Tehran Cheers US Unrest, Calls Minneapolis Protests ‘Instant Karma’
Iran’s state media has blasted the Trump administration as hypocritical, drawing a direct comparison between the recent protests inside the Islamic Republic and the ongoing unrest ignited by the controversial ICE shootings in Minneapolis.
Iran has seized on the latest fatal shooting of Alex Prettio, arguing that President Trump has no moral standing to condemn how Iranian authorities have handled its own nationwide demonstrations, which were triggered by economic strain and a collapsing currency after years of US-imposed sanctions.
State-backed Press TV pointed to Trump’s earlier public call for Iranians to rise up and take to the streets while pointing to the current Minneapolis demonstrations as “instant karma”.
Newsweek observed several fresh broadcasts from Iranian outlets drawing on the comparison:
While these protests were largely peaceful, Iranian state news channel Press TV dedicated a segment in which it presented them as the latest iteration of the anger at the actions of ICE.
The presenter on Press TV, Roya Pour Bagher, referred to social media posts by Americans expressing outrage at the killing, and described “growing fears of an imminent civil conflict—yes a civil war in the United States.”
In a separate clip, Bagher said that footage of Pretti’s killing clearly showed he did not pose a threat to anyone, adding that more protests could help stop the killings.
This has been the theme across pro-Tehran social media as well:
Iran’s state TV channel Press TV: “Calls on social media demanding Trump’s removal before the US is pushed into the unknown are growing louder, as crimes by ICE against civilians continue to rise.”
Iranian outlet Press TV: “Instant karma? Trump: Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING—TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!”
There’s actually some truth here in the way US officials and media portray things whenever there’s a protest inside Iran, or any nation deemed a ‘rogue’ state for that matter: all demonstrations no matter how small or varied in terms of the protesters’ actual motives tend to get treated as somehow “pro-Western democracy” in nature, or else as if the “regime” is always on the brink of collapse.
And then there are always the familiar calls by American politicians and pundits of the ‘Ayatollah must go’ or this or that dictator must go. Western mainstream media is also notorious for grossly oversimplifying complex dynamics behind foreign events and protest movements.
Tehran officials and state media have also of late been saying the Iranian protests that kicked off on December 27, but which last week finally ended, were quickly “hijacked” by foreign powers and interests. For example the below fresh PressTV commentary says:
In an interview with the Press TV website, Nury Vittachi, a Hong Kong-based journalist, author, and political commentator, said the deadly unrest and acts of terrorism in Iran in recent weeks bore the unmistakable signs of a coordinated campaign orchestrated by the United States and Israel.
“There is no doubt that there was heavy involvement from foreign forces during the riots. I have seen this same procedure in many locations,” he stated.
A protest light display was projected onto an ICE detention center in Los Angeles, California, depicting an ICE officer shooting at humanity, democracy, rights, and freedoms.
Thousands were killed, among them at least dozens or possibly even hundreds of police, security personnel, and pro-government people. But the majority of casualties were clearly on the anti-government side, as even Iran state sources have lately appeared to admit.
The West accuses Iran of often firing on unarmed protesters, while the Islamic Republic has retorted that there was an armed insurrection in tandem with those who went to the streets peacefully – creating a more murky, complex series of bloody clashes with the police and military.
A year ago, President Donald Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people for “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
That decision to issue the blanket pardon, in one of his first official acts as the 47th president, ignited controversy. It covered not only people who strolled through open doors of the U.S. Capitol, unaware they were trespassing, but also rioters who damaged property and assaulted police.
After the initial public backlash subsided, the pardoned—many of them newly freed from prison—began rebuilding their lives.
The Epoch Times interviewed five of those former Jan. 6 prisoners. Their consensus: Jan. 6 is one of the most-mischaracterized events in U.S. history, largely because records—and personal stories like theirs—have been ignored by most media outlets. They say the pardon was not a panacea. Some are still ostracized from friends and family. Others are still recovering from the financial setbacks.
All five believe they’ve been unjustly prosecuted and none say they regret their actions. Rather, the pardoned said they were proud to have stood up for the integrity of U.S. elections, Trump, and American values on that fateful day—despite the great cost.
As Dan Leyden, 58, struggles to regroup after his wife died of cancer late last year, he remains in disbelief over the life-changing events that preceded that horrible loss.
Circumstances lined up and thrust him—a low-profile union electrician from Chicago—into the forefront of the Jan. 6 conflict in 2021.
At the last minute, he had decided to join his brother in Washington to watch “our favorite president” speak, possibly delivering his final big public speech as the 45th president.
But the brothers got separated from each other.
“Then I don’t see that speech, because the man next to me says, ‘Dan, would you walk with me to the Capitol?’ So I walked to the Capitol,” Leyden said, “And, from there, my life has turned upside-down.”
While he doesn’t want pity, Leyden—who injects many of his remarks with wry humor—used the word, “heartbroken,” to describe losses he has suffered.
First, his prosecution cost him the Chicago Park District job he had worked without a single complaint for 24 years.
Also, while beginning to serve a prison sentence that would have spanned three years, Leyden missed the birth of his first grandchild—“a gorgeous baby girl” who he now enjoys visiting.
Days after an overjoyed Leyden was pardoned and freed, he plunged into sorrow over the shooting death of Matt Huttle, 42, a Jan. 6 prisoner who became his friend while they served time in prison together. Stopped for speeding in rural Indiana, Huttle threatened to kill himself rather than face life behind bars again. As Huttle resisted arrest, an officer fatally shot him.
Worst of all, Leyden lost his wife of 27 years to cancer on Dec. 29 last year. That illness, which stress has been known to trigger, hit Linda Leyden shortly after her husband was freed. His incarceration had kept them apart for 15 months.
Leyden said his wife was known for her compassion. It was her idea to adopt two daughters from a Russian orphanage; they are now grown.
A lively woman, his wife ran marathons in major cities across the United States and as far away as South Africa before she died at 62.
Despite mourning her death, Leyden jokes about their contrasting lifestyles: “I don’t run unless somebody’s chasing me—and the FBI hasn’t been chasing me lately.”
With sarcasm, he disputes a label he and other defendants were given. “I was a very poorly trained ‘domestic terrorist,’” Leyden says, noting he showed up for the wintertime protest wearing a lightweight green flannel shirt over a T-shirt, and “cheap mittens from Walmart.”
Trump was scheduled to speak at The Ellipse, a park about two miles from Capitol Hill, following a series of other presenters.
But the speeches were hard to hear above the din of the crowd, broadcast over poor-quality loudspeakers.
And Leyden was shivering. It was windy; temperatures hovered in the 30s.
