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CBS Finally Airs Updated ’60 Minutes’ Report On US Deportations To Salvadoran Prison

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CBS Finally Airs Updated ’60 Minutes’ Report On US Deportations To Salvadoran Prison

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

CBS’s “60 Minutes” finally aired its report on the Trump administration’s deportations, more than a month after the segment was taken down from the program’s lineup.

Guards stand outside a cell block at the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on April 4, 2025. Alex Peña/Getty Images

In the report, broadcast on Jan. 18, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi examined deportees sent to El Salvador’s maximum-security prison, known by its Spanish acronym CECOT. It aired without any mention of the story having previously been pulled from its originally scheduled date, Dec. 21, 2025.

The unaired segment nevertheless appeared online a day after it was pulled. Global TV, which airs “60 Minutes” in Canada, briefly featured the piece on its app, apparently by mistake.

CBS News said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times that its leadership “has always been committed to airing the ‘60 Minutes’ CECOT piece as soon as it was ready.”

“Tonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’ independence and the power of our storytelling,” it said.

The segment, titled “Inside CECOT,” featured interviews with two Venezuelan men being held in the Salvadoran prison after being deported from the United States.

Last year, as part of an effort to deliver what President Donald Trump has said will be the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in U.S. history, he invoked the wartime Enemy Aliens Act to fast-track the removal of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The Trump administration paid the Salvadoran government millions of dollars to send more than 200 of those Venezuelan deportees to CECOT.

The two Venezuelans interviewed by “60 Minutes” described conditions inside the prison, which they said included beatings, living in cramped cells where the lights stayed on 24 hours a day, and being forced to kneel for hours at a time.

The report was largely unchanged from the Dec. 22 version. The updated version included a short clip of Trump saying that CECOT has “very strong facilities” where security staff “don’t play games,” and another of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that “heinous monsters, rapists, murderers, sexual assaulters, predators who have no right to be in this country” were sent there.

Alfonsi’s introduction was updated to open with the Jan. 3 military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who is currently in U.S. custody awaiting trial on federal narco-terrorism charges. In the new material, she also said she obtained data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement suggesting 33 of the 252 Venezuelan prisoners had been convicted of a crime in the United States, and reiterated a statistic from the original report that eight had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.

In the segment, Alfonsi said the Department of Homeland Security declined her request for an on-camera interview and referred questions about the prison to the government of El Salvador, which did not respond. DHS did, however, provide an explanation for why it would not share detailed records about the individuals sent to CECOT.

“We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence, and we aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security every time a gang member denies he is one,” DHS wrote in an email to CBS News shown in the segment. “That would be insane.”

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 21:45

“Out Of Touch”: Marylanders Fume As Gov. Moore Prioritizes Building Energy-Hungry ‘Sphere’ Amid Power Bill Crisis

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“Out Of Touch”: Marylanders Fume As Gov. Moore Prioritizes Building Energy-Hungry ‘Sphere’ Amid Power Bill Crisis

Marylanders are raging at left-wing Governor Wes Moore, accusing him of fast-tracking a massively power-hungry Sphere entertainment venue near Washington, DC, while working-class households across the central part of the state are drowning under crushing electricity bills.

So this Governor spends money he doesn’t even have yet. 200 million dollars of the cost for the Sphere at National Harbor will come from the State of Maryland’s 2027 budget. He is so out of touch with what MD residents need and doesn’t care as long as his name is in the headlines every day,” Maryland resident Amy Milberger Seaman wrote in a Facebook group called “BGE Victims,” which has nearly 15,000 residents upset about exploding power bills.

Local media outlet WBAL-TV reported Monday that Sphere Entertainment plans to build its second U.S. Sphere venue in National Harbor, in Prince George’s County.

The Sphere will be slightly smaller than the one in Las Vegas, seating 6,000. Gov. Moore called the project the largest economic development project in the county’s history. The venue is expected to be funded through a mix of public and private financing, including $200 million in incentives from the state.

The venue will include an exosphere exterior LED display and a 16K x 16K interior screen, the highest-resolution LED display in the world.

Residents are furious about the new Sphere because at peak power, it uses around 28 megawatts (MW), enough to power roughly 21,000 homes. Adding more demand to an already tight power grid because of just bad policies, after years of backfiring’ climate crisis’ policies stripped reliable fossil fuel spare capacity.

Here’s what others in the Facebook group are saying about Moore:

He is an Obama want-a-be. He loves being a celebrity. Loves having his picture taken. So much so he has at least 3 photographers. Maybe more. He is a liar, clueless about budgets. Overspends our hard earned tax dollars. He needs to go,” resident Cheryl Gaigler Utz said.

