Category: blaze media

Last week, BlazeTV host and investigative journalist Christopher Rufo, alongside Manhattan Institute Director of Research Judge Glock, published a report titled “No White Men Need Apply,” which pulled back the curtain on the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program.

Despite functioning under the current Trump administration, Rufo and Glock discovered that the program has been awarding government contracts based on race, gender, and social disadvantage — a stark contradiction to the administration’s vows to abolish DEI.

“The Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program,” Rufo says, is “a $26 billion slush fund for government contracts that are available to every identity group except for one: white men.”

“We blew the whistle on this and made the case that this was a corrupt program” and “totally in violation of the president’s stated principles against DEI,” Rufo says.

The reaction from SBA and White House officials was surprisingly humble.

“I got a call from the SBA administrator, Kelly Loeffler. I got a call from a number of people at the White House, some of whom were a bit annoyed that we had brought this scandal to public attention, but all of whom recognized, ‘Yep, we’ve dropped the ball on this. It’s totally unjust. We’re going to take action,”’ Rufo recaps.

And they clearly meant it because just two days after their conversation, Loeffler posted the following announcement to X:

— (@)

Rufo says, “It’s not a perfect solution. I think the program should be abolished, but it’s at least a step in the right direction.”

But his co-host, Jonathan Keeperman, has questions.

“Is it the case that they’re not just abolishing this whole thing because, as Washington is, there’s just too many people who are sort of dependent on this, some of whom might even be Republicans or friendly to the administration?”

Are we playing the game of, “Look, we know this is bad, but these are our friends, and sometimes in politics, you just got to sort of weigh the cost of alienating people over here versus the cost of kind of just letting these not great things kind of continue because … that’s just the friction of Washington, D.C.?” he asks.

“From my reporting on this, the White House had contemplated just unilaterally winding down the program, declaring it unconstitutional, and taking it to the courts,” Rufo says. “From what I heard from a number of people is that the White House lawyers, Department of Justice said, ‘Hey, you can’t do that. It’s a statutory program. You have to release regulations, go through public comment, do the whole song and dance.”’

“So actually, the action was stalled, from what I’ve been told, for a number of months in kind of legal limbo, and only because we published this story were they able to start getting that policy process moving again,” he contines.

However, there is also, he says, “an element of kind of long-standing corruption and complicity from Republicans” at play.

He gives the example of Alaska, which receives a disproportionate amount of the SBA’s 8(a) contract money, the majority of which is funneled into companies owned by Alaskan natives.

Many of these companies, however, subcontract the actual work to non-native (usually white-run) companies. To abolish the program would anger Alaska native groups, which are both politically and economically powerful in the state.

According to Rufo’s sources, Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), for example, has “made it known throughout the administration, ‘We need to keep this cash flowing,’ because he’s dependent.”

“Tribes are pretty powerful in a state like Alaska … and other red states where there are big tribal populations. They have big lobbying operations. They have big political organizations, a network of businesses, casinos, constructions, contracting, etc.,” Rufo says, “and so there is an element of what I think is legal corruption — even in red states, even with Republican politicians — where they keep this disastrous program alive.”

Regardless, the Trump administration promised to uproot DEI, and Rufo intends to hold them to it.

“It’s been a year. You guys have to get rid of this,” he says.

Even though the SBA is now “letting white men into the program,” Rufo fears that “it will still heavily favor the other groups,” thus allowing the cancer that is DEI to live on.

“The only truly morally defensible position is to get rid of it. And so, I think they should blow it up. I think they should go nuclear,” he urges.

To hear more about Rufo’s investigation into SBA’s 8(a) program, watch the video above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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A Florida man is accused of going on a killing spree and gunning down three elderly tourists during their vacation near Disney World. The suspect previously beat an attempted murder charge with an insanity defense, according to court records.

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said in a recent statement that officers responded to reports of a shooting near a residence in Kissimmee around 12:13 p.m. Jan. 17.

‘It was cold-blooded, it was premeditated … absolutely no issues.’

Police said they “discovered three adult males deceased in front of the home” and that “all three victims suffered from apparent gunshot wounds.”

Deputies quickly located and arrested the suspect — 29-year-old Ahmad Jihad Bojeh.

Bojeh is facing three counts of premeditated murder and one count of resisting arrest without violence, according to Osceola County Jail records. Bojeh is being detained at the Osceola County Jail without bond.

“There is no threat to the community, as the suspect responsible for these horrific and senseless murders has been apprehended by Osceola County deputies,” said Osceola County Sheriff Christopher Blackmon.

Blackmon told the Tampa Bay Times that Bojeh lived next door to the rental property where the tourists were staying.

“It was cold-blooded, it was premeditated … absolutely no issues,” Blackmon told Fox News. “There was no conflict between these people. This was just random. And this happened to be the person who lived next door.”

After securing a warrant, deputies searched Bojeh’s residence and recovered two firearms, police said. Police noted that the firearms were being examined to see if they were used in the fatal shootings.

Sheriff Blackmon described Bojeh as a “frequent flyer” with police and added to Fox News that he is “a threat to the neighborhood all the time,” citing repeated calls for service involving the suspect.

Blackmon said the motive for the shooting is unclear; the investigation into the killings remains ongoing.

Fox News reported that the three friends — 68-year-old Douglas Kraft of Columbus, Ohio, 70-year-old Robert Kraft of Holland, Michigan, and 68-year-old James Puchan of Galena, Ohio — attended a car show together. Two of the slain tourists were brothers.

Families and friends of the slain victims released a joint statement to WKMG-TV: “With heavy hearts, we confirm the deaths of our beloved husbands, fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, and friends.”

The statement added that the tourists visited the Mecum Car Show in Kissimmee and were staying at a local Airbnb rental property.

“While waiting for assistance after rental car trouble and preparing to travel home, they were being observed from a distance by an unknown individual who was well-known to local law enforcement,” the statement read.

The tourists were “approached and senselessly murdered” in a “random, tragic act,” the families stated.

“Our families are left with an unexpected, unimaginable loss that cannot be put into words,” the statement said.

“We ask for privacy, prayers, and respect as we mourn and begin to process this tragedy,” the families concluded.

RELATED: What was to be a fun bachelor party in Florida ends with best man dead, 3 friends hospitalized, another sentenced to prison

Previously, Bojeh reportedly was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder but was released back on the streets on the grounds of insanity.

WOFL-TV reported that deputies with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office arrested Bojeh in 2021 for attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery, and two counts of criminal mischief in connection with an alleged shooting at a Wawa convenience store and gas station.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote on the X social media platform, “Prior to State Atty [Monique H.] Worrell’s suspension, Ahmad Jihad Bojeh was acquitted of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm and aggravated battery.”

Uthmeier continued, “It appears she didn’t put up a fight to Bojeh’s use of the insanity defense, and he was allowed to go free.” The attorney general added, “This guy, literally named Ahmad ‘Jihad’ Bojeh, shoots three tourists after being acquitted of multiple violent crimes on grounds of insanity.”

Uthmeier also declared, “This is why I’ve proposed Florida’s legislature narrow the insanity defense. Violent criminals should not be set free to hurt others!”

He also told WOFL, “If there’s a risk of them harming others, we need to ensure they’re locked up.”

Law enforcement sources told the New York Post that Bojeh was banned from owning firearms as part of his insanity plea.

WOFL reported that Bojeh was arrested in 2019 for retail theft.

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ request for comment.

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Las Vegas is a mirror. When it works, America works. When it struggles, the problem isn’t local — it’s national.

Vegas was built on a simple idea: value. Give people a reason to come, treat them fairly, and let them choose how much risk they want to take. No lectures. No stupid political games. No government hand in your pocket every five minutes.

A great city doesn’t nickel-and-dime its customers. Value matters. People don’t expect cheap. They expect fair. That lesson applies nationally, too.

That formula built the entertainment capital of the world. And right now, it’s under pressure.

The neon lights have dimmed

Vegas is getting squeezed from both ends, and the pressure feels familiar because it’s the same pressure families across the country have felt.

Under the Biden administration, inflation surged. Housing costs jumped. Groceries, energy, airfare, and insurance rose together. Families didn’t get richer. Their dollars just bought less.

Reckless spending, energy restrictions, and regulatory overreach drove the damage. Washington acted like prices were somebody else’s problem.

