Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The European Union must expand legal migration channels and intensify pressure on the criminal networks behind illegal border crossings, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday at a global migration conference in Brussels.

Von der Leyen argued that creating structured, regulated routes into the EU is essential if the bloc wants to reduce reliance on smuggling networks.

“We must open more safe pathways, legal pathways to Europe,” she said, urging closer cooperation between Europe and partner countries, including the G7.

“We must make sure that people can find a job where their talent is needed … bring skills across our borders.”

The Commission president highlighted the EU’s new “talent partnerships” — arrangements that allow non-EU citizens to work legally in Europe — saying five countries have already joined and that Brussels hopes more will follow.

She said a newly established “talent pool” would match European employers with qualified workers from outside the bloc, with a pilot “gateway office” in India launching to help jobseekers access legal routes.

If successful, she said, it could become “a blueprint for partnership with other countries.”

NEW – Ursula von der Leyen says that to prevent illegal border crossings, “we must open more safe and legal pathways to Europe,” and announces, as part of the new “talent partnerships,” an office opening in India to connect European employers with non-European jobseekers. pic.twitter.com/UMnxqKIKSc

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 10, 2025

She portrayed these initiatives as beneficial to both Europe and partner states through developing skills, creating opportunities, and keeping young people engaged. “By working in partnerships, we have found safe alternatives to the lethal criminal smuggling networks,” she added.

Alongside legal pathways, von der Leyen announced a significant escalation in the EU’s enforcement strategy. Brussels is preparing a new sanctions regime aimed directly at migrant smugglers and the financial channels that sustain them. “We need stronger legal tools to dismantle this criminal business,” she said. “This is why Europe is developing a stringent new sanctions regime against smugglers … Our goal is simple. We want to bankrupt their businesses through all means available.”

The Commission chief said the measures could include travel bans and asset seizures, developed in coordination with G7 partners. She argued that migrants who enter the EU illegally often fall prey to “networks of modern slavery,” and said that expanding legal migration routes was essential to cutting these groups out.

The president also called for a major expansion of the EU’s border agency, Frontex, which she said should be tripled to 30,000 staff as part of wider efforts to reinforce border management and combat illegal immigration. According to von der Leyen, irregular entries have fallen by 37 percent this year, with a 26 percent decline on the most frequently used routes.

Her remarks came amid continued controversy over the EU’s recently adopted Asylum and Migration Pact, which includes faster procedures for returning people without authorization to stay and a mandatory solidarity mechanism. Under the system, member states must accept relocated migrants or make a “solidarity payment” of €20,000 per person if they refuse. Hungary, Slovakia, and Czechia have all declared their opposition, while countries such as Poland will receive temporary adjustments to their quotas due to the high number of Ukrainian refugees already hosted.

Von der Leyen acknowledged the political challenges but said the EU’s overarching principle must remain clear: “Europeans decide who crosses the borders and under what conditions, not the smugglers.”

“We all have one common goal,” she told delegates.

“The common goal is to drive the smugglers out of business. To save the lives of thousands of people who dream of a better life.”

At no point in her speech did she mention the effect that illegal immigration has on European citizens. She did not refer to the disproportionate percentage of crimes committed by migrants across the bloc, nor the plummeting levels of security felt among citizens.

Instead, she told attendees, “We must create more bridges between our continents. We must make sure that people can find a job where their talent is needed, match the skills, and bring skills across our borders.”

Read more here…

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The New York Times editorial board released a video this week calling for the US to “prepare for the future of war” and urged the Pentagon to take drastic steps to be better prepared for a potential fight with China, a conflict that could quickly turn nuclear.

“US politicians often boast that America has the ‘Strongest and most powerful military in the history of the world’ but behind closed doors, they’re being told a different story,” the editorial board said. “New York Times Opinion has learned that the Pentagon has been delivering a classified, comprehensive overview of US military power called the Overmatch brief. The report shows what could happen if a war were to break out between China and the United States. The results are alarming.”