Resident Toby Allred said, “Wasteful spending!!! That’s what Democratic politicians love to do with OUR money!!”

Others said, “Build a natural gas and Power Plants First!!!

Maryland Democrats really dropped the ball on power grid management. They put a fake climate crisis first, retired fossil fuel power generators early, and denied any new reliable fossil fuel power generation capacity on the grid, all while pushing unreliable solar and wind. The end result of bad stewardship is bankrupting the working class in the central part of the state with exploding power bills.

Maryland is a one-party rule of Democratic kings and queens. Prioritizing the Sphere over working-class folks comes as no surprise. 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 20:30

Pakistan To Send Chinese Warplanes To Libyan Faction Under Gen. Haftar

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Pakistan To Send Chinese Warplanes To Libyan Faction Under Gen. Haftar

via Middle East Eye

Pakistan has sealed a deal worth over $4 billion to sell military equipment, including warplanes jointly built with China, to General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, according to a report by Reuters.

The deal could significantly alter the military balance of power in the oil-rich North African country, where Haftar rules over the eastern half and a UN-recognized government led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh in Tripoli controls the west.

Pakistan Air Force JF-17, via Military Watch Magazine

“Please make your armed forces as strong as possible because armed forces did guarantee the existence of countries,” Pakistan military chief Field Marshal Asim Munir said in a visit to Benghazi last week, where he met Haftar’s son, Saddam. Reuters reported that the arms deal was finalized in that meeting.

“Libya is a land of lions,” Munir said in a video clip of his address to Libyan National Army officers, referencing the Libyan Islamic Scholar Omar al-Mukhtar, whose struggle in the 1920-1930s against the Italian occupation of Libya was made famous in the 1981 movie Lion of the Desert starring Anthony Quinn.

A copy of the arms deal seen by Reuters before it was finalized said Haftar’s LNA would purchase 16 JF-17 fighter jets, a multirole combat aircraft jointly developed by Pakistan and China, along with 12 Super Mushak trainer aircraft, used for basic pilot training.

One of the Pakistani officials who spoke with Reuters said the agreement would be spread over two and a half years, with land, sea and air equipment included. Two Pakistani officials said the deal could reach up to $4.6bn – Pakistan’s largest in history.

Neither the Tripoli government nor Haftar’s forces have a substantial air force. Haftar made a failed bid to conquer Tripoli in 2019 with the backing of the UAESaudi ArabiaEgypt and RussiaTurkey intervened to defend the government in Tripoli, sending mercenaries and TB2 drones. Since then, it has stationed thousands of troops in the Western half of Libya and sealed a controversial maritime agreement with the government in Tripoli.

Dbeibeh was nominated prime minister of Libya in 2021 as part of a UN-backed process to prepare the country for elections. Instead, he has consolidated power in his hands and curried favor with powerful militias that control Tripoli to stay in power.

After the NATO-led removal of longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya became a theatre for proxy conflict between Gulf states and Turkey. However, those battle lines have blurred in recent years.

Libya’s shifting alliances

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have extended ties to Tripoli, while Turkey has courted Haftar through his son and likely successor, Saddam. Earlier this year, discussions were held about Khalifa Haftar visiting Turkey, but the visit never materialized.

Islamabad is close to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The latter remains the closest Gulf state to Haftar, but Saudi Arabia also provided support and lobbied on his behalf. Russia’s embassy in Riyadh once served as a facilitator for Haftar’s close ties to Moscow, MEE reported.

The Haftar family’s ties with Egypt have come under strain over their support and coordination with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.

Libya’s lawless southeast and Sudan’s Darfur share a border, and Haftar has facilitated the shipment of arms to the RSF, MEE has reported. Arab officials in June said that forces aligned with Haftar launched a cross-border attack alongside the RSF on forces loyal to the Sudanese army, which Cairo backs.

Pakistan’s decision to sell arms to Haftar could also complicate its diplomatic relations with a key partner. While the Gulf states may not be alarmed by the deal, it could rile Turkey, which has close diplomatic and security links to Pakistan.

Lieutenant General Saddam Haftar (L) with his father Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Source: The Arab Weekly/social media

Ankara backs Pakistan in its territorial dispute with India over Kashmir. Turkey is the third largest arms supplier to Pakistan, although it is massively outperformed by the largest, China.

Pakistan’s rising role

Pakistan’s cash-strapped government is trying to boost its arms exports, capitalising on its military hardware’s performance in a deadly military clash with India in May.