Southern Nevada also felt the economic whiplash. Tourism collapsed during the 2020 lockdowns, wiping out billions and driving unemployment as high as 33% at its peak. Visitor spending returned slowly, then softened again in 2025 — after wages, rents, and debt had already risen on the assumption that demand would keep growing.

For locals trying to raise families, that meant higher baseline costs and less margin for error. Housing, rent, and transportation ate paychecks. Hospitality wages rose, but many workers still lost ground as commuting costs and rents climbed faster.

A gamble on progress

Under President Trump, the trend has started to reverse — not overnight, but directionally. Energy production is up. Supply chains have stabilized. Regulatory pressure has eased. Inflation cooled. Costs didn’t snap back, but the bleeding slowed.

That matters because affordability is competitiveness. Vegas shows what happens when value breaks.

For decades, Vegas understood the middle-class customer: a weekend trip, a decent room, a good meal, a show, maybe a little gambling — and you left feeling like you got your money’s worth.

That perception is cracking. Resort fees that feel like a second room rate. Paid parking where it never used to exist. Food and drink prices that make people stop and stare. Fees stacked on top of fees, revealed at checkout. The experience starts feeling less like entertainment and more like an airport terminal.

Visitors notice. And when people feel squeezed, they don’t just complain — they change their behavior.

RELATED: America tried to save the planet and forgot to save itself

Photo by Timothy Fadek/Corbis via Getty Images

Vegas runs on volume. When fewer visitors come, fewer dollars circulate. The pain hits the dealer, the server, the bartender, the stagehand, the hotel staff, and the rideshare driver long before it reaches the executive suite.

Zoom out, and you see America facing the same dynamic.

The United States used to win because we offered the best value on earth. Not the cheapest — the best deal. A place where costs made sense and life felt attainable.

That edge has been eroding, especially in housing. When home ownership becomes a fantasy, workers can’t relocate, young families delay building stable lives, and talent looks elsewhere.

Meanwhile, competitors are building. Riyadh. Dubai. Macao. Singapore. They’re creating new tourism and entertainment hubs designed to pull dollars away from legacy markets like Las Vegas.

They’re betting America forgets how competition works.

Make Vegas Vegas again

Federal policy matters here. Washington still treats Vegas like a cash register, with outdated rules such as taxing gambling winnings and forcing IRS reporting thresholds stuck in the 1970s. That doesn’t just annoy visitors. It tells the world America doesn’t understand modern consumer behavior.

Ending the federal tax on gambling winnings isn’t radical. It’s strategic. Updating IRS reporting levels isn’t reckless. It’s realistic. Both would improve the visitor experience and help Vegas compete.

The industry also has work to do. A great city doesn’t nickel-and-dime its customers. Transparency matters. Value matters. People don’t expect cheap. They expect fair.

That lesson applies nationally, too.

America doesn’t win by lecturing consumers or ignoring affordability. America wins by making this country the best place on earth to live, work, build, and spend money.

Vegas is telling that story in real time. If Washington listens, the rest of the country benefits.

​Opinion & analysis, Nevada, Las vegas, Economy, Inflation, Tourism, Decline, Covid-19 tyranny, Families, Middle class, Energy, Affordability, Consumers, Housing, Rent, Resort fees, Value 

The world is abuzz with chatter about the United States’ pursuit of Greenland, but Daniel Horowitz, Blaze Media host of “Conservative Review with Daniel Horowitz,” says we ought to consider prioritizing a different kind of green land: “our pastures, our farms, our ranches.”

America’s food security, or lack thereof, is an issue that should deeply concern every American, he says. Between rising beef prices, the “endless shrinkage of ranchers exiting the farming business,” “the consolidation of corporate farms,” the “corporate monopoly of meat processors,” “inflation-driven land depreciation,” and the “government’s steering capital to data centers instead of ranches,” America’s ability to feed her people is growing weaker by the day.

Horowitz confesses he has grown weary of the Trump administration’s geopolitical distractions and obsession with building AI data centers when “the future of [America’s] food security is what matters.”

“We should be pushing for a Manhattan project for cheap and abundant food, for more ranchers, more farmers, more utilization of the land to produce American-made beef rather than cloud-based AI slop that’s actually now about to pop as a bubble and is not really getting us anything,” he says.

Yet Horowitz sees this prioritization not as a purely conservative misstep, but as a clever pivot by the left.

The shift toward prioritizing AI over food production, he argues, is just progressives’ latest trick in their long game: “jiu-jitsuing” conservatives’ support for “functional energy” and funneling it toward “building their surveillance, transhumanist cloud” to create a world where “we own nothing, are dependent on government,” small businesses (including ranchers and farmers) are crushed, and we’re all forced to “put our lives on the cloud.”

Based on several Davos speeches delivered at this year’s World Economic Forum conference, it appears that fossil fuels are back in style with the elites, but Horowitz warns that their plan is to “siphon it all off for their cloud-based, transhumanist” trashing of the internet.”

“Consuming all of our land — not for food, farming, ranching — but for cloud. That’s what this is all about,” he says.

He accuses the Trump administration of “literally digging our own grave” by handing power-hungry elites tax breaks, streamlined regulations, and priority land access for massive data centers, all while pushing policies that would block states and localities from using basic zoning rules to safeguard farmland and ranching.

In short, their efforts are paving the way for the destruction of farmland to build “massive power-sucking dung holes,” where our data will be stored and likely used to surveil us.

What this administration should be doing, Horowitz says, is “getting out of the way of ranchers and farmers so that we have safe, healthy, abundant, cheap food and protein in this country.”

To learn more about the boots-on-the-ground fight for food security in America, Horowitz interviews Texas cattle rancher and co-founder of the Beef Initiative Cole Bolton.

To hear their conversation, watch the full episode above.

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Social media users reacted to elites discussing the consumption of lab-grown meat products during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

A video clip circulated on social media on Thursday of Andrea Illy, an Italian businessman and chairman of the coffee company Illycaffè, pushing for the adoption of tech foods.

‘This, I know, it’s kind of a cultural revolution.’

Sam Kass, a former White House chef and senior policy adviser for nutrition under former President Barack Obama, said, “A lot of what we’re starting to see are these replacements for these core foods. I’ve tasted a bunch of, you know, ‘future coffee, fake coffee.’ How do you see that application?”

Kass asked for Illy’s opinion on the matter, noting that, while the technology of cultivated food is “smart” and “interesting,” “from a values perspective” and as a chef, he does not want to see a future “where we’re starting to drink coffee from a factory as opposed to from a tree.”

Illy responded, “There is a terrible cultural resistance from [the] consumer to accept tech foods. But in my opinion, they represent the way forward.”

“We know from statistics … that 70% of the ecological footprint of agriculture is due to animal proteins,” Illy continued.

RELATED: Say no to synthetic: America needs real meat, not lab slop

Andrea Illy. Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images for illy caffe

He argued that the “excessive consumption” of meat “is the first cause of noncommunicable diseases,” which he claimed is “the number one health problem in the Western society.”

Illy suggested reducing meat consumption to a “healthy” level, while considering “the environmental impact.”

“Why should I use animals when I can cultivate meat and get only the best part of it?” Illy questioned.

RELATED: Bugs for thee, beef for me: How big business monopolizes meat

Andrea Illy. Photographer: Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“This, I know, it’s kind of a cultural revolution,” he added, estimating that it would take decades to get people to adopt lab-grown meat as the new norm.

The WEF website boasts the adoption of cultivated meat. The organization explains that lab-grown meat begins with “extracting stem cells from a small sample of animal tissue” and placing those stem cells in a bioreactor. The WEF claims that cultivated meats offer “a multitude of benefits,” including reduced environmental impacts, lower resource use, elimination of the need to slaughter animals, and elimination of antibiotic use.

X users in the comments seemed less than enthusiastic about tech foods.

“They will eat steaks from the finest beef. Everyone else cancer cells cultivated in a laboratory,” one user wrote.

“Gross,” another stated.

“WEF is full of demons,” a third wrote.

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An insider report claims that Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny has plans to make the Super Bowl LX halftime show awfully political.

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, stirred controversy for most of 2025, both before and after being named as the performer for the big game. This included telling audiences they “have four months to learn” Spanish to understand his performance and releasing a parody of President Trump in his music video song “NUEVAYoL” on the fourth of July.

‘The NFL has no idea what’s coming.’

Now outlet Radar said that members of the musician’s style team have revealed he plans on delivering a “political thunderbolt” during the halftime show.