The video said that a war with China might seem “purely hypothetical,” but claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the Chinese military to be ready to seize the island of Taiwan by 2027. However, that timeline is based on claims from the CIA and has never been confirmed by Chinese officials. Xi reportedly told President Biden last year that there were “no such plans” to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

The Times editorial board said that defending Taiwan “won’t be easy” and called on the US to invest more in new technologies, such as drones, rather than “symbols of might,” referring to large aircraft and warships.

“America must prepare for the future of war. This is the opinion of The New York Times editorial board. You might be thinking America should focus on peace, not war. But one of the most effective ways to prevent a war is to be strong enough to win it. That’s why it’s imperative that we change,” the board said.

The board suggested several steps for the US to take to prepare for war with China, including building “new autonomous weapons and leading the world in controlling them” and relaxing rules on purchasing weapons to “make bets on young companies.”

The video comes after Congress unveiled a $901 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that, when added to a supplemental spending bill passed earlier this year, will bring the official US military budget to over $1 trillion.

“It’s been nearly 10 years since the Overmatch brief was first delivered. Its warnings have been updated and delivered again to the new Trump administration. We’ve been warned about the urgent need for change. The question is whether we’ll change in time,” the video concluded.

This refers to this NYT story (https://t.co/rdFRYttqF9) in which they reveal there now exists an “overmatch brief” at the Pentagon that details China vs US military power. The name says it all…

Apparently when a senior US official read the brief he “turned pale” as he realized… https://t.co/fJBKMKzR08

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) December 11, 2025

For years now, the Pentagon has named China as the top “pacing threat” facing the US and has been openly preparing for war with China. President Trump’s War Department is expected to prioritize the Homeland and the Western Hemisphere in its coming National Defense Strategy, as outlined by the recently released National Security Strategy, but it will still be putting a focus on a military buildup in the Asia Pacific to get ready for a future clash with China, while stressing that US allies in the region should spend more on their militaries.

Just when you thought the ongoing cultivation of weakness in American youth couldn’t get much worse, huge proportions of the student bodies at US universities are enrolling with official disability designations that bestow various accommodations upon the students who claim them. As you may have expected, the alarming trend is most pronounced at what are supposed to be the most “elite” institutions. 

We’re not talking about people in wheelchairs, but rather students snagging diagnoses for ADHD, anxiety and depression from indulgent doctors. “It’s rich kids getting extra time on tests,” an un-tenured professor at a selective university told The Atlantic‘s Rose Horowitch. Apparently fearing backlash, he requested anonymity. 

The numbers are jarring. Harvard and Brown’s undergraduate student body is 20% “disabled.” Amherst has hit 34%, while Stanford’s disability rate is a head-shaking 38%. At one unidentified law school, 45% of students have been awarded academic accommodations. In stark contrast, only 3 to 4% of students at public two-year colleges get disability accommodations. 

“Obviously, something is off here,” observes Emma Camp at Reason. “The idea that some of the most elite, selective universities in America—schools that require 99th percentile SATs and sterling essays—would be educating large numbers of genuinely learning disabled students is clearly bogus.”

Disabled students are often given time-and-a-half or double-time to finish a test, and the freedom to turn in papers well beyond the given due date. However, extra time isn’t the only benefit. At Carnegie-Mellon, a social-anxiety disorder can ensure a student isn’t called upon by a professor without advance notice.

Schools also let supposedly learning-disabled students take tests in “reduced distraction testing environments,” as being in a room with 80 other people is apparently just too taxing for them. However, a University of Chicago professor told the Atlantic that a deluge of students taking tests in the “reduced distraction testing environments” means those rooms are pretty much as “distracting” as a conventional classroom supposedly is.   

In what may be the most darkly amusing accommodation, a public college in California allowed a student to bring her mother to class — which backfired when the mother went beyond whatever role she was expected to play and eagerly participated in the discussions, tuition-free.  

Professor Paul Graham Fisher, who’d previously co-chaired Stanford’s disability task force, told the Atlantic:   

“I have had conversations with people in the Stanford administration. They’ve talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 percent? At what point do you just say ‘We can’t do this’?”