Arms have poured into Libya for years despite an arms embargo that the UN has imposed on the country since 2011.mAlthough Pakistan will be selling Chinese weapons to Haftar, Pakistan’s relations with the US have also improved substantially since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in October, live from a Gaza ceasefire signing ceremony in Egypt. Munir, who is seen as the more influential Pakistani leader, has met twice with Trump this year and is expected to visit the White House a third time to discuss Gaza.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 20:05

Fauci & Collins Brushed Off ‘Impressive’ Data For COVID Natural Immunity

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Fauci & Collins Brushed Off ‘Impressive’ Data For COVID Natural Immunity

Newly released emails reveal that senior Biden administration health officials privately grappling with research suggesting recovery from Covid-19 infection provided stronger protection than vaccination alone – at the very moment the federal government was preparing sweeping vaccine mandates in 2021.

(from l) Bill Gates, former NIH director Dr. Francis Collins and former NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The correspondence, released under the Freedom of Information Act to the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, offers the clearest documentary evidence to date that top officials recognized scientific uncertainties around one-size-fits-all vaccination policies, even as they publicly dismissed the value of natural immunity.

At the center of the internal debate was a massive Israeli study of nearly 800,000 people that found prior infection conferred substantially stronger protection against reinfection than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In private emails, Dr. Anthony Fauci described the findings as “rather impressive,” acknowledging both the scale and rigor of the research, which had received prominent coverage in Science.

The data [in the Israeli study] as reported in the news article look rather impressive . . . . but I would imagine that it is more complicated than we think . . . . [I]t is conceivable and possibly likely that those who have had a serious systemic infection develop a high level of immunity that even surpasses that of full vaccination,” Fauci wrote in an Aug. 27, 2021 email with the subject line “RE: Post infection protection vs vaccine immunity.”

Yet the same emails reveal officials’ concern that such findings could undermine the administration’s push for universal vaccination – and later, mandates – by complicating public messaging.

The documents lend new weight to claims made over the past four years by critics inside and outside government that federal agencies sidelined natural immunity not because of weak evidence, but because it was administratively inconvenient. Verifying prior infection, several officials suggested, would make policy enforcement harder and public guidance less uniform.

Acknowledging the Evidence – Privately

In exchanges with colleagues that included the surgeon general, the NIH director, and the CDC director, Fauci weighed the Israeli data against a far smaller CDC study of a few hundred Kentuckians. That CDC analysis, published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, suggested vaccination after infection reduced reinfection risk more than infection alone. As Just the News points out, “The Biden administration often used MMWR, also not peer-reviewed, to push weak research that justified its policies.”

The contrast was stark. The Israeli research – though a preprint at the time – showed natural immunity was many times more protective against reinfection and symptomatic disease. Fauci conceded the Israeli work was compelling, even while noting its retrospective design and voluntary testing.

He also speculated that the strength of natural immunity likely varied with illness severity, suggesting that recovery from “serious systemic infection” might offer better protection than vaccination – an assessment that ran counter to the administration’s public insistence that vaccination was superior across the board.

Bureaucracy Over Nuance

The emails echo statements later made by Paul Offit, a pediatrician and longtime FDA vaccine adviser, who admitted on a podcast four years ago that senior officials discussed – but ultimately rejected – recognizing natural immunity as a basis for exemption from vaccine mandates. According to Offit, the group broadly agreed that prior infection mattered immunologically. The obstacle, he said, was bureaucratic: how to document it.

Offit has since criticized aspects of the administration’s Covid vaccine strategy, including booster recommendations for low-risk groups and what he described as selective data-sharing with advisory committees. His term on a key FDA vaccine panel was not extended in 2022.

While the pediatrician and vaccine inventor told Just the News the meeting’s importance had been exaggerated, Offit elaborated after the 2024 election on the 2021 meeting’s details, telling the same podcast “we all basically agreed” on an exemption but “the question was, bureaucratically,” how to verify natural immunity.

He also said Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told him at a 2023 meeting that the feds didn’t target “high-risk groups” for vaccination because that was too “nuanced” and some at high risk wouldn’t get jabbed unless everyone was told to do it. -Just the News

The newly released records also show senior officials struggling to reconcile conflicting data while preparing talking points to counter claims that vaccines were unnecessary for those already infected. In one email, CDC Covid response medical officer John Brooks summarized the state of the science: both infection and vaccination induce immunity; infection-derived protection appeared more durable; but infection carried higher risks and vaccination was “safe.”

Still, Brooks acknowledged that some of the data supporting boosters were thin – one cited study involved only four subjects – and that the CDC lacked a comprehensive meta-analysis comparing infection- and vaccine-induced immunity.

Messaging vs. Evidence

Francis Collins, then director of the NIH, privately described the Israeli natural-immunity findings as “somewhat puzzling,” precisely because the study appeared well designed. He asked colleagues whether the CDC had synthesized all available evidence, noting that officials had repeatedly told the public vaccines provided better protection.