Unable to find his brother, Leyden headed toward the U.S. Capitol, hoping the walk would help him feel warmer.
After arriving at the U.S. Capitol, Leyden noted insufficient security; he ended up near a bike rack that functioned as a barricade. Photos show that Leyden was “pushing the barricade,” prosecutors said in a court record.
That’s a misrepresentation, Leyden said: “Did I lean on a bicycle rack? Yeah, I’m guilty.”
About 17 months later, the FBI descended upon his Illinois home. His wife was home alone with the family pets; she was terrified.
Leyden soon surrendered. He faced 29 years in prison, even though he never went inside the U.S. Capitol; neither did his brother, Joe, who was sentenced to six months.
Leyden’s wife urged him to take a plea, saying, “Can we get this nightmare over with?” His legal battle had cost $30,000, wiping out his savings, though he is not in debt.
Now after a year of freedom, he is awash in grief. He doesn’t know what direction his life will take. “I just wanna go walk my dog at the park; my best friend of 29 years is gone,” he said.
Spiritually, he has never given up. Leyden said he was “just knocked to the curb [and] got back up.” He is beginning to feel less ostracized and hopes to go back to union electrical work.
Many people’s lives have been devastated, too, he said, “all because of one day” that remains shrouded in questions.
“The American people deserve the truth,” he said. And that, he said, is worth fighting for.
Like many former Jan. 6 defendants, Alexander Sheppard hoped that being pardoned would go a long way toward clearing his name.
It didn’t.
Many people still treat the ex-defendants “like we are totally inhuman,” Sheppard, an Ohioan, said.
Another once-maligned group has consistently shown respect. “I’ve had Vietnam veterans tell me: ‘Thank you for your service.’ It’s mind-blowing,” Sheppard said.
Also, people of faith have demonstrated compassion. “A lot of Christians have been praying for the Jan. 6 people,” Sheppard said. “I appreciate that more than anything.”
With those notable exceptions, Sheppard still feels ostracized. He blames “the mainstream media” for falsely labeling nonviolent people like him “insurrectionists.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, Sheppard was 21 and had just started his own company. His prosecution forced him to return to restaurant work; he shares living expenses with his brother. He recently quit the restaurant job in search of a better opportunity.
Sheppard made a last-minute decision to attend the Jan. 6 rally, mostly because he opposed COVID-19 restrictions and believed that the 2020 election was stolen.
He was among many who entered the U.S. Capitol through open doors—unaware that they were trespassing.
Fatefully, Sheppard happened to be nearby when a police officer fatally shot Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt—unwittingly making him far more noticeable.
Sheppard would like to put Jan. 6 behind him. But “another part of me is saying, ‘We can’t move on because the people who did this to me are the criminals,’” who should be held to account.
Sheppard believes the FBI and Justice Department should apologize and pay restitution, calling for federal trials to be televised to prevent unjust tactics from being used without scrutiny.
People would be stunned to learn what really happened during trials like his, he said. Not a single Republican sat on his jury in Democrat-dominated Washington, D.C.
Prosecutors presented five witnesses against him, and “every single one of them said they didn’t know me,” except for the FBI agent who tracked him down after Jan. 6, he said.
“There’s no victim to my ‘crime’ and there’s no witnesses—and somehow, I get convicted.”
Investigators never asked him about the fatal shooting of Babbitt—which Sheppard witnessed from about 10 feet away. U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd fired the fatal shot and faced no criminal charges.
Babbitt, a stranger to Sheppard, was shot as she attempted to climb through the broken window in a doorframe.
Although the presidential pardon didn’t produce the reputational boost Sheppard had hoped for, “I’m so grateful for the pardon; I’m so grateful that President Trump included every January Sixer.”
Because of a court ruling involving Jan. 6 prosecutions, a judge reduced Sheppard’s 19-month prison term to six months. Thus, he was released in May 2024. Still, he benefited from the pardon in January 2025; it restored his unblemished criminal record and removed restrictions he had faced.
Although he was represented by a public defender, Sheppard took a financial hit after the arrest and the ensuing prosecution.
“I am not completely broke because I have been working a job and keeping expenses relatively low, but I would have a lot more money if I didn’t endure four years of persecution from the federal government,” Shepard said.
He feels there is much unfinished business about Jan. 6.
“We need accountability for FBI agents and prosecutors and judges who let this go down, because, in my opinion, what they did to us January Sixers is … one of the worst human rights abuses and biggest stains on our country’s history,” Sheppard said.
On an early February morning in 2021, in Tampa, Florida, Paul Hodgkins III awakened to the sound he had been dreading: an insistent, loud banging on his front door.
He knew the FBI had caught up with him for entering the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, six weeks prior.
Wearing only a towel around his waist, Hodgkins opened the door. An officer yelled for him to put his hands up. Hodgkins tried to comply while also attempting to keep the towel in place with his elbows.
“But he handcuffed me behind my back, and left me standing naked in my living room when they all came barreling in,” Hodgkins said, describing the humiliating circumstances of his arrest at his duplex.
At that moment, Hodgkins felt the weight of the federal government crushing him—later reinforced when he saw the words, “The United States of America vs. Paul Hodgkins” on legal paperwork.
Hodgkins, who had no prior criminal record, also gained unwanted notoriety that summer when he became “the very, very first person who was sentenced to prison” for the events of Jan. 6.
At a lawyer’s urging, he pleaded guilty to a single charge and was sentenced to eight months in prison.
Being the first-sentenced defendant “put all eyes on me,” Hodgkins said, describing “a lot of paparazzi” taking his photo at a Washington courthouse. Photographers from a publication based in the U.K. also staked out his neighborhood and snapped pictures of him.
Hodgkins made a last-minute decision to catch a chartered bus trip to Washington for Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, 2021, spurred by fellow Trump supporters.
After hearing Trump’s speech, Hodgkins followed the crowd to the U.S. Capitol.
Curiosity drove him around to the rear of the Capitol building, and before he knew what had happened, he was inside the Senate Chamber, thinking he might be able to see some of the senators and “encourage them to audit this election.” He didn’t know they had been evacuated because the U.S. Capitol was breached.
At the time, he realized he might be “crossing somewhat of a line,” but thought that, at most, he could face a minor charge such as disorderly conduct.
“I didn’t think I would be getting slapped with felonies and prison time, right?” As he left the Capitol building, an uneasy feeling stalked him, especially after he learned about the shooting death of Babbitt.
Now 43, Hodgkins was among those who paid respects to Babbitt at a memorial service on the anniversary of Jan. 6 this year. He has gotten to know Babbitt’s mother, and still has a hard time watching any footage of the shooting.