Plenty of these students are likely motivated by a cut-throat desire to gain advantage. However, equally bad, it’s possible a majority of these students sincerely consider themselves disabled. “Over the past few years, there’s been a rising push to see mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions as not just a medical fact, but an identity marker,” writes Reason’s Camp, who notes that social media and other factors foster a rush to attribute common human fallibilities as some kind of medical condition. “The result is a deeply distorted view of ‘normal,'” says Camp. “If ever struggling to focus or experiencing boredom is a sign you have ADHD, the implication is that a ‘normal,’ nondisabled person has essentially no problems.” 

The disability rush isn’t limited to elite college campuses. High school students are using disability designations to score extra time on SAT and ACT tests. “We are also well aware of fliers in the district circulating among parents of doctors in the area who are known to hand out ADHD diagnoses,” a high school teacher at an affluent public school told We Are Teachers. “In some cases, I think what’s happening is a pay-to-play situation.”

And the decline of the West proceeds apace…

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is looking into the potential links between COVID-19 vaccination and deaths in various age groups, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The FDA investigation is being carried out as part of a safety review, a HHS spokesperson said on Dec. 9.

The probe follows a Nov. 28 memo by Dr. Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which revealed that COVID-19 vaccines were likely implicated in the deaths of at least 10 children.

The spokesperson did not provide details on which age groups will be covered or what criteria the FDA will use to determine which cases fall within the scope of the investigation.

Data published by the World Health Organization showed that more than 700 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the United States since December 2020.

The Epoch Times reached out to the HHS for further comment, but did not hear back by publication time.

Prasad said in the memo that the findings were based on a review of 96 death reports voluntarily submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) between 2021 and 2024. The memo did not disclose the health conditions of the children or the vaccine manufacturers involved.

“If anything, this represents conservative coding, where vaccines are exculpated rather than indicted in cases of ambiguity. The real number is higher,” he stated in the memo. “This is a profound revelation.”

Prasad, head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, was one of the early opponents of keeping COVID-19 vaccines available for younger people. He has has supported COVID-19 vaccination for seniors and younger people with underlying conditions.

The investigation was spurred by concerns that the previous administration misled the public about harms COVID-19 vaccines can cause, including myocarditis, or heart inflammation, Prasad indicated in the memo.

The memo states that the FDA never required manufacturers to demonstrate—through randomized controlled trials—that vaccinating children reduced hospitalization or death. Available data, Prasad wrote, are deeply limited, rely on methods with notorious biases, and fail to establish whether the vaccine saved more children than it harmed.

Prasad criticized common assertions that COVID-19 infection posed a greater myocarditis risk than vaccination, saying that this claim is wrong, that existing studies use “a false denominator,” and fail to evaluate risk-benefit trade-offs for healthy adolescents and young adults.

“Finally, the FDA has failed to properly enforce many required post market commitments for COVID-19 vaccines, including for pregnant women and to document subclinical myocarditis,” he wrote.

Prasad said that CBER will take swift action on the safety concerns and will no longer grant marketing authorization for vaccines in pregnant women based on “unproven” surrogate antibody endpoints.

He added that the agency will shift vaccine regulation toward evidence-based standards and revise its annual flu vaccine framework.

Tom Ozimek, Zachary Stieber and Reuters contributed to this report.

In a move that should alarm anyone who is pro-free speech, members of Canada’s Liberal Party have capitulated to pressure from Quebec’s ultra-secular separatist party by voting to strip away a longstanding religious exemption from the country’s hate-speech laws as part of the draconian Bill C-9, also known as the so-called Combating Hate Act.

Canada’s Criminal Code has long shielded good-faith religious expression with a clear exemption that speech is not hate propaganda “if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”

On Tuesday evening, that protection was casually deleted at the Bloc Québécois insistence.

CBC has the details on what happened next:

Progress appeared to stall after an initial committee meeting to go over the bill was abruptly cancelled last week. Three sources speaking to CBC News said the bill was held up because Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s office brokered the deal with the Bloc without getting buy-in from the Prime Minister’s Office. Tuesday’s meeting was scheduled last-minute after last week’s cancellation. The Bloc has long sought to remove the religious exemption, saying religion could be used as a cover for promoting hate, such as homophobia and antisemitism. Blanchet said his party would not support the bill without the amendment.