“Does CDC have a ready meta-analysis of all of the studies that have compared the immunity from natural infection to vaccination?” Collins asked. “Most of us have been saying up until now that vaccines are actually better for providing immunity – what does the overall synthesis of the data now say?

As JTN notes further, those private doubts contrasted sharply with Collins’s earlier public posture, particularly his aggressive dismissal of the Great Barrington Declaration, whose authors argued for focused protection rather than universal restrictions and mandates. In the emails, Collins appeared far more circumspect, seeking nuance rather than certainty.

Protect the Public’s Trust has accused the CDC of misrepresenting its own Kentucky study, noting that agency press materials blurred the distinction between vaccination after infection and vaccination versus infection alone. The group filed a formal scientific-integrity complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services over what it called misleading public claims.

Michael Chamberlain, the organization’s director, told the Daily Caller that the emails show officials attempting to “bury what didn’t fit their preferred narrative,” even as Americans relied on foreign research for answers to basic questions about Covid immunity.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 19:40

Trump Says ‘Agitators’ In Minnesota Church Should Be Jailed, Wants Broader Investigation

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Trump Says ‘Agitators’ In Minnesota Church Should Be Jailed, Wants Broader Investigation

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump said that people who stormed a Minneapolis church over the past weekend should be jailed, while calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate two local Democratic politicians.

President Donald Trump speaks during the “Great, Historic Investment in Rural Health Roundtable” in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 16, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

“Just watched footage of the Church Raid in Minnesota by the agitators and insurrectionists. These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on early Tuesday.

The individuals who appeared at the church “are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing. They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”

A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting “ICE out,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and “Justice for Renee Good,” a protester who was shot in Minnesota by an ICE agent as she hit him with her car while trying to escape custody. The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors also leads the local ICE field office overseeing some operations in the Twin Cities area.

Responding to the church incident, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the department is investigating federal civil rights violations who she said were “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”

“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she wrote in a post on social media.

Dhillon said in an interview with the Daily Wire that DOJ prosecutors went to Minneapolis on Monday to investigate the church case, suggesting that the protesters were violating the rights of the church-goers.

“You can have your protest in a park, you can have a march, you can get a permit for a large gathering, but you can’t just go wherever you want and tear things up and disrupt,” she told the outlet. “And that’s what these people did. And so now, people are afraid to go to church. And that is an absolute disgrace in this country.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has also written that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted by the department.

In his social media post, Trump also took aim at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), calling on the DOJ to investigate both in response to the recent unrest in Minnesota.

Both Walz and Omar have been critical of the Trump administration’s operation targeting illegal immigration in Minnesota, with Omar saying last week that the Twin Cities area is “under attack” by the federal government.

There is no modern precedent for this level of federal overreach, violence, and lawlessness carried out in the name of immigration enforcement,” she said.

Walz also said that he believes Trump is seeking “violence in the streets” with the federal operation, adding that “Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace.” He then said, “Don’t give him what he wants.”

The Epoch Times contacted Walz’s and Omar’s offices for comment on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 19:15

“Extraordinary Times”: Ted Cruz Predicts Iran, Venezuela, & Cuba Could All Fall Within Six Months

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“Extraordinary Times”: Ted Cruz Predicts Iran, Venezuela, & Cuba Could All Fall Within Six Months

The world may be approaching a turning point not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. At least, that’s what Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) predicts. Appearing on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Cruz said the globe is on the brink of a historic realignment, predicting that three long-standing anti-American regimes could collapse in a matter of months—a shift with worldwide implications. 

And it could arrive far sooner than many expect.

“We are living in extraordinary times,” Cruz said, arguing that the pace of global change “exceeds anything we have seen in decades.”

According to Cruz, the unrest now gripping Iran could soon extend far beyond its borders.

“There is a very real possibility that in the next six months the regimes in Iran, in Venezuela, and Cuba will all fall,” he said. 

Cruz went further, suggesting those nations could soon choose a dramatically different path.

“There is a real possibility that Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba will all democratically elect new leaders.”

He framed the moment as one with sweeping consequences for the United States and the world.

“Instead of fomenting violence, fomenting attacks on America, instead of waging war on America, there is a real chance in the next six months that the people of those three countries will elect leaders who embrace freedom and free enterprise and who want to stand with America,” he said.

If that happens, Cruz added, “it is difficult to think of anything more consequential,” comparing the potential shift to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

The Texas senator laid much of the blame for global instability squarely on Tehran, calling Iran “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.”