Besides losing his freedom, Hodgkins’ prosecution cost him his job, but he has been able to find another good job at a machine-motor service shop. He has “plenty of haters” online and has lost friendships over his Jan. 6 involvement.
“And, financially, yes, I was set back a lot by case, but I got back to work, recovered, and marched on. I work, and live comfortably on my own,” Hodgkins said. “I didn’t like my life being so damaged from it all, but I also take pride in how I survived and built my life back.”
Still, he says, “I do not regret that I stood up for President Trump at that time. I don’t regret standing up for my country when I know we were being wronged. I still to this day, I know for myself that the 2020 election was compromised, and I don’t regret confronting that.”
When Hodgkins briefly met Trump at a 2023 dinner, he got the notion that a pardon might follow if Trump won a second term in office. “It was a prayer answered” when the pardon came, clearing Hodgkins’ conviction. It is now framed and on display in his home alongside other Trump memorabilia.
He thinks the pardon will help his career aspirations. “And I’m hoping, you know, before I’m too old to do it, that I might find a wife and start a family. … Whether that does happen for me or not, you know, I have a very, I have a very blessed life.”
Being pardoned delivered sweet freedom. But for Sara Carpenter, it also left a bitter aftertaste. She believes the pardon signifies that she was absolved of crimes that she didn’t commit.
“My pardon looks great on paper,” Carpenter said. “And then I say, ‘Wait a minute. It should never have happened to begin with.’”
While she is grateful that the pardon led to her release about midway through a 22-month prison term, Carpenter had filed an appeal. She was hoping to have her convictions overturned, and “that’s why I didn’t want the pardon, in a sense,” she said.
She knows of other pardoned defendants who feel similarly conflicted. Like many of the pardoned, Carpenter alleges she was convicted in an unfair trial based largely on falsehoods.
“I didn’t get tried by a judge and jury,” she said. “I got tried by political activists.”
Carpenter was convicted of two felonies—civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding—and five misdemeanors.
As a retired New York City police officer, Carpenter was particularly offended when the Justice Department alleged she “slapped” officers’ arms.
She has publicly challenged anyone to produce a video proving that claim; none has surfaced, she said.
Carpenter, 56, admits she got riled up; she perceived police were stoking unrest, not quelling it. But she says her actions weren’t criminal.
“I don’t regret what I did,” she said. “I yelled. I raised my voice.”
As an officer who responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Carpenter suffered lingering trauma that led to her retirement. It also affected her reactions on Jan. 6, she said; a suspected provocateur inflamed her when he compared Jan. 6 to 9/11.
Investigators initially treated Carpenter with some deference, she said. Dozens of Jan. 6 defendants worked in law enforcement, government, or military roles.
However, professional courtesies soon evaporated, Carpenter said. In March 2021, authorities raided her New York home, with a helicopter circling above.
Post-pardon, Carpenter, a college-educated artist, is producing artwork “that brings out hope.” With encouragement from others who share “America First” beliefs, Carpenter also does public speaking about Jan. 6.
“The reason I keep talking is so they won’t get away with it,” Carpenter said, alleging unjust persecution of Jan. 6 defendants and coverups of evidence. “The truth is there. People are choosing not to see it.”
She would like to see history courses teach a balanced view of Jan. 6, so children become critical thinkers and evaluate “both sides of a story, not just one.”
Carpenter said her side of the story wasn’t adequately told in court. While prosecutors showed images of her yelling, they didn’t show her praying at the U.S. Capitol, said Carpenter, who comes from a devout Irish Catholic family.
An item of religious significance was used as evidence against her: A trio of wise men figurines. “The three wise men are still being held hostage,” said Carpenter, who has made multiple requests for her personal property to be returned.
The figurines are antiques from her childhood Christmas displays, but where they are now is a mystery. Prosecutors presented them on the witness stand during her 2023 trial—an odd sight that dumbfounded her.
Carpenter says she likely took the figurines to the U.S. Capitol because Jan. 6 is the traditional date that the Vatican celebrates the Epiphany, the three kings’ adoration of the newborn Jesus.
The government’s use and retention of the figurines serve as a metaphor for many things about Jan. 6 that “make no sense,” she said.
“God was with me all the way and still is, because of my relationship with the Good Lord Jesus I have hope in the future,” Carpenter said. “My prayers are with those who did this to us and for Americans to speak up more to not accept being lied to by the past administrations, almost all of whom still hold positions in our government.”
The FBI unwittingly created an internet sensation when agents seized an odd piece of evidence from the Pennsylvania home of Robert Morss: a Lego model of the U.S. Capitol.
Last June, on the four-year anniversary of his arrest, Morss received the Lego box back—empty.
“I think someone has a trophy on their desk somewhere in some federal building, perhaps … but, yeah, the legend continues, you know?” Morss said.
Even though the Lego set remains missing, Morss has embraced his internet-birthed nickname, “Lego Man.” For him, it has become symbolic of his rebuilt, post-Jan. 6 life.
Authorities accused Morss of interfering with police and assisting others in doing so, among other actions on Jan. 6.
Had he not been pardoned in 2025, Morss would have spent five-and-a-half years in prison.
He chronicles his three-and-a-half years behind bars in a new, 565-page book, “Still There: A Story of Survival and Penance in Prison Through the Eyes of a J6 Political Prisoner.”
Besides writing and publishing two books, Morss quit drinking alcohol. He strengthened his Christian faith. He became a public speaker. During one speaking engagement in Florida, he met the woman he intends to marry in April, Olivia Pollock, a fellow former Jan. 6 defendant.
“We realize just how profound it is to have a connection with somebody that has also suffered in a very similar way,” Morss, 32, said. “You know, who else could I be with that could relate to what I’ve gone through?”
It’s essential for people to continue speaking out about what happened on Jan. 6, he said, because “justice dies in the quiet.”
Using a variant of his “Lego Man” nickname, Morss has launched his own film production company in Texas.
LeggoMan Productions aims to create “movies that reinvigorate the next generation to want to keep this Republic,” Morss said. Although the films will be “gritty,” the stories will be told from a Christian perspective, he said.
Noting that the word, “Lego,” means “I assemble” in Latin, Morss says that sums up what he wants to do: “Assemble” people into a cohesive group. His company is growing, and he expects to hire additional staff—opportunities he wants to provide first to Jan. 6 defendants and veterans.
He is a former Army Ranger who served three deployments to Afghanistan. In addition to the Lego model, authorities seized military-related items and notes, along with clothing Morss wore to the Jan. 6 protest.
In court records, prosecutors described the Lego model as “fully constructed” when the FBI seized it. The government later corrected the record, blaming a “miscommunication” for the inaccurate description.