Conservatives immediately sounded the alarm. Canadian Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre warned on X that the amendment would “criminalize sections of the Bible, Qur’an, Torah and other sacred texts.”

Liberal-Bloc amendments to C-9 will criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah, and other sacred texts.

Conservatives will oppose this latest Liberal assault on freedom of expression and religion.

Sign here. Defend religious freedom. Keep Liberal thought police out of your… pic.twitter.com/WJXqUcMC8q

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) December 1, 2025

At Tuesday’s meeting, Conservative MP Andrew Lawton accused the Liberals and Bloc of mounting “a full-scale assault on religious freedom.” When the amendment passed anyway, Conservative members filibustered, forcing an adjournment before clause-by-clause study could be completed.

🚨 FULL ASSAULT ON RELIGION 🚨

After 8 hours inside the Justice Committee, Liberals and the Bloc pushed an amendment that moves Canada toward criminalizing religious belief itself, regardless of faith.

This is the red line.

Full Video Below pic.twitter.com/FINeo9S8re

— Northern Perspective (@NorthrnPrspectv) December 10, 2025

Canada’s Justice Minister Fraser, scrambling to contain the fallout, claimed the change “will not criminalize faith” and “in no way, shape or form prevent a religious leader from reading their religious texts.” Freedom of religion remains a Charter right, Fraser said—as if repeating the obvious somehow negates the chilling effect of removing an explicit statutory shield.

Fraser went on to argue that the exemption is “redundant” and that the government knows of no case in which it has ever led to an acquittal. One struggles to recall the last time the Carney government boasted about making a law stricter because the existing one had never actually been needed as a defense.

Sheila Gunn Reid of Rebel News summed up her opposition to the bill perfectly.

“Never forget: during COVID, this same political establishment jailed pastors for the “crime” of holding worship services. If they were willing to imprison pastors for preaching, what do you think they’ll do with new Criminal Code powers aimed explicitly at “religiously motivated” speech? They’ve done it before. They’ll do it again,” she wrote. “Bill C-9 is not a hate-speech bill. It is a power-seizing bill. It is a faith-targeting bill. It is a censorship bill. And it must be defeated. If you value free speech, free worship, free thought — now is the time to speak.”

Bill C-9 isn’t law yet as it still requires third reading in the House and passage through the Senate.

Authored by Jennifer Cowan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Canadian psychologist and public speaker Jordan Peterson is continuing to fight an uphill battle with his health but has returned home after spending several months in the hospital, his daughter says.

Mikhaila Peterson shared an update on social media this week—her first since October—to announce her father’s return home after spending time in an intensive care unit this fall, where he was treated for pneumonia and sepsis. Those conditions appeared after mold exposure this summer led to a “severe” flare-up of a chronic illness he has been battling since 2017, she said.

Specialists are continuing to work on determining the underlying cause of his illness and are considering a complex array of possibilities from neurological, to autoimmune, to a mixture of both.

Mikhaila said no answers have emerged thus far and he remains “very unwell.”

“I’m hopeful he will recover with time,” she said in a Dec. 9 video post. “When I posted the last video, I didn’t know if he would recover at all. It was really scary and I’m hopeful now, but it’s still early on.”

Her father’s prognosis remains uncertain, but Mikhaila said she is hopeful he is on the road to recovery.

“Things are really bad, but they’re not as bad as they were a month ago or two months ago,” she said.

Mikhaila first announced her father’s health crisis in an August social media post, saying he had been forced to postpone his podcasts and reschedule his European tour due to a “severe” onset of symptoms she said is linked to chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS).

“Jordan Peterson is taking some time off of everything,” she wrote in an Aug. 13 X post, saying he has a “genetic predisposition” that results in the immune system’s inability to detect and detoxify mould or bacteria in indoor air.

She noted that her father has been battling CIRS since 2017, but the family didn’t know what the problem was at the time. CIRS is a long-term condition triggered by exposure to biotoxins in water-damaged buildings that can result in a variety of debilitating symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, and changes in appetite, according to the National Library of Medicine.