He pointed to its financial backing of terror groups, saying, “They have paid for and funded… 90 percent of the funding of Hamas comes from Iran, 90 percent of the funding for Hezbollah comes from Iran.” Cruz also noted that Iran has sent terrorists abroad, “including sending terrorists to, among other places, Venezuela, and targeting Americans.”

He also credited President Trump for his support for the people of Iran and highlighted what he called a decisive escalation from the White House in recent days.

“In the last two days, a really important step occurred where President Trump came out unequivocally and said, ‘It is time for new leadership in Iran,’” Cruz said. He continued, quoting the president’s words directly: “It is time for the Ayatollah Khomeini, his religious dictatorship to end.” Cruz called that statement “massively important.”

When Bartiromo pressed him on whether the United States should take direct action, Cruz argued that Washington should pursue maximum pressure with the explicit goal of toppling the Iranian regime. He said the regime openly defines itself by hatred of the United States, pointing to the Ayatollah’s routine participation in “Death to America” chants and to the fact that Iran even commemorates the 1979 U.S. embassy takeover with an annual “Death to America Day.”

Cruz also backed President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying the president concluded the risk of allowing a theocratic dictatorship to obtain nuclear weapons was intolerable. In Cruz’s view, the strike represented the most consequential foreign policy move of Trump’s second term. He contrasted that approach with the Obama administration’s response to Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution, when widespread protests were met with American restraint. Cruz said the United States squandered that moment by refusing to stand firmly with the Iranian people. This time, he argued, Trump has sent a clear message to Tehran that violently suppressing protesters will carry serious consequences.

Reagan won the Cold War by refusing to treat communist dictators as moral equals worthy of endless dialogue. Trump applies that same principle to Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba—regimes that have survived for decades solely because the establishment lacked the courage to finish them off. 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 18:50

Democrats Are Trying To Weaponize The 25th Amendment Again, And It Won’t Work

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Democrats Are Trying To Weaponize The 25th Amendment Again, And It Won’t Work

After spending nearly four years pretending that Joe Biden was fit for office, congressional Democrats are now calling for President Trump to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment after he linked his pursuit of Greenland to being snubbed for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

In that text, sent Sunday, Trump told the Norwegian leader he no longer felt obligated to “think purely of Peace” after his country decided not to award him the prize for having stopped or prevented at least eight wars.

Removing Trump under the 25th Amendment would require Vice President Vance and a majority of Cabinet members to declare to Congress that the president cannot discharge his duties. Congress would then have 21 days to ratify the decision, but two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and House would be needed to affirm removal. The mechanics make clear why this is political theater rather than serious governance. Vance and Trump’s Cabinet are not going to declare him unfit over a text message. 

But the real problem is that it’s impossible to take any of these Democrats seriously on this issue. Democrats have played this card repeatedly for years, turning what should be a serious constitutional matter into a tired old political stunt. 

Once Trump took office in 2017, Democrats and their media allies pushed baseless narratives about cognitive decline. They called for mental assessments. They amplified armchair diagnoses from partisan psychiatrists. They did all this despite zero evidence of actual impairment. The noise grew so loud that Trump requested a cognitive assessment from his physician a year into his presidency. He aced it, but his critics were not satisfied.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe claimed that Justice Department officials briefly discussed invoking the 25th Amendment mere months into his first term after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. 

The media routinely gave airtime to mental health professionals willing to claim Trump was certifiably unfit. Democrats even got 350 health professionals to sign a petition declaring his mental health was deteriorating

Weeks before the 2020 election, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly questioned President Trump’s fitness to serve and unveiled legislation to establish a commission that would allow Congress to intervene under the 25th Amendment and strip the president of executive authority—citing a “strange tweet” from Trump as justification. 

While questioning Trump’s mental fitness was a constant theme during his first term, Democrats routinely ignored or denied Joe Biden’s cognitive decline during his presidency until Biden was forced to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after a humiliating debate performance against Trump that June. Up until that point, the media was largely defending Joe Biden from accusations of cognitive impairment.

In March 2024, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough insisted that Joe Biden was at the top of his game.

“I’ve said it for years now: he’s cogent,” he insisted. “But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been intellectually, analytically. Because he’s been around for 50 years.”

He added, “Start your tape right now, because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”

Many elected Democrats also publicly defended Joe Biden during his presidency, only to admit after the election that he was clearly impaired.

Democrats spent years crying wolf about Trump’s mental state. They fabricated crises where none existed. Then they ignored the actual cognitive decline of their own president out of political necessity. 

Democrats have weaponized the 25th Amendment just like they’ve weaponized impeachment. Now they expect the public to take seriously another claim that Trump is unfit for office?