Glam squad

Insiders described as a stylist and a member of the singer’s “glam team” alleged that Bad Bunny plans on wearing a dress during the halftime show to honor Puerto Rican “queer icons” and “generations of drag, resistance, and cultural rebellion,” the outlet wrote.

RELATED: Trump says NFL is passing the blame on Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show: ‘I don’t know why they’re doing it’

Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images

“He loves controversy. He lives to push envelopes,” a stylist involved in Bad Bunny’s clothing choices allegedly told Radar.

Dress mess

“He is 100% going to wear a dress. A political thunderbolt disguised as couture,” they added.

A second source also explained, “He’s not playing it safe. The NFL has no idea what’s coming. Zero.”

An apparent third source, listed as only “a pal” of Bad Bunny’s, said that critics are free to complain, but “the dress is already being sewn.”

RELATED: Trump administration responds to Bad Bunny’s promise to perform in Spanish for ‘woke’ halftime show

Photo by Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images

Harebrained

The NFL has been accused by the president of passing the responsibility of the booking on to the promoters, as the content seemingly is at odds with the league’s core fans.

“Apple Music, the NFL, and Roc Nation announced that 3x Grammy Award-winning global recording artist Bad Bunny will perform at the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. on Sunday, February 8, 2026, airing on NBC,” the NFL wrote in a press release last September.

Apple Music’s key figure is listed as Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music and international content.

Roc Nation is also involved. That company was founded by rapper Jay-Z and has been working on Super Bowl halftime shows since 2019.

Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter said in the same press release that Bad Bunny’s “unique ability to bridge genres, languages, and audiences makes him an exciting and natural choice to take the Super Bowl halftime stage.”

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Democrats have worked energetically in recent months to demonize and delegitimize the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — those whom Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz branded as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”

This messaging campaign helped set the stage for deadly confrontations such as those that led to Renee Good’s death on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti’s death on Saturday.

‘I won’t vote to fund murder.’

Now Democratic lawmakers — who wouldn’t dream of letting a crisis go to waste — are threatening to shut down the government in order to starve the Department of Homeland Security of funds.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city,” said Democrat U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. “Democrats sought common-sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.”

Schumer noted further that Senate Democrats “will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”

Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar echoed Schumer and signaled opposition to the so-called “ICE funding bill” as well — and numerous other anti-ICE Democrats followed suit.

RELATED: ‘Going to get someone killed’: Democratic AG shocks with talk about shooting ICE agents in ‘stand your ground’ Arizona

Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, for example, vowed to “do everything” he can to prevent the deployment of federal law enforcement in American cities, noting “that starts with voting no on DHS’s budget this week.”

Ruben Gallego, another Democratic U.S. senator from Arizona, put it bluntly: “I won’t vote to fund murder in the name of law enforcement.”

Democrat U.S. Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said, “I’m not voting to fund this lawless violence. Trump’s abuse of power is tearing us apart.”

“The Senate should not vote to keep funding this rampage,” wrote U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.). “We are not powerless.”

The House of Representatives passed a three-bill minibus appropriations package in a 341-88 vote Thursday, which would fund the Departments of War, Labor, Transportation, Health and Human services, Education, and related agencies. In a separate vote of 220-207, the House reportedly also passed a funding bill for the DHS, which would allocate $64.4 billion to the department, including $10 billion for ICE.

‘The shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they’ll probably do it again.’

The four spending bills were combined with a pair of measures previously passed in the House then sent to the Senate for approval ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated that the DHS funding measure would not be decoupled from the others, reported NBC News.

While the Senate was expected to vote on the funding package Monday evening, Thune spokesperson Ryan Wrasse indicated the vote would be postponed until Tuesday “due to the impending weather event that is expected to impact a significant portion of the country.”

In order to avoid a filibuster and pass the spending package, Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate where they have only 53 members — including U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has a habit of voting against spending bills.

As of Sunday, the likelihood of another U.S. government shutdown by Jan. 31 was 76%, according to Polymarket.

Just days before Pretti’s fatal shooting by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer, President Donald Trump told Fox Business, “I think we have a problem because I think we’re going to probably end up in another Democrat shutdown.”

“The shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they’ll probably do it again. That’s my feeling,” continued the president. “We’ll see what happens.”

The most recent government shutdown was the longest in the nation’s history, lasting from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025 — a total of 43 days.

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BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is sounding the alarm on Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), claiming his political career has been a decades-long scheme to facilitate financial transfers to Somalia.

“It feels a whole lot like Keith Ellison may have been pulling off a long con. I mean, decades long, just to facilitate Somalian fraud. Like it seems like this has been his goal for a very long time,” Gonzales says, pointing out that before he was AG, he served in Congress from 2007 to 2019.

“You would expect that in 12 years serving in Congress, there would be a lot to show for it, right? Like he will have had a bunch of bills that he sponsored that passed … I mean he did turn into the Minnesota AG so like obviously he was successful,” she continues.

“Except, it turns out, there’s only one single solitary bill that he sponsored that ended up becoming law. Just this one,” she says.

The bill is titled Money Remittances Improvement Act of 2014.

“It made it easier for nonbank financial institutions like money-service businesses to provide remittance payments internationally, which of course, you know, is sending American money to foreigners across the world,” Gonzales explains.

And in an interview with the Mogadishu Times, Ellison explained that the primary goal is to keep “the discussion focused on how we can keep money flowing to Somalia.”

“Quite simply, one of the banks that helps to facilitate remittances from the United States to Somalia has now become worried about the degree of risk … they’re worried that they could end up being prosecuted on a criminal basis,” Ellison continued.

“It’s actually so incredible that all of this was out there. All the breadcrumbs were there this entire time. This has actually been in operation for a very long time for Keith Ellison,” Gonzales comments, shocked.

Ellison has also publicly claimed that sending money to Somalia is mutually beneficial for U.S. taxpayers.

“Please give me receipts on how it’s mutually beneficial. This is a third-world country with people who are inbred … so I don’t understand,” Gonzales says.

“On a serious note, lock him up. We need accountability for all of this corruption that has been happening for decades completely unchecked,” she adds.

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The late, great Angelo Codevilla had a way of cutting through the fog of foreign policy.

In the Claremont Review of Books in 2019, he asked, “What’s Russia to us?” He didn’t ask because he had any special admiration for Russia. He asked because Washington had turned Russia into a utility: a convenient villain that justified budgets, scolded dissent, and kept the governing class in charge. Codevilla’s point was simple but brutal. Strategy begins with interests. Interests require discrimination. Most of what passes for “grand strategy” amounts to habit and vanity.

Greenland touches national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.

That question — his question — fits the Greenland uproar better than any of the Davos hand-wringing last week.

European leaders want this story to be about Trump’s manners and apparent recklessness. They want it to be about “norms,” about “tone,” about the precious feelings of the alliance. They want Americans to believe the true scandal lies in a U.S. president speaking too plainly or belligerently.

Trump did speak plainly. In Davos on Wednesday, he pushed for “immediate negotiations” to acquire Greenland and ruled out the use of military force. He also floated a “framework” tied to Arctic security after meeting NATO’s secretary general, while walking back tariff threats that had rattled allies and markets.

Fine. Trump being Trump shouldn’t surprise anyone.

But Europe’s reaction should surprise people, because it revealed how unserious the continent has become — even about something as serious as Greenland.

Instead of handling business like adults — hard bargaining among allies over a piece of real estate that actually matters — European capitals staged indignation, offered lectures, and then produced the usual substitute for seriousness: a symbolic “show of force” meant for domestic consumption.

The numbers tell the laughable story. Sweden sent three officers. Norway sent two. Finland sent two liaison officers. The Netherlands sent one naval officer. The U.K. sent one officer. France sent around 15 mountain specialists. Germany sent a reconnaissance team of 13. Denmark led with about 100 troops. Reuters called it “modest.” That word was kind.

But that’s the European governing class in a nutshell for you: Perform alarm, then perform resolve, then declare victory over a crisis they helped manufacture.

All of this theater tried to sell one idea: Greenland needs protection from the United States.

Preposterous.

Greenland matters because it helps defend the United States. Pituffik Space Base — some Americans may still know it as Thule — sits where U.S. forces can track threats coming over the pole. The Arctic doesn’t care about European speeches. Missiles don’t fly around Greenland out of respect for allied etiquette. Geography dictates capability, and Greenland sits where the map says it sits.