She said his struggles with the condition had intensified over the past year but a recent large mould exposure while helping to clean out her grandfathers’ basement had pushed his symptoms over the edge.

He was taken to the hospital by ambulance later that same month and Mikhaila said in an October social media post that her father had spent nearly a month in the ICU before being moved to “a less urgent floor.”

The family was unable to communicate with Peterson throughout the majority of September, his daughter said in a video accompanying the post. He was diagnosed with critical illness polyneuropathy (CIP) toward the end of his bout with pneumonia. CIP is nerve damage causing severe, symmetrical weakness in critically ill patients, a common complication from sepsis.

Peterson’s situation is further complicated by his inability to take most medications without experiencing “severe paradoxical reactions,” thereby restricting his treatment options, his daughter said.

Stressful Time

Mikhaila said her father’s increased health issues came during a stressful period for her family after she struggled with a difficult pregnancy and then her infant daughter fell ill in June. The six-week-old Audrey suffered a nearly fatal episode of heart failure in June and was then hospitalized again just hours after her father was taken to the hospital in August.

The married mom of three said Audrey is now seven months old and doing “really well” after suffering what now appears to be a “one off freak incident that hasn’t repeated.”

Between her youngest daughter’s health scares and her dad’s condition the 33-year-old has been mostly offline for several months, saying she was feeling “too stressed out” to keep up with The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast.

“I wish things would just go back to normal, but they’re not there yet,” she said in her most recent video update. “Thank you so much for your prayers. We need them. I’ll let you guys know as soon as I can if anything changes, hopefully he’s on the road to recovery.”

Peterson, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto in psychology, rose to fame through his YouTube lectures, his successful self-help book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” and his criticism of the federal government’s Bill C-16, which added the protection of gender identity and expression to the Human Rights Code and Criminal Code. The bill received royal assent in June 2017.

The author announced last December his relocation to the United States due to his regulatory battles with the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario (CPBAO), also citing the political climate in Canada. He and his wife settled in Arizona, where his daughter resides with her family.

The CPBAO, the governing body for psychologists in Ontario, ordered him in 2022 to undergo social media training for comments he made online about a plus-sized model, transgender actor Elliot Page, and a number of politicians.

The well-known author refuted the college’s assertions, saying his comments were not expressed in his professional capacity as a clinical psychologist.

Peterson legally challenged the order but ultimately failed in his attempt after the Supreme Court of Canada chose not to hear his case last summer and dismissed it “with costs.” He had promised in a column earlier that year not only to dive into the social media training prescribed by the college if he lost the case, but to “publicize every single bit of it.”

Via Middle East Eye

Palantir software was used by Israel in its 2024 pager attacks in Lebanon, according to a new book by Alex Karp, co-founder of the Palantir tech company. On September 17, thousands of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members, including civilians not involved in any armed activity, were detonated across Lebanon.

Many showed “error” messages and vibrated loudly prior to exploding, luring Hezbollah members or, in some cases, their family members to stand close by at the point of detonation. The next day more communication devices exploded, including at the public funerals of Hezbollah members and civilians who had been killed the previous day.

While many Israeli figures celebrated, praised and even joked about the attacks, United Nations experts called them a “terrifying” violation of international law. In total, 42 people were killed and thousands wounded, many left with life-altering injuries to the eyes, face and hands.

Karp’s new biography reveals that Israel deepened its use of the company’s technology after it launched the war on Gaza in October 2023, deploying it in numerous operations.

“The company’s technology was deployed by the Israelis during military operations in Lebanon in 2024 that decimated Hezbollah’s top leadership,” wrote Michael Steinberger, author of The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

“It was also used in Operation Grim Beeper, in which hundreds of Hezbollah fighters were injured and maimed when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded (the Israelis had booby trapped the devices).”

He said that the demand for Palantir’s assistance by Israel “was so great that the company dispatched a team of engineers from London to help get Israeli users online“.

The involvement of a range of tech companies in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors in recent years, as well as for attacking and surveilling Palestinians, has sparked anger from rights campaigners and UN officials.

