have not received a check since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) entered a partial shutdown in mid-February.

“I am going to sign an Order instructing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on March 26.

More than 3,120 TSA agents, who haven’t been paid in weeks, called out on Wednesday, which prompted long lines to continue at airports across the country, according to a statement the DHS shared with The Epoch Times.

“It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!“ Trump added. ”I want to thank our hardworking TSA Agents and also, ICE, for the incredible help they have given us at the Airports.”

Trump has blamed the Democrats for keeping DHS shut down, while Democrats have pushed for changes to immigration enforcement operations as a condition for funding the department.

On March 25, Senate Democrats blocked funding for DHS in a 54–46 vote after Republicans rejected a counteroffer they put forward.

On the same day, Democrats separately offered a standalone bill that would immediately fund TSA, but not ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Republicans blocked the proposal.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Only females will be allowed in women’s events at the Olympics, according to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The March 26 decision by the committee excludes transgender-identifying individuals who were born male who may have sought to compete in the international events. 

“Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females,” the International Olympic Committee said.

Eligibility will be determined by a mandatory genetic test once in the athlete’s career.

The decision aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive order to retain the integrity of women’s sports, ahead of the U.S.-hosted 2028 games in Los Angeles. 

The IOC said the policy, which will apply to the 2028 games, “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.”

“It is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programs,” the organization said. 

Competitors such as two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya, who has a medical condition involving sexual development, would also be restricted according to the new rules, which were published in a 10-page policy document by the committee. 

In the document, the Olympic governing group outlined the physical advantages males experience, as experts said those advantages are retained, even after transition.

“Males experience three significant testosterone peaks: In utero, in mini-puberty of infancy, and beginning in adolescent puberty through adulthood,” the document said.

According to experts, this offers those born male “individual sex-based performance advantages in sports and events that rely on strength, power, and/or endurance.”

Days before the decision was handed down, the Sport & Rights Alliance (SRA), ILGA World, Humans of Sport, and over 100 other allied organizations released a joint statement, asking the International Olympic Committee to abandon any mandate for genetic testing to determine eligibility for Olympic events.

“A sex testing and blanket ban policy would be a catastrophic erosion of women’s rights and safety,” said Andrea Florence, Executive Director of the Sport & Rights Alliance.

No male-born transgender athletes competed in the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

However, transgender-identifying weightlifter Laurel Hubbard competed in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics on the New Zealand women’s team without medaling.

On March 12, Trump received loud applause when he spoke about his effort to prevent men from participating in women’s sports during a Women’s History Month event.

The president said he hopes to ban “the sexual mutilation of minor youth,” in reference to transgender surgery procedures performed on children.

“We have put the world on notice that America will not allow men to compete against women in the 2028 Olympics,” Trump said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As we outlined in our recent analysis on Australia’s dangerous vulnerability to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, most of Asia is heavily exposed and faces an unprecedented energy crisis should the war in Iran continue to prevent safe passage of oil and natural gas from the Gulf.  As Australia debates the potential for a national emergency, the Philippines has already declared one.

This week, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order No. 110, declaring a state of national emergency as a targeted measure focused on the energy sector in response to disruptions from the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran.  Approximately 98% of all oil bound for the Philippines passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The emergency declaration allows the Philippine government to exert control over fuel prices and fast-track imports from alternative suppliers, such as Russia. Philippine authorities say they have enough fuel to last about 45 days at typical consumption levels.  

Energy rationing programs are being instituted across Asia and questions are rising about a possible domino effect on global markets.  The Philippines announcement comes a day after South Korea launched a nationwide energy-saving campaign, calling on people to ride bicycles for short trips and reduce the length of showers. Japan, meanwhile, said Wednesday that it would soon begin releasing oil from its emergency reserve, equivalent to a 30-day supply. Thailand and Vietnam have also asked citizens to take steps to curtail energy use.

China’s exposure to Iran and the Hormuz situation could be detrimental.  Over 35% of their energy supplies pass through the Strait and 15% of their oil comes directly from Iranian wells.  That said, China also has a large oil buffer, with enough emergency supply to last around four months.  