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 18:05

Maybe It’s Time For Conservative Patriots To Rally In Minneapolis

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Maybe It’s Time For Conservative Patriots To Rally In Minneapolis

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

For years we knew it was coming: Civil War 2.0. It’s not as if the establishment has been subtle about their intentions to erase conservatives and liberty minded people from the American epoch. I remember during the Obama years, the narrative was repeated daily that conservatives are a “backwards remnant” of the old America that needs to adapt to the times or fade into obscurity.

The reasoning was that, slowly but surely, the US was becoming “more diverse” and therefore the progressive left was going to be the dominant political force for generations to come (because they think they own all minorities).

In other words, multiculturalism was the new ideological standard.

In order for conservatives to survive, we would have to become more like leftists, embrace DEI, and abandon the principles of western civilization that originally made America great.

But then, something happened that leftists and the establishment elites apparently did not expect; a groundswell of patriotism, a renewed reverence for the ideals of meritocracy and reason, a rising movement of moral clarity. The progressives and globalists did not understand that the conservative populism they categorized as “fringe” 10 years earlier was becoming a mainstay of digital discourse.

They thought they had won. They thought they had us after Obama, so much so that they ran Hillary Clinton for president with the assumption that she could not lose. Then, they thought they had us during the pandemic, but they failed to secure a lasting medical tyranny. They thought they had us during the Biden regime by flooding the country will third world migrants.

Now, they think they have us with their NGO paid army of activists, agitators and provocateurs. They think they have use with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Everything they do is built on the assumption that we will do nothing.

They think this because it is exceedingly rare for conservatives to step outside the traditional bounds of law and order. We have a tendency to wait for people in authority to fix our problems. We have a tendency to rely on civil discourse to ease tensions and find common ground. And, we have a tendency to wait for elections in the hope that the other side will simply accept our victory and recognize that most of the country is against them.

This is clearly not going to happen.

First, because leftists always double down. They are ideological zealots who thirst for power and they will do anything to achieve it. Morals and logic hold no value for them. They will ignore the results of the elections and they will ignore the will of the people because they think THEY know better than everyone else.

Second, globalist NGOs continue to fund and train these activists in greater and greater numbers. I have heard it argued that we need to “stop calling the activists paid protesters” because this diminishes the fact that they are crazed ideologues and true believers. I disagree.

Yes, they are lunatics. Yes, they are true believers. But they would not be able to sustain their mob actions without the steady aid of NGOs feeding them cash, legal help and training. These people are taking their orders from someone; they are not an organic movement.

In past articles I have tried to plead with conservatives to recognize that these activists are NOT sincere fellow citizens engaging in legitimate protest. They are a mercenary army paid to go to war. I’ll say it once again: WE ARE AT WAR. We need to start acting like it.

The organization of conservative movements is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks on the planet. And to be clear, I’ve tried it on a small scale in the past and it’s not easy to get conservatives to commit. That said, I’m not a joiner either and if I do something I usually prefer to do it alone. I suspect most conservatives are the same and I understand the reasons why getting patriots to show up en masse is like herding cats.

Conservatives have lives, we have families (families we actually care about), we have real jobs and most of us don’t see civil protest as a “career”. We also have a tendency to distrust anyone trying too hard to organize. We are, for lack of a better word, paranoid.

Then there’s the people I would call “crabs in a bucket”. The fake conservatives, the fraud influencers, the big talkers who have found their niche grifting in the name of patriotism. But when the moment comes that action and risk are required, they try to pull everyone back down into the bucket of apathy.

They cry that “this is what the leftists want.” They spread rumors of “false flags” to convince people not to get off their couches and walk out the door. What if this is “just another J6”, they argue every time the idea of organization arises. They’ll say our job as civilians is to vote, and then wait for the authorities to handle it.

To be sure, there have been examples in the past of patriots being misled, and I’m certainly a believer in informed caution, but these guys can’t seem to find a conflict they won’t run away from. At this stage all I see are people trying to mislead us into doing nothing while liberty speakers are assassinated, counter protesters are physically attacked, and common sense policies are sabotaged by a handful of corrupt politicians, judges and militant activists.

When there are no consequences for bad behavior, bad behavior will escalate into violence and chaos. It’s important to understand that the political left is made up largely of people who are emotionally stunted. They are toddlers trapped in adult bodies. And, like spoiled children, they act the way they do because they have never been spanked.

Then there’s the people behind the curtain. The NGOs who use obscure and often anonymous online recruitment programs to find and train the useful idiots. Most of their offices are safely nestled in blue havens like New York City or Washington D.C. They are protected by corporate personhood laws and can essentially do whatever they please while enjoying limited liability and the same civil rights as individual citizens.

