Courts can block executive action, so Congress must cut funding. Yet Republicans refuse, leaving the Justice Department and FBI with the same tools Democrats will use again.

That gap between rhetoric and action now threatens to erase everything President Trump promised. In March 2023, he vowed, “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” and pledged to “obliterate the deep state” and fire the bureaucrats who turned federal law enforcement into a political weapon. Those words land with force. Appropriations decide whether they mean anything.

Trump’s ‘retribution’ pledge will collapse into another campaign slogan if Republicans keep funding the same Department of Justice and FBI they claim to oppose.

But if Trump relies on executive action alone, courts will block key moves and the next Democrat in the White House will reverse the rest. Only structural reforms written into law can stop the next round of weaponization.

That reality hits hardest at the Department of Justice and the FBI. A Congress that keeps funding these agencies under the Biden-era architecture keeps the weaponization machine intact.

Yet Republicans just pushed through a Justice funding bill that drew more Democrat support than conservative support.

That vote captures the GOP Congress since 2017. Leadership passes budget bills with less resistance from Democrats than from Republicans. Spending is the battlefield. Everything else fades fast. If your own side opposes your funding bills more than the other side, you are not changing the country. You are managing the status quo.

Here’s the brutal truth: Congress has not structurally defanged the Justice Department’s weaponization or taken a sledgehammer to the FBI’s open-ended mandate. The same deep-state actors who drove January 6 abuses, FACE Act prosecutions of pro-life activists, and FBI operations like Arctic Frost still collect paychecks.

Republicans had one last chance to shrink this machinery before Democrats likely regain the House. The final Justice Department appropriations bill should have cut off funding for the most abusive programs and permanently reduced the department’s ability to target Americans. Instead, Republicans passed a status quo bill that effectively codifies Biden’s DOJ.

The vote breakdown exposes the scam. All but six House Democrats supported the minibus package that included full-year DOJ funding. Meanwhile, 22 House conservatives opposed it.

The package included three appropriations bills: Commerce-Justice-Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment. Freedom Caucus pressure forced leadership to hold a separate vote on the Commerce-Justice-Science portion first, and even then, it drew 40 Republican “no” votes. Leadership tried to quiet the revolt by swapping out a $1 million earmark for a Somali-led nonprofit after a welfare fraud scandal in that state. That move changed nothing about the bill’s core failures.

RELATED: The ‘blue-slip block’ is GOP cowardice masquerading as tradition

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Democrats voted for this bill despite calling Trump a dictator because the bill left the regime’s tools in place. On the issues that matter most, it stayed silent.

It did not:

Bar funding for future January 6 prosecutions.Bar funding for FACE Act prosecutions of pro-life activists.Address the FBI’s Arctic Frost overreach.Defund sanctuary cities, even though sanctuary policies endanger federal agents and courts have repeatedly blocked Trump’s efforts to punish them. If Congress refuses to codify enforcement policy, courts will keep neutralizing it.Cut off grants to NGOs that help illegal aliens evade deportation. Other appropriations bills even fund refugee resettlement contractors.End incentives for blue states to implement red-flag laws. The bill keeps the $740 million slush fund that bribes states to expand them. It also fails to defund Biden’s pistol brace ban, the “engaged in the business” rule, and the Justice Department’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention.Fund an Election Integrity Office to implement Trump’s executive order on election integrity, even while the bill keeps money flowing to offices that persecute Americans.Rein in the Office of Inspector General, which receives $139 million despite lacking an appointed inspector general and operating under an acting career bureaucrat.

The FBI budget barely took a haircut from its record Biden-era levels. Keep the scale in mind: The bureau has more than 35,000 employees, yet only 138 have been fired so far.

Republicans also promised fiscal discipline. This minibus package totals roughly $180 billion and rejects steeper cuts conservatives proposed in committee. It includes nearly $5.6 billion in earmarks for 3,030 projects. Leadership found room for parochial spending while refusing to squeeze the agencies that turned federal power against the public.

Congress holds one real lever to change the regime without begging courts for permission: the power of the purse. If Republicans won’t pass transformative legislation, they must at least defund odious policies through appropriations.

Trump’s “retribution” pledge will collapse into another campaign slogan if Republicans keep funding the same Department of Justice and FBI they claim to oppose. When Democrats vote happily to fund the very departments that targeted Americans under Biden, the conclusion writes itself. Washington will not dismantle the machine. It will keep it humming until Democrats take power again and aim it at us with even fewer restraints.