In a report produced by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese in July, several tech companies were accused of profiting from crimes including illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide in occupied Palestine. The report referenced AI systems that were developed by the Israeli military to process and generate targets during the war on Gaza.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe Palantir has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defense infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision making,” the report said.

In the report, Albanese called on UN member states to suspend all trade agreements and investor relations on any inviduals or entities that endangered Palestinians. 

She added that the International Criminal Court and national judiciaries should pursue investigations and prosecutions of corporate executives and entities for “their part in the commission of international crimes and laundering of the proceeds from those crimes.” Middle East Eye has asked Palantir for comment.

During a heated House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Thursday, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) sparked outrage by dismissing the Thanksgiving-eve shooting of two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., as an “unfortunate accident.” The casual characterization of what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem quickly corrected as a terrorist attack revealed Thompson’s apparent inability—or refusal—to acknowledge the gravity of the attack that left 20-year-old U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom dead, and 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe critically wounded.

The exchange began when Thompson referenced what he called “the unfortunate accident that occurred with the National Guardsman being killed.” 

Secretary Noem immediately pushed back, asking pointedly, “You think that was an unfortunate accident?” 

When Thompson tried to deflect, Noem shot back: “It was a terrorist attack. He shot our National Guardsman in the head.”

Officials in Washington confirmed that the shooting of two National Guardsmen near the White House was a targeted attack. The gunman, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who was admitted to the U.S. as part of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome, reportedly walked straight up to the troops on patrol and opened fire.

Thompson not only minimized the shooting but turned it into a partisan attack, pivoting to blame the Trump administration for approving the attacker’s asylum application. He doubled down on his dismissive language.

“It was an unfortunate situation, but you blamed it solely on Joe Biden. I want you to know, who approved the asylum, uh, application, uh, for this same person?”

“Mr. Thompson, this individual that came into the country—“

“No, no, no,” Thompson interrupted. “No, I want to know who approved it.”

“Congressman Thompson, I want you to understand—“

“No, no, no, no!” Thompson interrupted.

The back-and-forth devolved into a combative exchange as Thompson repeatedly interrupted Noem’s attempts to explain how the vetting process worked. Thompson interjected multiple times, attempting to prevent the Secretary from detailing how the attacker entered the United States under Operation Allies Welcome during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.

Noem fought to get her answer on the record despite Thompson’s constant interruptions. “This individual came into the country under an evacuation of Afghanistan, under Operation Allies Welcome, was thoroughly vetted by the Biden administration at that point and that time, allowed into our country, and that was never followed up,” she explained. She emphasized that the Biden administration failed to conduct required annual check-ins with asylum seekers as mandated by law.

Thompson then threatened Noem with perjury charges, insisting that the Trump administration’s DHS had approved the asylum application. “I don’t want to charge, file perjury charges against you, but I’m of the opinion that the Trump administration, DHS, your DHS, approved the asylum application,” he said.

Noem held her ground, explaining that “the asylum application moved forward under all of the information and vetting processes that were put in place under the Biden administration, which is when vetting happened.”

🚨VILE: Dem Rep. Bennie Thompson just referred to the terrorist attack against two National Guardsmen in DC as an “unfortunate accident.”

Noem: “You think that was an ‘unfortunate accident’!? He shot our National Guardsmen in the head.” pic.twitter.com/d8Bpt2xN4J

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 11, 2025

Thompson’s primary concern appeared to be deflecting blame from the Biden administration onto the Trump administration.

Initially, it was believed that Rahmanullah Lakanwal was radicalized after entering the U.S. under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome. However, last week, a new theory emerged suggesting that Taliban blackmail may have coerced Lakanwal into the attack. 

Federal investigators are exploring whether the Taliban threatened to harm his family in Afghanistan if he refused to carry out the shooting, raising questions about threats that standard vetting cannot detect. Lakanwal has no criminal record or history of extremism. He worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan as a GPS-tracking specialist for the Afghan Scorpion Forces. He assisted the CIA during the 2021 evacuation from Kabul, boarding one of the last flights out. His family, along with roughly 700 former Scorpion Forces members, remain under Taliban control, making them vulnerable to retaliation. Intelligence indicates the Taliban has a history of tracking and killing Afghans who aided the West, including brutal attacks on the families of collaborators.