By listing the model of the U.S. Capitol as evidence, that suggests it could have played a role in Morss’s alleged Jan. 6 planning. Morss and internet commenters savaged that notion as preposterous.
Morss explains why a former girlfriend bought him the U.S. Capitol model: “She knew I was a history buff, and she knew I wanted to be a teacher, and she also knew that I loved Legos.” He propped up the box as a “decoration” at his home, until it was seized.
At a recent fundraising gala, Morss auctioned off other Lego U.S. Capitol models to benefit his production company. “Everybody wants one,” he said; and purchasers asked him to autograph the boxes.
Yet some of the pieces of his life can’t be put back together. His father and brother turned their backs on him. His uncle worked with private investigators to help turn him in to the FBI.
And despite the book sales and speaking engagements, he is still struggling financially.
None of the positive changes in his life would have happened without his faith, he said.
“The only way that I’ve been successful at any of this stuff is because I continue to give glory to God,” Morss said. “It’s like a secret recipe: The more you want to honor God with what you’re doing, the more you incorporate God into your life … things just seem to work out.”
He advises his Jan. 6 brethren: “Find a new mission that honors God and saves your country, and you’ll be okay.”
In Secret Recordings, Ted Cruz Bashes Trump Tariffs, JD Vance, And Tucker Carlson
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took aim at President Trump’s tariff policy and Vice President JD Vance during closed-door donor meetings last year, according to recordings obtained by Axios. The recordings reveal deep rifts inside the GOP over trade and foreign policy.
The recordings, totaling nearly 10 minutes, were provided by a Republican source and were made during two donor sessions in early and mid-2025.
In the recordings, Cruz repeatedly singled out JD Vance and Tucker Carlson, accusing them of driving an anti-interventionist foreign policy inside the Trump administration. Cruz claimed the two were responsible for pushing out former national security adviser Mike Waltz because he supported military action against Iran, even though Trump later embraced that approach.
“Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same,” Cruz told donors. He has been feuding publicly with Carlson on social media for months.
Cruz also said Vance and Carlson played a role in briefly installing Army veteran Daniel Davis in a senior intelligence position. Cruz described Davis as fiercely hostile to Israel and said their involvement triggered backlash that ultimately led to Davis being forced out.
In the second recording, Cruz recounted a tense late-night phone call with Trump after the president rolled out his tariff plan in early April 2025. Cruz and several other senators tried to persuade Trump to back off the policy. The call stretched past midnight and “did not go well,” Cruz said. Trump was “yelling” and “cursing” during the conversation.
“Trump was in a bad mood,” Cruz told donors. “I’ve been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them.”
Cruz warned Trump that the tariffs could wreck the economy and imperil the GOP’s political standing.
“Mr. President, if we get to November and people’s 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10–20% at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath,” Cruz said he told Trump.
“You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.”
Trump’s response, according to Cruz, was blunt: “F**k you, Ted.”
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the trade deficit shrank to $29.4 billionin October. That marks the smallest gap since June 2009 and a sharp 39% decline from September’s $48.1 billion. The economy also grewat an annualized rate of 4.4% in the third quarter— the fastest pace in two years.
When a donor brought up “Liberation Day,” Trump’s branding for the tariff rollout, Cruz mocked the phrase. He said he told his staff that anyone using it “will be terminated on the spot.” He added, “That is not language we use.”
Cruz also told donors he had been “battling” the White House to secure a trade agreement with India. When asked who inside the administration opposed such deals, Cruz pointed to economic adviser Peter Navarro, Vice President Vance, and “sometimes” Trump.
A Cruz spokesperson downplayed the recordings in a statement, insisting that Cruz is “the president’s greatest ally in the Senate and battles every day in the trenches to advance his agenda.”
“Those battles include fights over staffers who try to enter the administration despite disagreeing with the president and seeking to undermine his foreign policy,” the statement continued. “Sen. Cruz is proud of those fights, his accomplishments, and his close relationship with the president. These attempts at sowing division are pathetic and getting boring.”
“Minnesota Democrats hate ICE because they’re deporting their voters.”
– Gunther Eagleman on “X”
Isn’t it obvious by now that the seditious mischief roiling Minneapolis is some kind of a demonstration project for a China-backed overthrow of the whole country? This is not hard. And, apparently, the Democratic Party is either a willing accomplice or a hostage in thrall to its captor — like Patty Hearst, the heiress kidnapped and bamboozled by psychotic Maoist maniacs who styled themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, until she was happily making bombs and robbing banks with them (and ended up in prison).
Neville Roy Singham
It is well understood that these ICE-Out riots are organized and funded by a network created by one Neville Roy Singham (American, b. 1954), now based in Shanghai. Singham funds the Party for Socialism and Liberation, The Peoples’ Forum, Code Pink, the United Community Fund and a web of other money laundries that supply all the logistics for Lefty-left mobs going back to the George Floyd / BLM operations of 2020 and including the pro-Palestinian uproars of 2024.
Singham’s father, Archibald, was a Sri Lankan poly-sci prof at Brooklyn College, specializing in Third World revolution; his mother was a Cuban-born Marxist. Singham founded a software development company called Thoughtworks in 1993, and sold it to a London-based private equity firm, Apax, for $785-million in 2017, after which he devoted himself to the cause of “dismantling capitalism,” and destroying the USA. If ever there was a James Bond villain come to life, it’s Neville Roy Singham.
And then you have his perfect foil, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who visited China at least thirty times in his previous career as a teacher, his travel often funded by the CCP. What was he up to there? I think we’re going to find out. We’re also going to find out what he has been up to in the state he supposedly runs, especially vis-à-vis the developing mega-scandal of billions creamed off taxpayers through the Somali fake social services fraud network. It’s already known that some of that money found its way into Democratic Party coffers. How much of it landed in the bank accounts of Minnesota politicians and administrative officials? We’ll find out about that, too.
ICE-Watch Signal Chat boss Amanda Noelle Koehler with her boss, Gov. Tim Walz
The communication system for the Minneapolis riots is an encrypted Signal Chat network (“MN ICE-Watch”) run by Tim Walz aide and campaign strategist Amanda Noelle Koehler. That’s how they organize rapid-response actions against ICE and broader mobilization for key propaganda opportunities like the recent shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan acts as an admin for the MN ICE-Watch Signal group. Kind of makes you wonder if Tim Walz himself is involved in orchestrating the chaos. Another thing we’ll probably find out. Are these officials criminally liable in the deaths of Good and Pretti? In any case, it’s all a grand distraction from the massive Somali fraud scandal that broke out over Walz this month like a case of scabies.