RELATED: Pressed on Greenland, Trump tells Davos the US has weapons he ‘can’t even talk about’

Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

Europe’s commissioners understand that. They just hate saying it out loud because it reminds them of the arrangement they prefer to obscure: America provides the real security; Europe provides the indignant boo-hoo commentary.

The Greenland tantrum exposed another reality that should make America’s sensible policy planners sweat, assuming they still exist: The industrial foundations of power have become strategic again, and the West has behaved like an empire that forgot how to build.

Rare-earths sound like an investor pitch until you remember where they go. Modern weapons systems and advanced electronics depend on them. We need minerals you have likely never heard of — neodymium, dysprosium, samarium, and yttrium — to keep our F-35s flying and our missiles precision-guided.

But the supply chain runs through the part nobody wants to talk about: processing and refining. China dominates that bottleneck — especially the heavy rare-earth elements that sit in the highest-end systems. One major estimate put China’s share of global heavy rare-earth processing at more than 90%. That’s a massive national security hole.

Greenland matters because it offers a way out — not a magic wand, but an exit. Greenland holds serious mineral potential. That potential shifts the long-term strategic balance only if development happens.

Greenland’s own politics have made development tricky. In 2021, Greenland reinstated a uranium ban that effectively froze the Kvanefjeld project, one of the world’s most significant rare-earth deposits, because uranium appears alongside rare-earth ore and triggers the political and regulatory trip wires that make major mining projects difficult to sustain.

Greenland’s voters have every right to weigh environmental costs. Strategy still counts consequences. But the practical result of the ban didn’t restrain Beijing. It protected Beijing’s advantage.

The Europeans, of course, love a green virtue-signal that imposes no serious cost on Europe. Through it all, however, the continent remains dependent on America’s military might, dependent on Chinese processing, and increasingly dependent on slogans to conceal both.

So yes — Trump’s aggressive posture creates complications. Acquisition talk puts Denmark in a public box and turns what should be an alliance negotiation into a freak show. It hands European leaders a stage they don’t deserve and an excuse to treat American interests as a moral problem.

RELATED: Trump announces ‘framework’ of ‘great’ deal with NATO on Greenland

Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images

But Europe’s leaders made fools of themselves by trying to address a strategic reality through choreography. A reconnaissance team, a few liaison officers, and a weekend of headlines don’t secure Greenland against anyone. Their “show of force” invited contempt, not respect.

Codevilla’s 2019 essay mocked the way our establishment inflates foreign threats to discipline the home front. The Greenland episode shows a mirror image: European elites inflating a U.S. negotiating push into a crisis because they can’t handle an America that talks like a serious country.

Greenland touches our national defense. Greenland touches Arctic geography. Greenland touches the supply chain for advanced systems. Those facts don’t bend around Davos etiquette.

So use Codevilla’s test. Strip away the moral fog. Rank interests and act like the answers matter.

What’s Greenland to us?

A hell of a lot.

​Greenland, Denmark, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, National defense, Davos, Europe, Nato, China, Rare earth minerals, National interest, Arctic, F-35, America first, Foreign policy, Angelo codevilla 

Years ago, I worked in a large office building with a woman who walked with a terrible limp. Not a slight hitch, but a pronounced, jarring gait caused by a car accident that left her with significant bone loss in one leg. She was a delightful person, but no one could ignore the limp. It shaped how she moved through the world and, at times, how the world responded to her.

She lived that way for more than 25 years.

Liberation may begin with a D-Day assault or a precision, middle-of-the-night special-forces strike, but rehabilitation always moves slower.

Then one morning, everything changed.

She walked into the office upright and steady. No limp. No sway. Her posture looked different. Her face looked different. The transformation was so striking, people stopped what they were doing just to stare.

An orthotist had fitted her with a lift for her shoe. For the first time in decades, her body was aligned.

It felt dramatic. It felt hopeful.

Three weeks later, she showed up at work limping again.

When I asked what happened, she looked down and said quietly, “It was too painful.”

For years, that story stayed with me. I assumed she should have pushed through the discomfort. If she really wanted to walk straight, I thought, she would have endured the pain. I put the burden on her.

Decades later, while talking with the man who makes my wife’s prosthetic legs — who is also a certified orthotist — I mentioned the story. He didn’t hesitate.

“That was the orthotist’s fault.”

With that degree of limb difference, he explained, correction must happen in small increments over time. You do not force a body that has adapted to damage for decades into alignment overnight. The shock alone can undo the good you intend. Pain, in that case, isn’t weakness. It’s warning.

The problem was never the goal of walking straight. It was the pace. The change looked impressive, but it couldn’t last.

Had she been guided wisely, she might still be walking straight today.

That realization reshaped how I think about far more than posture and gait.

RELATED: Do not pass the plow: The danger of declaring a golden age without repentance

Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP via Getty Images

We talk a lot about sustainability, but the word often gets treated as corporate jargon. In real life, it means something simpler: Can you keep going without being damaged by the very solution meant to help you?

The question isn’t whether disruption can be endured for a season. The question is what happens when it lasts long enough to reshape the body, the household, or even a culture itself.

The longer misalignment persists, the more people adjust to it. Not because it’s right, but because it becomes familiar.

I think of family caregivers who, like that woman, adapt to dysfunction. They normalize exhaustion. They compensate for imbalance. What once felt untenable becomes routine. The standard slowly drops, and despair and resentment find room to grow.

This pattern doesn’t stop with individuals.

It shows up in institutions and nations, especially those emerging from long seasons of corruption, fear, or misrule. The fraud being uncovered in Minnesota will not be corrected quickly. Venezuela didn’t unravel overnight, and it won’t be restored all at once. Iran won’t shed decades of tyranny through slogans or spectacle. Systems deformed over time don’t heal on announcement alone.

Liberation may begin with a D-Day assault or a precision, middle-of-the-night special-forces strike, but rehabilitation always moves slower. Hard ground is taken a little at a time. Institutions get rebuilt inch by inch. The work costs money. It lacks glamour. No one escapes it.

Trying to fix everything at once is like forcing a damaged body into alignment without preparation. The result may look decisive, but it often collapses under its own weight.

This is where leadership gets tested.

Not by how loudly change is declared, but by whether it can be endured.

RELATED: When human worth becomes conditional, caregiving becomes impossible

Photo by: Edwin Remsburg/VW Pics via Getty Images

Real leadership doesn’t just name what’s wrong. It requires patience and competence. It understands limits. It moves deliberately. It produces progress people can live with — and live inside — over time.

People can endure difficult change when it leads somewhere stable. What they can’t endure is repeated pain with no lasting gain.

A deliberate pace doesn’t mean abandoning the goal. Real leadership — whether for a caregiver or a nation — recognizes the trauma that brought us here. It refuses to confuse speed with progress. It commits instead to patient steps that straighten what has been bent without breaking what remains.

That kind of leadership doesn’t rush healing. It makes healing possible.

For caregivers, for communities, and for nations, alignment imposed too quickly can injure the very people it claims to help. Alignment applied with patience, competence, and resolve can change a life permanently.

That woman wanted to walk straight. She simply needed someone wise enough to guide her there.

​Limping, Recovery, Reform, Personal struggle, Opinion & analysis, Caregiving, Caregivers, Balance, D-day, Shock and awe 

Canada’s decision to slash tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles is being sold as a pragmatic trade adjustment. In reality, it looks more like a self-inflicted wound to the country’s auto industry, workforce, and long-term economic sovereignty.

Lower prices today may come at the cost of lost manufacturing tomorrow — along with vehicles that struggle with quality and cold-weather reliability in a country where winter is not a minor inconvenience but a defining reality.

A vehicle that looks competitive on paper may tell a very different story after several Canadian winters.

Under an agreement announced earlier this month, Canada will allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs into the country each year at a tariff of just 6.1%, down from the 100% rate imposed in 2024.

Officials emphasize that this represents less than 3% of the domestic market. But auto markets are shaped at the margins. Even a relatively small influx of aggressively priced vehicles can disrupt pricing, undercut domestic producers, and discourage future investment.

Under pressure

Canada’s auto sector is deeply integrated with the United States, with parts, vehicles, and labor flowing across the border daily. That system has supported hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs for decades. Introducing low-cost Chinese imports into that ecosystem does not simply add consumer choice; it destabilizes a supply chain already under pressure from regulatory mandates, rising costs, and declining market share.