They WANT Trump to deploy troops to places like Minneapolis. They want their useful idiot activists to get their asses kicked by federal agents on camera. They want some of these people to die because then they can say: “See, we told you Trump is a fascist! Rise up against your oppressor!” They want a communist-style revolution motivated by the fantasy that leftists are “freedom fighters” against a government tyranny that does not represent the American public.

The Trump Administration is legally restricted in what it can do when it comes to investigating or dissolving NGOs. That’s why these institutions are so useful to leftists and globalists.

Our only recourse, in my opinion, is for patriots to organize and act to remove the threat these groups present. Trump has to adhere to the boundaries of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights…but we don’t. The constitution restricts government enforcement, it doesn’t restrict us. The political left ignores our rights, so why should we respect theirs?

The activist mobs in Minneapolis have reverted to pure terrorism. They are physically beating counter-protesters for simply showing up. It’s only a matter of time before they kill someone. Meanwhile, local law enforcement is doing nothing because they have been told by Democrats to do nothing.

Leftists are setting up checkpoints and harassing residents. They are invading peaceful churches with the intent to cause fear among local Christians. They attack ICE agents at every opportunity; men who are merely carrying out the policies WE voted for in 2024.

The political left is trying to subvert the mandate of American voters. They refuse to accept that they lost and they are executing a guerrilla war instead. It’s time for conservatives to step up and do something about it; not just wait for Trump to repair the damage. Maybe Trump deploys troops to Minneapolis, and maybe the activists disperse (maybe not), but they will inevitably pop up elsewhere and we need to be ready.

Conservative groups can set up their own funding structures. We can help to pay expenses for patriots traveling to stop these NGO activists from wreaking havoc. We can train people. We can field an army just as easily as the political left (if not more so).

I’m not much of an organizer, and I certainly don’t want to handle other people’s money. But I believe there are many conservatives out there with far bigger platforms than I have who could take on this role (just watch out for potential grifters, you don’t want a BLM situation where some guy buys three mansions with your donations). The bottom line is, we can do what leftists do and do it better. Anyone who wants to talk more about this can contact me at: brandon@alt-market.com

What I pledge is that I will be there, at the front of the line, to face off against the leftist mob. I will drive from Montana to Minnesota (or anywhere else) and will happily meet with caravans of patriots on the way. With my self defense background I can help train counter-protesters to fight back if needed. With my extensive radio experience I can help to set up secure communications. I will do whatever I’m able.  If we do this, let’s get prepared and let’s do it right.

I think there are millions of conservatives out there who feel the same way I do. We are fed up. Our capacity for diplomacy has been exhausted.

Very few people want to say it out loud and maybe they’re afraid to say it, but we’re all thinking it. Now is the time to act. Wherever the leftist mob shows up to create chaos, we should show up and drive them out of the city. This is the risk we must take if we ever want peace in our country again.

Or, we can continue sitting on our laptops and phones waiting for the problem to fix itself while the activist mob spreads across the entire country, fully emboldened by our lack of resolve.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 17:45

Lululemon Yanks Leggings Over “See-Through” Concerns When Bending Over

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Lululemon Yanks Leggings Over “See-Through” Concerns When Bending Over

Lululemon Athletica yanked its new Get Low training apparel line from its North America e-commerce website just days after launch, following customer complaints that the leggings were see-through.

“The Get Low line has officially been pulled. The leggings are absolutely see-through when you squat or bend over (in every colorway). You can bring them into any store and trade them for a different legging even if they have been worn, FYI. They didn’t pull them from stores, so I don’t know what Lululemon is thinking. The tops are great, in my opinion,” a viral post on the r/lululemon subreddit stated two days ago.

A spokesperson for Lululemon Athletica told Bloomberg that the entire “collection remains available in our stores in North America, but we have temporarily paused sales online in the market to better understand some initial guest feedback and support with product education.”

“We expect to bring the collection back to our North America e-commerce channels soon, and the collection continues to be available in other markets,” Lululemon said.

JPMorgan analyst Matthew Boss told clients that the Get Low training apparel was removed from the company’s website just three days after its debut. He said complaints on social media were mostly centered on the tights, with customers describing them as “not squat proof.”

Shares of LULU were down more than 5% in late afternoon trading on Tuesday. This is not Lululemon’s first product debut fumble. In 2013, the company was forced to recall large amounts of its black yoga pants after customers complained that the leggings were see-through.

 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 17:25

The Reckoning On Immigration Is Here

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The Reckoning On Immigration Is Here

Authored by Alex Berenson via Unreported Truths,

The easy part is over.

Americans wanted the borders closed.