The emergency declaration in the Philippines is initially set to last one year and serves as a tool to provide the government with more legal flexibility to respond to the crisis.  Executive Order 110 enables the government to:

Fast-track procurement and imports of fuel and petroleum products from alternative suppliers. Exert control over fuel prices if needed to prevent excessive hikes or profiteering. Ensure orderly distribution of fuel, food, medicines, and other basic goods. Form a contingency committee for coordinated response. Authorize advance payments on contracts if required for timely supply. Activate a “whole-of-government” framework, including support packages for livelihoods, industry, food, and transport.  

The last time the world faced a similar threat of energy shortages was the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 following the Yom Kippur War.  It was this event, coupled with a massive devaluation of the US dollar, that triggered a stagflationary malaise that lasted until 1981.  It was also the event that led to the US diversifying its energy resources to avoid future dependency on OPEC.  Only 7% of all oil bound for the US travels through the Hormuz.  

Asian nations, however, have less access to alternatives, which is setting up the region for a historic breakdown in productivity if the flow of oil and natural gas is not restored within the next couple of months.  

The US-Israel war against Iran is nearly one month in, and amid the ongoing escalating threats and warnings Iran is touting that it is able to tap more than one million fighters for a potential ground confrontation with the United States, according to Tasnim News Agency citing a military source.

Some 7,000 additional US troops, mainly Marines and elite Army Airborne troops, are currently headed toward the region, amid speculation that President Trump will order a military operation to forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz, which could involve a high risk island campaign and effort to takeover Kharg Island oil export hub.

Tasnim has described a surge in volunteerism which driving the buildup, with young Iranians seeking to join military formations – angry at Iranian cities coming under heavy US-Israeli bombardment.

The report, which has been picked up in Western media headlines, also cites a surge in requests from Iranian youth to the Basij, which is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) domestic security force, and has stood accused of the large-scale killing of protesters last January.

According to some of the direct quotes presented from military sources in the report:

Iranian authorities claimed that the possibility of the US launching a ground offensive, prompted “a wave of enthusiasm” among the population to create what it calls a “historic hell for American forces”.

“The US wants to open the Strait of Hormuz with suicide and self-destructive tactics; that’s fine”, the military source told Tasnim in response. “We are ready for both their suicide strategy to be executed and for the Strait to remain closed”.

President Trump said this during a televised cabinet meeting on Thursday:

US President Donald Trump has said Iran is “begging to make a deal”, describing them as “lousy fighters but great negotiators”, while casting doubt on whether the two sides would be able to reach a deal. pic.twitter.com/3GGINOwduu

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) March 26, 2026

At the moment, US CENTCOM has indicated some 40,000 to 50,000 American troops were already stationed in the region, but after over a dozen US Gulf bases came under Iranian missile attack, most have been moved to other, safer and more locations which are more removed.

Visualizing Iran’s armed forces and military hierarchy…

International estimates have long put Iran’s total active duty force at around 600,000 – with another few hundred-thousand in reserves. These significant figures, among a large population of over 90 million, do indeed suggest any potential American ground force could prove an utter disaster for the US, spelling quagmire for years to come. It is indeed very possible that Iran could draw on a million extra ‘volunteers’ during this state of war and existential survival for the nation.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told ABC News on Wednesday that the month-long U.S.-Iran conflict and the resulting spike in jet fuel prices are set to push domestic summer airfares higher.

Kirby told ABC that ticket prices will have to rise by 20% to offset the more than 80% jump in jet fuel prices since the conflict began late last month. He said travelers should lock in their ticket prices now, before fares move higher.

Jet Fuel NY Buckeye MOC (New York Buckeye Pipeline jet fuel benchmark) 

In a separate report, Bloomberg cited data from research firm Alton Aviation showing that long-haul summer airfares have surged. In particular, June fares on key Asia-Pacific-to-Europe routes are up 70% from a year ago, with some routes experiencing even steeper increases: Hong Kong to London, up 560%; Bangkok to Frankfurt, up 505%; and Sydney to London, up 429%.

Data from the research firm Cirium show that demand for summer travel is already softening. Summer bookings for June travel from Europe to the U.S. have declined 15% from the same month a year ago, while bookings in the opposite direction have fallen 11%. Bookings from Asia to Europe also declined during the month, down 4.4%, including routes that connect through the Middle East.