That pressure is already visible. The combined market share of General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis in Canada has fallen from nearly 50% to roughly 36%. These companies are not just brands on a dealership lot. They are employers, investors, and anchors for entire communities. When their market position erodes, the consequences ripple outward through plant closures, canceled expansion plans, and lost supplier contracts.

Cold comfort

Supporters argue that Chinese EVs will make electric vehicles more affordable, accelerating adoption and helping Canada meet emissions targets. But affordability without durability is a hollow promise. Many Chinese EVs entering global markets have yet to prove themselves in extreme climates. Cold weather is notoriously hard on batteries, reducing range, slowing charging times, and increasing mechanical stress — conditions Canadian winters deliver in abundance.

Reports from colder regions already using Chinese EVs raise concerns about performance degradation, software issues, and inconsistent build quality. Battery thermal management systems that perform adequately in mild climates can struggle in deep cold. Door handles freeze, sensors fail, and range estimates become unreliable. These are not minor inconveniences when temperatures plunge and drivers depend on their vehicles for safety as much as transportation.

Quality concerns extend beyond climate performance. Chinese automakers have made rapid progress, but speed has often come at the expense of long-term durability testing. Western manufacturers spend years validating vehicles under extreme conditions precisely because failure carries real consequences. A vehicle that looks competitive on paper may tell a very different story after several Canadian winters.

Cheap creep

There is also the question of what happens to Canada’s manufacturing base as these imports gain a foothold. History offers a clear lesson. When markets are flooded with low-cost vehicles produced under different labor standards and supported by state-backed industrial policy, domestic production suffers. Plants close, jobs disappear, and skills erode — losses that are extraordinarily difficult to reverse.

Europe offers a cautionary example. In the rush to meet climate targets, policymakers opened the door to inexpensive Chinese vehicles, only to see domestic automakers squeezed between regulatory costs and subsidized foreign competition. The result has been declining investment, layoffs, and growing concern about long-term competitiveness. Canada risks repeating that mistake but without Europe’s scale or leverage.

RELATED: Exclusive: ‘Anti-China moves’ pay off BIGLY — Governor Sanders and Arkansas earn A+ for crushing CCP land-grabs

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Image

Spy game

The geopolitical implications cannot be ignored. Modern EVs are data-collecting machines, equipped with cameras, sensors, GPS tracking, and constant connectivity. U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Chinese-built vehicles pose national security risks. Whether or not those fears are fully realized, perception matters. The United States has already signaled that Chinese EVs will not be allowed across its border, even temporarily.

That leaves Canadian consumers in a difficult position. A vehicle purchased legally in Canada could become a barrier to travel, commerce, or even family visits. The idea that a car could determine whether a driver can cross the world’s longest undefended border should give policymakers pause. Instead the Carney government appears willing to accept that risk as collateral damage.

Realism over resentment

Some Canadians, frustrated by U.S. tariffs and rhetoric, may view this pivot toward China as an act of defiance. But trade policy driven by resentment rather than realism rarely ends well. Replacing dependence on the United States with dependence on China does not restore sovereignty; it simply shifts leverage from one superpower to another, often with fewer shared values and less transparency.

President Donald Trump has made his position clear. He is open to Chinese companies building vehicles in North America if they invest in domestic factories and employ domestic workers. What he opposes are imports that bypass production, undermine jobs, and introduce security risks. Canada’s deal does nothing to address those concerns. Instead it places Canadian workers and consumers squarely in the crossfire.

The promise of cheaper EVs may sound appealing in the short term, but the long-term costs are becoming harder to ignore. Lost manufacturing jobs, weakened supply chains, unresolved quality and cold-weather issues, and strained relations with Canada’s largest trading partner are not abstract risks. They are predictable outcomes.

Canada built its auto industry through integration, investment, and a commitment to quality. Undermining that foundation for a limited influx of low-cost imports is not a strategy. It is a gamble — and one Canadian workers, manufacturers, and drivers are likely to lose.

​Auto industry, Lifestyle, Ev mandate, Align cars, California, Canada, China, Evs, Driving in winter 

In late 2025, two songs by “Christian artist” Solomon Ray — “Find Your Rest” and “Goodbye Temptation” — topped Billboard’s gospel digital song sales chart and iTunes’ Christian music songs chart, reaching the No. 1 and No. 2 spots.

Christians across the globe deeply resonate with Ray’s Southern revival style and emotive, biblically solid lyrics. In just a matter of weeks, Ray’s music has amassed hundreds of thousands of monthly Spotify listeners, millions of streams, and significant YouTube views.

There’s only one problem: Solomon Ray isn’t a real person. It’s an AI generation.

Despite their popularity, Ray’s songs have sparked intense ethical and theological debate in the Christian music community — drawing criticism from artists like Forrest Frank over issues of authenticity, the absence of the Holy Spirit, and whether AI can truly convey genuine faith or soul in worship music.

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick Burgess addresses the controversy.

Rick acknowledges that while there’s certainly room to disagree on this issue, “something about it in my spirit … doesn’t seem right.”

“The first thing that we have to consider,” he says, “is that Solomon Ray has no soul; he has no spirit; he isn’t real. The pictures we see of him are not real. They’re like watching an animation of someone.”

Even though Rick gives credit where it’s due — “they’re good songs,” he admits — he nonetheless feels that Christians who engage with this music are flirting with something sinister.

Many proponents of Ray’s music, however, argue that because the songs were allegedly written by Christopher “Topher” Townsend, the conservative Christian hip-hop artist who created Solomon Ray, it shouldn’t matter who — or what — sings the lyrics. AI, they contend, is simply the next “evolutionary step in music.”

But Rick disagrees.

“It may be true [that AI is the next evolutionary step in music], but there’s something that’s also kind of dishonest about it,” he says, “because when you read [the] Spotify profile, Solomon Ray is a ‘Mississippi-made soul singer carrying a Southern soul revival into the present.’”

“No, he’s not,” he says bluntly.

“We’re starting to blur the lines of reality and truth.”

Rick quotes popular Christian music artist Forrest Frank, who echoed these concerns when he said, “At minimum, AI does not have the Holy Spirit inside of it. So I think that it’s really weird to be opening up your spirit to something that has no spirit.”

If artificial intelligence and Christendom continue to intersect — and they almost certainly will — Rick is concerned about what else our spirits will be subjected to.

“How many sermons are we going to start hearing that no longer feature[] a man of God sitting down with the word of God, praying for the Holy Spirit to inspire him for his next message, as opposed to getting down to the computer, saying, ‘Here’s what I need to speak on Sunday. Crank me out a sermon’?” he wonders.

He cites a recent book by Pastor Todd Korpi titled “AI Goes to Church: Pastoral Wisdom for Artificial Intelligence”: “The biggest threat to creation at the hands of AI is in how it continues to feed our appetite for consumption and progress. AI-generated music is faster, easier to produce than a studio album that requires real musicians, songwriters, audio engineers, the relational part of making music. … AI might continue this trend of disconnection and preference for the convenience of a disembodied interaction that has shaped the last decade.”

Rick agrees with Korpi’s warning. When it comes to AI music, “we’re dealing with something that’s disembodied. That feels demonic to me,” he says.

“The adversary and his demons love to manipulate scripture,” he reminds us, referring to the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden and Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

“The apostle Paul warned Timothy that these days were coming — that people would begin to look for pastors — and I would say musicians and singers — that tickle their ears and satisfy their desires, as opposed to being rebuked by scripture, to being convicted, to being drawn into the holiness of God for praise and worship,” says Rick.

“I’m just concerned that disembodied AI-generated messages and music may not bring me into the awe-ness of God and how awesome He is because it’s those spirit-inspired things about God that always bring me into worship … and it just seems like if I want to manipulate scripture and manipulate theology, AI sure does give me an easy path in.”

To hear more of Rick’s analysis, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

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​Strange encounters, Rick burgess, Rick burgess strange encounters, The rick burgess show, Blazetv, Blaze media, Artificial intelligence, Ai, Ai music, Ai christian music, Demonic, Spiritual warfare, Christianity 

“The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality and the most intellectually resisted fact.”

The name of the man who made this pronouncement may not mean much to many readers now. Yet the world he warned about has arrived all the same, whether his name is remembered or not.

When Malcolm Muggeridge — a British journalist and broadcaster who became a public figure in his own right — died in 1990, many of his fears still felt abstract. The moral strain was visible, but the structure was holding. Progress was spoken of with confidence, and freedom still sounded uncomplicated.

‘I never knew what joy was until I gave up pursuing happiness.’