For decades, the legacy media and politicians in both parties ignored that wish, claiming the United States had to accept and support an endless flood of illegal migrants. The disconnect between average people and elite opinion was so obvious that academics wrote papers about it.

President Trump broke with the elite consensus from the first day of his 2016 presidential campaign, when he announced “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border.” No issue proved more politically potent for him.

In his second term, Trump has kept his promise. The wall may not be literally complete, but it might as well be. Customs and Border Patrol reports monthly “encounters” with illegal migrants on the southern border have fallen about 95 percent from the Biden Administration average, and 97 percent from their 2023 peak.

But closing the border to new arrivals does not undo the fact that tens of millions of people are living in the United States illegally, or with quasi-legal “asylum” or “temporary protected” status the Trump Administration is now seeking to revoke.

Just how many people are inside the United States illegally? We do not really know. In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security put the figure at roughly 11 million in 2022 — and said the number had not changed for almost 20 years.

That estimate is nonsensical, given that close to 10 million people arrived in the first three years of the Biden Administration alone.

In 2018, in a paper that should have received more attention than it did, three researchers from Yale and MIT estimated about 22 million people — double the official figure — were living illegally in the United States.

As the paper explained, the consensus 11 million figure comes from a census question that “requires accurate responses from survey respondents when asked where they were born, and whether they are American citizens.” In other words, the survey required illegal immigrants to tell on themselves — to government officials. (It’s a surprise the figure was not zero.)

The researchers used a different method, netting out changes in immigration over time by estimating the number of migrants entering, leaving, and dying. To be clear, this was an exercise in modeling, with all the uncertainty that implies. But even a modeled figure is better than a clearly nonsensical one.

Their best estimate was that the number of illegal migrants rose from under 5 million in 1990 to about 22 million before the 2008 financial crisis, then stayed roughly flat for the next decade. This growth makes intuitive sense. The American economy was very strong in the 1990s, and making money is the primary reason people uproot their lives and cross borders.

(The 2018 Yale estimate of illegal immigrants in the United States. Note the black line hovering just over 20 million.)

The prolonged recession and slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis kept a lid on illegal migration for the next several years.

Then three factors combined to drive up migration.

Economic growth accelerated in President Trump’s first term.

Leaders in the Democratic Party began to speak out aggressively against any enforcement of border laws.

And migrants realized they could use asylum claims to gain entry into the United States and become quickly eligible for Medicaid and other public benefits programs, which previously had not been available to them. The number of people claiming asylum rose from 44,000 in 2011 to 209,000 in 2017, according to a State Department report to Congress.

When the Biden Administration took over in 2021, these trends exploded.

Covid lockdowns and plunging tourism devastated Latin American economies, making the United States more attractive. The official 2020 Democratic Party platform essentially called for an end to border enforcement. And requests for asylum surged even further, with almost 480,000 people asking for asylum in 2023 — even as the Biden Administration created other new pathways to admission, like the “Humanitarian Parole Program.”

Millions more people simply came across the border without even the fig leaf of an asylum request or humanitarian parole. In 2024, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 65 percent of all the migrants in the post-2020 surge — roughly five to six million people — fell in that category.

At an minimum, the United States now probably has close to 20 million people inside its borders who have no legal right to be here under any circumstance. The number may well be closer to 30 million, especially as the Trump Administration strips away the Biden Administration’s expansion of asylum and “humanitarian parole.”

Many of those people are hardworking migrants whose only crime is their immigration status. Others have depended on public assistance since the day they arrived on American soil and have no plans to or realistic hope of getting off it. And some — a small but still real percentage — are criminals.

But they are all present illegally and thus face the risk of deportation. Until now, that risk had been largely theoretical. The United States had operated under a fragile don’t-ask-don’t-tell-style consensus on deportation, which was more or less as follows:

If you can get across the border and you work and do not commit crimes, you will not face a serious risk of immigration enforcement or deportation. And if you have children here, they will be American citizens, under birthright citizenship.

To be clear, the left — not the right — destabilized this bargain.

Opening taxpayer-financed programs to millions of asylees, refugees, and other immigrants with quasi-legal status infuriated many native-born Americans. In combination with the sheer number of new arrivals, the welfare expansion understandably led to an angry backlash.

Now the Trump Administration has made clear that in its view closing the border was the first step, not the last, in immigration enforcement, and that the United States should view the presence of tens of millions of illegal migrants as a mass violation of its laws and sovereignty, even if they are committing no other crimes.

We are about to find out whether most Americans agree.

The easy part — closing the borders — is over.

The hard part — deciding what to do about the people who are already here — comes now.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/20/2026 – 17:05