The overall Singham / CCP plan is to get rid of Donald Trump, elect a Democratic Party Congress, and turn the USA into CCP-inflected clone state. The Dems have already made their strategy clear: bring in X-million illegal aliens (done) and set them up as voters; admit DC and Puerto Rico as new states to secure the Senate; stuff the Supreme Court with extra Lefty-left justices, and set about “redistributing” the nation’s wealth from the productive class to their rainbow coalition of the oppressed, marginalized, non-white, and mentally-ill. I’m sorry if this sounds like the ridiculous plot of a James Bond movie. Oscar Wilde was onto something when he observed that life imitates art.
Now, the question is: what are we going to do about all this — we who care about preserving an American republic based on economic liberty? And perhaps more to the point: how to put down the current engineered chaos in Minnesota ASAP, in a way that serves notice we will not allow our country to be overthrown by any Marxist-Jacobin rabble. Many are calling for President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
The Singham / CCP / Democratic Party axis would like nothing better, of course, because they could then slap the “tyrant” label on Mr. Trump and set him up for impeachment in 2027, if they can take the midterm election.
And they’ll do exactly that if Senate Majority Leader John Thune keeps obstructing passage of the SAVE (election reform) Act.
Is there a path short of the Insurrection Act to quell the Minneapolis mobs?
How about this: since the Minneapolis Police have been ordered to stand down by Mayor Jacob Frey. . . why not deputize the officers as federal marshals and put them under the direct authority of the US DOJ? Then arrest as many unruly mob actors as possible, just get them off the streets and make the point that there are consequences. Meanwhile, seize the assets of all the organizations that are funding the chaos. No more coffee and donuts. No more Signal Chat dispatch system. No more subsidized motel stays. No more riot paychecks. All support gone.
Perhaps that’s a start. Expect to see some resolute action this week against the parties involved in the Minneapolis attacks on Immigration Enforcement agents.
And understand that the forensic litigation over Alex Pretti’s foolish death is just an obsessive-compulsive public ritual that is fooling nobody with half a brain.
Get in law enforcements’ faces with a gun and you’ve signed your own death warrant. What part of that is a mystery?
Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin declared 2026 to be the “year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty,” starting with his own devices.
In a Friday post on X, he laid out the software changes he has made to reduce reliance on data-hungry, centralized platforms.
The “two major changes” to the software he used in 2025 were switching “almost fully” to Fileverse, an open-source, decentralized document platform — a kind of privacy-preserving Google Docs — and switching “decisively” to Signal as his primary messaging app.
Signal uses end-to-end encryption by default for all one-to-one and group chats, and stores minimal metadata, meaning only limited information, such as when an account was created or the last date it connected to the service.
Telegram, in contrast, only offers end-to-end encryption in optional “secret chats” and otherwise keeps messages and metadata on its own servers, a model that has drawn scrutiny as law enforcement data requests have increased in countries like France.
Buterin also discussed his experiments with locally hosting large language models, arguing that sending all data to third-party services is “unnecessary” when users can increasingly run artificial intelligence tools on their own hardware.
He said better user interfaces, integrations and efficiency are still needed to make local models a seamless default, but added that there has already been “huge progress” compared with a year ago.
Privacy advocates see broader shift
His post echoes points made by privacy advocate and NBTV founder Naomi Brockwell, who described running models locally as the most private way to use AI without sending prompts or documents to external servers.
Brockwell has spent years teaching privacy-enhancing behavior to mainstream audiences, arguing that privacy is about autonomy rather than secrecy and encouraging the use of tools like Bitcoin, encrypted messengers and self-hosted services to reduce government and corporate surveillance power.
Buterin’s post also comes amid renewed debate over how much access governments and platforms should have to users’ private communications and metadata.
The European Union’s controversial Chat Control proposal, for example, originally included pre‑encryption scanning of messages to detect abusive material, and prompted warnings from civil liberties groups and technologists that client‑side scanning could undermine trust in encrypted apps.
Progressively swapping out everyday apps for encrypted, open-source and local alternatives is, according to Buterin and other privacy advocates, one way for users to start reclaiming control over their data flows.
“Signal-Gate” continues to erupt out of Minneapolis, as the organizational structure or command-and-control nodes of left-wing activists operating within encrypted messaging apps were infiltrated and exposed on Sunday, revealing that on-the-ground pressure campaigns against federal agents were highly coordinated and, according to some experts, exhibit characteristics of a “low-level insurgency.”
“We’re investigating. As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it. If that leads to a break in the federal statute or a violation of some law, then we are going to arrest people. They should be worried. If they broke the law, you should be worried,” FBI Director Kash Patel told Benny Johnson this afternoon.
Patel is referring to citizen journalist Cam Higby’s bombshell report on infiltrated Signal chats linked to left-wing groups in Minneapolis that are acting as a shadow revolutionary force against the federal government’s deportation operations targeting criminal illegal aliens.
BREAKING: FBI Director Kash Patel CONFIRMS Full Investigations Are Active Into Left-Wing Terrorist Signal Chats in Minnesota, ‘They Should Be Worried.’
“We’re investigating. As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it. If that leads to a break in the… pic.twitter.com/0qeI68AS8U
What is especially concerning is that the federal government was unable to identify the command-and-control communication structures behind these pressure campaigns in the sanctuary city, while citizen journalists were the ones who ultimately uncovered the bombshell.
* * *
What appears to be unfolding in Minneapolis, particularly following the emergence of “Signal-Gate” on Sunday via citizen journalists on X, extends well beyond any conventional protest activity. The evidence so far suggests coordinated pressure campaigns against federal agents exhibiting characteristics of a low-level insurgency, with direction, tasking, and information flow routed through encrypted messaging apps, implying an organized command-and-control structure functioning as a shadow revolutionary force.
What’s more, former Tim Walz campaign adviser Amanda Koehler, as well as Minneapolis City Council Member Aurin Chhowdhry, have allegedly been identified as a key figures in the now-leaked Signal group chat.
🇺🇸 Aurin Chowdhry, a Minneapolis City Council member, has been linked to the top of an Anti-ICE Signal group chat.
This revelation is fueling calls for a major investigation into her and other city officials allegedly involved.
The group even had a ‘Signal Chat Guide’ advising anti-ICE protesters:
The Signal chat was exposed by journalist Cam Higby, who published a bombshell report on Sunday after infiltrating multiple groups across Minneapolis with the stated aim of tracking federal agents and impeding, assaulting, or obstructing their operations. The report sparked a wildfire across X overnight.
🧵🚨 MINNEAPOLIS SIGNAL INFILTRATED
I have infiltrated organizational signal groups all around Minneapolis with the sole intention of tracking down federal agents and impeding/assaulting/and obstructing them.