“What we’re seeing is not just a short-term pricing shock. Even as the immediate disruption eases, longer routings, tighter capacity, and higher fuel costs will keep upward pressure on prices for an extended period,” Bryan Terry, a managing director at Alton, told Bloomberg.

Terry added, “It could take up to three months for the price reductions to work their way through the jet fuel supply chain.”

In recent weeks, analysts at Deutsche Bank and UBS have both warned that airlines may have to cut capacity to offset the spike in jet fuel prices. Reduced capacity, combined with higher fuel costs, points to possible demand destruction in travel this summer as consumers face sticker shock on ticket prices.

S&P 500 Airlines Index breaks sees technical breakdown.  

However, UBS analyst Atul Maheswari states why he sees a possible bottom (report here). 

Authored by Tyler Turman via TheDailyEconomy.org,

America has spent more than $20 trillion on fighting poverty since the introduction of President Johnson’s Great Society program in 1964. Sixty years later, how are we doing?

That depends, as it turns out, on how you measure it.

Last month, Senator Kennedy (R-LA) introduced a bill that would require the Census Bureau to report a new poverty metric as an alternative to the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) by including both cash and non-cash welfare benefits in its calculations.

As Kennedy points out, this is a much-needed fix. The OPM’s methodological weaknesses are well documented. Most notably, it ignores the hundreds of billions of dollars the government spends each year to assist low-income families through tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and in-kind transfers such as Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies.

In short, the OPM paints an egregiously inaccurate picture of material poverty in America.

Kennedy’s bill would require the Census Bureau to publish the Congressional Budget Office’s more comprehensive poverty measure alongside the OPM in its annual poverty report. A similarly constructed measure was developed by economists Richard Burkhauser and Kevin Corinth in a recent paper with the National Bureau of Economic Research. After accounting for taxes and transfers, they found that the “full-income” poverty measure sat at just 3.7 percent in 2023—1.6 percent after including employer-provided health insurance—a far more optimistic look than the OPM’s 11.1 percent from the same year.

That sounds like a triumph.

But Burkhauser and Corinth take it one step further and use their “full-income” measure to track changes in the poverty rate dating back to 1939. 

Contrary to popular belief, they find that the greatest era of poverty reduction happened before Johnson declared war on it.

From 1939 to 1963, absolute full-income poverty plummeted by 29 percentage points, from 48.5 percent to 19.5 percent. Then, despite the government pouring trillions of taxpayer dollars into combating poverty, poverty fell by only 15.7 percentage points from 1963 to 2023. Barely half the progress in more than twice the time.

But the stagnating decline is only half the story. The more consequential difference is what drove it. 

Before 1964, the main engine of poverty reduction was increases in market income — a measurement that includes wages, salaries, and other forms of income from employment. From 1939 to 1959, market income poverty fell by 26.1 percentage points, nearly all of the 27.3 percent decline in full-income poverty over the same period. In short, before the rapid expansion of the welfare state, most people were earning their way out of poverty.

After 1964, that engine stalled. Market income poverty fell by just 3.9 percentage points from 1967 to 2023, while post-tax, post-transfer poverty fell by 10 percentage points. Even though poverty has continued to decline over the past six decades, most of that was due to the ever-expanding generosity of government transfers.

While low-income Americans were benefiting from the biggest poverty reduction in the country’s history, the percentage of working-age adults relying on government transfers for more than half their income decreased from 2.9 percent in 1939 to 2.7 percent in 1959.

By 2023, this number had nearly tripled to 7.6 percent, even reaching as high as 15 percent in some years.

As Mercatus scholar Jack Salmon put it: “The War on Poverty changed the how of poverty reduction, but it didn’t accelerate the how much.” 

If anything, by changing the former, it may have blunted the latter. A 76 percent increase in real median income, paired with rising employment and higher productivity, largely driven by rapid postwar economic expansion, pulled more people out of poverty in 24 years than trillions of dollars in government-imposed wealth redistribution have done in 60.

Some may argue that this trend is to be expected. After all, reducing poverty from 48 percent to 20 percent is arithmetically easier than reducing it further because there are simply fewer people left below the poverty line, and those who remain tend to face the most entrenched barriers to self-sufficiency.

Fair enough. But as Burkhauser and Corinth point out, full-income poverty largely stagnated starting in the 1970s — right as welfare spending was ramping up dramatically.