Today, those assumptions lie in pieces. What he distrusted has hardened into dogma. What he questioned has become unquestionable. We are living amid the consequences of ideas he spent a lifetime probing.

Theory meets reality

Muggeridge was never dazzled by modern promises. He distrusted grand schemes that claimed to perfect humanity while refusing to reckon with human nature. That suspicion wasn’t a pose; it was learned. As a young man, he flirted with communism, drawn in by its certainty and its language of justice. Then he went to Moscow. There, theory met reality.

What he encountered was not liberation but deprivation. Hunger was rationalized as hope. Cruelty came wrapped in benevolent language. Compassion was loudly proclaimed and quietly absent. The experience cured him of fashionable idealism for life. It also taught him something harder to accept: Evil often enters history announcing itself as virtue, and the most dangerous lies are told with complete sincerity.

That lesson stayed with him. In an age once again thick with certainty, that insight feels uncomfortably current.

Pills and permissiveness

Yet Muggeridge’s critique extended beyond politics. At heart, he believed the modern crisis was spiritual. God had become an embarrassment, sin a diagnosis, and responsibility something to be displaced by grievance. Pleasure, once understood as a byproduct of order, was recast as life’s purpose. The result, he argued, wasn’t freedom but loss.

This realism shaped his opposition to the sexual revolution. Long before its consequences were obvious, he warned that freedom severed from restraint wouldn’t liberate people so much as hollow them out. He mocked the belief that pills and permissiveness would deliver happiness. What he anticipated instead was loneliness, instability, and a culture increasingly medicated against its own dissatisfaction.

Muggeridge also understood the media with unsettling clarity. As a journalist and broadcaster, he watched newsrooms trade substance for spectacle and truth for approval. When entertainment becomes the highest aim, he warned, reality soon becomes optional.

By the end of his career, Muggeridge had dismantled nearly every modern promise. Fame proved thin. Desire disappointed. Professional success brought no lasting peace. Skepticism could clear the ground, but it could not explain why nothing worked.

A skeptic stands down

When after more than a decade of exploring Christianity, Muggeridge finally entered the Catholic Church in 1982, the reaction among his peers was disbelief bordering on embarrassment. This was not the impulse of a sentimental seeker but of one of Britain’s most famous skeptics — a man who had mocked piety, distrusted enthusiasm, and made a career of puncturing illusions.

Friends assumed it was a late-life affectation, a theatrical flourish from an aging contrarian. Muggeridge himself knew better. He had not converted because Christianity felt safe or consoling, but because, after a lifetime of alternatives, it was the only account of reality that still made sense.

As he had written years before in “Jesus Rediscovered,” “I never knew what joy was until I gave up pursuing happiness.”

That sentence captures the logic of his conversion. Muggeridge did not arrive at faith through nostalgia or temperament. Christianity did not flatter him. It named pride, lust, and cruelty plainly, then offered grace without euphemism. It explained the world he had already seen — and himself within it.

RELATED: Chuck Colson: Nixon loyalist who found hope in true obedience

Washington Post/Getty Images

Truth endures

His Catholicism was not an escape from seriousness but its culmination. He believed human beings flourish within limits, not without them; that desire requires direction; that pleasure without purpose corrodes. Christianity endured, he argued, not because it was comforting but because it was true.

After his conversion, Muggeridge did not soften. He sharpened. The satire retained its bite. The warnings grew more direct. But they were no longer merely critical. Skepticism had given way to clarity — not because he had abandoned reason, but because he had finally stopped pretending it was enough.

More than three decades after his death, Muggeridge’s voice sounds less like commentary than like counsel. The world he warned about has arrived. What remains is the stubborn relevance of faith grounded in reality — and the freedom that comes only when truth is faced, rather than fled.

​Faith, Abide, Christianity, Lifestyle, Conversion, Converts, Malcom muggeridge 

President Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin shared graphic images to social media Saturday evening apparently showing part of a Homeland Security Investigations officer’s finger — in a jar.

McLaughlin said Minneapolis “rioters attacked our law enforcement officer and one of them bit off our HSI officer’s finger.”

‘This avoidable tragedy is a result of the total failure of Minnesota’s city and state officials.’

“He will lose his finger,” added McLaughlin.

One of the photographs appears to show a medic tending to an HSI officer who is missing the end of the fourth digit on his right hand. Another photo apparently shows the missing piece of the finger with its nail intact inside a plastic container.

The alleged incident — which U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) cited as the latest sign that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act — came just hours after an armed 37-year-old Illinois native identified as Alex Pretti was fatally shot amid a struggle with federal agents.

Pretti’s ex-wife told the Associated Press that he was a Democratic voter with a permit to carry a concealed firearm who previously took to the streets in 2020 to protest the death of George Floyd. Pretti’s father, Michael Pretti, said he warned his son about protesting, telling him “do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically.”

The AP added that family members said Pretti was an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital who “cared deeply about people” and was upset by Trump’s “immigration crackdown in his city.”

RELATED: DHS: Armed suspect fatally shot by federal agent in Minneapolis; suspect ‘violently resisted’ disarming attempt

Photographer: Jaida Grey Eagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Department of Homeland security said its “law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted.”

More from the DHS post on X:

Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.

The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

— (@)

In addition to asking about Pretti’s firearm, Trump wondered, “Where are the local police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE officers? The mayor and the governor called them off? It is stated that many of these police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — not an easy thing to do!”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche indicated that an investigation into the shooting is underway but stressed that “this avoidable tragedy is a result of the total failure of Minnesota’s city and state officials who have resisted federal law enforcement and created this escalation.”

Multitudes of radicals converged on the location of Pretti’s shooting and immediately began clashing with federal agents.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem noted that the protesters who rushed to the scene “began to obstruct and to assault law enforcement officers. We saw objects being thrown at them, including ice and other objects.”

“A rampant assault began and even an HSI officer agent’s finger was bitten off,” added Noem, who faulted Democrat Gov. Tim Walz for branding ICE as the “gestapo” and other Democrats for effectively painting targets on federal immigration officers’ backs.

— (@)

Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard on Saturday at the request of Democrat Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt also asked for support from the National Guard at the B.H. Whipple Federal Building.

The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that role of the Minnesota National Guard “is to work in support of local law enforcement and emergency responders, providing additional resources. Their presence is meant to help create a secure environment where all Minnesotans can exercise their rights safely, including the right to peacefully protest.”

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​Minnesota, Minneapolis, Department of homeland security, Kristi noem, Alex pretti, Shooting, Border patrol, Maclaughlin, Office involved shooting, Fatal, Death, Cannibal, Finger, Riot, National guard, Politics, Trump, Walz, Frey 

The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos offered a picture-perfect illustration of the clash between globalism and America First.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — a longtime advocate of globalist policies, whether as governor of the Bank of England or as a United Nations goodwill ambassador for climate change — delivered a speech that electrified woke forces around the world.

‘Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.’

Yet while Carney proclaimed a kind of independence from U.S. economic and military hegemony, many seemed to forget that he had just signed a trade deal with China — against the backdrop of his declaration that Canada was joining Beijing’s “new world order.”

Past tense

Carney’s address waved a red flag at the United States and President Donald Trump, though he lacked the courage to name either directly. Instead, he spoke of America in the past tense, obliquely warning that the “rules-based international order,” under which “countries like Canada prospered,” was finished.

“We joined its institutions. We praised its principles. We benefited from its predictability,” Carney said.

And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false — that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

Then came the line that sent globalist acolytes into rapture.

“This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

But isn’t Carney himself the author — and perhaps the finisher — of that rupture? For years, he has worked against the natural alliance between Canada and its largest trading partner and closest military ally. As we have pointed out before, Carney has labored to replace the United States with China as the world’s economic engine.

RELATED: Trump not worried about Canada’s China-centric ‘new world order’

Brad Smith/ISI Photos/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

A little gratitude

Trump was listening — or at least was promptly briefed. During his own address to Davos, the president castigated both Carney and Canada for taking America for granted. Referring to the development of the Golden Dome defense system, Trump noted that it would, “by its very nature,” defend Canada as well.

“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way,” Trump said. “They should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful.

“Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, before you make your statements.”

By Friday morning, Trump had gone farther, withdrawing Carney’s invitation to join his proposed “Board of Peace.”

Trump spent much of his Davos remarks ridiculing the globalist “Green New Scam” and questioning why the United States continues to belong to NATO when it derives so little benefit from the arrangement.