Higby’s reporting unleashed a rapid mobilization of citizen journalists, including accounts such as 0HOUR1, who began mapping what appears to be an organized command-and-control network of left-wing activists behind the groups.
What do we have on these signal chats
-Government officials
-Anarchists
-Antifa
-Gang members
-Journalists
Coordinating and attacking ICE AGENTS across the country.
This my friends is Organized Crime not Protesting.
Higby suggested that left-wing activist networks are leveraging local residents as force multipliers in coordinated pressure campaigns against federal agents, forming pressure campaigns that one military analyst characterized as “What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t ‘protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.”
The encrypted Signal messages obtained by Fox News Digital in real time show that anti-ICE “rapid responders” were actively tracking, broadcasting and summoning “backup” around federal agents outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue, where the shooting happened. Local “rapid responders” made at least 26 entries into a database called “MN ICE Plates” in the critical hours before and after the killing, documenting the license plate numbers and details of alleged ICE vehicles they claimed to see around Nicollet Avenue.
This highly organized Signal group even managed to track journalist James O’Keefe, as well as quickly obtain his cellphone number, and threatened the journalist with violence…
They tracked James O’Keefe’s license plate in MN, texted him about it, and threatened his life.
These Leftists have access to state license plate databases and are weaponizing them to commit vigilante violence.
Besides tracking and deploying anti-ICE pressure campaigns against federal agents like guerrilla-style warfare tactics through the messaging app, the group was also building a list of federal vehicle license plates stored in a database, 0HOUR1 revealed this on Sunday.
They have illegally captured 5000 plates in the Signal Group.
By late Sunday afternoon, after Higby published the Signal chats on X and citizen journalists flooded the groups, exposing highly organized internal targeting plans, the revolutionaries appeared to panic.
“We’re all fucked!”
Rioter signal chat was exposed for all their internal plans targetting ICE agents (names, threats, illegal acts).
First, Eric Schwalm, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret who held the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 4, offered his assessment of events unfolding in Minneapolis.
Schwalm described the command-and-control dynamics operating within left-wing activist Signal groups as a form of “low-level insurgency infrastructure,” noting it appears to be created by individuals who have clearly studied and internalized the insurgency playbook.
Schwalm continued:
As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.
What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.
Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction—or worse.
This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.
The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers—complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal—you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.
I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.
Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.
We either recognize what we’re actually looking at—or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread.
Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore. It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.
As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters,…
The key informational gap citizen journalists face is who exactly is providing the organizational know-how required to coordinate these operations across Minneapolis via encrypted messaging platforms. There are reports that Antifa, government officials, gang members, journalists, and others were in the group, but the structure observed is well-disciplined, scalable, and purpose-built to disrupt federal deportation operations. We’ve told readers that Minneapolis has been a testbed for revolution, with tactics likely to be deployed across sanctuary cities nationwide.
This suggests involvement by socialist or Marxist-aligned NGOs, raising another question about the origin of their training. One plausible origin is Cuba, as outlined in earlier reporting:
DataRepublican writes, “SIGNALGATE Donor List Available for Download; Politicians and Foreign Leadership Confirmed?”
🚨💵 BREAKING: SIGNALGATE DONORS LIST AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD; POLITICIANS + FOREIGN LEADERSHIP CONFIRMED?
In one of the files revealed by @camhigby , a resources file directs people with money to a website, Stand with Minnesota, which in turns directs donors to a campaign ran by… pic.twitter.com/5CDhWxRKhk
If this movement is assessed as a communist revolutionary effort, and if the seasoned special forces expert is viewing it as more of a “low-level insurgency”, then the current characterization as a civil rights protest or democratic activism is a misdiagnosis of the actual threat – one that we’ve labeled is a color-revolution-style operation being waged from the left-wing NGO sphere against President Trump.
The big question is why mainstream Democratic leaders have remained largely silent as left-wing revolutionaries operate within their party under the guise of “democracy” or whatever the most trending cause is. The mobilizing narrative has shifted repeatedly, from George Floyd to pro-Palestinian activism, and now to anti-ICE. Just wait until spring; the revolutionaries want chaos – and Democrats are completely fine with this.
Remember what retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn stated in late November:
What We Are Experiencing Is Not De-Dollarisation But De-Fiatization
By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist At Rabobank
J.P. Morgan once famously remarked that “gold is money, everything else is credit.” That dictum was apparently forgotten during the 1980s & 1990s as gold’s share of central bank reserves steadily declined and gold prices – for most of that period – did the same.
That period was the most recent era of high financialization, where Hollywood movies like Wall Street, Trading Places, Barbarians at the Gate and even Pretty Woman glorified the swashbuckling lifestyle of financiers. It was also the era of the leveraged buyout, the rise of the MBA, the retail day-trader speculating in the dotcom boom and the germination of the idea (in the Anglosphere, at least) that you too can get rich through landlording – effectively transforming housing from a consumption good to a financial asset. This was also the era of the imperialism of the US Treasury Bond.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is reasonably clear from the data that this period ended with the popping of the dotcom bubble, but the final eulogy was not read until the financial crisis of 2008 when the excesses of high financialization were truly laid bare. This imbued the arguments of non-market economies like China that American system was decadent and sclerotic – and that the their system was superior – with apparent credibility. Along with military misadventure in the Middle East this constituted a heavy blow for the soft power and prestige of the United States.
While it is typical to think of the financial crisis is an epochal ending, gold’s share of central bank reserves hit its nadir around the year 2000. That was also the approximate highwater mark for US Treasury bonds’ share of global reserve assets. Many Western central banks – the last sellers of scale – had recently offloaded their holdings at low, low prices in the late 1990s having been taken in by fashionable ideas that gold was a “barbarous relic” and that the creation of the fiat monetary system and floating exchange rates in 1971 made holding gold a quaint anachronism.
Fast forward to today and gold is now trading well above $5000/oz. Silver is trading well above $100/oz. The financial has given way to the material and the fashionable narrative is now ‘sell America’ and de-Dollarisation. Dollar assets’ share of total central bank reserves has been in slow decline for years, but some commentators are now pronouncing the death of the Dollar system as Donald Trump’s abrasive style of foreign policy offends traditional allies. In seeming support of the sell America narrative, the Bloomberg Dollar spot index is down 1.14% year to date.
However, on the other side of the ledger we continue to see strong demand at US Treasury auctions and SWIFT data shows that the use of the US Dollar in international payments is actually increasing, mostly at the expense of the Euro. The Chinese Renminbi has seen a modest rise in its use in payments, but small declines in its already low share of central bank reserves. Even the increased use in payments is exaggerated somewhat by transactions between mainland China and Hong Kong. At only 3-4% of total payments versus more than 50% for the Dollar, it would seem to us that the demise of the Dollar in favor of other currencies is much exaggerated.