More than 5,000 Afghans admitted under Biden have already been flagged as security risks. The potential for coercion highlights a vulnerability no standard screening process can fully address.

Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,

The litany of reasons California is broken is well documented. The highest cost of living and the highest taxes. The highest percentages of homeless people and people living in poverty. Unaffordable homes and unaffordable rent. High crime and failing schools. A hostile business climate and record migration out of state as people and businesses flee.

But not often enough are we reminded of the countless small things that have gone wrong. Small things that add up to a big problem: a state legislature that is out of touch with the people it represents; a state legislature that, for all practical purposes, holds its constituents in contempt; a state legislature that is doing everything in its power to make life difficult.

Just a few days ago, the latest in this long train of abuses arrived. No more plastic bags. Although 2026 is still a few weeks away, this grocery store has already converted to paper only—heavy, fragile paper bags with handles that tear off under the slightest stress. Everything was double-bagged just to lower the probability of catastrophic failure of the handles.

The problems with this are more than the inconvenience of having to pay 20 cents for every double-bagged bag full of groceries. With plastic bags, you could loop their handles around your fingers and carry several of them securely in one hand. Try that with a paper bag. And there are no uses after the first use for a paper bag. Shall we use paper bags for cat litter? Trash can liners? Maybe, but they won’t work very well. And storing them uses up space fast.

So what’s the advantage? Are we saving oil? Certainly not much. And if savings are what we’re after, why did they ever force us in 2014 to stop using ultra-thin plastic bags in favor of “reusable” bags that nobody reuses for groceries, yet have 10-15 times as much plastic in them per bag? Funny how the plastic industry rolled over on that one. “Please don’t regulate us” morphed into “Never mind, we’ll split with the state that dime we’re charging now per bag.” Corporation wins. State wins. Misanthropic regulations abuse the rest of us.

Now the plastic bags are gone. But the dime per paper bag? That stays.

Does this law reduce the “footprint” of plastic? Yes. Marginally. Meanwhile, it increases the footprint of paper bags, which are actually worse for the environment. And maybe that’s the biggest problem here: California’s corporate special interests, their lobbyists, and their fanatic green marionettes are all too ready to force “solutions” onto the public before the technology has caught up.

Are there bags that look like plastic bags and work like plastic bags—convenient to use and durable—but aren’t made of plastic? That’s certainly possible, but could we wait? No, of course not. We had to let the special interests consolidate their power and profit, while the usual crowd of useful fanatics beat their chests and crow about how they’re saving the planet. What would we do without them to rescue us all?

When taken to such extremes, these laws have little to do with the environment. It’s about control. It’s about money. It’s a shakedown.

Last weekend I had to refill the gas tank in my rototiller. Could I just uncap my gasoline can and fill it up? That would be too easy. The State of California mandates “automatic sealing nozzles” on five-gallon gasoline cans. Have you ever tried to fill the tank of a small engine tool with gasoline out of one of these overdesigned, utterly dysfunctional cans? To save time, you’re better off removing the entire nozzle assembly, as if you’re at the gas station refilling your can from the pump, and then pouring from the nearly two-inch diameter opening in your partially disassembled gasoline can into a funnel you have inserted in the tank of, in this case, a rototiller. It’s messy and time-consuming. And that’s just another example of the idiocy our supposed representatives force us to endure.

Do you want to install new windows on your house? Not cutting a new window where there once was a wall. No. Just replace an existing old window with a new one. Guess what: you need a permit. You have to submit plans to the city or county bureaucracy. Are you kidding?