Windbag

But his most biting remarks were reserved for the fantasy that green energy can power a modern economy.

China, Trump noted, makes “a fortune selling the windmills.”

“They’re shocked that people continue to buy those damn things,” he continued. “They kill the birds. They ruin your landscapes. Other than that, I think they’re fabulous, by the way. Stupid people buy them.”

Trump’s rejection of globalist orthodoxy was reinforced by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

“Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America,” Lutnick said. “It’s a failed policy. It is what the WEF has stood for, which is export, offshore, far-shore, find the cheapest labor in the world. … In reality, it has left America behind. It has left the American workers behind.”

“America First,” he continued, “is a different model — one that we encourage other countries to consider, which is that our workers come first. … Sovereignty is your borders. You’re entitled to have borders.”

All of this carries enormous implications for any renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement.

And Carney appears to have been left with no cards to play. China has already seen his hand.

​Davos, World economic forum, Culture, Mark carney, Donald trump, America first, Globalism, Howard lutnick, Letter from canada 

As President Trump proposes a ceasefire-in-place to stop the meat grinder in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin appears to be doing what he does best: stalling. With the U.S. busy juggling Iran, Venezuela, and even Greenland, Putin likely figures he can drag this war out long enough to wear Ukraine down and force a surrender through attrition.

Meanwhile Volodymyr Zelenskyy is brooding over not getting Tomahawk cruise missiles — weapons that could strike deep inside Russia.

The goal is irritation, disruption, and humiliation — repeated so often that people start cursing the Kremlin for creating this mess.

But instead of fixating on Tomahawks, Zelenskyy should look at the position Putin is now in. It has a historical parallel worth taking seriously.

Putin resembles Czar Nicholas II in 1917.

In both cases, Russian treasure has poured into a black hole while generals kept ordering “meat attacks” that chewed through manpower by the hundreds of thousands. In 1917, the loss of blood and money turned the nobility against the czar and set the stage for the Kerensky Revolution.

Putin’s oligarchs now sit where the czar’s nobility once sat: close enough to power to profit and close enough to disaster to panic.

Ukraine should exploit that.

A weapon of mass disruption

The goal shouldn’t be a dramatic strike that makes Russians rally around “Mother Russia.” A Tomahawk barrage would do exactly that. It would unify the country behind Putin and hand him the cleanest propaganda gift imaginable.

Ukraine needs something else: a way to transfer the misery and frustration of war to the Russian public — especially in Moscow and other major cities — without creating a patriotic surge.

Russia’s population is insulated by propaganda. Ukraine should attack the insulation, not the borders.

Winter brings slower movement and fewer offensives. That gives Ukraine an opening to run a low-cost, high-annoyance campaign modeled on a little-remembered British operation from World War II.

RELATED: Pressed on Greenland, Trump tells Davos the US has weapons he ‘can’t even talk about’

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The British Royal Navy called it Operation Outward. Today strategists would call it a “cost-imposing” campaign: something cheap to launch that forces the enemy to spend far more to stop it.

The Royal Navy released nearly 100,000 weather balloons. About half carried incendiary bomblets. The rest dragged long wire strands designed to short out power lines and cause disruption across the German electrical grid. German forces had to waste time and resources trying to counter a swarm of cheap devices drifting across their territory.

Because winds in the northern hemisphere generally move west to east, the Germans couldn’t retaliate in kind.

(The Japanese later tried something similar against the United States with the Fu-Go balloons, launching roughly 9,300 of them toward the U.S. and Canada. They forced America to divert resources even though the overall damage remained limited.)

Ukraine’s geography makes this concept even more attractive. Ukraine sits southwest of Russia. That means a balloon campaign drifting into western Russia would give Moscow no easy, low-cost way to respond with the same trick.

And unlike the World War II version, Ukraine wouldn’t need incendiaries. The point isn’t to burn Russian cities or kill civilians. The last thing Ukraine needs is to create martyrs and rally Russians around Putin.

The goal is irritation, disruption, and humiliation — repeated so often that people start cursing the Kremlin for creating this mess.

The cost math

Peter Rosato of Kaymont Consolidated Industries, a major weather balloon manufacturer, estimates that an eight-foot diameter balloon costs about $5 to $7. A hydrogen generator could inflate them for only pennies more.

Using the British model, the balloon could carry a simple ballast mechanism that slowly lowers it while trailing a long tether: roughly 700 feet of hemp cord, tied to a thinner steel wire around 300 feet long. That wire drags across power infrastructure and can short out lines, forcing repairs and outages.

The British saw real success disrupting the German electrical grid. They also forced the Nazis to waste valuable fighter flight hours trying to shoot down balloons — an expensive response to a cheap threat.

Ukraine could buy 100,000 balloons at roughly $5 each and — even after adding wire and other components — build a unit for under $1 million.

Unlike the British, Ukraine also wouldn’t need the same complex altitude-control system used to guide balloons across the English Channel, France, and the Low Countries into Germany. A long, contiguous border allows Ukrainian launches to drift into Russian territory without the same navigation demands.

To improve the results, Ukraine could tweak the design. A better unreeling mechanism might outperform a simple trailing wire. A Ukrainian electrical grid specialist and a meteorologist familiar with conditions in the northeastern border region near Shostka could help optimize launch times for maximum impact.

Make it a war Russians can’t ignore

This isn’t just disruption. It’s information warfare.

The point is not only to knock out power lines but to make the disruption visible — balloons everywhere across western Russia, especially near Moscow — as proof that Putin cannot protect his own people from the consequences of his war.

Modern realities require modern execution. Ukraine couldn’t run this from fixed-launch sites. Russian reconnaissance drones would find them, and artillery or kamikaze drones would destroy them.

The operation would need to move.

A vehicle-borne launch system makes the most sense: military trucks large enough to carry inflated eight-foot balloons, gas tanks, uninflated balloons, payloads, communications gear, a generator, and basic workshop tools.

And for safety, Ukraine would likely need to use helium instead of hydrogen. Hydrogen is cheaper, but the risk of accidental detonation inside a truck is too high.

RELATED: The fastest way to stop Iran’s killers … without firing a single shot

Antonina Satrevica / Getty Images

Night launches would also matter. To avoid detection, the trucks and equipment would need to be compatible with night-vision operations.

Now picture the outcome.

Imagine 1,000 yellow-and-blue balloons drifting into Russia every day, dragging wires across electrical lines.

Imagine the manpower, equipment, and aircraft Russia would have to divert from the front to hunt them down — at night — every night — for the next hundred nights.

And for the final touch, imagine the optics when Russian crews find one of these balloons in daylight, wires draped across a shorted power line, with a huge portrait of Vladimir Putin half-naked on a horse and the Russian phrase for “I did that!”

That kind of mockery lands differently when you’re freezing in the dark because of Putin’s war.

Ukraine doesn’t need Tomahawks to hit Russia where it hurts. It needs a cheap, persistent campaign that turns irritation into anger — and turns anger into political pressure on the regime that started this catastrophe.

​Balloon attack, Donald trump, Operation outward, Opinion & analysis, Power grid, Russia, Russia ukraine war, Tomahawk cruise missiles, Vladimir putin, Volodymyr zelenskyy, Weather balloons, World war ii 

The Supreme Court’s latest delay in its tariff case is fueling speculation that justices are trying to craft a behind-the-scenes compromise to avoid market shock — even if it means quietly curbing presidential trade authority.

But Daniel Horowitz explains that the tariff ruling may be less important than the remedy itself, especially as another crisis tightens its grip on Americans: a frozen, inflated housing market that government policy continues to prop up instead of letting it reset.

“I think what they’re trying to do is two things. … One is, they want to do it with as little disruption as possible. So they’re trying to think how that remedy works. And number two, I think particularly maybe for Thomas and Alito, they’re trying to figure out how not to get involved in a political question,” Horowitz tells BlazeTV host Steve Deace on the “Steve Deace Show.”

“And that’s really where I am. As you well know, I don’t believe the court should ever be the arbiter of a fundamental political disagreement. If it’s a problem, Congress should oppose and deal with it,” he continues.

Trump has also announced his plan to go after residential homes being bought up by global corporations like BlackRock, which sounds great to everyday Americans, but Horowitz believes the solution is even simpler.

“It was announced, no more, you know, BlackRock owning of homes, residential, you know, mass production of, or acquisition, I should say, of residential homes, things of that nature,” Deace says.