Speaking to the media at Davos, hedge fund manager Ray Dalio argued that what we are experiencing is not de-Dollarisation, but de-fiatization. That is, flight from fiat currencies in favor of real assets or – as J.P. Morgan might have advised – real money in the form of gold and silver. Ray pointed out that “in a war-like environment” countries don’t want to hold each other’s debt for fear of sanctions (Russia presents a cautionary example), while other investors don’t want to hold financial claims for fear of debasement through deficit spending by national governments and debt monetization – quantitative easing – by central banks. Under this scenario, it is rational to hold neutral money with no counterparty risk, no risk of debasement and less scope for the imposition of capital controls. The last sellers of scale (central banks) became the first buyers of scale in 2024 and 2025, but the trade has broadened out to other buyers.
The debasement of fiat currencies is now easy to spot. Aside from gold and silver regularly re-setting all-time highs the Bloomberg commodity index has surged to sit at its highest level since mid-2022. Brent crude prices have risen for the last five weeks straight and Henry Hub natural gas prices have surged more than 65% year-to-date. These types of moves signal a scarcity of the material relative to the financial. Consequently, long yields have remained elevated (or surged, in the case of Japan) and the Reserve Bank of Australia – who took the ‘gently, gently’ approach on fighting inflation – may soon become the first G10 currency-issuing central bank (aside from Japan) forced to hike rates. The AUD has recently been surging in anticipation.
As Dalio explained to Bloomberg, the flipside of a trade imbalance is a capital imbalance. This is because the capital account is – by definition – the inverse of the current account (which includes the trade balance) in the balance of payments. With the USA running record current account deficits in early 2025, it’s a matter of mathematics that foreign investors have to buy US Treasuries for that deficit to be financed. For the US to make progress on reducing its trade deficit (as it has recently), it must also make progress on reducing its capital account surplus. That means fewer Dollars for the rest of the world who – as detailed above – rely on Dollars to conduct trade.
This is the Triffin Dilemma, which also describes why China – with its immense and growing trade surplus – cannot supplant the Dollar’s global role with the CNY. How are you going to get CNY into the hands of other countries unless China runs a trade deficit? Logically – though its appeal as a store of value may be diminishing – the Dollar must remain the global reserve currency because there is no viable alternative. Central governments will not return to a gold standard for the same reason the last vestiges of the gold standard were abandoned in the first place: it would constrain governments’ freedom to engage in deficit spending and create inflation.
Very clearly the world is erecting new barriers to the free movement of goods. With the US embracing a re-invigorated Monroe Doctrine under its new National Security Strategy, it now views the economic affairs of its neighbours in the Western Hemisphere as issues of interest for the United States. This is obvious in the case of Venezuela, and also in the case of the Panama Canal, and was again highlighted over the weekend when President Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on all Canadian goods if Canada were to do a trade deal with China.
Canadian PM Carney became the darling of Davos by delivering a speech articulating the changes in the world order and attempting to rally middle powers to band together and stand against great power coercion. Carney was delivering jabs at the United States, but the credibility of his message may have been diminished somewhat by his actions in signing an agreement with China to reduce Canada’s 100% tariff on Chinese EVs in exchange for a reduction in Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola and seafood products.
Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained the tariff threat by making it clear that Canada’s deal was not acceptable from the perspective of the USA. “We have a highly integrated market with Canada… Goods can cross the border six times during the manufacturing process. And we can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S.”
For now, the geostrategic competition between China and the United States continues to be prosecuted as a trade war but investors may do well to heed Dalio’s warning that punishment in the form of a global capital war is on the horizon. For details on how one part of that might look, see our thoughts on US Dollar stablecoins here.
This year, there has been a race to the bottom as Democratic politicians fuel the rage in our streets against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
That continued this last week when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz again rushed to judgment after a shooting, adding that the public should not treat Border Patrol or ICE officers as real “law enforcement” officers.
However, rock bottom was finally reached by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who not only said that she does not consider ICE officers to be “real law enforcement,” but raised the possibility of citizens shooting them under state law.
First, the obvious.
Mayes said, “I put [“officers”] in air quotes because I don’t think they are real law enforcement.” These are real law enforcement officers under federal law, enforcing federal law. Period. The effort by Walz, Mayes, and others to question their status or treat them as impostors is clearly designed to inflame citizens and encourage greater confrontations.
It is a dangerous form of demagoguery. It is sending citizens into harm’s way, encouraging them to impede federal operations involving the arrest of criminal suspects.
Mayes’s comments could justify many putting “attorney general” in air quotes since she is not only misleading citizens about the status of these officers but also enabling the very rage that is causing the injury and death of individuals.
Again, repeating Walz’s talking points, she referred to these officers as “poorly trained.” She obviously has no idea about the training of these officers. The officer involved in the Alex Pretti shooting was an experienced officer with the Border Patrol. The officer involved in the prior Renée Good shooting was also an experienced officer.
While mischaracterizing the officers, figures like Walz are sending demonstrably “untrained” citizens into highly dangerous situations. Walz specifically called out citizens into the streets to record these operations, which is precisely what Pretti was trying to do before his fatal confrontation with officers.
Mayes, however, was not looking for a tie in that race to the bottom. She told citizens that Arizona’s “Stand Your Ground” law might be cited as grounds for the use of lethal force against officers. She declared:
“You have these masked, federal officers with very little identification — sometimes no identification — wearing plain clothes and masks and we have a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law that says if you reasonably believe your life is in danger and you’re in your house or in your car or on your property, that you can defend yourself with lethal force.”
She later added, “It’s a fact that we have a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and, in other states, un-uniformed, masked people who can’t be identified as police officers.”
It was a reckless statement of the law.
These laws only protect “reasonable” uses of self-defense. However, they have an express exemption for using force “to resist an arrest that the person knows or should know is being made by a peace officer or by a person acting in a peace officer’s presence and at his direction, whether the arrest is lawful or unlawful, unless the physical force used by the peace officer exceeds that allowed by law.”
It is not uncommon for law enforcement to use officers in plain clothes to make initial arrests or contacts with suspects who might flee or resist.
Mayes’s comments could encourage an already enraged and irrational segment of our population to use lethal force under the false pretense of standing their ground.
Attacks on these officers have increased exponentially with the violent rhetoric of these politicians. Just last week, a rioter bit off the finger of an officer.
Mayes also vowed to prosecute any ICE agent who violates state laws in these operations. She is also mimicking Walz in spreading legal disinformation. While federal officers do not have absolute immunity in all cases, it is extremely unlikely that state officials could successfully prosecute such cases without facing a transfer to federal court and likely dismissal.