​Opinion & analysis, Justice department, Fbi, Weaponized justice, Weaponization, Congress, Senate republicans, Joe biden, Retribution, Budget, Minibus, Arctic frost, Face act, Abortion, Sanctuary cities 

A native Salvadoran faces likely deportation after pleading guilty in connection with nearly $1 million in COVID-related fraud.

On Tuesday, a man who calls himself a woman and prefers the name Ruby Corado learned that he will have to spend 33 months behind bars followed by two years of supervised release. Corado pled guilty to one count of wire fraud back in July 2024.

Corado was previously charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, laundering of monetary instruments, monetary transactions in criminally derived proceeds, and failure to file a report of a foreign bank account. Prosecutors dropped the other charges in exchange for the guilty plea.

‘You betrayed this country.’

In 2020, Corado applied for two federal COVID-relief loans on behalf of Casa Ruby, the now-defunct nonprofit he founded in Washington, D.C., ostensibly to help homeless LGBTQ+ youth. An Economic Injury Disaster Loan and a Paycheck Protection Program loan, both from the Small Business Administration and totaling $956,215, were then deposited directly into a Casa Ruby account, according to a defense sentencing memorandum.

However, Corado instead wired at least some of those funds overseas and hid them from the IRS, prosecutors claimed, according to NBC Washington. Corado also escaped to El Salvador in 2022, apparently to evade federal authorities.

Prior to sentencing, Corado submitted a statement to the court, admitting to funneling at least $200,000 to El Salvador. He claimed he had hopes of establishing Casa Ruby services there

“I am sorry that my mistake impacted my work,” he told the court.

RELATED: Transvestite founder of LGBT group caught 2 years after fleeing country; faces federal fraud charges

Photo by Linda Davidson/Washington Post/Getty Images

In his statements during the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, D.C. District Judge Trevor McFadden issued a scathing rebuke of Corado.

“You betrayed this country,” McFadden said, according to WUSA9. “You spotted an opportunity to defraud the American people.”

McFadden also professed himself “very dubious” that Corado tried to bring Casa Ruby to El Salvador, noting that the defense offered no evidence that Corado had attempted to establish any nonprofit there.

McFadden also ordered Corado to pay back the SBA in full.

The defense had argued for leniency, requesting that Corado, who identifies as a “transgender woman,” be able to serve his sentence at a local jail or perhaps even at home out of fear that the Trump DOJ will place him in a men’s facility in accordance with his “biological sex”:

DOJ policy has moved to align federal detention practices with directives rejecting gender identity in favor of “biological sex,” resulting in transgender women being transferred into men’s facilities and in efforts to curtail gender-affirming medical care. Attorneys representing transgender women in BOP custody have described these shifts as placing their clients in “incredibly dangerous” situations, effectively emboldening predators and exposing inmates to foreseeable harm. As one longtime advocate explained, the signals sent by these policies can determine “whether a person lives or dies.”

Whether Corado will be housed in a men or women’s facility remains unclear, though he was incarcerated in a men’s jail after his arrest in March 2024. What is clear is that Corado will likely be deported back to El Salvador after his sentence is concluded.

“Your deportation is likely if not certain,” Judge McFadden said.

Corado also faces a civil suit regarding alleged failure to pay Casa Ruby employees. Though that suit was paused pending the criminal proceeding, it may soon resume now that Corado has been convicted.

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​Ruby corado, Casa ruby, Lgbtq, El salvador, Transgender, Covid, Politics 

A Venezuelan security guard, speaking to the New York Post after the January 3 raid that captured Nicolás Maduro, described American forces using some kind of directed-energy weapon that left hundreds of defenders bleeding from their noses, vomiting blood, and unable to stand. According to this account, about 20 U.S. troops from roughly eight helicopters took down hundreds of Venezuelan soldiers without a single American death.

The basic facts are wild enough without the sci-fi angle. Delta Force conducted Operation Absolute Resolve in the predawn hours, capturing Maduro and his wife from Fort Tiuna in Caracas. More than 200 special operations forces participated, supported by about 150 aircraft that disabled Venezuelan air defenses and extracted Maduro to New York to face narco-terrorism charges. Venezuela reported over 100 casualties, with only seven U.S. troops injured.

That’s already one of the most audacious military operations since the bin Laden raid.

Trump wants adversaries, particularly in Latin America, to believe the US has these capabilities.

But then comes the guard’s testimony, shared publicly by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on X. He describes radar systems simultaneously shutting down, swarms of drones, and then this mysterious weapon that made his “head feel like it was exploding from the inside.” Mass collapse. Internal bleeding. Complete incapacitation.

To those of us with long memories, it sounded strangely familiar, hearkening back to the “Havana syndrome” attacks on American personnel starting in Havana in 2016. Those attacks were suspected to have been caused by a secret energy weapon. Now, the United States has its own.