Read this summary of the steps you have to take to get a window replaced in a California home:

Step-by-step procedure for replacing old windows with new ones without changing the opening size (most common, fewer forms).
Gather the required documents and use the online portal to submit the application.
Plans: Drawings showing window location, size, and framing (if structural changes).
Window Specs: Manufacturer cut sheets, energy efficiency ratings.
Title 24 Compliance: Documentation showing energy efficiency.
Contractor Info: License details if using a contractor.
Lead Paint Info: If your home was built before 1978, be prepared for lead-safe work requirements and paperwork.
Create an online account with the county and submit your application and documents electronically.
Plan Review: County staff will review for code compliance (Structural, Life Safety, Energy, etc.). You’ll be notified of any needed corrections.
Permit Issuance & Inspection: Once approved, pay fees and get your permit. Schedule required inspections through the portal as work progresses.

The same goes for all of these and more: ceiling fans, patio covers, carports, water heaters, retaining walls, landscape irrigation, and shower or tub replacements. What percent of people doing these jobs get these permits? How many? I’m waiting. How many? Who was that Russian who said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime”? Welcome to California.

Let’s be clear. The time it takes to fulfill all these steps is often greater than the amount of time that it takes to do the actual work. In many cases, the expense for the excessive designs and disclosures and fees also adds up to more than the actual labor and materials.

This petty tyranny extends to almost everything in California. Do you have a pool? Better put a permanent fence around the entire pool and alarms on any doors that open into that enclosure, or you have not complied. Do you have a gate into your pool enclosure? It has to be “self-closing,” or you did not comply. Make sure the enclosure’s fencing is at least 60 inches high (60 inches! five feet!). Is there a latch on your self-closing gate? Better make sure it is at least 54 inches off the ground, and no plants are allowed, not even in planters, within five feet of the enclosure. New pools even have to have “an approved cover.” Because that’s safe! I’ll never forget the time I saw a grown man, overwhelmed with grief, carrying his soaking wet dead dog into the waiting room at a local veterinary hospital. The poor animal got trapped under their pool cover.

It’s not just bags and buildings where the long arm of California’s regulatory state interferes with your life and induces honest citizens to reluctantly become petty criminals. It also tempts honest contractors who just want to do good work for a fair price, instead of charging three times as much, to spend more than half their time on “compliance.” We aren’t talking about new homes or major remodels, where obviously some regulations are called for, although nothing like what the California legislature has done to basically kill the home building industry. We’re talking about windows. Who do you trust more? The guy with good references who will just replace your window with no fuss? Or the guy who wants to charge you triple and jump through every regulatory hoop? And why should any of us—vendor or customer—have to be put in such a tough position? Get it done efficiently and be a crook, or take three times as long and pay three times as much and be a sucker?

Consider the new law governing kitchen waste. Residents are now required to save their kitchen waste—oops, their “organics”—and discard it in their green waste containers, along with grass cuttings and leaves. Don’t bag it up and put it in the trash, because that increases the quantity of methane that comes out of landfills. Never mind that landfills are still going to emit methane, with or without kitchen scraps, or that methane rapidly degrades in the atmosphere, or that its alleged impact on the global climate is based on theories still wide open to debate, or that even if you are desperately concerned about methane emissions, there are far more cost-effective and less intrusive ways to capture it.

Some of these laws are literally unbelievable, but they’re all too real. According to a thoroughly house-broken reporter for the Sacramento Bee, the potential fine of up to $5,000—five thousand dollars—for someone who, say, repeatedly fails to put their empty pizza box in the right container, “speaks to the seriousness of the matter.” This is pure corruption, meant to enrich public sector unions who get to staff up to implement these laws, and sold to brainwashed “environmentalist” advocates, many of them masquerading as objective journalists who actually think they’re helping the good guys.

California’s intrusive laws are far too numerous to catalog. They are selectively enforced, for the simple reason that the quantity of violations in this supposedly enlightened state numbers in the hundreds of millions. And if you have a business open to the public? Then you may expect the intrusive government regulations to multiply by orders of magnitude. No wonder so many people are leaving, heartbroken that they and their children live in a place where the government is doing everything it can to drive them out. A government that has made the state they love a state they can’t stand to live in anymore.

California’s policymakers aren’t technically criminals—or at least not all of them are. But what they’re doing to the people who live here is a crime. A crime that is split into so many thousands of petty offenses that it is sometimes hard for us to realize how truly monstrous it has become.