In short, taxpayers have been paying for a multitrillion-dollar boondoggle that has yielded increasingly diminishing marginal returns. 

So, what was the main driver behind the pre-1964 miracle?

Simple: Economic growth.

The pre-1964 record, along with centuries of evidence, suggests that nothing has worked better than economic growth in helping individuals, especially those at the bottom of the income ladder, to achieve a higher quality of life. Across the world, economic growth driven by liberalization helped pull almost one billion people out of extreme poverty from 1990 to 2010.

The Fraser Institute’s research shows that North American states with higher and increasing levels of economic freedom tend to have more income mobility especially among low-income households, higher economic growth, less homelessness, and lower levels of food insecurity.

The fruits of economic growth are visible in ways that poverty statistics fail to capture, especially for America’s poor. As Joseph Heath points out, 95 percent of American households below the poverty line have electricity, indoor plumbing, a refrigerator, a stove, and a color television. More than 80 percent have an air conditioner and a cell phone, and two-thirds own a washing machine and dryer. Economic growth, not government programs, is what helped make these once-luxury goods unavailable to many wealthy households now accessible to nearly everyone. It continues to bear fruit today — wages for typical American workers are at all-time highs.

The most powerful anti-poverty program had no enrollment forms, caseworkers, or spending bills. It was a growing economy that helped millions of people earn their way to a better life. As such, subsequent efforts should focus on removing government-created barriers to economic growth, occupational opportunities, and job market entry rather than adding another layer of expensive, inefficient wealth transfers.

Senator Kennedy is right to say we need a more accurate measure of poverty. When analyzing the best ways to combat poverty, policymakers should reflect on whether the welfare state was ever the right tool for the job.

According to a newly declassified intelligence report, U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted communications from Ukrainian government officials back in 2022 discussing a scheme to siphon off hundreds of millions in American taxpayer dollars. The funds, earmarked for clean energy projects in the war-torn country, were allegedly redirected to the United States to benefit Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee. 

The report, obtained by Just the News, summarizes raw intercepts gathered by U.S. spy agencies in late 2022. Officials familiar with the material say the communications are not believed to be tied to Russian disinformation efforts.

The declassified summary is very specific. 

“The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,” the document states. 

The mechanics described are textbook money-laundering architecture. “The plan included details of how subcontractors would be funded through U.S. companies so that how the funds were spent and allocated would be difficult to track,” the report explains. Two American subcontractors were named in the raw intercepts as conduits for funneling money toward Democratic coffers, though their identities remain redacted in the declassified version.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Ukraine became by far the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 — the first time a European nation held that distinction since the Marshall Plan. As of December 31, 2025, Congress had made available $188 billion in Ukraine-related spending, with $164 billion flowing from just five pieces of legislation. The last of those bills passed in April 2024 — while Biden was actively campaigning for a second term. 

What makes the alleged scheme particularly audacious is the built-in exit strategy. “They were confident the project would be funded initially, even though at some time in the future the project would be disapproved as unnecessary. At this time, the money would already be allocated and impossible to return or use for a different purpose,” the report added. In other words, the design assumed the fraud would eventually be discovered – and didn’t care. By then, the money would be gone and untraceable.

The cover-to-transfer pipeline was engineered for maximum opacity. “Additionally, contracts would be executed that would be difficult to verify. In this manner, most of the U.S. funding would be diverted to Joe Biden’s election campaign without the ability to track where exactly the funds came from,” the report read.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently learned of the intercepts and directed USAID officials to search agency records for evidence that the plot was actually carried out and to evaluate whether a criminal referral to the FBI is warranted. Perhaps the most disturbing find so far is that there is no substantive evidence that anyone during the Biden years made a serious effort to investigate what U.S. intelligence had intercepted. Officials reviewing the files noted a lack of investigative curiosity about allegations of foreign election interference.

Since President Trump took office, no new legislation authorizing additional spending for Ukraine has passed Congress. But now we need to find out how much of the funds for Ukraine were diverted to Biden’s campaign or the DNC, and whether the lack of an investigation reflects willful negligence, deliberate burial, or a conspiracy. 

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

Paid activists in Los Angeles, California, have been caught on hidden camera paying homeless people on skid row to forge signatures of registered voters on ballot initiatives.