Walz made the same misleading claim in saying that Minnesota would investigate the shooting and that the federal government would not be allowed to conduct the investigation. He has no authority to dictate who or how the shooting will be investigated.
While the state can conduct its own investigation, the federal government will investigate a shooting by a federal officer. Walz further pandered to the mob by raising the debunked “bait boy” story and telling citizens that ICE was “shooting them in the face when they come out of donut shops.”
Rage is hard to maintain for months and the Pretti shooting, as described by one Democratic operative according to Fox’s Chad Pergram, is a “new wild card” in the politics on the Hill over funding.
There remain legitimate questions about this shooting. The videotapes do not show, as suggested in early accounts from the federal government, that Pretti approached the officers brandishing a weapon.
Pretti does not obey the commands of the officers in returning to the middle of the road during their operation. However, he did not appear threatening until after the officer pushed him to the side of the road. At one point, he appears to shove the officer as he tries to assist a woman who was pushed to the ground.
What happens next is hard to determine. There is a video that suggests that an officer may have removed his weapon from its holster just before another officer yells “gun.” It is hard to see Pretti’s hands and we do not know what happened in that split second. We may get a better idea as new videotapes emerge.
Law enforcement officers do not expect blind deference on shootings. However, they have a right to expect a fair chance for an investigation to hear their side of a shooting — not a governor or a mayor rushing before cameras to effectively accuse them of murder.
At this point, it may not matter. Only the mob matters. Minneapolis Brian O’Hara explained: “even if there is an investigation that ultimately proves that at the time of the shooting it was legally justified, I don’t think that even matters at this point, because there just- there is so much outrage and concern around what is happening in the city.”
Walz has demonstrated politics of the lowest kind, stoking anger as citizens and officers alike are injured. Walz is pledging to go to court to stop further operations—a lawsuit that would be another frivolous filing. Previously, the state, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, filed to prevent the federal government from increasing forces to investigate fraud and immigration violations.
Walz, Mayes, and others are following a long line of demagogues who sought to use social unrest to advance their political careers. For Walz, sending people into the streets has the benefit of not having them at home watching and reading about the growing fraud scandal in his state.
It is not a defense of democracy, but mobocracy in Minnesota.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the author of the forthcoming “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” which will be released on Feb. 3 as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Forecasts of a massive oil glut are seriously exaggerated as demand keeps rising and global stocks are below the five-year average, according to Saudi Aramco’s chief executive officer, Amin Nasser.
“Oil glut predictions are seriously exaggerated,” Nasser said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week as carried by Reuters.
Global oil stocks are low, while the amassed barrels in floating storage on tankers are mostly sanctioned supplies, the CEO of the world’s biggest oil firm and top crude exporter said.
Moreover, spare capacity has dwindled over the past year, also limiting potential efforts to boost output in case of major supply disruptions, according to Nasser.
“It (spare capacity) is at 2.5% and we need a minimum of 3%. If OPEC+ further unwinds cuts, spare capacity will fall even further and we will need to watch this very carefully,” Aramco’s top executive said.
The market is oversupplied, analysts say, as reflected in only brief spikes in oil prices in recent weeks driven the geopolitical developments.
Most investment banks and the EIA forecast that average oil prices will be below $60 per barrel in 2026 due to an emerging and persistent market oversupply, especially during the first half of the year.
But OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, insists that the market would be balanced as demand growth is robust and will remain such in 2027, too.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) this week raised its oil demand growth estimate and expects growth at 930,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2026, up by 70,000 bpd from last month’s assessment.
The upgrade reflects a recovery in feedstock demand in the petrochemicals industry, on top of expectations of normalized economic conditions after the unpredictable and chaotic tariff policy of the Trump Administration last year.
But the market continues to be oversupplied, the Paris-based agency noted.
“Indeed, benchmark crude oil prices remain $16/bbl lower than a year ago, reflecting the large global supply surplus that built up over the past 12 months, in line with our forecasts,” the IEA said.
Post-Winter Storm, Deep-Freeze Pushes Power-Grids To Brink As Feds Move To Avert Blackouts
The major winter storm that dumped heavy snow and ice across much of the eastern US is finally over, but the cold-weather danger is far from over.
Roughly 185 million Americans remain under winter alerts today as Arctic air continues to pour deep into the central and eastern states. Wind chills are dropping into the minus 20s and minus 30s in some areas, with temperatures running 10 to 40 degrees below seasonal averages.
This prolonged cold – expected through the week – will continue to pressure major natural gas production hubs with freeze-offs, send pipeline volumes sliding, and push already-strained power grids to the brink.
The latest on grids:
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected a record demand of 86 GW on Monday, above its prior summer peak.
PJM Interconnection warned it faces days of extreme winter demand, an unprecedented stretch for the grid spanning the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic.
Grid operators are paying large customers to curb usage to avoid widespread rolling blackouts.
Power prices spiked to crisis levels, with PJM on peak prices averaging about $639 per MWh and ERCOT North hub prices jumping more than 1,200% day over day.
On Sunday, the Energy Department issued emergency orders authorizing PJM to operate power plants at maximum capacity, including those fueled by coal and oil, regardless of limits set by environmental rules or state law. Similar orders were issued for ERCOT and ISO New England.
Golf clap for fossil fuels saving the grid from collapse. It wasn’t solar or wind. It was oil and natural gas.
Meantime in New England and Boston oil – yes OIL – is a stunning 39% of electricity production.
Never, ever seen this high.
Next day power costs (on the left) are super high as well.
300 miles from one of the largest nat gas fields in the world and burning … oil.… pic.twitter.com/HuMqxmkqMd
UBS analyst David Robinson told clients, “Natural gas futures have surged nearly 20% Monday Asia morning as the worst winter storm in recent years in the US has seen surging demand for heating, with plunging temperatures knocking off nearly 10% of production.”
US LNG feed gas nominations opened this week at a limited 14,209 MMcf/d, declining by -4,910 MMcf/d since Friday as every operator actively scaled back inflows leading into the winter storm.
That total drop also now includes reductions from Venture Global’s assets, as Calcasieu… pic.twitter.com/QU2uf299g0
US natural gas futures in New York jumped nearly 20% to more than $6 per million British thermal units when trading opened up on Sunday (read here). Gains have largely held into early Monday, with prices still up about 17% as of 0715 ET.
Highest since 2022.
January could be the largest NatGas futures spike on record.
With 10% of US natural gas production knocked offline just as heating demand surges, this week shapes up as a major stress test for the nation’s power grids. Stack the firewood high and make sure the whole house generator is fueled up.