Whether we actually used that weapon or the White House just wants you to believe it did, either way, the strategic effect is the same.

The Havana syndrome connection

Starting in late 2016, U.S. diplomats and CIA officers in Cuba began experiencing bizarre symptoms: sudden onset of severe headaches, hearing strange sounds, vertigo, cognitive issues, and what appeared to be actual brain injuries. Over the next several years, hundreds of American personnel reported similar incidents in China, Russia, Austria, and even Washington, D.C.

The National Academies of Sciences concluded in 2020 that “pulsed electromagnetic energy” was the most plausible explanation for at least some cases. Multiple intelligence panels agreed: Directed-energy weapons were the leading theory. In 2024, investigative reporting linked Russia’s GRU Unit 29155 to research on “non-lethal acoustic weapons.”

For years, American officials have suspected, but couldn’t prove, that hostile actors used these weapons against U.S. personnel. The attacks hit diplomats inside embassy compounds, in hotels, and even at home. Invisible, deniable, and devastating.

Now fast-forward to the January 3, 2026, raid and its darkly ironic twist: 32 Cuban military advisers were killed defending Maduro’s compound, possibly hit with the same type of weapon that may have been used against Americans in Cuba.

If true, it sends a message: We know what you did to our people in Havana, and now you’ve experienced it yourselves.

The Pentagon just bought the Havana syndrome weapon

CNN reported on January 13 that Homeland Security Investigations acquired a device through an undercover operation for tens of millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using Pentagon funding. The backpack-size device produces pulsed radio waves and contains Russian components.

That portability matters. One of the long-standing questions about Havana syndrome was how you could make a weapon powerful enough to cause brain injuries that’s also portable enough to deploy against specific targets in embassy compounds, hotels, and homes.

The Pentagon tested it for more than a year and considered it serious enough to brief the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in late 2024. There’s still debate within the government about its actual link to Havana syndrome cases, but the acquisition has, according to CNN, “reignited a painful and contentious debate” about whether foreign adversaries have been attacking U.S. officials with directed-energy weapons.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who went public about injuries he sustained in what he believes was an attack in Moscow in 2017, told CNN: “If the [U.S. government] has indeed uncovered such devices, then the CIA owes all the victims a f**king major and public apology for how we have been treated as pariahs.”

This news breaks days after Venezuelan guards described similar symptoms during the Maduro raid. Interesting timing.

RELATED: Polymarket bettors RAGE as the app says Maduro’s capture doesn’t count as ‘invasion’

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

But did they actually use it?

The Venezuelan guard’s account describes mass nosebleeds, vomiting blood, and hundreds incapacitated simultaneously. These are more extreme than documented Havana syndrome cases, which typically involved headaches, vertigo, and cognitive issues rather than acute internal bleeding. Could blast overpressure from conventional explosives cause similar effects? Yes. Could shrapnel, concussive force, and chemical irritants from 150 aircraft’s worth of ordnance produce these symptoms? Absolutely.

Here’s what makes me skeptical: Both Maduro and his wife claimed injuries, but they survived and appeared in a Manhattan courtroom days later. The injuries reported (Maduro falling while fleeing, his wife struck in the head) sound like conventional combat trauma, not internal organ damage from directed energy.

And the biggest tell: The White House press secretary amplified this story. The Pentagon just spent tens of millions on a device they suspect is behind Havana syndrome attacks, briefed Congress, and now CNN is reporting on it publicly. If U.S. special forces had actually deployed a classified weapons system and some guard blew the secret, the response would be aggressive operational security and plausible deniability. Instead, we’re getting transparency.

That’s not how you handle a genuine security breach. That’s how you handle a psychological operation.

Why ambiguity is the weapon

The Trump administration wants adversaries, particularly in Latin America, to believe the U.S. has these capabilities. And here’s the brilliance: The technology is real (we have the receipts), but whether it was used remains ambiguous. Venezuela can’t prove it didn’t happen. The U.S. won’t confirm or deny. Adversaries now have to plan for worst-case scenarios.

This is the modern version of Reagan’s Star Wars program. Most scientists knew it couldn’t work as advertised, but the Soviets spent billions trying to counter it anyway. Sometimes the belief in a capability is more valuable than the capability itself.

The United States just demonstrated it can reach into a fortified compound in a hostile capital, extract a head of state, and fly him to New York to face trial, all while suffering minimal casualties. That capability needs no embellishment. But the embellishment serves a purpose: forcing every tin-pot dictator and mid-level drug trafficker in the Western Hemisphere to wonder if they’re next and whether their security forces can protect them from weapons they can’t see or hear.