O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) released part Two of its undercover investigation into the Democrats’ blatant election fraud operation in L.A. on Tuesday.

President Trump shared the report on Truth Social, commenting “terrible!”

California’s Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Steve Hilton commented on X: “They paid homeless people cash and drugs on Skid Row to forge your signature. Your name. Your vote. Stolen by a crackhead with a clipboard — while Gavin Newsom looked the other way.”

Hilton added: “This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s on tape. And not one Democrat is outraged. That’s because THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE.”

Part One showed petitioners offering cash to homeless people and drug addicts for their signatures. The shocking new video shows the activists, armed with printed lists of voter names and addresses, taking the scheme to another level.

“Fraudulent petitioners on Skid Row are now paying the homeless people to forge names, forge addresses and forge signatures of registered voters,” O’Keefe says at the beginning of Part Two.

Rather than registering the Skid Row denizens to vote, activists gave them $2–$3 in cash to commit forgery and election fraud in what OMG called “a coordinated system.”

O’Keefe stated that the operation was observed on nearly every street corner in downtown Los Angeles.

“The scheme appeared to be present in whatever direction we walked,” he noted.

The goal of the operation, according to OMG, is to “ensure the information matches official records so he signature passes verification.”

The workers handed out post-it notes with the names of a single voter written on them to each of the homeless dupes.

“I’m gonna tell you what to write,” a petitioners told one of the undercover journalists. “Your name’s Robert,” he said.

A petitioner told a female OMG journalist that she could move from corner to corner and get paid $3 a pop for signing other peoples’ names to the ballot petitions.

“Oh, so you guys are all working together?” she asked.

“You ask a lot of questions,” the petitioner replied. “You’re scaring me.”

The undercover journalists were taking a risk by asking questions and clandestinely recording among the unpredictable and potentially violent fraudsters.

At one point, during the investigation, one of the Skid Row workers attacked an OMG producer, punching him in the neck.

O’Keefe and colleague Cam Higby tracked down the addresses of some of the registered voters whose names were being used in the scheme.

In one case, the voter had not lived at the residence for nearly a decade,  but the current owners were still getting her election mail.

“Doesn’t live here . . . I bought this house nearly 9 years ago. The only reason I know that name is because we still get her mail,” the homeowner told Higby.

“I always feel really weird when I get the voting ballot . . . obviously that’s fraudulent,” he added.

After being shown the undercover footage, other residents appeared shocked that their names were used without their consent.

“I hope you put a stop to this soon,” a homeowner told O’Keefe and Higby. “I didn’t know they were using my name and address, for political fraud. Hopefully, the governor and district attorney just put a stop to this,” he added.

Multiple California felony statutes appear to have been violated, “including Elections Code §18613 (signing another person’s name to a petition), Penal Code §470 (forgery), and Elections Code §18601–18602 (paying for petition signatures),” OMG pointed out.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other Republican in the gubernatorial race, has meanwhile been investigating a reported discrepancy of 45,000 votes in his county from the November 2025 special election on Proposition 50, the state’s congressional redistricting plan. Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday filed an emergency writ with the court of appeals to stop the ballots from being counted.

“Why in the world would Rob Bonta want that count stopped unless he was afraid of what that count would uncover?” Bianco asked in a video posted on X.

In a sit down interview with O’Keefe, Hilton said it was vital to stop the money flow to California’s election fraud operations.

“We have to freeze all the money going to any organization doing this,” he said. “The other thing is the entire voting system in California is called into question by this. Because you can’t trust any of it.”

“Prosecutions need to happen, the money flow needs to stop because this is all being funded,” he added. “These people are being paid. Where’s the money coming from?”

In Part One, OMG reported that the Weingart Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that offers services to homeless men and women living in LA’s skid row, appeared to be in on the scam.

The nonprofit has reportedly received millions in taxpayer grants since early 2022, including $112 million in 2022 alone and has over $800 million in net assets. Executives “are paid between $400,000 and $600,000 per year, yet the organization has repeatedly missed federal audit deadlines.”

Several petitioners also told OMG they work for Populus Inc., a political consulting firm.

Hilton told O’Keefe that he has put together a team that will weed out the fraud and prosecute the fraudsters in California if he is elected.