“This is a primary thing that the young male demographic that voted our way in the last election cares about. It’s a primary driver of the current situation in the economy. Not to mention the fact it’s the greatest source for individual liquidation that exists right now to the average American,” he continues.

“We’re sitting on all this liquid that could go back into the economy if we can get the housing market moving. What should they be doing, do you think?” Deace asks.

“Very simple. Let the bubble pop. And I know it sounds very simplistic, but it’s something that they refuse to do, and everything that they’re proposing will further fuel it. Corporate ownership is a symptom of the problem, not the problem,” Horowitz responds.

“The president needs to be honest with people. The biggest problem with the president economically is he doesn’t understand the mutual exclusivity of things. So, he wants insurance to cover everything, but he wants premiums to go down, right? He wants the welfare state, but he doesn’t want inflation. He wants seniors to have a checking account in the form of fake housing on unrealized gains, but he wants young people to be able to afford them,” he continues.

“If you want to actually get the economy back to what we all said we did, which is a broad-based income economy rather than an asset bubble, you’ve got to pull the plugs on all the things doing this. And it’s the exact opposite of what the president is saying,” he adds.

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The Department of Homeland Security said an armed suspect was fatally shot Saturday by a federal agent in Minneapolis and that the suspect “violently resisted” a disarming attempt.

DHS indicated a firearm and two magazines were recovered.

‘They have encouraged these reckless confrontations and attacks on our agents and officers.’

“At 9:05 AM CT, as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” DHS said.

“The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted,” DHS added. “Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.”

DHS also said “the suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID — this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

Gun that the Department of Homeland Security says fatally shot suspect was carrying Saturday in Minneapolis.Image source: Department of Homeland Security

“About 200 rioters arrived at the scene and began to obstruct and assault law enforcement on the scene, crowd control measures were deployed for the safety of the public and law enforcement,” DHS also said.

Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as well as Democrat U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith of Minnesota seized on the shooting as another opportunity to demand the ouster of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from the Gopher State.

Walz, who indicated that he has spoken with the White House, stated, “Minnesota has had it. This is sickening. The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

Klobuchar wrote, “To the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress who have stood silent: Get ICE out of our state NOW.”

“Another catastrophic shooting in Minneapolis by federal agents,” wrote Smith. “ICE must leave now so MPD can secure the scene and do their jobs.”

RELATED: ‘Maga maggots’: Guns, body armor, ammo, Palestinian flag found at home of man accused of threatening to murder ICE agents

In the wake of the shooting, the Border Patrol Union suggested a shooting likely would have been defensive and condemned the incendiary rhetoric spread in recent weeks by politicians and the liberal media.

“Border Patrol agents are trained extremely well to protect themselves, their fellow agents, and innocent third parties. When a supposed ‘peaceful’ protester brings a weapon (such as a loaded handgun) and brandishes it, there are going to severe consequences and repercussions,” said the union.

“We have pleaded with and warned the media and the politicians that their irresponsible, hate-filled and false rhetoric is going to get people unnecessarily hurt, or worse, killed when they portray our agents and officers as the aggressors,” continued the union. “They have encouraged these reckless confrontations and attacks on our agents and officers who are performing their lawful duties and enforcing the laws that Congress has put on the books.”

This is a developing story; updates may be added.

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​Minneapolis, Minnesota, Shooting, Border patrol, Ice, Immigration and customs enforcement, Anti-ice, Tim walz, Klobuchar, Department of homeland security, Politics 

Civil rights attorney Harmeet Dhillon is sounding the alarm on human rights abuses that the left pretends aren’t happening — including the assaults on female inmates in prison by men pretending to be women.

“Mass. women’s prison ‘a haven for sexual predators who pretend to be transgender,’” reads the title of an article in the Christian Post. In the article, women who claim to have been raped by men in a Massachusetts prison are also reporting being punished for speaking out about it.

“I saw the news story about Massachusetts, and we’ve opened up a federal civil rights investigation into that fact pattern. We have an active civil rights investigation under our prison reform laws into Colorado for prisoner conditions ranging from transgender violence to abuse of the elderly prisoners and heating and cooling conditions and others,” Dhillon tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey.

“There’s some horrific stories out there. And like, look, it’s my perhaps bleeding-heart view that no one should be raped in an American prison. Male or female. You are serving your time for a crime you committed that should not include unreasonable violations of cruel and unusual punishment, which certainly would include being violently assaulted or raped,” she says.

“Or being forced to share an intimate space with a man. That is cruel and unusual,” Stuckey chimes in.

“I’m very concerned about the transgender issue in prisons, and you know, you’ve got a lot of people, people who identify as Christian, obviously a lot of progressives, who you know, they feel like they’re taking up the cause of the most vulnerable,” she says.

However these progressives refuse to speak up about vulnerable populations like unborn children inside the womb or imprisoned women who are doing their time but have no ability to advocate for their own safety.

“I mean, the progressives are total hypocrites, and you’ve seen some voices on the left break from that progressive movement. J.K. Rowling is a great example of that in the U.K., where she’s I think said in the last 24 hours, I saw online, that you know, you shouldn’t be raped in a prison or forced to subordinate your human dignity,” Dhillon says.

“That would seem obvious, and yet, there’s this total hypocrisy on the left on this issue, and it’s as if the feminist movement has completely abandoned its original premise,” she adds.

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Democrats and the liberal media have been working overtime to vilify and dehumanize the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This demonization campaign — which opened a new front Sunday with the mob action against Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota — has coincided with unprecedented spikes in assaults and death threats against ICE agents.

‘Alright, you got me.’

The growing left-wing animus is not, however, going unanswered.

Two men were charged in separate cases this week for allegedly threatening to murder ICE agents.

Justin Mesael Novoa, 21, of Columbus, Ohio, was federally charged Thursday with making threatening interstate communications. Novoa apparently has been stewing for months, allegedly issuing threats on X which were brought to the attention of Homeland Security Investigations.

According to the Justice Department, HSI investigators came across a June 2025 post in which Novoa allegedly wrote, “They should blast every ice agent they find.”

Apparently it was far from a one-off articulation of bloodthirst.

In November, Novoa allegedly wrote, “Can’t wait to shoot these p***y ice agents and r*****d maga maggots.”

RELATED: ‘Going to get someone killed’: Democratic AG shocks with talk about shooting ICE agents in ‘stand your ground’ Arizona

Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images

Court documents indicate that Elon Musk’s X Corp. provided HSI with account details, including an email in Novoa’s name as well as his phone number, reported WSYX-TV.

Investigators subsequently found other troubling posts on Novoa’s alleged X account including numerous anti-Semitic posts calling Jewish people “subhuman” and “filthy” as well as posts referencing Adolf Hitler.

When federal agents executed a search warrant at the radical’s residence in December, they found body armor, a pair of military-issue helmets, two rifles, two shotguns, a handgun, and a wealth of ammunition.

A Palestinian flag reportedly also was found in Novoa’s room.

Novoa allegedly told federal agents conducting the search, “Alright, you got me. That was me,” adding, “Damn, so Elon [Musk] does give you access to that,” reported WSYX.

Novoa, whose preliminary hearing is set for Feb. 5, apparently did not have an adult criminal history, and court documents indicate he was not prohibited from possessing firearms.

In a separate case, a man from Harrison County, West Virginia, also was arrested this week for allegedly threatening to murder federal immigration agents and supporters of President Donald Trump. Cody Smith, 20, has been charged with making terroristic threats and was being held at North Central Regional Jail.

West Virginia State Police learned that Smith had posted videos of himself online in which he allegedly said he was going to attack and kill ICE agents and made threats against Trump. Smith also allegedly indicated on social media that he intended to murder Trump supporters and service members willing to “bootlick,” reported WBOY-TV.

Blaze News has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

These alleged terroristic threats also come amid Democratic officials’ increasingly incendiary rhetoric.

Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey, for instance, characterized ICE as an “occupying force.” In a recent interview, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes accused federal immigration officers of engaging in “thuggish, brutish behavior” and discussed scenarios in which it may be reasonable to shoot masked ICE agents.

Earlier this month, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin noted that “the unprecedented increase in violence against law enforcement is a direct result of sanctuary politicians and the media creating an environment that demonizes our law enforcement and encourages rampant assaults against them.”

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​Crime, Us immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Department of homeland security, Death threats, Threats, Maga, Donald trump, Justin mesael novoa, Cody smith, Politics