And for anyone involved in Havana syndrome attacks, whether Cuban, Russian, or anyone else, there’s now a very clear message: If you hit our people with invisible weapons, don’t be surprised when we return the favor. The 32 dead Cuban advisers make that point unmistakably clear, regardless of what weapon actually killed them.

Power projection isn’t just about what you can do; it’s about what others believe you can do.

The bottom line

The truth about Venezuela is probably somewhere in the middle. Electronic warfare to knock out radar and communications? Almost certainly. That’s standard doctrine. Directed-energy weapons causing mass internal bleeding? The technology exists, but the extreme symptoms described don’t match documented effects. Whether they were actually used? Strategically ambiguous.

And that’s the point. The ambiguity itself is the weapon. If they used it, adversaries know America will deploy it. If they didn’t, adversaries still believe they might next time, and uncertainty is often more powerful than certainty.

Here’s a story: Cuba helps Russia attack American diplomats with invisible weapons starting in 2016. Years later, Cuban advisers die defending a dictator when the U.S. raids his compound with technology that sounds awfully familiar. Whether that’s coincidence, retaliation, or just good storytelling doesn’t really matter. The message landed.

That’s worth understanding because we’re going to see more of it in this fifth generation of warfare. The age of warfare where you could independently verify what happened on the battlefield is over. In the era of psychological operations, classified capabilities, and information warfare, the story about the battle matters as much as the battle itself.

Maybe more.

​Tech, Return, Havana syndrome, Venezuela, Nicolas maduro, Operation absolute resolve 

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have refused to honor congressional subpoenas requiring them to testify about Jeffrey Epstein and the federal government’s handling of his crimes.

The former president and secretary of state responded with a sharply worded letter to House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) — also posted publicly on X — dismissing the probe as partisan politics designed to distract from the Trump administration’s failures, including aggressive ICE operations; January 6 pardons; threats to funding and free speech for universities, media companies, and law firms; the dismantling of national security agencies (such as USAID); and the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences. For us, now is that time,” the letter declares.

“Really? Now? … Now, when you’re asked to testify in front of Congress under subpoena about Epstein? That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back?” Glenn Beck retorts, calling the timing of their sudden “fight” for “principles” suspiciously convenient.

Their letter and refusal aren’t about justice or principle at all — they’re about what the Clintons have always prized most: self-preservation.

In the letter, Washington’s most scandal-ridden, slippery duo wrote, “You accepted the least from those who know the most but demand the most from those who know the least. To say that you can’t complete your work without speaking to us is simply bizarre.”

Glenn finds this statement so absurd, it’s almost funny. “Is there anybody that was closer to Epstein than Bill and Hillary Clinton? I mean, maybe not Hillary, but Bill? I mean, he was there all the time,” he claps back. “In the stairway of the Epstein mansion was that weird-ass picture of Bill Clinton in the dress with his legs draped over wearing heels.”

The letter also addressed the potential for contempt of Congress charges. “We expect you will direct your committee to seek to hold us in contempt,” they wrote, denouncing such an act as a partisan move that will only halt Congress.

In 2022, however, Hillary Clinton publicly supported holding both Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro — former Trump advisers — in contempt of Congress for defying the Jan. 6 subpoenas.

But now that the same fate is staring them in the face, the Clintons are suddenly calling it “injustice.”

“You don’t get to suddenly sound like James Madison after you spent four straight years trying to put Donald Trump in prison by any means necessary,” Glenn says, recalling that “it was Hillary Clinton that started the whole Russiagate thing.”

“[The Clintons] did everything — Russian collusion, manufactured intelligence, leaked FISA warrants, media operation masquerading as journalism, all of that stuff,” he continues. “Now, we know that all of this stuff is based on lies, so when I hear warnings about the Justice Department being used as a cudgel, … when I hear lectures about intimidation and subpoena and punishments of enemies, you know, I don’t dismiss them, but I also don’t forget who the people were that normalized it.”

The truth is, everyone who was tied to Epstein in any way — not excluding President Trump — should be questioned, Glenn says.

“Doesn’t mean they all go to jail. Doesn’t mean they all did something. But you should be questioned — all of them,” he says.

“I don’t want show trials. I don’t want immunity for friends or punishment for enemies. … I want equal justice under the law — you know, the kind written in the Constitution and almost never practiced by anybody in power lately.”

But Glenn knows the odds of real justice ever catching up to the Clintons are slim to none.

“They’re above it all,” he acknowledges.

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Clintons, Clinton subpoena, Epstein, Bill clinton, Epstein island, Epstein victims, Crooked hillary, Hillary clinton